Admiral Don Alonzo peered through his spyglass into the early morning mist on May 2, 1669, at the rapidly-approaching pirate flagship followed by its motley accompaniment of twelve small ships. Below deck the fifty-eight superbly trained gunners touched their torches to the fuses and sent a rain of cannonballs down on the vastly outnumbered enemy. The ships closed in quickly but the gunners adjusted their cannons to keep the hot lead straight on target. Riggings on the pirate ships were being shredded while Don Alonzo looked with admiration on the courageous pirates. Some wore floppy hats, but all wore fixed looks of determination with cutlasses hanging ready at their sides. Shot now poured from Don Alonzo’s flagship Magdalena directly into the faces of the on-rushing, out-gunned, trapped pirates of the Caribbean. Surrounded by two other large, well-armed naval vessels and supported by a strong fort, the Spanish navy guarded the 800-yard-wide gateway to the Gulf of Maracaibo. His enemy, Captain Morgan, had finally been trapped in an inescapable prison. Victory was certain.
Good sleuthing had brought Admiral Alonzo to the pinnacle of his career. Like intelligent men and women of every era, he gathered his information well. Sent to eradicate the pirate pest from the Caribbean, he’d stopped at towns along the Spanish Main and listened carefully to the gossip that flowed freely in the taverns. Over glasses of rum, buccaneers had boasted of the pieces of eight they were going to grab in Maracaibo, Venezuela. The town was situated inside a vast gulf rimmed on three sides by mountains that towered up to 14,500 feet high. Racing south with his navy, Alonzo seized the fort at the mouth of the gulf and garrisoned it, stuffing it full of ammunition, provisions, trained Spanish musketeers and local militiamen. Best of all, he loaded it up with cannons that would soon punch holes in the sides of Captain Morgan’s converted merchant ships. Then Alonzo sailed his ships into position at the mouth of the harbor and began receiving steady reports from the citizens rimming the gulf.
The Admiral sifted the reports carefully. Morgan’s carpenters were heard fortifying a captured Cuban ship. The Captain’s colors flew above the strengthened ship. Provisions and captured gold were being loaded on board. Don Alonzo’s terms for peace sent by messengers were impertinently rejected. To escape by land, the buccaneers would have to abandon their $12.5 million in captured gold, not to mention slaves and huge stores of trade goods. Then the men, used to lounging in Caribbean ports and drinking their rum under the sun and gentle trade winds, would be forced to hike through hostile territory, over snow-covered passes, and attempt to hijack more ships before the Spanish navy could again hone in on their position. Alonzo despised what he saw as the pirate scum that floated up out of the holds of stolen ships and looked forward to the glory of ridding the Spanish realms of his adversary. Rigorous military training, culture, numerical superiority, military intelligence, the might of an empire, reinforcements already heading from other Caribbean ports and an impregnable position supported the methodical Don Alonzo. As the doomed pirate vessel crashed with splintering force into the Magdalena and grappling hooks clinched the vessels in a death grip, Spanish musketeers leaped onto the out-manned pirate’s decks.
Confidence based on truth is the reinforced concrete foundation for bold action. Life, death and eternity demand a clear sense of the issues at stake. The size of the decision determines the amount of careful planning needed. Admiral Alonzo hadn’t been careless, lazy or lax. But confidence based on lies had blinded his mind. He couldn’t believe that his foreign enemy had a devilish plan. “The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not” (2 Corinthians 4:44In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. (2 Corinthians 4:4)).
The pirates aboard their doomed ship failed to raise their cutlasses to defend themselves. Everywhere from the hold to the rigging, the smell of highly-flammable tar filled the Spanish musketeers’ nostrils. The hold, filled with gunpowder, erupted with tremendous explosive force launching musketeers upward into the rigging like droplets in a fountain. Every form of flammable material driven by the morning winds swept over the decks of the Magdalena while the front of the ship slipped under the waves and the remaining sailors, soldiers and once-proud captain leaped for longboats or the salty sea.
Morgan’s carpenters had removed timber to not dampen the explosion, created wooden pirate cutouts carrying cutlasses at their sides, and slathered the ship with flammable material. Shortly before impact, the skeleton crew of real pirates that had sailed the ship toward Alonzo’s Magdalena had slipped out the back of the ship in canoes and paddled furiously in the opposite direction. Alonzo’s “certain victory” was an illusion propped up by believable rumor, supported by hazy views from the spyglass, and anchored in place by self-confidence in his own cultured training and superiority.
As fascinating as history can be, neither you nor I care as much about the past as the future. A clear view of what’s ahead is sometimes clouded by the baggage we carry from our past. God provides clear, definite answers about what’s coming in His Word, the Bible. Have you read it? Let me share a disturbing secret. Days before the pirate attack, a man the Spaniard despised made it to the ship with a warning of the impending fireship attack. Alonzo’s response? “How can that be?” he roared at his informant. “Have they, peradventure, wit enough to build a fireship?”
Does Satan have “wit enough” to take you down with the fireship of sin? Are you certain that warnings such as “he that believeth not the Son [of God] shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:3636He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36)) come from worthless sources? Confidence in prevailing rumors and local opinion cost Don Alonzo everything that mattered to him in life. Where is your confidence placed for what matters more — what comes after this life? Many have found eternal certainty in the words spoken by another despised man. Jesus Christ said, “God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:1717For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:17)). Find out more of His plan of salvation in the next story, I “Didn’t See God.”