With a drink in my hand, a girl at my side, in a jammed crowd in a New York night club listening to one of the top bands—who would have thought the time was going to end in tears rather than cheers? As I sat high-spirited at the lounge table (despite the fact that I was wearing a full-length cast on my leg due to a football injury), a tap on my shoulder informed me that I was being paged at the entrance.
A girl whom I had invited at the last minute to match with my football roommate was being kept from entering—found to be a minor. Anticipating difficulties in getting in, she had brought along a false identification for proof of age. However, the bouncer detected the deceit and asked her to write her name on a piece of paper. He compared it to the signature on the I.D. he was holding in his hand. It seemed as though she would get in, but a last-second glance made him notice a wrong middle initial and he said firmly, "You're not coming in here tonight!"
A few football buddies and I huddled together to see what strategy we could use to get her into the club, but the guard rejected all our proposals, even a bribe. I insisted that we send the girl back home (a thirty-mile ride), but my advice was unanimously overthrown and we went on to another club where the bouncer was more typical and all entered unhindered—no questions asked.
The next morning the N.Y. Times read: "The young people were dancing to the soul rock band when the band leader stopped the music to announce a small fire had begun in an adjoining part of the building. Within minutes, the sunken dance floor, called the "PIT," was a turmoil of black smoke and screaming, terror-stricken people. The narrow stairway to the exit was suddenly packed with people clawing at one another for air." Gulliver's night club became the second worst night club fire in history, exceeded only by Boston's Cocoanut Grove fire which took almost 500 lives in twelve minutes.
The fact of my thigh-to-ankle cast combined with the thought of the fifteen-step stairway to the exit brought me to tears thanking God for preventing me from perishing in the "PIT." The previous night's eat-drink-and-be-merry spirit was reversed to sober thoughts of death and its consequences. Eternity had never come before me with such force. Heaven or hell—which would my destiny have been? Getting right with God became foremost in my mind. Bible searching, prayer and religious inquiries were intensified. This state of agitation ended about seven months after the holocaust when I received the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior by the Holy Spirit's revelation through the scripture verse: "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed." Isa. 53:55But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5).
Where I would have gone if I had died in Gulliver's didn't hit me till about eight months after the fire. At the end of an afternoon nap, I dreamed about the club fire. In the dream I was back on the dance floor at the time the announcement of fire was made. Then the lights went out and the screams of young people struggling to escape and visions of hands waving and feet kicking to remove all obstacles from their path were vividly portrayed. My leg cast was too cumbersome to compete with the fast-rushing crowd. My lagging behind was keeping me too long in the smoke-filled "PIT." My gasping for breath was only to inhale more toxic smoke. I slumped down to the dance floor which became my deathbed, but the dream didn't end there.
I dreamed I went to hell! By now half awake, a sweat came over me, my eyes filled with tears and my body began to shake. The like-real symptoms of being in hell startled me out of my dream and I fell to my knees thanking God that I was saved from the eternal burnings which I would have justly deserved.
Are you aware of what's ahead for you when life's fleeting pleasures give way to the realities of a non-material eternity?... the deceptions of the god of this world (Satan) will end and your soul be shifted naked into the presence of the sovereign Master of the universe? The holy Word of God warns that God's house will not be tainted by anything that defiles. Your sins, which separate you from God and will bar you from heaven, must now be put away by faith in the work of Christ on the cross. He died and shed His own precious blood to wash away our sins.
If you trust the Lord Jesus Christ and the work He accomplished to save sinners like you and me, you'll then have the assurance from His Word, "that where I am, there ye may be also." John 14:33And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (John 14:3). If you do not believe, Jesus said, "whither I go, ye cannot come." John 8:2121Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come. (John 8:21).
It was a great mercy of God to have been delivered from the "PIT" in that discotheque, but far greater was His love in sending His only begotten Son to take the punishment of my sins and to save my soul from the pit of hell. "Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back." Isa. 38:1717Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. (Isaiah 38:17).
May you, as I, be able to say, "He brought me up also out of a horrible pit... and set my feet upon a rock [Christ]... and He hath put a new song in my mouth." Psa. 40:2, 32He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. 3And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord. (Psalm 40:2‑3).