“I’m alive!” exclaimed Steve Callahan in a telephone call to his brother Ed. “I always wanted to spend a few months at sea, but not like that!” Steve had just been rescued from a six-foot rubber raft near the West Indies in the south Atlantic Ocean. He had survived for 76 days and had drifted almost 1,800 miles before being rescued by some fishermen.
Steve’s ordeal began when his 22-foot sailboat sank near the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa. He had planned a five-week trip and was on the way only four days when the boat struck a reef and began sinking. Steve was asleep at the time.
“I woke up when I heard a huge ‘bang’ on the side of the boat,” he recalled from his hospital bed. "I barely had time to get on deck when water started gushing in like someone had turned on 50 water-hoses!” He quickly inflated his life raft and piled supplies into it before his boat sank. Steve’s survival gear included two pints of water, a fishing line, a protractor and charts for navigation, a few pencils, a few days’ supply of food and a cheap speargun. Not very many supplies for a 2 ½ month trip. But Steve had no idea what was ahead of him.
Most people today are poorly supplied with what is really needed for this life. They are sailing through life, much like Steve was in his sailboat, with many of this world’s supplies—things like a job, a home, family and friends, and good health—all of which are usually taken for granted. But when these are taken away people become miserable, because they have lost what they feel are the things necessary for happiness. Steve had the “basic emergency supplies” for his life raft. God is offering you far more than just the “basics.” He is offering a complete RESCUE to “whosoever will.” For all those who realize that without the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour they are lost and on their way to hell, God has the “navigational chart” that can lead them to safety. It is His Word, the Bible, which tells us about His Son, the Lord Jesus: “For there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” Acts 4:1212Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts 4:12). Before you go any further on this life’s journey, be sure that you have the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour and Navigator. He will guide you on a safe course that leads to His home in heaven.
The food that Steve had managed to throw into his life raft did not last very long. But he was able to spear fish with his speargun. Eating fish and barnacles kept him alive.
Day after day he drifted with the westerly current. He watched seven ships pass by without seeing him. “When you’re by yourself, there is no one to calm you down when you get panicky,” he recalled.
Finally, 76 days after his boat sank, Steve was rescued. Birds flying around the raft attracted the attention of the fisherman who found him and rescued him.
Although Steve was in pretty bad shape from lack of water, sunburn and starvation (his weight had dropped from 150 to 110 pounds), he recovered quickly after being taken to a hospital.
News of Steve’s rescue was sent by CB radio to other fishermen in the area. After all, it is not often that a person spends 76 days in an open raft in the ocean and lives to tell about it! The news was eventually heard by the Coast Guard in Miami who notified Steve’s family of his rescue.
Do you think that Steve had any thought of saying “no thanks” to those fishermen who wanted to rescue him? No, of course not! Yet there are boys and girls who are saying “no thanks” to the Lord Jesus. They are refusing His offer to save them. Are you one of them? You are if you have not agreed that you are a sinner and believed that it is only His blood shed on the cross that can save you. If you believe that He was punished for your sins, then you can say that “The Lord thy God, He it is that doth go with thee; He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.” Deuteronomy 31:66Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. (Deuteronomy 31:6).
ML-08/22/1982