Since January 1, 2015, live bombs packed with explosives that could rip apart town centers have been discovered buried across Europe and Asia. The potential for death and destruction is disrupting whole communities, forcing evacuations, closing key transportation links and placing military, police and civilian expert bomb-disposal squads in risky situations.
In late January, a Danish fisherman working the Baltic Sea near Bornholm brought up a deadly load in his net. The explosive measured nearly three feet long and forced a call to the Danish Emergency Management Agency who took charge of its disposal. Experts now estimate that there may be millions of such hidden explosives stashed in that same area. Genuine fear stalks the minds of the fishermen who work the rich fishing waters.
Then in March, a massive 550-pound bomb was discovered buried in central London that placed thousands of local residents at “significant risk.” Army disposal teams sent warnings through the area sending people from around 1,000 households fleeing to safety. Flyers posted in the area warned that were the bomb to explode, nearby homes could be destroyed and homes across a wide area damaged. The Tower Bridge across the famous Thames was closed and a massive rail line threatened. A local resident stated, “Everyone’s worried; everyone’s a bit petrified. All the buses have stopped and the trains might have to stop too.” Schools were evacuated while gutsy Army disposal experts carefully examined and removed the 5-foot-long bomb.
In late May, a little over a month before the fabled Wimbledon tennis tournament, a 110-pound bomb was discovered in a parking garage close to the storied Wembley Stadium where the tournament is held. The device, “capable of reaching heights of 1,100 feet,” with its explosion posed a serious threat. Hundreds were evacuated and the area brought to a standstill for 24 hours while army experts successfully removed the device.
Then, just days later, Cologne, Germany, faced its own crisis. Tens of thousands of residents were forced to leave their homes. Streets were flooded with long lines of senior citizens in wheelchairs pushed by social workers moving toward waiting buses sent to get them out. Schools and kindergartens, even the local zoo, were shut down. The culprit? A 1-ton bomb found buried 16 feet underground near a vital bridge that lay close to a 45-story apartment complex.
In June reports were heating up around the world. Sicily had a key airport, the sixth busiest in Italy, closed down, rippling flight delays across Europe. Gloucestershire police in southern England called in local army bomb experts to check out 10 devices discovered in a cluster near new homes.
Now, just last week, news has filtered in from Okinawa that Japanese authorities fear removal of bombs buried in their area may take up to 70 years. A nervous Tetsuo Shimanaka said, “I get nervous every time there’s a disposal operation, whatever the size. ... It’s scary to think I was sleeping above bombs.”
Are You Sleeping on Bombs?
Who’d ever want to sleep on bombs? But that’s the enduring legacy of World War II. A recent estimate made by the Berlin government guessed that the city sat on top of around 3,000 unexploded bombs. But no one knows quite how many there are or where a backhoe will expose the next one. Multiple people have died this decade trying to successfully remove them. Unexploded ordnance from that massive conflict litters not only nations across Europe but island nations from Brunei to Japan.
All this begs the deeper question. Do you have your house parked on a bomb or two? Maybe you live far from the blast zones of World War II or outside the range of the RPGs littering the Middle East and Central Asia. But what about the 110-pound “white lie” or the 1,000-pound “nasty gossip”? They may not have caused any obvious problems when they escaped our lips a few years ago. Now they are buried and forgotten by us. But just as the seven decades since World War II haven’t rendered its explosive power inert and harmless, seven millennia could roll by and leave our sins as potent as the day they were dropped in a heated moment of anger or deceit. Burying them under lovely stadiums of good works or 45 stories of charitable giving doesn’t remove their sting. “That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:1515That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past. (Ecclesiastes 3:15)).
Fire Exposes Live Explosives
One family in Plymouth, England, kept a bomb given to them after a World War II raid as a door stop for years. It passed from one man to his brother and then on to his child. Then fire swept through a neighbor’s house. “If that [were] to happen to us, the bomb would be a danger,” they thought, so they called the Navy. Just this month the Royal Navy Bomb Disposal truck pulled into their driveway and then made off with the bomb that was proven to be live. What a mercy the fire hit next door instead of hitting their home.
Will you call the only available expert able to remove the hidden and exposed sin from your life? Leaving it to be tested by a future fire of judgment is not a good idea. Don’t even dream of trying to dispose of it on your own. What a lousy idea to improve your life and pretend that will disarm the past. “God requireth that which is past.” And God’s Word says about Jesus, “Now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many” (Hebrews 9:26-2826For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: 28So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (Hebrews 9:26‑28)). The Lord Jesus Christ is the only One that can ever remove the explosive power of sin from your life. Will you call on Him to be your Saviour?
Find out what else has long-lasting power in An Old-Growth Forest and Eternity.