It was midsummer and very hot. In the steamy heat the whole apartment complex seemed to be dozing, but Damon, 13, and Emerson, 11, were playing ball in spite of the heat.
Inside, in a first-floor apartment, five small children sat or sprawled on the floor, their eyes fixed on the make-believe world of the television screen. Seeing them so absorbed, their mother slipped out to the neighborhood store. She would only be gone a minute!
Outside, the ball game came to a sudden stop. Was that smoke curling out of a window? The boys hesitated only long enough to be sure, then the game was forgotten as they rushed into the apartment.
There were the five children, still transfixed by the unreal world they watched while smoke and fire spread toward them.
"Those kids didn't even know there was smoke in the room," said Emerson. "They just sat there watching television. The fire was coming right at the baby. I grabbed her and ran outside."
The apartment was destroyed, but the two boys got all the children outside, uninjured.
Later Emerson said, "I was scared something was going to blow up... but I guess I thought more of their lives than I did my own."
And Damon said, "It was just something that had to be done."
The boys ran a terrible risk, but they saved the children without losing their own lives.
Nearly 2000 years ago the Lord Jesus Christ gave His life to save us. He came to a world absorbed in its own plans and pleasures, to people that had forgotten God and were "willingly ignorant" of the destruction that was coming on the earth.
There was no hope that man would see his danger and flee from the wrath to come. Satan, the god of this world, had "blinded the eyes of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ... should shine unto them." 2 Cor. 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).
As Damon said, "It had to be done"—if the children were to be saved.
The Lord Jesus had to come, had to die, had to rise again, if we were to live.
There was no other way.