Titanic

PASTOR ON TITANIC MADE ONE LAST CONVERT

(April 08, 2024) Honouring the late Dan Wooding founder of ASSIST, we share this story he published some years ago…

On Sunday, April 14, 1912, the unsinkable ocean liner Titanic sank to the bottom of the ocean after hitting an iceberg. About 700 people survived, but some1,500 people perished in the frigid north Atlantic because an insufficient number of lifeboats were placed on the ship.

 One of the passengers, John Harper, served as pastor of Walworth Road Baptist Church in London, England. He was a 39-year-old widower with Nan a six-year-old daughter. Harper was en route to Chicago, where he was slated to preach for several weeks at the Moody Church, according to an account in AoG News.

Self-sacrificing
His daughter and niece accompanied him on the trans-Atlantic voyage. After the Titanic hit the iceberg, his daughter and niece boarded a lifeboat and survived.

Harper, however, refused to save himself and instead helped others to the crowded lifeboats. According to survivors, Harper preached the gospel until his dying breath, first on the sinking ship and then in the frigid waters.

The October 1928 issue of The Latter Rain Evangel (published by The Stone Church, a historic Assemblies of God congregation in Chicago), recounted the following story of John Harper’s last convert.

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SO WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

(July 12, 2022) Richard Winter brings a timely challenge…

History records both good and bad times that humanity lives through! And we don’t need anyone to tell us that were living in difficult days today… we know! Indeed, bad times these days offer us a perspective of worse times to come!

This was true in the times of Jesus too! And one day He gave His disciples ‘a scripture memory test’ about Noah’s times, linking it to the end of time and His return from heaven.

Most people know the story of Noah and the ark Jesus referred to. Indeed everyone should take note of His Matthew 24:37-38 warning, ‘As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered into the ark, and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood took them all away.’

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TITANIC ‘IF ONLYS’

(April 06, 2022) Robert McQuillan shares some April thoughts…

110 years ago on Sunday 14 April 1912, the massive White Star liner RMS Titanicstruck an iceberg. That catastrophe is generally reported as happening at 23.39… Three hours, one minute later, at 2.40am Monday morning the so-called unsinkable, luxury liner was gone in the calmest but coldest seas (28 degrees under).

Only 750 were plucked from the frigid sea. Sadly, 1523 had perished.

 It was indeed, as the Walter Lord‘s prolific 1955 book and subsequent 1958 movie called it, A Night to Remember.

Titanic’s ‘If Onlys’
Among other beliefs – and ‘believed mysteries or conspiracy theories’ – the following have been associated with that horrifying disaster.

If only…

  • The British Board of Trade ruling had called for more lifeboats.
  • The crow’s nest spotters binoculars hadn’t disappeared.
  • Iceberg warnings had been taken more seriously.
  • Bruce Ismay, White Star managing director, hadn’t pressed for a speedier (24k) crossing.
  • First officer Murdoch hadn’t reversed the main engines, handicapping the turning ability.
  • The ship had had a double hull.
  • The watertight doors had been higher than three metres (and there had been more doors).
  • There had been more red flares on board.
  • The mysterious ship nearby had responded to the distress signals
  • The Carpathia hadn’t been so far away to steam to the rescue (four hours away).
  • ‘We’ hadn’t booked on the maiden voyage.
  • Morgan Robertson’s 1898 romantic novel The Wreck of the Titan or, Futility had been taken seriously. (Later this book would be regarded as ‘prophetic’ as it centred on ‘the largest craft afloat… unsinkable, indestructible she carried as few boats as would satisfy the laws’ being sunk by an iceberg. ‘Fourteen years before the greatest civil maritime disaster of all time, this story eerily prefigured the actual calamity’ of the Titanic).

That’s 12 ‘If Onlys.’

Thirteen is often regarded as unlucky. Christians don’t believe in ‘luck’ as we trust God (or should!), but here’s a thirteenth ‘If only’, a sad one…

  • God hadn’t been mocked! Seems it was mockingly, jokingly claimed that even God couldn’t sink Titanic (not that He would have!).
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