1 Olympic Mountain Rescue

A young couple drove their SUV up the winding road to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park for a day of snow skiing. The night before several inches of snow had fallen in the mountains. A road crew had worked hard in the early morning hours to clear the route to the ski run.

At an elevation of a few thousand feet they drove through a long dimly lit tunnel that had been drilled through the solid rock of the mountain. After exiting the tunnel the road had a dip and a bend in it. They were driving along when the unthinkable took place. The SUV hit a patch of ice and began sliding towards the edge of the steep mountain. The driver stepped on the anti-lock brakes and turned the steering wheel hard to one side but nothing he tried was able to stop the vehicles slide on the ice. They watched wide-eyed with horror as the distance, foot by foot, disappeared between them and the edge of the mountain.

The car hit the low bank of snow on the narrow shoulder of the road. With a frightening lurch the front wheels drove off into the space over the edge of the mountain, and the chassis landed with a thud and then scraped to a rest on the shoulder of the road. The vehicle came to a halt, part on the road, and part suspended in space over the mountainside.

Olympic Mountain Rescue 2

Thoughts flashed through the minds of both persons inside the car of unfastening their seatbelts and leaping clear of the vehicle. But when the car slipped forward a little, such thoughts were quickly forgotten. They were too scared too move. The slightest movement might upset the delicate balance and send them careening down the mountain. The pair with death staring them in the face was in desperate situation.

You, too, if you have not been saved from your sins, are in a situation every bit as desperate as theirs. Death, the king of terrors as it is called in the book of Job, is certainly lurking somewhere in your future. At best, life is very brief, while in eternity death is forever. If you dont know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, no matter how comfortable your earthly situation is, you are tottering on the brink of disaster!

God whose unalterable nature is holy, just, and good, must hold every person accountable for the sins they have committed. It is appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment. He will not judge sin the same way men do. He will not trivialize it. He will not excuse it as normal or natural. It is his nature to utterly abhor sin. One sin is enough to sink a sinner into hell for all eternity. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, is a warning from Gods word that ought to solemnize the hardest of sinners.

His wrath hangs over every person who refuses to turn away from their sin, and to believe on the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. If they die without that all important change of heart and mind, towards the Lord Jesus, they will suffer Gods wrath forever. These shall go away into everlasting punishment, is a plain statement the Lord Jesus made in reference to those who pass out of this world without ever coming to repentance towards God. Repentance is a whole hearted change towards sin and God. It is a turning away from the sin we once loved, and a turning to God whose love and grace we had once spurned.