A STEEL WORKER'S STORY
ROBERT E. SURGENOR, Evangelist
 

IT WAS A COLD FEBRUARY NIGHT, but less than seventy feet away was a molten, boiling, lake of fire! Behind fire-brick walls and heavy water-cooled steel doors, a 500 ton mass of seething molten steel bubbled at 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit, being fed by a tremendous flame that required 700 gallons of oil per hour. This roaring inferno was an open hearth furnace - the very heart of steel making.

A few moments before walking over to the furnace, I had experienced a brush with death. For years, God had spoken to me about my soul in a variety of ways. Two motorcycle wrecks, three near-disasters while piloting a plane, and a near-drowning in the Atlantic Ocean. But like many brought up in a Christian home, I desired not the knowledge of God's ways (Job 21:14).

Mother had objected to me going to the mills for work, but it was "big money," and that's what counted! During my first month, I witnessed a poor fellow, his head and shoulder cut off by an overhead crane. It was a gory sight as his bloody flesh was gathered up and put into a wire basket by my father, the melter foreman. A voice seemed to say, "If that were you, Bob, where would your soul be?" I pushed the thought immediately out of my mind.

A BRUSH WITH DEATH

In the course of twenty years, three men had fallen into the pits - a fifteen-foot drop in back of the furnaces. Two were burned alive, but I survived. Mother cried, and pleaded with me to quit, but money, sin, and pleasure were my gods. Now God was speaking once again. A brush with death was nothing to laugh at, or take lightly. A swinging overhead crane hook had just narrowly missed my head and I was shaken! Fellow workers on the scene shouted in jest, "Hey, Surgenor, if that thing had hit your head, you'd be shoveling coal in hell right now!" Their laughter pierced my heart! I had heard the Bible enough to know that there's no shoveling coal in hell - just a flame that torments its victims. A steady, piercing flame on the soul! A place of no comfort, no water, and no hope! But their words of jest were like the arrows of the Almighty. They stuck, and I couldn't get rid of them.

Looking into the furnace through a wicket hole, I was preparing to draw out a sample of the molten steel for testing. As my eyes beheld the white hot roaring flame and the steel lake of fire, my soul trembled. A voice said, "He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." It was a Bible verse I'd learned in Sunday School many years before, and now God was bringing it to my remembrance to awaken me (Proverbs 29:1).

After the shift, I went home from that steel mill as a young man convicted of sin, scared of going to hell, and wanting to be saved. A few days later, humbled and broken, and crying and trembling for fear of meeting God in my sins, I trusted the Lord Jesus Christ who died for me on the cross. It was my dear wife, who had been saved for only six days, who pointed me to the Saviour.

STARTLING FACTS

Friend, I'm sure that in your lifetime, you, too, have heard the voice of God in numerous ways. What about your soul? Do you ever consider eternity? As man to man, let me mention some startling, God-given facts. Do you know, "All have sinned" (Romans 3:23), and heaven's door is closed? Do you know death does not end all; that there is a conscious hereafter? (Luke 16:19-31). The undertaker buries the body in the grave, but God buries the lost soul in hell, to reserve it "unto the day of judgment to be punished" (II Peter 2:9). Do you know there are two resurrections: one for the saved; one for the lost (John 5:29)? Death (the body's abode) and hell (the soul's abode) shall deliver up the dead that are in them (Revelation 20:13). With body and soul reunited, the sinner shall stand before God to be judged for his sins, to determine the severity of his punishment. Do you know God has prepared a lake of fire and brimstone where this punishment will be poured out upon the sinner forever? The smoke of their torment will ascend up for ever and ever, they will have no rest day nor night (Revelation 14:11; 20:10). It will be a place "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:44).

Do you know God has made a way of escape through the precious blood of Christ? Oh, fellow traveler to eternity, be honest! Be fair to yourself and face the facts! Flee to Christ, receive Him now as your Saviour and be saved from the lake of fire.

"Being now justified by His
blood, we shall be saved from
wrath through Him" (Romans 5:9).

Born September 2, 1928. Born again February 10, 1952

"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3)