5 soldiers shot at Fort Stewart in Georgia

Fort Stewart is the largest Army post east of the Mississippi River. Five soldiers stationed there were shot this morning, leading to a lockdown of the base before the shooter was arrested.

As of this writing, the conditions of the soldiers and the circumstances of the shooting are still unclear, though we are now learning that there were no fatalities and that the suspect is a male soldier.

I have no idea what prompted this shooting, but the story makes a point worth considering, one that transcends its setting and speaks to us all.

Why JFK was right

Few people in America are better trained at defending themselves than our military personnel. Few places in America are more secure against attack than our military bases. And yet five of our military personnel were attacked at one of our military bases.

At the very least, this proves that John F Kennedy was right when he observed,

In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

However, when he spoke those words in June 1963, their truth was more obvious than it is today.

President Kennedy’s message addressed the issue of world peace in the midst of the Cold War and the fear of nuclear annihilation. The Cuban Missile Crisis, just a few months earlier, showed the relevance of such fear. Mr. Kennedy had survived a world war that took the life of his older brother and nearly claimed his own. He and many of those present that day still remembered vividly that global conflict and the millions of lives it cost.

In 1963, an Asian Flu epidemic caused more than eleven thousand deaths in 108 American cities. Before the measles vaccine became available that year, hundreds died from the disease each year. Heart disease and cancer were the leading causes of death then, as they are today, but they had far fewer treatments than we have.

In 1963, 73 percent of Americans were church members, compared to 47 percent today. They would have heard sermons and Bible studies emphasizing heaven, hell, mortality, and the need to be ready for eternity today.

When was the last time you heard a sermon on hell?

“The safest road to hell”

CS Lewis had his demonic tempter, Screwtape, tell his apprentice, “The safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

Our enemy has made this road more popular today than ever.

• A postmodern culture that considers all truth to be personal and subjective accordingly rejects biblical authority and biblical warnings about heaven and hell.
• Our relativistic society dismisses the concept of sin, much less the reality that we are sinners in need of a Savior.
• Our medical advancements have inoculated us against the terrors of disease and the pain of death until they find us. In the meantime, we live our lives in the mistaken belief that we are somehow immortal, or at least that death is an irrelevant subject for our daily reflection.
• Our religious pluralism has convinced us that “all roads lead to heaven,” so our personal faith (or lack thereof) is irrelevant to our eternal destiny.

Accordingly, if you’re like most secular Americans, you read the news about the shooting at Ft Stewart with regret for those affected but no thought for its relevance for you.

That’s just what our enemy wants us to think.

“You hang by a slender thread”

Until we admit the fact of our mortality, we will not live in the light of eternity and will miss our best lives in the meantime. The best way to live today is to be ready to meet God today. 

If you knew you would stand before him in judgment in an hour, what sins would you confess now? What relationships would you heal? What obedience would you render?

Doing these things is the best, most healthy way to live, even if you were guaranteed another fifty years of life (which you’re not).

This is why Jesus discussed hell so much more often than we do. And it is why contemplation of the reality of hell has often been a catalyst for repentance and spiritual awakening across the centuries.

Consider Jonathan Edwards, the greatest preacher of the First Great Awakening. His most famous sermon was titled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Hear the words with which he closed:

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.

You can see why his words sparked fear in his hearers and helped turn them to God in repentance and faith.

If they do not apply to you, it is only because you have trusted in Christ as your Savior and Lord and received his forgiveness and eternal life. However, if you know someone who has not made this commitment to Jesus, does Edwards’ warning not apply to them?

Is sharing the message that leads to safety from hell and security in heaven not the greatest gift you could give them?

Crawling over broken glass

In Why Revival Tarries, Leonard Ravenhill tells the story of Charlie Peace, a convicted criminal condemned to death in England. As he was being led to his execution, the chaplain read some Bible verses along the way. The criminal was shocked at the way the minister professionally read about hell and said to him,

Sir, if I believed what you and the church of God say that you believe, even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it, if need be, on hands and knees and think it worthwhile living, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that!

What will you do to share the hope of heaven with someone before it’s too late?