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THE EVEREST CHRONICLES #3

NEXT TIME GO BY PLANE

He was sitting comfortably in a seat on Thai Air flight 311, which has as its route Bangkok to Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal. Writer and mountain climber Jon Krakauer was on his way to join up with the rest of the Adventure Consultants guided expedition which was planning a May 1996 scaling of Mount Everest.

And as Krakauer writes afterward in his chilling bestseller, Into Thin Air, he suddenly got the urge to get a better view of the Himalayas. Going to the back of the jet, he crouched down on the starboard side so he could get a good look out the windows there. And sure enough, right there on the horizon he could see what he called "the jagged incisors of the Himalaya." Here's how he describes the next hour:

"I stayed at the window for the rest of the flight, spellbound, hunkered over a trash bag full of empty soda cans and half-eaten meals, my face pressed against the cold Plexiglass."

And it was all right there outside that plane window. Being an experienced mountaineer, he could recognize these famous peaks one by one. There was Kanchenjunga; at 28,169 feet above sea level, it was the third-highest mountain in the world. Just 15 minutes later, he saw Makalu come into view, the fifth-tallest peak on our planet.

But then came the moment he was waiting for, the sight he'd been thinking about for a good share of his 41 years. There it was: Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, the so-called Third Pole. Of course, the five digits had to come pounding into his mind: 2 - 9 - 0 - 2 - 8. This mountain was 29,028 feet tall, the roof of the world. Let me read to you verbatim his description as he stared out the window of that Thai Air jet:

"The ink-black wedge of the summit pyramid stood out in stark relief, towering over the surrounding ridges. Thrust high into the jet stream, the mountain ripped a visible gash in the 120-knot hurricane, sending forth a plume of ice crystals that trailed to the east like a long silk scarf." Now notice this next line of confession: "As I gazed across the sky at this contrail [or vapor trail], it occurred to me that the top of Everest was precisely the same height as the pressurized jet bearing me through the heavens. That I proposed to climb to the cruising altitude of an Airbus 300 jetliner struck me, at that moment, as preposterous, or worse. My palms felt clammy."

Well, it's colorful writing, isn't it? And you know, here at the Voice of Prophecy, we look at photos of Everest a bit differently now. The cover of Krakauer's book, Into Thin Air, shows an Everest with that kind of terrifying, forbidding death power. It honestly does look like a Death Zone there at the top.

That last paragraph by Jon Krakauer, though, paints a picture for us we could look at two different ways. On the one hand, as he stared out at this cold piece of rock, Everest, it scared him to death to realize that the peak of the mountain was as high up in the rarefied air as he was inside the plane. I know all of you who have flown have seen those safety videos where little yellow oxygen masks come popping out. That's how high he was at that moment, and in a few short weeks he and seven other paying clients would be trying to climb up to that exact same height. Hence the clammy palms and the attack of nerves.

But when we turn that same paragraph around and look at it another way, a very spiritual picture begins to emerge. Yes, that mountain was as high as the plane. On the other hand, the plane was as high as the mountain. Thai Air flight 311, because it had jet engines and pilots and thrust and aerodynamic lift and all the rest . . . had taken him, Jon Krakauer, to a height of 29,028 feet without him having to leave the plane. Inside the plane, he was at that very height. Even though many, many mountain climbers were paying $65,000 and giving up two months of time and strapping on crampons and breathing through those 6.6-pound orange Kevlar oxygen canisters and arduously going from Base Camp up to Camp One, Camp Two, Three and Four, and then finally risking their lives, frankly, to get up to 29,028 feet, he and many other fare-paying passengers were already at that level in perfect comfort inside a jet plane.

Well, maybe it's a bit simplistic, but the point for the human race is kind of obvious. God has provided us with a plane ticket — and it has the word "GRACE" stamped on the front of it. While all around us people are striving to climb the mountains of perfection, of human achievement, of an earned salvation, there's a plane parked at the hangar which can safely carry you to 29,028 feet and far beyond. The expedition to heaven is not one where we climb, but where we ride.

Now friend, I know full well that it isn't a perfect illustration. Climbing up a mountain isn't the same thing as flying over it, and I won't pretend that it is. But in the spiritual realm, it's absolute truth — and Everest-like deadly truth — that millions spend their lives, and sometimes give up their lives as well, trying to climb up Everest.

So many places in the writings of Paul seem to speak of airplanes and mountain-climbing. Of course, if you listen to the Voice of Prophecy for more than about a week, you're likely to encounter our favorite theme text, which is found in Ephesians chapter two:

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast."

We mentioned yesterday and Monday some of the Everest boasting that has gone on — and really, some of us who have never ventured much above sea level find our own mountains to sing about. But notice how the Word of God tells us that salvation is not something we can do for ourselves. "This is not from yourself," Paul writes emphatically. "Your being saved is due to grace; it's a gift; it's provided."

Back in Galatians chapter two, he says the same thing again:

"A man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ." A few verses later in chapter three: "Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because ‘The righteous will live by faith.'"

It's good to notice that that last expression, "The righteous will live by faith," is taken directly from the Old Testament book of Habakkuk. So it's good news that our Bible speaks of airplanes and free tickets in both testaments.

In his wonderful, wonderful book The Knowledge of the Holy, theologian A. W. Tozer has 23 chapters, all of them describing various attributes of God. And of course, one chapter is entitled very simply: "The Grace of God." He seems almost to speak of plane rides when he says this:

"[Grace's] use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places" — even higher than 29,028 feet up, I might add — "to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God's kindness to us in Christ Jesus."

And speaking of grace being available in both the Old and New Testament, he immediately adds this:

"No one was ever saved other than by grace, from Abel to the present moment."

Now friend, let me say this about grace and Mount Everest. Back on May 29, 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay proved that a man could climb Everest. Ever since then, more than 600 others have done it again. Jon Krakauer himself got to the top; he reached the roof of the world under his own steam. He made it up to that magic number, 2 - 9 - 0 - 2 - 8, both the easy way and the hard way.

But here's the sober truth in the spiritual realm. If salvation is a kind of Everest, then there's simply no way humans can climb it. Not Hillary, not Billy Graham, not the Pope, not you, not me. This mountain absolutely cannot be climbed. Every human attempt to get to the top is going to fail. Every attempt, every expedition, every time. Acts 4:12 is a hugely important text in the climber's lexicon:

"Salvation is found in no one else [except Jesus Christ], for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."

And you know, I don't really read that verse for the benefit of all the "(quote) heathens" and atheists in the world. Because even the most born-again among us, every time we wake up in the morning, have a temptation to look at the nearest hill and say to ourselves: "Well, I can at least make it up to Base Camp by myself. Maybe even up to Camp One or Camp Two. Krakauer's up there near the top; Hillary made it; I think I'll go for it." Friend, we're always wanting to climb, always wanting to go up there by ourselves, when all the time, there's an airplane waiting for us, and a first-class plane ticket already paid for.

Back in 1980, two years after being the first to make it to the top of Everest without oxygen, Reinhold Messner did it again, this time coming up from the Tibetan side. At 3:00 in the afternoon, August 20, climbing through thick clouds and falling snow, he finally reached the summit. In his book The Crystal Horizon, he describes it:

When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath. . . . I can scarcely go on." And then later: "I was in continual agony; I have never in my whole life been so tired."

Listen, friend, are you tired? Tired of climbing, tired of trying, tired of going up, up, up, only to find that you're in the Death Zone?

There's a seat reserved on that plane. Reserved in your name. And the Pilot, right now, is warming up the engines.