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THE SCIENCE OF GRACE #15
BRINGING BACK MONTE
It’s one of the most stirring, moving stories I’ve ever read – and the recent book, United By Tragedy, is even more a personal blessing because I have come to know some of the people. But on September 2, 1998, Swissair Flight #111, bound for Geneva out of JFK International Airport, crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia. All 229 people on board were killed. And a Christian father named David Wilkins later teamed up with the wonderful writer Cecil Murphey to pen this spiritual account of the tragedy where he lost his 18-year-old son, Monte.
We could reverently use this story for weeks here on the radio, but today as we continue to study in God’s Word about the amazing gift of grace, there’s just one small piece of the saga we want to share with you. Swissair and its partner airline, Delta, of course, were also in anguish, and standing by, ready to help the families of victims any way they could. A Delta representative, Sheryl Johnson, got in touch with Dr. Wilkins and his wife, Janet, at their home here in Southern California. “Do you want to travel up to Nova Scotia?” she asked. The parents both knew they had to make the painful trip; after some discussion, siblings Darren, Yvette, Dan, Shannon, and Marci all decided to go too. And this Sheryl Johnson said to the grieving family: “If you want to go, we’ll arrange everything. Our job is to make sure you don’t have to worry about anything. You tell us who is going and we’ll take care of everything. We can have you out of here tonight and in Nova Scotia tomorrow.”
And that’s exactly how it happened. That evening, September 3, two vans pulled up and took everyone to the airport. No one had to pay for plane tickets or worry about connections. That was provided. Luggage: all taken care of. Boarding passes: all set. Local transportation: already handled. The lodging was free. Toiletries and other personal care items were graciously in place. Even cash – U.S. and Canadian currency – was quietly put into their hands when it was needed.
And all along the trip, Delta representatives, skilled at handling these moments of such raw anguish, were just THERE. They knew what to do. “We never saw the inside of a terminal,” David Wilkins writes later. The Delta personnel wisely kept them separated from the prying camera lenses of the media. When it was time to get on a plane, they went through private entrances and had cloistered, private seats up in first class where they could grieve and heal without interference. When they arrived at Halifax, the same generous, gracious, royal treatment was ready there too. Hotel rooms: all set. Transportation, privacy, counselors, ministers, handkerchiefs, Kleenex, everything.
And you know, as we read this story here at Voice of Prophecy, one thought came to mind: how lovely an illustration of the unlimited power of grace. Grace covers everything. It handles everything. It solves everything. It rights all wrongs, repairs all hurts, restores all losses.
Most of you regulars know that we’ve spent three weeks now – and two more to come, I’m glad to say – on a new series entitled THE SCIENCE OF GRACE. I have to tell you that this new book, United By Tragedy, could be a wonderful third textbook for us, but we’ve really been getting most of our script “threads” from the Bible and also a recent Adventist Review special issue on the theme of grace. And a writer named John Fowler describes for us, in clear biblical terms, how grace – on God’s side – is a powerful, unlimited gift.
Here’s II Corinthians 9:14:
“In their prayers for you [men’s] hearts will go out to you, because of the SURPASSING GRACE God has given you.”
How about Romans 5:17?
“For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s ABUNDANT PROVISION OF GRACE and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one Man, Jesus Christ.”
And this John Fowler concludes in his own words:
“No sin is too great to be forgiven; no person has gone too far to be brought home by God’s grace when that person approaches God in absolute surrender and faith. ‘Whoever comes to Me I will never drive away’ (John 6:37) is the divine promise and provision.”
Maybe you remember back in November of 2003 the furor when a 54-year-old truck painter named Gary Ridgway confessed to being the infamous Green River Killer. The families of victims broke down in anguished sobs as this rapist and murderer stood in a Seattle courtroom and said “Guilty” 48 times. “I killed so many women [over a 20-year period] I have a hard time keeping them straight,” he admitted to prosecutors. Newsweek described him as having the distinction of being “the serial killer convicted of the most murders in U.S. history, ahead of John Wayne Gacy, who killed 33 young men and boys in Chicago in the 1970s.”
What really broke the hearts of people in Washington State was that prosecutors had plea-bargained away the death penalty in exchange for details on some of the killings. It was the only way to get closure for some of the heartbroken families, but now Mr. Ridgway will never face his own execution. And with the state having a rule regarding proportionality in punishing, district attorneys are afraid Washington will never again be able to use death as an ultimate punishment – for anyone. How could any other killer get lethal injection when this man strangulated 48 innocent women, and just got life in prison?
And so we ask, here on this Friday: is grace truly unlimited? Could this Green River Killer come to Jesus, fall to his knees at the foot of the cross, and have all 48 killings be forgiven? Could he get a mansion in heaven someday, next to the thief on the cross? According to God’s Word, yes. Because grace is unlimited. And if we think that somehow, some way, someWHERE, the mighty river of grace has to run out – if not for the Green River Killer, then for Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler – we should remind ourselves what a preacher named John the Baptist said. He was down by a river too, called the Jordan, and when he saw Jesus coming toward him, he cried out:
“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin OF THE WORLD.”
I can’t get out a set of moral scales, and adequately explain to you how the death of my Savior, Jesus, on that cross, on that Friday can cancel out the Everest of sins, all sins, every sin, every kind of sin, every manner of sin, every life of sin . . . that has ever happened on this soiled old planet. I can’t explain it. But when the Bible has John telling us that grace is unlimited enough to take care of the whole thing, friend, I have to believe it. Most importantly, I have to believe that it’s enough for me. My concern is really not for Mr. Gary Ridgway; it’s for one E. Lonnie Melashenko. In five-and-a-half decades of life, I have done some things I’m not proud of. I’ve failed those I love. I’ve broken God’s law and messed up His blueprint. But Jesus is the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.
You know, whenever you and I are tempted to think, “This time it’s too much”; “that person has gone too far”; “now, for sure, my enemy cannot be forgiven,” or when we simply look into the mirror and lament, “Surely MY case is lost” . . . let’s remember that grace is an unlimited, never-ending fountain flowing from the infinite heart of God. You simply cannot get to the end of this rainbow and find darkness beyond it. It can’t be done.
And yet, I think I need to go back to this tender story of Dr. David Wilkins, whose boy was destroyed on that dark September night in the cold waters off Nova Scotia. Yes, the people from Delta and Swissair were so very kind to his family. They handled a seemingly unlimited number of painful details. Their generosity seemed to know no bounds. But after all of the memorial services, you know what? Young Monte Wilkins was still dead. In fact, out of 229 victims that awful night, only TWO corpses were even somewhat intact. The rest of these precious people were just blown apart. They were gone. And what good is amazing grace then?
Well, friend, let me say that if grace has unlimited power anywhere, then it has it here for sure. Why do we have the promise of the resurrection in God’s Word? Why does Revelation 20 describe a glorious day when the sea shall give up her dead? Why do we have the guarantee of a reunion when we will meet the Lord in the air, along with those who have fallen asleep in Jesus? Listen, we only have those promises because Jesus had the raw strength and the determined love to go up on a cross and give Himself for us. And grace truly IS unlimited – meaning it can even beat the violent death of a plane crash – only because of the cross. If I ever come on this radio and talk about grace like it’s some kind of soft, gentle cloud – just the tender touch on a weeping cheek, nothing more – then I’m a fool. Unlimited grace, the kind that conquers death, was forged from nails through the palms and a crown of thorns on the brow and the triumphant Friday afternoon cry: “It is finished.”
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