The Way is Shut {Nathan C. Warren}

I recently heard a story of Two young men in their early twenties who heard of an island in the West Indies where an atheist British owner had 2000 to 3000 slaves. And the owner had said, ‘No preacher, no clergyman, will ever stay on this island. If he’s ship wrecked we’ll keep him in a separate house until he is to leave, but he’s never going to talk to any of us about God, I’m through with all that nonsense.’ Three thousand slaves from the jungles of Africa brought to an island in the Atlantic and there to live and die without hearing of Christ.

Well after years of prayer asking God to open up a door finally years later they where able to witness on the island. THE END

Well at least that is how this story would end for most of us! However that is not what they did...

They sold themselves to the British planter and used the money they received from their sale (for he paid no more than he would for any slave) to pay their passage out to his island for he wouldn’t even transport them. As the ship left its pier in the river at Hamburg and was going out into the North Sea carried with the tide, the families had come from Herrnhut to see these two young men off. Never to return again, for this wasn’t a four year term, they sold themselves into lifetime of slavery.

The families weeping, for they knew they would never see them again. They wondered why they were going and questioned the wisdom of it. As the gap widened one of the young men with his arm linked through the arm of his fellow, raised his hand and shouted across the gap the last words that were heard from them,

‘MAY THE LAMB THAT WAS SLAIN RECEIVE THE REWARD OF HIS SUFFERING!’

I don't know if this story moves you at all like it moves me. It just makes me wonder if I have missed something. If maybe God was placing something on my heart, but because I looked at the situation carnally to me the way was shut. However there was one open door. A door of suffering and sacrifice that I myself was unwilling to go through.

A lot of people would look at this situation and see a closed door. But this is the same one our example took.

Hebrews 12:2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.