What you probably won’t read on the front page of today’s newspaper is that while the trapped miners in Chile waited for their rescue, they were listening to recordings of sermons, Bible studies and Christian music, thanks to the efforts of Chilean engineer Igor Bravo, a member of First Baptist Church of Santiago. Bravo realized that though the miners' physical needs were being met, their spiritual needs had been overlooked. So he called his pastor for help. They engaged the support of Radio Harmonia, a Christian broadcasting station in Santiago, which was able to provide MP3 files of pastor Adrian Rogers' sermons and Bible studies in Spanish along with Christian music.
Then Bravo sent down 33 New Testaments, and miner José Henríquez, began leading Bible studies for the miners each evening. The Bible study started out with 5 men and ended with 20 participants. Bravo said the other miners called Henriquez The Pastor. Only three of the 33 trapped miners were evangelical Christians but since that time, two more have made professions of faith in Jesus.
For days, weeks and months to come, news commentators and pundits will be telling the stories of the 33 men who survived 69 days nearly a half-mile below the earth—I am confident a made-for-TV movie is already in the works! Sociologists and psychologists will study them for the next 10 or 20 years, trying to discover what it is in the human psyche that allowed them to survive emotionally and psychologically. But we know the true story—the presence of Jesus illuminated the darkest hours of those miners’ lives.
Greg,
ReplyDeleteGratefully, the was so much life being infused into those miners that they didn't have time or desire to think too much about death. Had they not had their "life" resources, many would have found it too easy to give up. In their captive environment, cut off from everyone else for so long, depression would have been contagious and could very well led to most, if not all of them, dying from lack of hope.
"In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." (John 1:4)And "the entrance of Your words gives light..." (Ps.119:130) The atmosphere in that mine had All-Sufficient light and life!
Stan