Ignored Distress Flares

By Dan Betzer
Guest Writer

CBN.com -- Early in the 20th century the White Star Company set out to construct the world’s largest ship. Its proposed measurements were stunning, especially for that time: 900 feet long and 11 stories high. Further, the company announced a breakthrough in steamship design.

This ship would have 16 watertight compartments and a double bottom. No doubt about it, this ship, the Titanic, would be unsinkable. Yet on April 15, 1912, just 4 days, 17 hours, and 35 minutes later, the “unsinkable” Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank into two miles of ice-cold water.

A total of 1512 passengers perished. It is an interesting sidebar to this well-known story that a freighter, the California, was only 10 miles away. The crew actually saw eight distress flares fired from the sinking ship, but they did not respond. They figured the flares were set off in some kind of celebration on the Titanic.

For some reason, that story from history reminds me of the destruction of Sodom.

Abraham’s nephew Lot, a resident of the ill-fated city, had been warned by heavenly messengers to get out. He tried to warn friends and family. They laughed at him for his strange “distress flares.”

Why? Because the life that Lot lived was so little different from their own they couldn’t understand why God would save HIM if, indeed, there were divine destruction coming. They responded, “Lot, you’re mocking us!”

It was tragic that the city was destroyed, but even more tragic perhaps that some who could have been rescued were not rescued because of the poor example God’s man in the city had set. It makes one think about one’s own life today, doesn’t it?