The Panama Canal and God’s Love

The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children’s children (Psalm 103:17). 

One hundred years ago, the journey from the east coast to the west coast of the United States took 2 months and 8,000 miles through two oceans and around two continents (12,875 km). In 1904, the United States bought a stretch of land through the central American country of Panama straddling the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. President Theodore Roosevelt envisioned a channel uniting the two oceans.

The huge project cost about 9 trillion dollars in today’s numbers, and took over 10 years to complete. The US Army Corps of Engineers hired more than 75,000 men and women to work on the project, during which nearly 6,000 of the workers died mostly of malaria, which the United States eradicated. 

The 49 mile canal now allows more than 15,000 ships a year to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean in only 8 to 10 hours. It also provides abundant drinking and irrigation water to Panamanians. In 1979, the United States gave the canal to Panama without cost. 

The Panama Canal makes it possible to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean directly through the heart of the 35 nations of North and South America. You can travel from one extreme to the other through the very heart of two continents!

The Bible says that God’s hesed love (merciful, good, kind, gracious love) is from everlasting to everlasting. His love for His own children has no beginning and no end. You have been loved from eternity, through time, and into eternity. 

Imagine! The holy and almighty God loved you before the world was formed or you were born, knowing exactly who you would be, what you would do, and how you would live. His love for you is as eternal, unchanging, and unending as He is!

This love of God without beginning or end is what the Apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote, For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39). 

John Harper (1872-1912)

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household (Acts 16:31).

With his sister and 6 year old daughter secured in the lifeboat, Pastor John Harper said his farewell, then shouted, Women, children and the unsaved into the lifeboats!

Roaming the deck of the sinking RMS Titanic, his Bible open to Acts 16:31, Harper told the passengers of the need to repent of their sins and that Jesus had died and been resurrected so that through belief on Him they might be saved.

A short time later, Harper jumped from the sinking ship. Floating in the icy Atlantic Ocean, he drifted near another man he asked, “Are you saved?“

The man replied that he wasn’t. Harper shouted the text of Acts 16:31, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved! Minutes later, Harper drown with over 1,500 others.

Only seven people were rescued from the waters that day. One survivor was Aguilla Webb, who four years later printed a small tract called, I was John Harper’s Last Convert.

John Harper grew up in the small Scottish village of Houston and was trained from childhood in the Scriptures by his Baptist parents. At 18 he began preaching. His sermons were passionate and well studied and so was asked to pastor a small congregation in Glasgow.

While pastoring in London, Harper was asked to preach in the United States. With his daughter and his sister, the widower sailed to the United States where he preached for three months in Chicago, Illinois.

After returning home, Harper received a request to return to America to preach at the Moody Memorial Church. He booked immediate passage on the RMS Lusitania for New York City. For reasons unknown, Harper cancelled those tickets and instead set sail one week later on the maiden voyage of the luxury liner Titanic out of Southampton, England.

Passengers later told that the Scottish pastor kept himself busy each day talking to others, always finding a way to insert the message of Christ’s death and resurrection. He knew what it meant to Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. For Harper, the gospel wasn’t a prepared speech or a program to implement, it was a way of life using ordinary conversation as an open door to talk about Jesus. That’s evangelism!

At 11:40 pm, on April 14th, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank less than 3 hours later.

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Polishing the Brass

It was the largest, fastest, and most luxurious ship in the world. Late in the evening of April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg only 375 miles from the shore of Newfoundland, Canada. In less than 3 hours, 1,517 of the 2,224 crew and passengers were drowned.

The crew ignored warnings of icebergs in the area because they believed the advertisement that the ship was “unsinkable.” One passenger boarding the ship, Mrs Sylvia Caldwell, proclaimed that God Himself could not sink this ship. 

As the unsinkable Titanic sank, passengers still believed the ship could not go under the icy Atlantic Ocean. Some began playing a game of soccer with chunks of ice on the deck. The ship’s orchestra continued to play as people around them panicked. Millionaire businessman Benjamin Guggenheim took off his life vest and donned his black tie, tails, and top hat while walking the deck saying he would go down with the ship as a gentleman. Hundreds stood around a priest praying that God and Mary would save them yet did nothing to save themselves.

One thing no one did, however, was polish the brass on the sinking ship.

We do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day … for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal (Second Corinthians 4:16, 18).