A Steel Worker's Story

It was a very cold winter night, but less than seventy feet away was a molten boiling, lake of fire! Behind fire brick walls and heavy water-cooled steel doors, a 500 ton mass of seething, molten steel bubbled at 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit, being fed by a tremendous flame that required 700 gallons of oil per hour. This was an open hearth furnace—the very heart of steel making.

A few moments before walking over to the furnace, I had experienced a brush with death. For years God had spoken to me about my soul in a variety of ways—two motorcycle wrecks, three near disasters while piloting a plane, and a near drowning in the Atlantic Ocean. But, like many brought up in Christian homes, I desired not the knowledge of God (Job 21:14).

Mother had objected to my going to the mills to work, but it was "big money," and that's what counted! During my first month I witnessed a poor fellow's head and shoulder cut off by an overhead crane. It was a gory sight as his bloody flesh was gathered up and put into a wire basket by my father, the melter foreman. A voice seemed to say: "If that were you, Bob, where would your soul be?" I put the thought immediately out of my mind.

Mother cried and pleaded with me to quit, but money, sin and pleasure were my gods. Now God was speaking once again. A brush with death was nothing to laugh at, or take lightly. A swinging overhead crane hood had just narrowly missed my head and I was shaken! Fellow workers on the scene shouted in jest, "If that thing had hit your head, you'd be shoveling coal in hell right now!" Their laughter pierced my heart. I had heard the Bible enough to know that there's no shoveling coal in hell—just a flame that torments its victims. A steady, piercing flame on the soul! A place of no comfort, water, or hope! But their words of jest were like the arrows of the Almighty. They stuck, and I couldn't get rid of them.

Looking into the furnace through a wicket hole, preparation was made to draw out a sample of the molten steel for testing. As my eyes beheld the white hot roaring flame and the steel lake of fire, my soul trembled. A voice said: "He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." It was a Bible verse (Proverbs 29:1) I had learned in Sunday school many years before, and now God was bringing it to my remembrance.

After the shift, I went home from that steel mill a young man convicted of sin, scared of going to hell and wanting to be saved. A few days later, humbled, broken, crying and trembling for fear of meeting God in my sins, I trusted the Lord Jesus Christ who died for me on the cross. It was my dear wife, who had been saved for only six days, who pointed me to the Saviour.

Friend, I'm sure that in your lifetime you too have heard the voice of God in numerous ways. What about your soul? Remember, God has made a way of escape through His Son. Oh, fellow traveler to eternity, be honest! Face the facts! Flee to Christ! Receive Him now as your Saviour and be saved from the lake of fire. "Being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him" (Romans 5:9).

—R.E.S.