Michael Faraday: The Scientist Who Knew He Was Saved

Welcome to “The Masters”: Michael Faraday

Good evening, and thank you very much for coming. If you were here Sunday night, you’ll remember that we visited Germany in thought when we considered Johann Sebastian Bach, and last evening we turned our attention to Nigeria and to that remarkable woman, Mary Slessor. Tonight takes us to England, as we continue looking at our series called The Masters — and tonight’s subject is Michael Faraday. We’re going back to the early 1800s and late 1700s to consider what we can learn from his life.

So again, thank you for coming each night. Before we read the Scriptures, we like to take a moment to ask God to bless His Word to you and to your family. Let’s do that now.

Opening Prayer

Father, we reverently approach Thee in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son. We thank Thee for preserving us all through this day. There are many who began the day with plans and purposes before them, and they are now in eternity. We thank Thee for each one here. We have the Word of God to tell us that it is God who holds our souls in life, and so we thank Thee for preserving us and allowing us once more to listen to the Word of God. We ask Thy blessing on the Scriptures, praying that each person here, each one listening remotely, every family represented, will know blessing from the reading of the Scriptures tonight, as we give thanks in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.

Reading: 1 John 5:11–13

I’d like to read with you from John’s first letter — not the Gospel, but his first epistle, which is very near the end of the New Testament. We’ll read in 1 John chapter 5, beginning at verse 11.

“And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”

You’ll notice that God, in His Word, divides the entire human family — not by ethnicity, certainly not by education or wealth, and not by religion — but by His Son, the Lord Jesus. Those who have trusted Christ have life. Those who have not yet trusted the Son of God do not have this eternal life. Verse 13: “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God.”

The Faith of History’s Great Scientists

I remember being shocked — my physics course in high school was an experimental type of teaching (Harvard Project Physics), and I don’t think I would have enjoyed physics nearly as much if it had been taught the normal way. But as I read about these scientists, I was shocked to find out how many of them were saved, were Christians, or believed the Bible and believed there was a God — Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, who said as he studied the stars that he felt he was “just thinking God’s thoughts after Him,” Galileo, and Sir Isaac Newton, who actually wrote more about the Bible than he did about science. That was very stunning to me. And the man we’re looking at tonight stands as a classic example: Michael Faraday, one of the greatest scientists of all time.

Michael Faraday: From Blacksmith’s Son to Brilliant Scientist

He was born on September 22, 1791, in Newington, Surrey, England, the son of a blacksmith. His humble birth notwithstanding, he became one of the greatest scientists in the history of the world. If you study his life, you’ll follow the course of a little boy who starts out cleaning boots, washing bottles, and mending books, and ends up becoming the most eminent scientist of his day.

His Christian beliefs strongly influenced the way he approached and interpreted nature. This is part of why modern science had its birth in Christianity: Christians believed that if there is a Maker — if there is a God, and He is the Creator — then studying creation is learning about that great Creator, and there must be a design to creation, what we call laws, that can be examined, because there is actually a mind, a designer, behind it. Faraday believed nature was the work of a divine Creator, and because one God created the world, he felt all of nature must be interconnected as a single whole. Therefore, he reasoned, electricity and magnetism must be interlinked. His work in these fields not only revolutionized physics but led to so many things in our lifestyle today that depend on them, including computers and telephones.

Faraday invented, but he never patented his inventions. He said that if they were of any use to the world, let the world have the benefit of them. He argued that it was by the kindness of others that he had acquired the knowledge he had, and therefore he did not want to patent his masterly achievements.

Faraday’s Favourite Book: Job

Faraday’s favourite book in the Bible was the book of Job. In his scientific studies, Faraday was consciously seeking to understand the beauty, symmetry, and organization of God’s creation. He also realized, as did Job, that a man cannot find God by his own reasoning — that it is the Scriptures that clearly reveal God. Faraday wrote that a Christian finds his guide in the Word of God and commits the keeping of his soul into the hands of God. He looked for no assurance beyond what the Word of God could give.

A Preacher, an Elder, and a Friend to the Poor

Michael served as a preacher and an elder in the Christian assembly to which he belonged. Brilliant as he was, he understood that the Bible was infinitely more important than mere human ideas. Here’s a quote from one of his sermons: “I cannot do better than to read to you the words of the Scripture, instead of multiplying my own words.”

As an elder, he was faithful in visiting poor brothers and sisters in their own homes, comforting them in their sorrows and afflictions, and assisting them from his own purse. He was continually pressed to be the guest of high and noble people, but he would, if possible, decline, preferring instead to visit some poor brothers or sisters in trouble, assist them, take a cup of tea with them, read the Bible, and pray. He would even return early from the provincial meetings of the British Association just to make sure he would be in London for the meetings on the Lord’s Day.

Head of the Royal Institution

His work propelled him into the limelight. By 1826, Faraday was head of the Royal Institution, founded to provide scientific education for the masses. (I know we have some Irish with us tonight, so I should mention that the first head of the Royal Institution was, I believe, Ireland’s own Robert Boyle — another brilliant man.) Faraday, in his day, became its head, and it remained a society providing scientific education for the masses.

He pursued truth industriously throughout his whole life. It has been said that the wealth generated by inventions based on Faraday’s discoveries exceeded the value of the British Stock Exchange, and his biographer said that is probably an understatement. Yet Faraday remained a modest, unpretentious person who never sought financial profit from his work. He did accept a cottage from the government in his senior years, but he rebuffed honours: he declined the presidency of the Royal Society, and when the Queen wanted to knight him, he graciously refused, wishing to remain just plain old Mr. Faraday. The glory of the Lord Jesus was the only reward he sought throughout his life. He was marked by great humility, born out of a reverence for God, and never for a moment did he seem to realize that he was changing the face of civilization.

He enraptured audiences with his public demonstrations. I had the privilege, when I was having meetings in England some years ago, to visit a reproduction of the rooms where he taught — first his labs, and then the auditorium where medical students and students from the universities would come and sit and listen to his lectures.

A Legacy That Changed the World

He discovered some of the most important laws of physics and chemistry — discoveries that revolutionized the world economy. Steadfast and humble, Faraday remained absolutely committed to biblical truth from early childhood throughout his long life. He would have been considered what is called today a fundamentalist Christian, if that term had existed in his day. Nothing — not even the rising tide of skepticism in Britain leading up to the Darwinian revolution — shook his confidence in the Word of God.

For over half a century, Faraday worked and lived at the Royal Institution in London, where he was a leading chemist as well as the developer of field theory in modern physics. He was the discoverer of benzene, as well as the discoverer of electromagnetic induction and the laws of electrochemistry. He was the first to convert mechanical energy into electric energy — the crucial step toward developing the electric motor and the generator. So when you start your car tonight, remember Michael Faraday. In his study of electricity, Faraday developed some of the vocabulary still used in physics today — terms such as electrode, cathode, and electrolysis. The farad is the standard unit of capacitance in the International System of Units, and of course, “farad” comes from his name.

Failing Memory, Unshaken Faith

In his old age, Michael Faraday suffered from increasing memory loss — it’s a great comfort to some of us that this began in his 20s and gradually grew more severe in his later years. It was not incoherence or mental incompetence, but simple forgetfulness, perhaps brought on by exposure to mercury or other lab chemicals. One benefit of that was that it forced him to write everything down, and historians now have a monumental legacy of letters and documents from Michael Faraday, because he felt he needed to document his discoveries and his thoughts.

As he aged, his body remained strong, but his memory continued to fail. He continued lecturing until the age of 70, but with difficulty. He accepted his lot with equanimity and grace. He wrote to a friend:

“I am, I hope, very thankful that in the withdrawal of the power and things of this life, the good hope is left with me, which makes the contemplation of death a comfort, not a fear. Such peace is alone the gift of God, and as it is He who gives it, why should we be afraid? His unspeakable gift in His beloved Son is the ground of no doubtful hope, and there is the rest for those who, like you and me, are drawing near the latter end of our terms here below.”

There was one thing he never forgot as the mental fog crept in: his love for the Lord Jesus and his confidence in the promises of God’s Word. He spent the remaining nine years of his life at Hampton Court, looking forward to heaven, which he entered on August 25, 1867.

A Legacy Too Vast to Measure

The discoveries made by Faraday were so numerous, and often demand so detailed a knowledge of chemistry and physics before they can be understood, that it would be impossible to describe them all, or even enumerate them, in a message like this. To honour him, Faraday appeared on the British £20 note and on a Madagascar postage stamp. The English author Aldous Huxley — no particular lover of the Bible or of Christianity — once said that even if he could be Shakespeare, he thought he should still choose to be Faraday.

“Speculations? I Have None” — Faraday’s Confidence in Eternal Life

It’s reported that near the end of his life, a student asked him what his speculations were about the future — this man who had delved into so many mysteries of the scientific world. Quoting 2 Timothy chapter 1, he gave his now-famous answer:

“Speculations I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed, and I’m persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”

Do You Know For Certain Where You Will Be?

Tonight’s subject, and this man’s life, gives me the opportunity to speak about one of the most wonderful things about Christianity — one of the things that sets it apart from all the man-made religions that flood our world. Here it is: a person who knows Christ has the assurance from the Word of God that he or she is saved. That’s why I read to you from 1 John chapter 5 — John, writing to believers, says, “I’m writing this so that you may know that you have eternal life.”

So before I say anything else, I want to challenge each person here: do you know — do you know — where you would be tomorrow if you died tonight? I’m not asking whether you have a place you hope you’d be. Do you know where you will be? Because that’s what these meetings are all about. We would love for you to know that you have salvation, that Christ is your Saviour, that you have a home in heaven, and that no matter when the moment comes that you must leave this planet, you will step from earth into eternity, into the presence of the great God of heaven and His beloved Son.

That is what Faraday was saying when he said, “Speculations, none. I know whom I have believed.” In a world where people proverbially say that nothing is certain but death and taxes, a person who has Christ as Saviour has the greatest certainty of all: the assurance of eternal security. How else could I put it? Here I am — living in a dying body, on a cursed earth, with a saved soul, on the way to an eternal heaven — with absolute assurance from God. Not positive thinking. Not strong faith on my part. But from God, that live or die, dark or bright, come what may, my future is secure, all because of the Lord Jesus, who died on the cross.

So I want you to think with me about this tonight. I’m going to arrange my comments around two topics that branch in different directions. First, I want you to think about the great uncertainties in this life. Then, the glorious certainties in the Christian life.

The Great Uncertainties of Life

Life Is Fleeting

Life is unpredictable. It is fleeting and transitory. Life goes by so quickly — the march of time is relentless. Life, said James in the New Testament, is a vapour. Job said it’s a shadow that declines; he said it’s like an eagle hastening to its prey — that soaring bird way up there spots its prey down on the desert floor, and then, in the blink of an eye, it’s hurtling down. That’s what Job thought his life was like. He watched ships with their sails billowing as they were pushed out by the wind into the water, watched them go, and then disappear on the horizon, and he said, “My life is like the swift ships.” He thought about a runner, and pictured his life as being like a high-speed runner racing through his course at breakneck speed.

I know young people are here tonight — thank God you are, I’m so thankful you’re in the meeting. But one of the problems with being young is you think you’ll never die. You think you’re going to live forever. You know, hazily, somewhere in the background, that everybody dies — but you’re young, so you don’t realize that you will hurry through your 20s and your 30s, speed through your 40s, run through your 50s, race through your 60s, jet through your 70s, and hit warp speed sometime in that period, and you’ll blink a few times and your life will be over. That’s why you hear so many people say, “Wow, where did the years go?” or “Time really flies,” or “It just seemed like yesterday I was a teenager.”

Because life races by, it is not only fleeting and transitory, it is fragile and tenuous.

Life Is Fragile — The Story of Jerome Rodale

We are as stable and permanent as a blade of grass or a delicate flower. You can guard your health, take your vitamins, watch your diet, exercise daily — and you can die tonight. That’s how sure life is, because we are in an uncertain world.

The man I’m going to tell you about was just my age. His name was Jerome Irving Rodale. Long before Americans, at least, were conscious of healthy diets and healthy living, and the big push to make sure you have a healthy lifestyle, he was at the forefront of a health movement. He was the publisher of a magazine about living healthily, and he is the man who famously said, “I don’t see any reason why I can’t live to be a hundred, unless I’m run over by some sugar-crazed taxi driver in New York City.”

The day after that statement was published, Jerome Rodale was being interviewed by a gentleman named Dick Cavett. Cavett had a television show where he interviewed people — and if I have this correct, it wasn’t live; it was being taped to be released later. Rodale was another guest on the show, along with someone else. The topic — and this is why Rodale was there — was long life. As Cavett recalled it: another guest made a comment, and then he turned back to Mr. Rodale, who had put his head down. He asked him a question, and Rodale didn’t lift his head. He said, “Mr. Rodale? Mr. Rodale?”

Dead. Gone. The man who thought he could live to be a hundred — dead. Because life is fragile and tenuous. Whether it’s that heart that’s pumping blood so faithfully and regularly, or some disease, or some accident, there are a thousand and one ways I could be swept off this planet into eternity. Now you know something of why I’m so thankful I’m saved, because of the assurance that I have.

Life Is Capricious

I’ll tell you something else about life: it’s freakish, and it is capricious. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. There’s no fairness or equity to living and dying. There are no rules and regulations, other than this — 100 people out of every 100 people die. That’s the only rule. Doesn’t matter how old or young, how nice or miserable, how religious or impious, how important or obscure, how needed or useless — every one of us has to die. Which is why the Bible says, “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”

You know Jackie Chan, the movie star? He was scheduled to be acting as a window washer at the top of one of the World Trade Center towers on a September day in 2001. He was going to play the part, in a movie, of a window washer who, from his vantage point, sees terrorists about to blow up the Statue of Liberty. But they made a script change that altered the day he was to be up there, and so, instead of September 11, 2001, he wasn’t up there. Here are his own words: “I’d probably have died if the shooting had gone as planned. I probably would have died. I had to be at the top of the tower for one of those scenes.” How would he ever have gotten down, if he hadn’t died in the blast?

Sarah Ferguson, once of royalty, was scheduled to be there too. She was delayed in traffic. She pulled up at the front entrance — one of the towers had already been struck. Her entourage got back in, and they drove off. Otherwise, she would have been in there.

I have a friend who told me about a group of people from her company who were meeting in an office building in that trade center. One of them spilled coffee on his trousers and said, “Go ahead without me, I’ll be back,” and went to his hotel room to change. While he was gone, the planes crashed, and the towers came down.

There’s nothing predictable about life. The only thing we know for sure is that somewhere, sometime, if the Lord doesn’t come, everybody in this building is going to die. That we know for sure. Now the question is: do you know for sure where you will be?

The Future Is Unforeseeable

Very much related to that is the fact that the future is unforeseeable. Here’s what we do know: we know that we are “but of yesterday,” as the Bible says, and we don’t know anything at all about tomorrow. One man in the Bible said, “I do not know the day of my death.” And we bemoan our ignorance — someone we love dies, and we wish we had known the day before, so we could have told them how much we appreciated them. But we couldn’t see that their end was coming, and now we’ve lost the chance, because we don’t know anything about the future.

The Emptiness of Physical Things — Solomon’s “Vanity of Vanities”

I’ll tell you what we do want: we don’t want to leave this world with which we’re so familiar. We don’t want to leave the people and places we’ve become comfortable with. It’s because we yearn for permanence. Every one of us wants something permanent about our life. We don’t want to be like children building sandcastles on the beach, only to have our life be nothing more than sand — and the next time the wave comes in, it’s all gone, washed out.

There’s a man in our Bible named Solomon — a wealthy, powerful, influential man — and what he moaned and mourned was the fact that his life was empty. The word he used was “vanity of vanities.” It’s all empty. One Jewish rabbi said that the best way to convey the meaning of that Hebrew word into English is to think of soap bubbles — imagine a child grabbing at a soap bubble. Solomon was saying, “My life is like soap bubbles. There’s nothing to it. Nothing lasting. Nothing permanent.” Physical things are so undependable.

Not far from where I live, there’s a place called the Main Line — a moneyed area over in the state of Pennsylvania (I’m in New Jersey; there’s not too much money where I live!). The Main Line has large estates, and people would come from England, Ireland, and Scotland to work there as maids, servants, and groundskeepers. One of the Christians in the Bynmar assembly worked on one of those estates for a very wealthy man. When that man lay dying of an illness that would eventually kill him, he had two small dogs that he loved, that used to curl up at his feet on the bed. He said to this Christian on one occasion, “I wish I were a dog. I wish I were a dog.” A wealthy man who had lived life to the full — but you see, you cannot find satisfaction for your soul in a physical world.

When a man drinks himself drunk, it’s not the thirst of his throat he’s trying to quench. There’s a deeper thirst, a deeper hunger, and we cannot quench the thirst of our spirit and soul with things that only quench the thirst of our throats and bodies. Millions have tried it. They’ve always failed. You will fail. The only place that can be found is where the Lord Jesus offers the water of life — living water that quenches the inner thirst of a human heart. Relationships other than those linked with God are destined to fail.

God, in His kindness, has built into each of us emotional needs. He gave us bodies to interact with the world around us. He gave us souls to interact with one another. He gave us spirits to be able to interact with Him. We were made to love God and use things to help people. But when sin came in, it removed God from the equation in our thinking, and now, instead of loving God and using things to help people, we love things and use people to accomplish our own ends. And we find that relationships seem doomed to fail when it comes to meeting the deep longing in our heart.

The Necklace

There are scholars here who have studied English literature, and you’ve probably read, at some point in university or even in high school, “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant. You’ll remember the story — a woman from the lower class, not wealthy at all, who was invited to a ball. She’d never been to one, but she had a wealthy friend, and she went to her and asked to borrow a gorgeous necklace she knew her friend owned. So for the first time in her life, she’s at a ball with this beautiful necklace around her neck, thrilled by the experience — and somehow, that night, she lost the necklace.

Too embarrassed to tell her friend she’d lost it, she went to find out how much it would cost to replace. It was going to cost, for her, a fortune. She poured out everything she had, mortgaged, borrowed, took out loans, and replaced the necklace, and gave it back to the woman. That began a life that was nightmarish, because she had to work night and day to pay off those debts.

Some years later — worn, haggard, clearly spent from all the hard labour she’d gone through — she met her friend again. (This is a novel, so bear with me; he’s proving a point.) She happened to mention that night: “I borrowed your necklace.” And the woman said to her, “Oh, that necklace? It was pretty, but that was fake. I keep my real jewels in the bank. That was just a fake necklace.”

And there, near the end of her life, the woman discovers she had spent her whole life for a trinket.

Don’t Waste Your One Life

You’re going to come to the last day of your life, one day. We, as Christians, want to make sure that you don’t waste your one life — the one life you have — on something that’s absolutely worthless. Because until you know the Lord Jesus, you will never have the certainty that God wants you to have.

Now, I’ve spent more time on that than I intended, because I want to tell you about the glorious certainties in the Christian life.

The Glorious Certainties in the Christian Life

Christ’s Finished Work

That certainty is based on the precious blood of Christ. It’s not based on a work I have done, an accomplishment I’ve achieved, or a payment I have made. It is based on what Christ has done. Here are the facts that secure my salvation for eternity.

The Lord Jesus, by His work on the cross, did what He did there for all of my sin. It was done perfectly — He didn’t leave out any provision from what He accomplished. Isaiah reminds us that the LORD laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Peter says He bore — He carried — our sins in His own body on the tree.

What was happening at Calvary was something the soldiers, the chief priests, the rulers, Pilate, Herod, and Judas could never have accomplished. They nailed Him to a cross. They spat in His face. They crowned Him with thorns. They ripped His back apart. They beat and bloodied His face until He was hardly recognizable as a man. But they could not do what I’m about to tell you now. If you ever watch a movie about the crucifixion, the producers can only show you the physical sufferings inflicted on the Lord Jesus by humans — they cannot show you what the Bible says actually happened. On that cross, something took place of such monumental importance that it divides time and eternity: there, in the darkness of Calvary, on that April day, likely in the year 33, hanging on that cross, the Lord Jesus took my sins upon Himself, and He suffered for them. It was for all sin. It was for all time. It was done permanently. That’s the meaning of those words: “It is finished.” It never needs to be repeated.

But having said all of that, I want to tell you that I know that work was not only for all sin and for all time, but that it was for me — for me, a useless, helpless, powerless sinner. Christ died for me. There’s nothing general or vague about this aspect of His death. “Christ died for the ungodly” — that’s me. “He suffered, the just for the unjust” — that’s me. That’s why Paul said, “The Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for me.”

A Message Written in Blood — The Story of John Phipps

There was a man in Los Angeles named John Phipps, who worked at an aerospace plant in Burbank, California. He was called in to work early one day, so he was on a train he wouldn’t normally be on — a double-decker, very early in the morning, earlier than his usual commute. He went upstairs to the top deck and fell asleep.

He woke up pinned to the floor, feeling like something was dripping on him. Two people were dead on either side of him. Six would die that day; a hundred would be injured. John Phipps was bent in such a way that he couldn’t even lift his head. He felt what was dripping, and when he brought his hand up, he found his own blood on it. He reached out to steady himself, touched the back of the seat in front of him, and saw his bloody handprint. John Phipps was sure he was going to die.

So he did this: he took his own blood and wrote on the back of that seat, “I love Leslie” — that’s his wife — “I love Leslie.” He had three children. “I love my children.” And then he passed out.

When rescue workers came, they bent the chairs off of him and found him. One of them noticed the writing on the chair and made sure it didn’t just go into the trash. At the hospital, a nurse gave Leslie a picture that had been taken of the back of that chair: “I love Leslie, I love my children,” written in her husband’s blood. She said, “Hallmark is never going to beat this.” A message of love, written in his blood.

Listen to me, please. There’s a message of love to you written at a place called Calvary — written by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died to save you from hell, to save you from your sins, to save you from judgment, to save you from the lake of fire, to save you from wasting your life, and to bring you eternal life and the assurance that you will never perish. My assurance is based on the blood of Christ. My assurance is based on the Scriptures of truth. It’s not based on some feeling or experience I have had.

A Personal Testimony

I was saved in the year 1966, July the 10th. If I ever question whether I’m saved — I don’t, but if I did — I wouldn’t go back to July 10, 1966. I’d go back to Calvary. I’d go back to what the Bible tells me took place on that cross, because my assurance is not my feelings. His Word is true, and His Word is trustworthy. That’s why Paul put those two things together and said, “This is a faithful saying” — that is, it is true and worthy of everyone’s acceptance, it’s trustworthy, and what a welcome it deserves — “that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

Now, one more thing. My assurance that I will be in heaven forever is based on what the Lord Jesus did on that cross. My assurance is based on this book — the wonderful book of God, the Bible. My assurance is based on the power of God, because the Lord Jesus told us about His grip, didn’t He? He told us that He holds on to His sheep, and not one of them will perish. In fact, He says they’re not only in His hand, but in His Father’s hand — that’s omnipotence doubled, God and His Son seeing to it that not one person who trusts Christ will ever perish. Not only that, but He calls them “My sheep.” This is His grace — His sheep were once lost, but His grace sent Him to seek them and to save them. He says, “I give My sheep eternal life.” The night I trusted Him, the Lord Jesus gave me eternal life, and He says His goal is to make sure that everyone is brought safely home to heaven, and nobody can defeat Him.

The Tightrope Walker and the Good Shepherd’s Grip

If I drop the name Jean François Gravelet, I’m not sure how many of the young people would recognize it — he didn’t play hockey. He was better known by a name that will suddenly light up a lot of people right here: his name was Blondin. He was a famous acrobat in his day, and I grew up hearing preachers talk about him walking the tightrope at Niagara Falls, wanting to carry somebody on his back. Let me give you some details I find fascinating.

His stage name was Charles Blondin. He had a wheelbarrow — he wheeled a stove out over the Niagara River, stopped, and cooked an egg, on a wire, with the water raging underneath him. He did a number of incredible things. One thing he did was strap on a kind of harness across his shoulders — almost like you’d sit on the side of a horse — and he offered to carry a man across. Nobody volunteered. So he talked his Chicago-born manager into it, and Harry Colcord unhappily put his feet into the stirrups and climbed onto Blondin’s shoulders. Blondin, holding a long pole, made his way out onto the wire.

Now, here’s what the preachers never told me: Blondin was just a man, and he got tired. So he would stop on the wire and say to Harry, “Step down, I need to rest.” Well, Harry was no acrobat — he was terrified. So he’d take his feet out of the stirrups and step down onto the wire, trying to hold himself steady, and in doing so, he’d push Blondin off balance. When Blondin finally caught his breath, he’d say, “Get back up.” Imagine doing that, on a wire! So Harry would climb back onto Blondin’s shoulders, and they’d take more steps out over the river. Blondin needed to rest again. Colcord got down, terrified, and again, trying to balance himself while holding on to Blondin’s shoulders, he pushed him off balance. Finally Blondin said to him, “Miss the stirrup one more time, and you go the rest of the way on your own.”

So, very, very carefully, Harry Colcord put one foot into the stirrup, then the other, and carefully mounted onto the shoulders of his acrobat. He could have fallen. Blondin could have lost him. Blondin could have perished — because he’s just a man.

At about quarter to ten on the night of July 10, 1966, I rested my soul for eternity on what the Bible told me about the Lord Jesus Christ. And at that moment, the Good Shepherd picked me up and put me on His shoulders, and He says He will never let me perish.

Closing Appeal

Do you know now why Christians know they have eternal life? Why Christians know their future is secure? Why Christians know — and it’s not bragging or boasting — it has nothing to do with us. It has everything to do with the Lord Jesus. He’s the one who said, “I give My sheep eternal life; they shall never perish, neither shall anyone pluck them out of My hand.”

You come to Christ tonight, and you’ll go home, for the first time in your life, knowing — not hoping, not guessing, but knowing — that you have eternal life.