THE BLACKSBURG TRAGEDY

By John Stallings

It’s natural for us to have questions about tragedies such as what happened at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Tragedies have a way of stopping us in our tracks & jolting us out of complacency. When the tragedies are natural disasters even though they are devastating to us, we can get a grip because we realize we live on the face of a planet that by its very nature is volatile & unpredictable.

However when a tragedy like the one at Virginia Tech occurs & over thirty people are premeditatedly executed, we have a very different response. Now we are faced with the cold hard fact of how dangerous man is. Though it shocks & amazes people who look at things through spiritual eyes, it must be even more difficult for people who are uncomfortable with the fact that evil exists in this world. That brings things too close to home & forces us to focus on our nature as fallen beings. Now we’re talking about things in the spirit realm, like it or not & that makes the carnal man jumpy.

Good people disagree & in the weeks & months to come this tragedy will be examined & a hundred different conclusions will be reached. For some the big issue will be gun control.

Others will see the tragedy as an ethnicity problem, while others will view it as a class issue because part of the note the young man left spoke disparagingly of “the rich kids.” From what I glean he also had nothing good to say about the female gender. The answer to this dilemma will be missed by the media & sad to say much of the nation, because the true answer is the problem of hate fueled anger, fostered by sin in the human heart.

I don’t know the details of the young man's life who committed this horrible mass murder, nor many of the other details surrounding this horrendous tragedy so in lieu of a post-mortem on the situation, I’m going to suggest a few broad lessons we can take from this & other tragedies that occur.



· TRAGEDY REMINDS US OF THE FRAGILE GRIP WE HAVE ON LIFE

In another century an American man by the name of Horatio Spafford was invited with his family to join D.L Moody & his singer Ira Sankey in several crusades in Europe. He sent his wife & four daughters ahead on a ship planning to join them in two weeks. Their ship never made it but collided with an English sailing ship & sank in 20 minutes. Spafford’s wife Anna was able to save herself but her four girls drowned & she was forced to send her husband a telegraph saying “Saved alone.”

Spafford boarded the next available ship to be near his grieving wife. When the ship passed near the spot where his daughters died, Spafford penned these precious words:

WHEN PEACE LIKE A RIVER ATTENDETH MY WAY,
WHEN SORROWS LIKE SEA BILLOWS ROLL,
WHAT EVER MY LOT, THOU HAST TAUGHT ME TO SAY,
IT IS WELL , IT IS WELL, WITH MY SOUL.

Every one of us has been impacted by tragedy to some degree whether it is illness, death or any of the thousands of things that can touch humanity. These things serve to remind us just how fragile & fleeting our lives are, but we should always remember that Jesus is more than adequate to take care of any & every situation we may face.


James 4:14 says, “Whereas, ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life”? It is even as a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

I spoke to a young man one time about accepting Christ & he informed me that he planned to do so someday but not now. When I pressed him with the fact that life is fragile, he told me that the people in his family lived into their eighties & since he was in his early twenties, he was sixty years from eternity. I explained to this young man that isn’t the way things really work. Eternity is a line that is drawn a few inches from where we stand. We all can step over the line at any moment, at any age. People cross into eternity as babies, as teenagers as well as in middle age & extreme old- age.

All it takes to cross the line into eternity is to have an accident, or sudden death to come, & it can come in a thousand different ways.

· Methuselah lived 969 years, but he died.
· Noah lived 950 years but he died.
· Moses lived to be 120 years old, but he died.
· Joseph lived to 110 years old but he died.
· Jesus lived to the age of 33 but he died. He was raised after the third day.
· John F. Kennedy, a powerful president, handsome & wealthy, died at 47.
· Bobby Kennedy, Americas Attorney General, died at 42.
· Elvis Presley, one of the most beloved entertainers on earth died at 42.
· A few years ago a man wrote a book entitled “How to live to be 100. He died at 69, not making it three-fourths of the way.
· Comedians Bob Hope & George Burns lived to be 100 & died a few weeks later.
· One of the oldest persons in America recently died in her sleep at 115.
· The rich, the poor, the young the old, the famous & the unknown, the educated the uneducated, the sinful, the righteous, they all die.

Hebrews 9:27 says “And it is appointed unto man once to die & after this the judgment.



· TRAGEDY REMINDS US WE LIVE IN A WORLD THROWN OUT OF ALIGNMENT BY SIN.

Our world is tragedy & accident prone. The fact is that we live in a fallen, spoiled world. Paul reminds us that even natural disasters while they aren’t the direct result of sin, they are caused by the presence of sin in the world & further explains that the earth is in bondage to decay.

Listen to Romans 8:22, For we know that the whole creation groaneth & travaileth in pain together until now.

Ours is a fractured ecosystem & disasters are a reminder of the imbalance brought into the world by sin.

Thank God, our world has retained much of its natural beauty, but still it has been deformed & distorted by sin. When Adam & Eve sinned, they opened the flood gates to allow sin in the world & they weren’t the only ones changed; the natural world was also changed.

God created a perfect world in harmony with His will, to be inhabited by perfect people to live in harmony with Him, but when men & women chose to reject God’s authority over their lives, disaster struck & we’ve lived with the cataclysmic consequences ever since.

· SIN HAS SHIFTED THE NATURAL WORLD OFF BALANCE.

Even more important, humanity’s relationship with God was affected & we stand at odds with God. Now we all have death in our future & that’s why, as Jesus said,

… Unless ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.


· TRAGEDY REMINDS US THAT MOTHER NATURE ISN’T AS DANGEROUS AS HUMAN NATURE.


When we saw the pillaging & looting of New Orleans after the fact of the storm, we realized that the human element was going to be as destructive, or more so, than Katrina.

When these terrible things happen like the Virginia Tech tragedy & on other college campuses, we have to stop & remember that every vestige of God has been evicted from our American educational system. The religion of our day, if you look at what’s taught in the public schools, is SECULAR HUMANISM. A word like Humanism sounds good; like a plus for humanity. However when you study it, you find the concept totally leaves God out, & replaces man as his own God.

For example, Humanism teaches that a child is born a blank slate. A child is born absolutely without an agenda, waiting for those who raise the child to “make marks” on their slate.

The Bible, however, teaches exactly the opposite. The Bible teaches that each child is born a sinner, & very soon in their lives they’ll require a savior. To show how absurd humanism is; has there ever been a parent who didn’t quickly learn that a child doesn’t have to be taught to manipulate? Hasn’t every parent been lied to by a small child? Doesn’t every parent know that nothing makes a child thirstier than to be told to go to bed?

Jeremiah 17:7 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?

Most of the blame for the bad behavior in all our schools & colleges has to go to the unregenerate nature of man, as well as the teaching of Secular Humanism, that teaches our young that they came from monkey’s, so they may as well act like animals.

If a person is taught that they came from nothing & are headed for nothing, --nothing very good can be expected from them.


· TRAGEDY REMINDS US OF JUDGEMENT TO COME.

If you think scenarios like what happened at Virginia Tech aren’t something already predicted in the Bible read 2 Timothy 3:1-7. Even though natural disasters may be flukes of nature, and not specifically Gods judgment, that doesn’t mean they’re not a “shadow of things to come.”

Listen to Peter as he not only reminds us of the patience of God, but also of the judgment to come;

· The Lord is not slack concerning His promises as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 2 Peter 3; 9.



We should make no mistake; a final judgment is coming & tragedies like these remind us of the greatest disaster many will ever experience. It’s a day only known by God but it’s on His calendar.

· TRAGEDY TEACHES US THAT WE SHOULD MAKE SURE OF OUR SALVATION.


We inhabit a planet racing headlong toward judgment. After describing God’s patience, Peter continues; ----BUT THE DAY OF THE LORD SHALL COME AS A THIEF IN THE NIGHT; IN THE WHICH THE HEAVENS SHALL PASS AWAY WITH A GREAT NOISE & THE ELEMENTS SHALL MELT WITH FERVENT HEAT, & THE EARTH ALSO & THE WORKS THAT ARE THEREIN SHALL BE BURNED UP. – 2 PETER 3:10


· GOD IS BIGGER THAN ANY TRAGEDY WE”LL EVER FACE.

Just look at Job. He was hit by a “hurricane.” Satan killed his family & took everything he possessed. Job was wise enough not to charge God foolishly & after a 42 chapter delay; God restored to him twice what he lost.

In Acts 27 we read about a tragic storm Paul endured on a ship for two weeks, but God brought him through it and not a man on the ship was lost. Storms as well as other disasters usually have a time limit on them & they will pass. “Tough times never last, tough people do.”

· FIRST, WE NEED TO MAKE SURE OF OUR RELATIONSHIP TO GOD.

We must be prepared to meet God at any moment. Isn’t it strange how we prepare for so many things except eternity? Getting to know God isn’t just believing in His existence, it’s having a personal relationship with Him.

· SECOND, WE NEED TO LEARN HOW TO WALK WITH GOD IN OUR DAILY LIVES NO MATTER WHERE WE ARE.

In Matt. 28:20 Christ promised, Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. The Lord must be real to us if we are to remain faithful to Him in the hour of crisis.

· THIRD, WE NEED TO READ & MEMORIZE SCRIPTURE.

Verses like “I can do all things through Christ which strengthenth me.” Phil.4:13. Also scriptures like Rom. 8:31-39 are good to hide in our hearts.

· FOURTH, WE NEED TO MAKE PRAYER OUR PRIORITY.

All of us have a devil to fight & we must be a people of prayer. The best way to survive crisis & the “evil day” is to deepen our spiritual life. Eph.6:13.

Here’s a good prayer to pray;

Dear God, I know I can’t face any disaster without you. Please walk with me in these uncertain times & help me find the strength & peace that I need in you in my hour of need. AMEN!

John