A Rebuke from Those in Peril
By W. W. P.
THE story of Jonah needs to be read frequently. There are lessons for us just now in his experience. It was written for our learning. In his attempt “to flee . . . from the presence of the Lord,” Jonah took passage on “a ship going to Tarshish.” A great storm arose, and the whole ship’s company, including Jonah himself, was in the greatest peril. “But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.” Then came the call of the shipmaster unto him, “What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.” Think of it! The man who had been commissioned to carry a message of warning to those in danger of perishing, through his neglect of duty became an occasion of threatening destruction to his heathen companions on the ship, and yet in the very time of greatest danger he was fast asleep! And it required the call of the heathen shipmaster to rouse him to a sense of his own peril and that of his companions. “What meanest thou, O sleeper?” The application of this lesson is so obvious that it hardly needs to be put into words. We have a commission from God to sound the message of warning throughout the world, a warning of threatening peril, a warning of destruction which will come upon every unprepared soul, ourselves as well as others, but we have settled down in a self-complacent way right in the face of the danger, instead of throwing every consecrated energy into the work of sending forth the warning message and rescuing souls. We have been lukewarm when we should have been burning with zeal for the establishment of the Lord’s kingdom and for hastening His coming. Now the cry of those in peril seems to be heard rebuking our slothfulness, and saying, “What meanest thou, O sleeper?” The Macedonian call is coming from many an unentered field. The word comes to us to “preach in the regions beyond.” And we are thankful that the minds of many are being stirred concerning this situation, and that there is hope of a new order of things.