An Eleventh Hour on a Lonely Beach

Jesus told him, “I tell you with certainty, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
(Luke 23: 43 ISV)

A while ago I wrote a piece titled “The Eleventh Hour” about the thief on the cross who, as he was dying, reached out to Jesus, and asked to be remembered by Him. Jesus’ response was the verse above. It came to mind this week when I read a story of a modern-day eleventh-hour rescue.

In 2015, many of us saw the horrific pictures of twenty Coptic Christians in orange jump suits kneeling on a beach in Libya. Behind each one, with a sword in hand, was a masked, black-clad member of the terror group, ISIS.

One by one the prisoners were told that if they would deny Christ they would be allowed to live. Twenty offers of life were given, twenty offers of life were refused, each followed by the sickening sound of a sword falling.

But there were actually twenty-one prisoners kneeling on that beach that day. The twenty-first was not a Christian. He had inadvertently been caught up in the dragnet. He had witnessed twenty offers to recant Christ and twenty refusals. Now it was his turn. Once again, the offer was made.

His reply?  “Their God is my God.”

At the eleventh hour, a lost soul reached out to a willing Savior and Grace smiled and pulled him into the safety of the sheepfold just as the door was closing.

Sidebar: Satan never wins – he tried to shrink the church by twenty that day and instead added one.