AT WHAT COST

Just off the East coast of Scotland there is and has been for hundreds of years a place that goes somewhere out into the sea some 12 miles a place that has claimed many lives… Due to a rock that sets out in the sea that one cannot see with their eye… It has been a known hazard and many have lost their life there…

The rock’s notoriety for destroying anything that dared sneeze at it, is legendary. In the 1300s, the Abbott of Arbroath, a town in the district of Angus, in eastern Scotland, tried to install a warning-bell on the reef, to alert passing ships. The bell lasted a year, 

It is known that a pirate removed the (LANDMARK) and it was never replaced…

It was placed there to warn the others of imminent danger… It was a (LANDMARK) that came about for the reason to keep one safe… As the waves crashed against it, it would ring… The closer you got the louder it became… It caused you to turn another way…

What is so bad about this is, that now that the (LANDMARK) was removed danger had now returned… Ships got to close… Merchant men yet again began to lose their ships and their lives… Once again there was more that became lost at sea… Death had returned and certain death lurked just below the surface…

The story goes that the pirate that removed the bell… The pirate that stole the (LANDMARK) just happened to be one that lost his ship and his life to this place known as Bell Rock…

He removed a (LANDMARK)… He removed that which had kept him along with his crew and his ship safe…

May I ask???

·        How many (LANDMARKS) are you going to remove???

·        How many (LANDMARKS) have you already removed???

·        How many (LANDMARKS) WILL YOU IGNORE???

·        What have you rendered to be no longer necessary???

Bell Rock was proving more and more dangerous as the centuries rolled by. By the close of the 1700s, it was estimated that the rock claimed upwards of six ships every year. On a particularly bad night, up to seventy ships were lost in one storm alone!

No warning… No sound… No light… Where is the (LANDMARK)???

·        The storm has come… I hear them say, “I know it’s around here somewhere…”

·        The waves, the storm in the darkness… “I can’t see it…” “Is it here???”

 

Suddenly the crash… The splintering of the ship… It always comes with a cost when one decides to remove the LANDMARK…

 

In 1804, the HMS York, a huge, 64-gun warship, ran aground on Bell Rock. The waves smashed the ship to pieces, killing the entire crew onboard (nearly 500 men).

·        How many have lost their life, their soul???

·        How many more???

·        Who’s next???  

·        What part of the foundation must go until more and more is lost???

·        Soon the structure will not reflect or even resemble what its foundation even was simply because someone deemed the bell which was there to give WARNING is unnecessary…

·        And when done, the (LANDMARK) along with its REMINDER and ABILITY TO WARN is gone…

 

Prov 22:28 Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.    KJV