The fishermen’s barometer warned them. And they sailed anyway.
October 14, 1881 was a momentous day in Eyemouth, Scotland. The town fishing fleet faced a difficult choice. Weeks of storms had kept boats docked. Families were running low on food and money.
The pier-head barometer registered an ominously low reading that morning. But the sea looked calm.
Eyemouth tradition held that if one boat sailed, the whole fleet was honor-bound to follow. Forty-five boats put to sea.
Midday brought a darkened sky and hurricane-force winds. The fleet raced back toward harbor. But horrified families on the shore watched helplessly as boat after boat smashed against the Hurker Rocks just short of safety. Some capsized within only yards of home.
Nightfall revealed 189 men dead, 129 of them from Eyemouth alone. They left 93 widows and 267 fatherless children in a town of 3,000 people. A children’s charity offered to take in the orphans. But Eyemouth’s mothers refused outright. They insisted in keeping their own children for the town’s future.
Eyemouth took almost a century to fully recover.
The barometer that morning had been right the entire time.
God’s barometer is also right the entire time. For 6,000 years it’s been right. It will continue to be right forever.
God’s barometer says sin will be punished.
It has been true historically.
Adam and Eve sinned. Death thus entered their world and ours (Genesis 3).
Noah’s world was wicked. God told him judgment was coming and to build a boat. Noah warned people. They paid no attention. All perished in the worldwide flood. Only Noah’s family survived. They believed God’s warning and were safe in the boat (Genesis 6-8).
Sin will continue to be punished.
The world we know now will be destroyed, and a new sinless world created for the people of God.
“The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare” (2 Peter 3:10). God will intervene in human history for the purpose of judging sin. At that time, all that God created, “the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), He will destroy.
Then God will create a “new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1). It will include “New Jerusalem” (v. 2), the capital city, a place of perfect holiness. All who have trusted Jesus will live there forever. Peter refers to this new creation as “the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13).
But every person will die and spend forever in hell as punishment for their sin…except for those who have heeded the barometer and put their faith in Jesus.
The Bible warns that hell is a real place where the wicked/unbelieving are sent after death. We have all sinned against God (Romans 3:23). The just punishment for sin is death (Romans 6:23). Eternal hell—the second death—is the punishment we have earned because of our sin.
Hell is described in Scripture as “eternal fire” (Matthew 25:41), “unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12), “shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2), a place where “the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48), a place of “torment” and “fire” (Luke 16:23–24), “everlasting destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:9), a place of “burning sulfur” where “the smoke of . . . torment will rise forever and ever” (Revelation 14:10–11), and a “lake of burning sulfur” where the wicked are “tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10).
That’s a barometer warning like no other!
But through Jesus we can escape this awful place.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16)
“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (v. 18).
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (v. 36).
God’s barometer has given full warning.
How foolish to sail anyway.
But how wise to take refuge in Jesus from the wrath of God against sin.
Amen.