"Preserved"

CN Tower at midnight

   On the evening of December 31, 1999, Joy and I drove to the outskirts of Toronto and caught the subway to downtown. From the station, we walked to the Toronto Star parking lot on Lakeshore Boulevard. After about 10 pm, in twos and threes, and fives and sixes, crowds started to flood into the lot. By 11:30, there must have been two thousand people packed in, shoulder-to-shoulder, with hardly room to breathe.  

At the stroke of Y2K midnight, a wave of fireworks burst from the CN Tower above us, and lit up the sky, as the new year and new millennium began. What momentous events we looked forward to, even as more fireworks flashed above the harbour from a nearby barge out on Lake Ontario. What excitement! What applause! How we cheered!

But then the show was over. No follow-up. What do 2000 people do now? They make for the exit. What if that exit is barely two lanes wide? The crush of people became almost unbearable―shoulder-to-shoulder we walked, and front-to-back with strangers pressing against us on all sides. I pulled my wife tight up against me and we balanced as best we could in an uncontrollable river of bodies. One stumble, one fall would mean death.

We got through the exit, the river became a delta, the current eased, and we caught our breath back near our subway stop. A late-night ride, a half hour drive, and we were home, safe in bed by two in the morning. God is good. That’s His character. He was especially good to us that night and we are deeply grateful. How close were we to disaster? Too close! I read of identical tragedies where deaths occurred at sports events or in burning hotels or restaurants. I now know what it means. I now avoid anywhere I might meet huge uncontrolled crowds.

A similar event also occurred in the Bible, but with much more serious consequences. Read 2 Kings 7:1-2, 16-20. Back in the days of Elisha, the Arameans were besieging Samaria and they had the city completely sealed up; people were starving. Elisha prophesied a huge supply of barley and fine flour for the next day—the king’s advisor mocked and basically said, even God couldn’t do it! When the siege was lifted and the news of the huge food supply spread through the city, the crush of people trying to get out destroyed him. He was trampled to death in the city gate.

For some reason, I keep coming back to Pascal’s wager. Why was the advisor so adamant against the prophecy? If we look at probabilities, he might have said the apparent probability of plentiful food was 1% and no food was 99%. But, like modern-day atheists, he should still have covered that low probability. Why leave that 1% gap? Investigate! Be really sure! God can step in and override all probabilities! This advisor made a gigantic mistake and lost his life.