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Message in a Bottle



Your prayers like God’s Word will not return to you void.

“Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days” (Ecclesiastes 11:1).

Back in the late nineteen forties, evangelist Everett Bachhelder started a most unusual ministry prior to settling in Nome, Alaska. At the time, Alaska was not yet a state of the USA. He optimistically saw this remote northern territory and its indigenous Eskimo people as the mission field God had selected for him. As a means of “spreading the Word” in a vast, desolate world of frozen pack ice and icebergs Everett believed he could place his “tracts” with the message; “God Loves You” in various kinds of bottles and throw them into the icy waters to drift wherever the Lord would take them. The printed message had been translated into many of the different languages of that part of the world.

One of Everett’s missionary bottles did not float very far. It floated to the north of the Seward Peninsula in Alaska. There an old Eskimo man had gone off to die. It was the custom among his people that when a person was that old they did not want to be a burden to their younger family so they would go off onto the ice and allow themselves to freeze to death. This old Eskimo man had done just that. However, God loved this old man and it was not God’s will for the old man to die before receiving the gospel! Near death the old Eskimo laid upon the cold ice waiting for his last sleep when a bright green, floating bottle bobbed against the large ice floe where he was lying. He saw the bottle and crawled over to take it from the icy water since it appeared to have a note of some kind rolled up inside it. The old man with frozen, trembling fingers opened the bottle and read the note inside. It read; “God Loves You” and it explained how to receive Christ as your Savior. The note also had the name and address of the person who had written it. Changing his mind about dying, the old man returned to civilization and wrote to Everett. These were his words; “I read your message and I knew someone loved me.”

Some time later, Everett visited the old man’s village and learned that the old man had recently died, but not before he and his whole family had accepted Christ!

Like Everett’s bottle ministry, hopefully, this daily blog (my message in a bottle) goes out into the world telling people of all nations to know, “God Loves You.”

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