THAT QUICK INTO ETERNITY

[Rudy Reynolds, the MT bigfoot preacher]

Monday, October 6th, 2008, two YOUNG co-workers were coming back from Bozeman to Belgrade on their day off, travelling I-90 westbound about 1815 hours (6:15 P.M.) and were passed by a BMW going at a high rate of speed. That vehicle then passed a car in front of my acquaintances that had a lone female occupant, and it immediately barely missed colliding with her as it veered sharply off the right shoulder, went through the ditch and a fence, and over an embankment into a gravel pit, without slowing or any brake lights coming on at all. My friends and four other cars stopped and all occupants ran to the crest of the hill and looked down at the overturned BMW in the lake below, and all ran down the hill, some calling 9-1-1 on their cell phones as they went. My 2 YOUNG male friends, another male and a woman plunged into the waste deep water and turned the car upright, as it was sinking but still buoyant. They tried to get the doors open but water pressure held them shut, so the 3rd male rescuer found a rock and smashed the rear driver side window, and my friend, Charlie, unfastened the driver's seat belt and pulled him out, and Sam helped him get the guy to shore, where a different female attempted CPR. Paramedics and deputies arrived and took over, but the driver, a 31-year-old Oriental man, was pronounced dead at the scene when advanced life support (AED/CPR) failed to revive him.These volunteer rescuers, all of them, were unsung heroes that day, in my opinion, and I have been places where other drivers would have went on their merry ways, but all who witnessed the event stopped and rendered what aid they could, despite the cold water and what they were wearing.

Being a minister who has been a paramedic and a sheriff's corporal who has faced death and dismemberment many, way too many times, when these two young heroes came to work still shaking from adrenaline and the cold water, instead of going home first on their day off, thought hard and fast to help their minds deal with this first close encounter with a dead person at the moment of death, and spiritual guidance and counsel. Everybody was proud and expressing it, as I did, for they had done all they could do for the guy. Everyone was remarking what might have caused or been wrong with the yound BMW driver that made him do that at his age. Then I brought up the question, 'Wonder where he is now?' SILENCE, but all eyes upon me. "Just goes to show how suddenly and quickly any one of us can step into eternity." I added.

Another co-worker said,"Well, he probably doesn't believe in that."

"Whether he believed in it or not, he knows for sure, now, doesn't he, and if he didn't believe and have accepted the plan of salvation, he has eternity to regret it, doesn't he?" More silence and the gathering went back to work. LORD, bless the seed planted and break the resistance, I pray I scored some points for you. Charlie has not slept much since pulling the guy out of the car, Sam doesn't seem to let it bother him, but i pray you direct their thoughts to what I said for you, and to You be all the glory and honor, bring home some lost sheep.