Now is the time to receive Him tomorrow may be too late. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that we prepare to meet Him (Amos 4:12), and that we do so on His terms, receiving by faith His blessed Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shed His precious blood and died on the cross for our sins. 9:27), and life at best is uncertain and brief. We all have an appointment with God and eternity (Heb. First, not one person who boarded that plane thought that November 28, 1979, would be his last day on earth.

When I first heard and read about this tragedy, I couldn’t help but think of a few spiritual lessons which parallel the account. Apparently having entered some cloud cover in its descent, the jet smashed head-on against the mountain-evidence that the pilot never saw it. Thomson said the pilot was on the wrong side of the 12,400-foot mountain when he descended to give the sightseers a closer look at the smoldering volcano. Instead, Thomson blamed the pilot, who had been with the airlines for 11 years but who was making his first Antarctic flight. Roy Thomson, the New Zealander who headed the recovery effort, said the DC-10 was not at fault. To help celebrate this significant anniversary, Air New Zealand advertized a tragically apt $340-a-ticket “trip to the end of the world.” For 257 persons, including 21 Americans, who were aboard Air New Zealand’s DC-10, this unusual and spectacular sightseeing flight over Antarctica ended with charred remains of the jet and all its passengers scattered along the frozen side of Mount Erebus, Antarctica’s most active volcano.

Byrd’s historic flight over the South Pole. It was almost a year ago, the exact date having been November 28, 1979, just one day before the 50th anniversary of U.S. Except for the loved ones directly involved, how easily we forget the lingering sorrow and hurt experienced by so many in our modern times as a result of multiplied tragedies throughout the world.

Mount erebus disaster truth