DEAD HORSE POINT

DEAD HORSE POINT

By Ada Nicholson Brownell

A few miles down the river from Moab, Utah, is a miniature Grand Canyon, Dead Horse Point. Vast scenic deserts, snow-capped mountains, aspen and pine forests, are all encompassed in a single view.

Red rock canyons with spires and pinnacles reach as high as fourteen hundred feet off the canyon floor in almost unbelievable color variety. The rock formations are fantastic giant monoliths of colored stones, wind-sculpted scenes that are breath taking, leaving little to the most fertile imagination and much to challenge the most exacting color photographer.

Two thousand feet below this point, one can trace the rugged Colorado River as it winds its way through the canyon.

Dead Horse Point got its name from what now is a legend. A wild horse herd in search of water in the hot, dry desert came to the point. They could see the river below, but the steep precipice made it impossible for them to reach it. The sight of the water was probably what kept the horses at this point, but looking at the life-giving waters was not enough—and the horses died from thirst. Their bones testified to that.

How many people today are standing on ‘Dead Horse Point? In Christian America they know where they can get life-getting water. Some talk, plan, and have good intentions—putting off their day of Salvation until they die—still thirsty.

Many have said, “Someday I am going to take seriously this matter of preparing for eternity, but their resolutions always are for the future. Suddenly death strikes and it’s too late.

Jesus said to the woman at the well, If thou knewest the gift of God … thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water” (John 4:10).

This woman carried within her a heart that longed for spiritual satisfaction. She may have felt she was miles from the answer when she came that day to the well where Jesus rested, but Jesus had the answer to her need. She might too have looked and longed, for there were many barriers and precipices between her and the life-giving waters.

She was a social outcast, a hated Samaritan. By her own sins she had place herself in this dry desert place where even social fellowship with other women was denied her. It must have seemed that his sinful woman would surely die as she had lived—longing for spiritual reality. But however inaccessible that River of living water had seemed to her as she approached the natural well, Jesus made her see the answer to her longing heart was hers for the taking and she eagerly grasped her opportunity.

A famous film actor who died not long ago left behind him a strange testimony. He had stood on the peak of fame and had lived in luxury, his wealth enabling him to enjoy anything this world has to offer.

But there is thirst that can’t be satisfied with fame or frolic. And while this man tasted one pleasure after another, there must have been a strange consciousness he was missing something—something this world wasn’t giving him. So forcefully was this feeling of emptiness stamped upon his life that, instead of having his initials monogrammed on his personal belongs as so many famous personalities do, all of his belongings were marked with a question mark! And he seems to have gone in God’s eternity without the question answered and the emptiness filled.

Yes, this man must have driven past many churches—and he must have had access to a Bible in which the answer to his biggest question could be found.

How like this was King Solomon’s testimony up to the point where he summed up all his disappointment in all the world offered him, and having tried everything he said, “All is vanity and vexation of spirit, and there is no profit under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:11).

But thank God, he did not stop here, but turned to correct supply for his lack and said, “But I will seek him whom my soul loveth.”

A teenage hoodlum did just that. Though he had been raised in Christian home, this boy found himself as it were on a high barren rock—a user of illegal drugs, and in trouble with the law. Nothing had satisfied his spiritual thirst, but he surrendered his heart to God—and just in time. Soon after his conversion his former companions—the pals with whom he doubtless would have been had he not given his heart to God—were in an auto accident. One was paralyzed and the other killed. Today this young is an evangelist preaching the gospel.

The horses at Dead Horse Point could not reach the river. The sinner has but to take what God offers. No matter on what point in life’s arid desert you may find yourself, His blessed call comes to you now, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14).

--THE PENTECOSTAL EVANGEL.

--Copyright Ada Brownell