AVOIDING
ICEBERGS

Topics: Security; Spiritual Warfare; Temptation; Threats; Watchfulness

References: Matthew 26:41; 1 Corinthians 10:1–13; Ephesians 6:10–18

The Hibernia oil platform in the North Atlantic is 189 miles southeast of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. The total structure is 246 yards high from ocean floor to the top of the derricks.

Unlike the fated Ocean Ranger, a platform that sank in 1982, killing the eighty-four men aboard, Hibernia’s design incorporates a gravity-based structure (GBS), which anchors it to the seabed. The structure does not move. It is an artificial island. It was built that way because it is in the middle of “iceberg alley,” where an iceberg can be as large as an ocean liner.

Hibernia is built to withstand a one-million-ton iceberg (expected every five hundred years), and to withstand a six-million-ton iceberg (expected once in ten thousand years) with repairable damage. Even so, Hibernia’s designers take no chances. Radio operators plot and monitor all icebergs within twenty-seven miles. Any that come close are “lassoed” and towed away from the platform by powerful supply ships. Smaller ones are diverted by the ship’s high-pressure water cannons or with propeller wash. As rugged and as strong as this platform is, Hibernia will not allow an iceberg even to come close.

One thing seems obvious: the engineers of this oil platform are not guilty of the kind of false security that may have contributed to the sinking of the Titanic. Christians need to take spiritual threats just as seriously.

—J. Richard Love, “Oil Platform Designed to Survive the Worst,” PreachingToday.com