A respected leader in Fullerton Avenue Presbyterian Church, he was also involved in volunteer ministry with his friend, the great evangelist D. When the Great Fire swept through Chicago in October , Horatio and his partners were heavily in debt because of their speculation in real estate. Chicago was changed, and even though the Spaffords' home went untouched by the fire, they still suffered shock and dismay as they ministered to others in the wake of this tragic event.
Horatio accompanied his family and friends via train to New York to board the finest passenger ship afloat at the time, the Ville du Havre. Because of an important sale of real estate, Horatio sent his family on ahead and made plans to join them later. Just before the ship's departure, however, Horatio received word that the prospective buyer had died. Cesar Pronier, from Geneva. Weiss, Cook and Lorriaux promised Horatio that they would watch over his family on the voyage.
Leaving port a little after p. Beautiful Anna Spafford, 31, traveling with her four daughters, was quickly noticed by the other passengers.
A boy passenger teased nine-year-old Maggie, telling her that the French children she would meet all had black faces. During the first six days of the journey, the ship was buffeted by rough seas followed by a dense fog. On the seventh day, passengers awakened to calm seas and beautiful weather. Spirits seemed to elevate with the sun as it rose. The night was calm, and after tucking the children into bed, Anna Spafford walked the yard deck with Pastor Weiss.
She mused that it seemed "almost impossible that a ship can cross this immense ocean without danger When I think that a few planks are all that separate us and all these charming people from the depths of the sea The Cataclysmic Collision Early on November 22, just a little before a. Recognizing an emergency, the passengers fumbled in the dark to find slippers, shoes, and coats before making their way to the main deck.
To their shock, they saw sparks shooting like fireworks from the engine room, revealing a hole, 40 feet in length and feet deep, torn into the belly of the ship. Though no passenger realized it at first, the Ville du Havre had been rammed by an iron ship, a Scottish cargo vessel called the Loch Earn. Stunned passengers assembled in frantic groups, hardly making a sound. Some were disbelieving and some disoriented from being so abruptly awakened from sleep.
The crew members struggled to launch the lifeboats, but the boats had been painted into position and did not yield to ready operation. Ville du Havre for family. At the last minute, he was unable to leave, but sent his family on ahead, planning to soon follow. At sea the ship was struck by another ship and sank. He and his wife lost their four daughters at sea.
In he, his wife, and the two daughters born to them after the shipwreck, moved to Jerusalem, where he helped to found a group call the American Colony. Spafford, these sometimes-embellished accounts suggest, should be viewed as one who singularly trusted God in the midst of tragedy.
Both approaches, however, lack historical sensitivity and paint Spafford with broad brushstrokes. Spafford gets portrayed either as a saint or as a heretic. What both approaches fail to attend to is that Spafford appears to have started to move in a theologically aberrant direction sometime after two major tragedies in his life: the loss of his fortune in the Great Chicago Fire of and particularly after the loss of his four daughters and almost of his wife at sea in What is the evidence that Spafford only started his move in a heterodox direction after the second tragedy?
Four considerations make it likely that Spafford was a Bible-believing Christian up until the time of the shipwreck and the penning of his famous hymn, and then started to theologically waiver after that. These four combined pieces of evidence suggest that Spafford was a regular Christian who affirmed biblical orthodoxy—at least up until he faced a succession of life-altering tragedies that started him on a trajectory toward false doctrine.
Why does this matter? Now, it is possible that after I post this article someone will point out some piece of historical evidence that will demonstrate that my attempted historical reconstruction is incorrect.
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