MIF 3:4 (July-Aug 1971)
Editorial
A Last Link
According to U.S. News & World Report, long-standing hurdles have now been removed for construction of the last section in the famed 14,000-mile Pan-American Highway, extending from mid-Alaska to the southern tip of South America. This last link is through a 256-mile stretch of jungles and swamps in Panama and Columbia, and it will take five years to complete a usable road, 10 years for a full paved highway.
The U.S. Congress already has voted the U.S.’s share of about 100 million dollars. Plans are to let bids for the Highway project in July and to begin construction as soon as the next dry season starts, in January. After 33 years of road building, hopes are that by late 1976 U. S. tourists will be able to drive south of the border into South America.
The main hangup has been the 40-mile wide Atrato Swamp with its apparently bottomless muck, but American engineers operating with helicopters and infrared photo-mapping equipment found a way to build across the Darien Gap by laying a causeway directly across the swamp by using rock fill, with a long bridge to be constructed for one portion.
Thinking about all this, I couldn’t help but thankfully reflect on the “Highway to Heaven.” It required the infinite wisdom of the Triune God to make it possible, its purchase price having been the precious blood of Christ, and there is no last link yet required — the work was finished some two thousand years ago. To sinful man there are many highways that seem to lead to Heaven (Prov. 14:12), but the Lord Jesus Christ dogmatically said: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6; cf. Matt. 7:13-14). It is both significant and fitting that the early Christians were looked on and referred to by pagans as those of “the Way” (Acts 19:23; 24:14).
Along the highways of this life, are we telling others of Christ Who alone is “the Highway” to Heaven?
—W.R.R