The New Jerusalem

June 23, 2015 (Tuesday)
Dale Pogue’s blog about Indianola, Texas, a town with tremendous potential for greatness, being wiped out by a hurricane caused me to think about other ghost towns.
One that came to mind was St. Mary’s, positioned on the shore of Mission Bay, just west of Rockport. Hurricanes of 1886 and 1887 completed a decline that had begun years earlier as the town lost status as a commercial center and county seat. Clara Driscoll, famous Texan, great American, successful business person and generous philanthropist, was born in St. Mary’s in 1881. She died in 1945.
The other town that came to mind was Eutaw, Texas, which was hardly more than a memory when I was pastor in Kosse, Texas, two miles west, in 1959-1961. While in Kosse I had three funerals in which the deceased were buried in the Eutaw Cemetery, still in existence today. The town had churches, a stage coach depot, a post office, school, and stores until the railroad chose Kosse as its terminus in 1869. Jack Hunt, a lifelong resident of the area, took me on a little tour of the town site one day, and described for me the activities that had taken place on that land many years before. I could almost see and hear the stagecoach coming in as the horses were brought to a halt. A town now long gone.
The feelings were a little like those I had when I visited the site of the church building in Houston where I was saved in 1942 and preached my first sermon in 1948. The church folks had relocated to another part of town, and sold the building, which had later burned. Nothing remained among the trees and bushes that now grew there, except the concrete baptistry where years before I had been baptized. I know the church is people, certainly not confined to a place, but good memories flooded my heart as I sat in my car and gazed at the location, now bereft of buildings, worship and people.
When people visit the Holy Land today, they view locations that have changed through the years. The guides tell the tour groups where Jesus was born, where he died, and where he rose from the dead. Passing the remains of the Temple, the visitors might join those in prayer at the “Wailing Wall.” The wall is all that remains of that magnificent temple, once an impressive place of worship, to which people flocked from many countries. The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb will be the Temple of the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:22).