When 2002 dawns, it will be upon a United States of America unlike any that ever began a new year.

As the ball falls in New York’s Times Square, between 3,000 and 4,000 people who worked nearby will not be there to see it. Less than four months before the new year’s dawning, their lives were snuffed out. The sudden carnage also claimed the lives of 265 people on four airliners and 125 men and women at the Pentagon.

Without the terrorist attacks it is likely that all of these individuals would have seen the birth of the second year of the third millennium since Christ.

Many would have made resolutions. Some would have kept them.

Some died in faith; others, we know from firsthand reports, cried out to God before losing their lives. But many did not have time to make the most important decision they could ever make.

The year 2002 dawns upon a nation at war, one with increased security measures that have changed all our lives.

But one thing has not changed. There are still multitudes in our great land who do not know Jesus Christ. Though most Americans have had some kind of spirituality awaken within them, for many it is simply a heightened patriotism. If another attack or disaster were to claim several thousand lives in 2002, it is likely that, wherever the tragedy were to occur, the greatest number of those would be unsaved.

Christians should be the ones most changed by the events of September 11. We must realize the suddenness with which anyone can be precipitated into eternity.

How many lost their lives September 11 who had friends or coworkers who were believers – but they just hadn’t gotten around to telling them about Jesus? I’ll tell him someday soon; I’ll tell her the first opening I get, they may have thought.

Then, September 11.

No one could have anticipated it.

This is a time for resolutions. For believers, it is necessary to take a cue from the suddenness of the terrorist tragedy.

We cannot afford to wait. We must delay no longer. Resolve to witness now, to never let another soul go into eternity without Christ because a believer failed to bring him or her the message of salvation.

The responsibility is yours. Today is the day of salvation.

Make the resolution — and keep it.

—Ken Horn