every week when I stand here in front of an  empty auditorium and preach to more people   than I ever have before in my life I’m reminded  of the incredible opportunity that God has given   me to share the wonderful message of the gospel  with those who watch and listen and I just want   to let you know the one thing that’s burning in  my heart more than anything else is that if you   are watching and you do not know Jesus Christ  in a personal way before we’re finished with   our service you will accept him and allow him to  fill you with his presence and his guidance and

his friendship and his salvation during this time  I want to talk with you in this message about the   perfect storm when the Andrea Gail left Gloucester  Harbor in Massachusetts on September the 20th 1991   and headed into the North Atlantic no one could  have known that this fishing boat would never   be seen again only a bit of debris ever turned  up and the six crew members vanished forever in   his book the perfect storm author Sebastian  Junger immortalized the fate of the Andrea   Gail a film followed featuring George Clooney  and Mark Wahlberg but these stars big as they

are played only supporting roles the real star  of the film was the storm itself a terrifying   relentless oppressor born of fierce winds and  mountainous waves it was meteorologists who named   this cataclysmic tempest the perfect storm it is  just a way of saying worst case scenario in the   case of the Andrea Gail it was the simultaneous  convergence of the toughest weather conditions   possible three deadly elements came together  in October of 1991 first of all there was a   front moving from Canada toward New England and a  high-pressure system building over Canada’s East

Coast and the dying remnants of hurricane grace  all of them churning along the eastern seaboard   of the United States strong weather was coming  from three of the four points on the compass and   all of it converging on the little Andrea Gail  the last radio transmission of Billy Tyne the   captain of the fishing boat came

at 6:00 p.m. on  October 28th 1991 he reported his coordinates to   the captain of his sister ship the Hannah Boden  saying she’s coming on boys and she’s coming on   strong the popular book and the movie brought  the term perfect storm into common use but the   concept is as old as humanity people have always  had to deal with the convergence of multiple rough   circumstances today in our faster more crowded  and more complex world a few little squalls can   quickly become the perfect storm and when multiple  conditions converge and threaten critical areas of   our lives such as finances relationships jobs  and health we question how much more we can

endure there is really no better term available to  describe what we’re going through right now this   is the ultimate perfect storm we are in the midst  of this storm and it’s very hard not to feel the   clutches of fear that accompanies serious storms  the fate of the Andrea Gail demonstrates two kinds   of fear that we all experience the first is that  gut level adrenaline drenched fear that the crew   felt in the midst of the storm they were afraid  because their lives were on the line this kind of