In the days when America’s west was being settled, prairie fires were one of the scourges of the land. The very thought of these fires struck terror into the hearts of the people. With dry grass standing high, sometimes as high as a horse’s head, the fires could sweep across vast acreages and not lack for fuel. To get caught out in the open in the midst of such a fire meant certain death.

Over the course of time, though, people figured out an odd way to remain alive during such a typically fatal time. First, you used water or dirt to create a large circular pattern in the grass surrounding you. Second, you used a match to start a fire inside that circle. Third, once all the grass inside the circle was burned, you laid down inside the circle and covered your face to avoid smoke inhalation. The prairie fire would rage all around the burned circle but not come inside it. It couldn’t come inside it because the grass to fuel it there had already been consumed.

When God looks down upon the earth, He still sees a certain spot just outside the old city of Jerusalem. It is a burned spot (think of it as a circular area) the fires of His holy wrath consumed some two thousand years ago. The spot goes by different names: Calvary (Luke 23:33), Golgotha (John 19:17), and the Place of a Skull (Matthew 27:33). Scholars debate its precise location, but God knows exactly where it is. It was at this spot that Jesus died on a Roman cross for the sins of the world. The burning of the spot reached its climax when Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46)

The fact is, the fire of God’s wrath must sweep through the life of each sinner. His indescribable holiness demands it. Those who have believed in Jesus as Savior are granted the privilege of standing inside the burned spot of the cross because Jesus has already taken God’s wrath for us. This allows us to watch in safety as God’s wrath rages all around us. On the other hand, those who have not believed in Jesus as Savior must face the fire of God’s wrath out in the open, on their own. As John 3:16-18 and 36 put it:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God…..He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (N.K.J.V.)