Have you ever had a door closed in your face? As a door-to-door salesman of religious literature, I frequently had this happen. Sometimes this happened rather violently in what one could call a slam. This could be a very ego-deflating experience as none of us likes to be rejected. However, such treatment is taken in stride by door-to-door salesmen; it is accepted philosophically as part of the job. We have all experienced the frustration of a bank teller's window closing when we are next in line, or a mail clerk taking a break when it's our turn to be waited on, or when the parking lot is full, or the ticket window is closed, or the gas pump is out of order. These experiences can be summed up by an expression from yesteryear as 'missing the boat.'
Some years ago our family was on a camping trip to the northwest, and we were camped at Port Angeles, Washington in a trailer park. We decided to take an excursion over to Vancouver Island for the day. So, leaving our trailer behind, we boarded the ferry and spent the day enjoying the beauties of the island. When we arrived at the ferry terminal for the return trip, there was a long line of cars waiting to board because it was the last ferry of the day. Finally the gate opened, the cars began to move, and we finally reached the gate only to have it close in our faces. The next ferry wasn't due until the next morning, so we were stranded for the night in a strange city separated from our trailer by a wide water channel. We were able to find hotel accommodations and enjoyed seeing Butchart Gardens at night, but I shall ever remember the helpless frustration I felt when the gate closed before us.
There are examples in the Bible of doors closing as precursors of the situation at the end of time. When the door of probation closes, out of all the inhabitants of earth at that time, only 144,000 enter the gates of the Holy City. When the door of Noah's Ark slammed shut, there were only eight persons inside and an estimated five billion outside. In the parable of the ten virgins the five wise virgins were admitted into the feast, the door was closed, and the five foolish virgins were shut out. When the children of Israel arrived at the border of the promised land, they failed to trust God and refused to go in. As a consequence of their rebellion, they were doomed to wander in the desert for forty years, and out of a huge multitude of over a million persons who left Egypt, only Caleb and Joshua survived to enter the promised land. As in the children's story of the Ten Little Indians, when eight were gone,"Then there were two," so it was with the great multitude, finally "then there were two."
