Shackleton and his crew were a part of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. One of his final expeditions was the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which was an attempt to cross the continent of Antarctica by way of land.
Their ship, the Endurance, was caught in polar ice and eventually crushed after his team was unable to free it. The men made their way across the continent for months and took to make-shift camps until preparing a rescue operation which consisted of Shackleton leading open-boats to the coast to South Georgia to gather rescue resources. It is still held that everyone survived.
Dr. Timothy Keller brings this story to life in his second to last chapter of King's Cross. Keller says that Shackleton's biographers all claim that through every hardship of the Endurance Expedition - which included starvation, arctic temperatures, and blistering wind - the most horrific part of the journey was the polar darkness.
The biographer's claim that there is nothing more desolate and depressing than the arctic night, which can last for months.
It is such deep darkness, so absent from the sun, that men unfamiliar with it have gone insane. Not only can you not move forward, but you cannot see yourself at all. Not a hand in front of your face. For months.
Keller describes it like this:
"You have no direction...You don't know what you look like. You may as well have no identity….Physical darkness brings disorientation."This is exactly like metaphysical or spiritual darkness, says Keller.
Why were the "people in darkness" so happy to see a great light? It gave them direction. It gave them identity. It gave them orientation, a place in which to orbit their life around.
And the "great light" that the prophet speaks of? Jesus. On the cross, it was Christ who drank the darkness of God's wrathful absence so that we might have direction, identity, and orientation. Now, with eyes fixed on Him, we not only see the light, but by that very light we see all things.
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