A believer in Christ was seeking to help a stubborn atheist. This unbeliever had declared: "I do not believe what you preach."
"What do you believe?" asked the Christian.
The man promptly replied: "I believe that death ends all."
"You do? And so do I," was the surprising answer.
"What!" exclaimed the atheist. "You, too, believe that death ends all?"
The believer in Christ replied positively: "Yes! Death ends all your chance for doing evil. It ends all your joy, all your prospects, all your ambitions, all your friendships. And death ends all the gospel of God that you will ever hear. Death will end it all for you, as far as earth is concerned.
Then you will be cast into eternal outer darkness!
"As for me, death will end all my wanderings, all my tears, all my problems, and all my disappointments, aches and pains. Death will end them all, and I will go to be with my living Lord in glory!"
"Well, I never thought of it that way before," said the atheist.
This was a new thought to him. The words so solemnly spoken stuck in his unbelieving mind. Day and night the fear of death—the end of all earthly things—ate into his aroused conscience. The Christian's prospect of eternal joy with the Savior awakened in the darkened soul of the atheist a burning desire for similar blessing.
In his quandary he turned to the previously despised Word of God. As he earnestly searched the Scriptures the troubled man came across Hebrews 9:2727And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: (Hebrews 9:27). He read: "And as it is appointed unto men once to die." Of course he believed that. It was true, so maybe the rest was too: "but after this the judgment."
What would he have to face then? Surely he would have to answer for his sins, for his unbelief, for his long neglect of the good of what he now knew to be his never-ending soul!
Crying for light to the God he had denied, this seeker after truth read on in verse 28: "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." Could he be counted among the "many"? The next phrase gave the answer: "and unto them that look for Him." Ah, there was the root of the matter: "look for Him"—believe in Him—put their trust in Him!
Through the grace of the God he had spurned, the man's doubts and fears were swept away as he put his trust in the Lord Jesus. In the joy of his new-found belief in a God of mercy and a loving Savior, the atheist became a worshiper, and could cry from the depths of his soul: "My Lord and my God."