WHILE staying at a watering-place lately, I made some inquiries one day of an elderly man who was occupying one of the numerous seats, as to various localities. To my surprise he answered in rather an insolent tone. I then offered him a tract which he took, asking sarcastically, “Oh, is this an almanac?”
“No, it is a tract,” I said.
“A tract,” he said; “what’s that? I never read anything but the newspaper and the almanac.”
I told him that the tract was about the Lord Jesus Christ, at which he said―
“Oh, who’s He? Does He live in H —? I never heard of Him.”
I said: “The Lord Jesus Christ is in heaven, seated at God’s right hand. Do you mean to say you have never heard of Him — how He left His home in glory and came to this world to seek and to save the lost; and how ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever (that means you and me) believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life’?”
Then he told me that in H — there were “a lot of mighty righteous people,” which led me to reply that the Bible, which is the Word of God, tells us that all our righteousnesses are but filthy rags; that there is none righteous, no, not one; that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. “If these people you speak of are resting in their own righteousness,” I said, “then they are lost; but if they are true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and in His finished work, then they are clothed in the garments of salvation, and covered with a robe of righteousness of God’s providing. God alone sees into all our hearts, and Jesus Christ when on the earth said to the religious people of that day, the scribes and Pharisees, that the publicans and harlots were going into the kingdom of heaven before them, and that they themselves would be thrust out; it was the publicans and sinners who drew nigh to hear Him; it was the common people that heard Him gladly.” This seemed to impress the man.
He said, “I’m a bad lot; they tell me I’ll go to the bad place; but I tell ‘em there’s a reckoning day coming.”
I said: “If you go to hell it will be your own choice; and if you do, you will there remember this day, how the Lord sent me along this way to meet you and give you this message from Him, of how. He died upon the cross that you might be saved. This same Jesus who came once in grace to give Himself a ransom for us, to seek and to save the lost, was crucified and cast out of the world, but He is coming again to judge the world, and an awful day it will be for it when He comes in judgment. But God is now offering to you salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, and His blood can cleanse you from all sin.”
He said, but in a very different tone: “Well, well, I give you credit for being sincere, but it’s no use your speaking to me, for I’m a bad lot. I heard all that once upon a time.”
Then I said: “This is the message from God to you — ‘This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,’ and the vilest may come.”
The Good Shepherd goes after the lost sheep till He finds it, and I left this man with the conviction that he was one of the lost ones the Good Shepherd was seeking, for He came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance, and His word to all is, “Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.”
W. J. M.