YEARS AGO off the coast of Japan a tourist on board a ship was reading his New Testament on deck. Suddenly, it seems, the wind lifted it out of his hands and it fell overboard into the water. Face down it floated on the waves far out to sea, for how long, we do not know. Perhaps the sea gulls pecked at it and the fish played around it, and no one might ever have heard of it had not God meant to use it.
The New Testament was found by a Japanese officer named Wakasa who was in command of the army at Nagaki. He turned its wet pages but he could not read it for it was not printed in his language. It was in English and he noticed that it was unlike any other book he had seen. It seemed to be broken up into chapters and little verses, each of which was numbered. Wakasa was an educated man and set about to find out what this strange book so strangely found was. He discovered that it was the Christian’s Bible.
At that time the Japanese hated the Christians and as far as Wakasa knew there were none in all Japan. Indeed there was a fearful old law which read: “So long as the sun shall warm the earth let no Christian be so bold as to come to Japan; and let us know that the king of Spain himself or the Christian’s God, or the great God of all, if he violate this command shall pay for it with his head.”
But the great God of all did come to Japan, and He came not in judgment but in grace with the blessings of the gospel of Christ.
This only made the strange Book more interesting and curious and, being a soldier, Wakasa knew no fear. He sent to Shanghai in China and got a Chinese copy of the Book he had found, and this he could understand. He read it through. He was interested and he read it through again. Again he read it and then he wanted to have some one to tell him about it.
There was only one man to whom he could go. His name was Dr. G. F. Verbeck. He had been a little Dutch boy but was then a great scholar and an American missionary at Nagasaki. Wakasa found him and asked him to explain the Book to him, which the missionary was only too glad to do. Wakasa later said he was “filled with admiration, overwhelmed with emotion and taken captive by the nature and life of Jesus Christ.” Like the rose which opens to the warm rays of the sun, his heart opened before the love of God told forth in the gospel. He believed that Jesus Christ died for his sins and he confessed Him as his Saviour. Later he was baized by Dr. Verbeck and thus was among the first converts to Christ in Japan in the last century. Two of his friends followed him and were baized. Now there are thousands of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ in “the land of the rising sun.”
Wakasa went to be with his Saviour when he died, but the work of grace goes on. It began with a Bible that had fallen into the sea. It is wonderful how great things grow out of little things. The mighty oak comes from a little acorn, the golden harvest from a few sacks of grain, and sometimes a life is changed by a little touch of kindness, or a little word of love.
May the love of the precious Saviour warm and win your heart, dear reader, if you have not yet yielded to Him.
Christian, take courage.
“Cast thy bread upon the waters.
Thinking not ’tis thrown away;
God Himself saith, Thou shalt gather
It again some coming day.”
ML-06/16/1963