MR. JAMES FISH, who carried the gospel to the lonely lepers on Robben island years ago, tells the story of a very remarkable patient he met there.
The man had been a station master on the mainland. Rising one morning he was alarmed to find brown patches on his arms and face. Five doctors finally decided he was a pronounced leper.
Knowing he would be banished from home and compelled to go to Robben Island he tried to take his own life. He failed in two attempts; then in the extreme moment of his distress, God met him and stopped his madness. And now as a broken man, he saw not only his own guilt, but the Hand of God's mercy restraining him from that rash act. Oh what a God of mercy He is!
Just at that time a Christian lady, hearing of his illness, wrote him, expressing her sympathy and pointing him to Christ as the only true source of comfort. This timely message of consolation was used of God in a wonderful way, and the missionary found him on the island, a humble contrite man.
It was really wonderful to listen to him as with eyes filled with tears, he told how God met him. On one occasion he said he had nearly broken his neck over God's intervening hand. He said also that "he would rather live on Robben Island with his terrible affliction yet knowing Christ as his Saviour, than possess the wealth of twenty of the towns in which he had lived previously without Christ." Such is the power of true conversion on one who has new life in Christ in his soul!
Messages of the Love of God 10/5/1975