He was a big, stalwart Scotchman, still hale and hearty though past eighty years of age. He was an intelligent and well-read man.
Taking his Bible one day, he sat down beside me and turned to Deuteronomy, chapter 29. Having read aloud verse 22, he raised his clear blue eyes to mine, and said: "Do you see any converting power in that verse?”
When I answered in the negative, he continued: "That scripture was used of God for my salvation! Until I was forty I was a skeptic. I had read the Bible, but found nothing in it to commend it to my conscience or heart as the Word of God.
"God had given me a sister whom I loved devotedly. She had become an invalid, but was a true devoted Christian. I occasionally took her to her meetings just to assist her; but I had no interest in what was said.
"On her birthday I gave her a present, an old book; `Keith, On the Prophesies.' Picking it up one day, my eye fell upon the author's description of a visit Volney had made to Palestine: Volney, the great infidel, the rejecter of the Bible. After traveling over the Holy Land and seeing its beauty and its natural advantages, yet finding only desolation and ruins everywhere covering the sites of the once populous cities, he had exclaimed: 'My God! What does this mean? The grandest land the sun ever shone on, and yet all is desolation and ruin everywhere!'
"Then Keith in his book quotes this passage from Deut. 29, beginning at verse 22, speaking of God's judgment on His people, Israel, and His land, Palestine: 'So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the Lord hath laid upon it; and that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zebon, which the Lord overthrew in His anger, and in His wrath: " 'Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger?
“‘Then shall men say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them forth out of the land of Egypt: " Tor they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom He had not given unto them: " 'And the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book.'
"There they were, the two passages, side by side, the prophecy and the fulfillment to the letter, and that by an infidel—`a stranger' indeed 'from a far country!'
"It came to me with all the force of a firm conviction: this is the Word of God! As if struck on the head with a sledge-hammer, I fell upon my knees with such force that the whole room shook, and the chandelier jingled above my head. Instantly all was settled for heart and conscience. The letter of the Word I knew. Now all was life and power. My infidelity vanished, and I realized my lost condition and need as a sinner before a holy God. I believed in the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, the One crucified and the only hope of a lost, helpless sinner. Thus God saved me, begotten again by the Word of God, a new creature in Christ Jesus. Old things had passed away; all things had become new.”
This is the vital point. When the Bible is seen to be the Word of God, the living, quickening Word of the living God, to the soul, the work is done. The same Word that spake in the first creation that "out of darkness" light should shine (see 2 Cor. 4:66For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6)), the same that commanded Lazarus, dead four days, to "come forth," and he "came forth," that is the very Word that can bring light and life to the quickened soul once dead in trespasses and sin.
Sinner-friend, believe the Bible as the Word of God. Own your lost condition; everything proves it; but the Word of God settles it: "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Rom. 3:2323For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; (Romans 3:23).