A young man who had been a skeptic for years, when dying, sent for me to come and see him. I was startled to see the ravages of disease; his eyes were bright, but his voice was low.
I sat by his side. He told me: “It has been dark with me; but it is brighter now. I think I see the light. I found out last night that I was a sinner, a great sinner.” Then the tears gathered in his eyes, but looking at me, he added: “I want to tell you about my life. I’ve been a skeptic. I had a good education, but I began to pick the Bible to pieces, and when a young man begins to do that, you know that there are many things he cannot understand, and I was young. I could not see how Christ could be God; how His being taken by the Roman soldiers and nailed upon a cross, was any good to me. I read about Him, and I thought He was merely a good Man, and that a crowd of cowards had killed Him.”
He paused a moment, then continued, “Now, I want you to explain to me fully and clearly all about Christ.”
Lifting a silent prayer to God, I read a few verses; then spoke to him of sin and the necessity of atonement. “Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:2222And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. (Hebrews 9:22)).
I spoke of the spotless humanity of Christ, proving Him to be God. I took him from scene to scene of the Saviour’s life. We lingered by Gethsemane together, and went on to Calvary. I spoke of the darkness and the desertion; His being made sin for us, who Himself knew no sin; and the Holy God who could not look upon sin, forsaking Christ because He was bearing our sin.
Then I spoke of the resurrection and ascension; and of Christ and Heaven, because sin had been put away; there, because God was satisfied with what He had done for the sinner. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)).
He whispered: “I see it now, I believe it, too; the barriers are broken through at last, and I have peace with God.”
He had been to God about his sins before I saw him, and now he grasped the finished work of Christ clearly.
Where art thou? A saved sinner on the road to eternal glory, or a skeptic on the road to endless gloom? Where now? Where then?
ML-10/07/1979