A CHRISTIAN man once lost his way in the forest. He was afraid to spend the night there and was so glad when he spied a light in the distance. It proved to be a blazing fire around which sat a group of people. The man sat down on the fringe of the crowd to listen.
To his horror he found that it was a gathering of atheists, and the speakers were bold and determined in venting their blasphemy against God. One young man got up and declared that he did not believe in the existence of God, and dared Him then and there to destroy him if He did exist.
The Christian man was meditating a reply but words failed him. The young infidel orator sat down amid the loud clapping and approval of his friends.
Then a burly woodsman, past the prime of his life, rose to his feet and asked for a hearing. He said he was not going to dwell on the topic the young orator before him had discussed, he merely wanted to tell them a fact. “Will you hear me?”
“Yes,” they shouted, for it was a free discussion.
“Well, a week ago,” he began, “I was working up the river, cutting logs. You know there is a falls down a piece, and as I was felling a tree
I heard cries and shrieks, together with prayers to God for help. I ran down to the water’s edge and saw a young man caught in the rapids. The current had him in its grasp and if some outside help did not come to him he would certainly be swept to his death over the falls. I saw that young man kneel down in the boat and pray to God, by the love of Christ and by His precious blood, to save him. He confessed he had been an infidel, but said that if he might be delivered this once, he would openly declare his belief in God.
“At once I jumped into the river. I managed to get into the boat, turn it around and bring it to shore. So I saved that young man’s life. And that young man is the same one who is here, he has just sat down after denying the existence of God and daring Him to destroy him!”
Proud infidelity is always bold in the absence of danger but cowardly in the time of catastrophe) Infidels sneer in the crowd but tremble in the dark. The heart of man is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9), and out of Christ is the plaything of the devil.
May our reader be delivered from all dishonoring thoughts of God and Christ, and if you have not fled to Him for refuge may you put your soul’s safekeeping in the hands of Him who died for unworthy sinners such as we.
“For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” Rom. 5:6.
ML-07/16/1972