One day as I was walking home to my apartment, I suddenly pictured myself suffering terribly in the blackest darkness after I died. I don’t know why that happened, but it filled me with such an awful fear that I was willing to pay any price to escape from such a terrifying eternity.
Some time after this, I was in the Navy stationed at Pearl Harbor. On May 8, 1965, I did something foolish. I made six dives in water about 110 feet deep, all within less than five hours. After the sixth dive, I returned to the boat very frightened and gasping for air. I soon collapsed into unconsciousness. My buddies called for help, and the next thing I remember was waking up in the ambulance with an oxygen mask over my face.
At the hospital I was put into a recompression chamber for 11 hours, but when I came out, I was completely paralyzed and barely alive.
These days there are charts to show how long and how deep you can safely dive. In those days diving was often done by trial and error. If you didn’t come back up, your buddies in the boat decided they had better be more careful when it was their turn. Certainly I should never have been able to return to the surface, but God had a purpose to fulfill in my life.
About two years later, I had gained enough strength so I could get around in a wheelchair. Life in a wheelchair is boring and sometimes very painful because of the disability that put you there. I was now 30 years old and had never read a Bible. But God had brought me to the place where I was willing and ready to read His Word. Then He sent someone to bring me a Bible.
I had lots of time on my hands, and the memory of that terrible picture of eternity that I’d had while I was still a healthy, young man pressed me to read the Bible.
The more I read, the more I wanted to know God Himself. I saw that my sins had contributed to the death of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Then I saw the blood flowing from His wounded side and the indescribable power in His precious shed blood that could cleanse my soul from all my sins. I trusted Him, and my load of sins was immediately gone. I couldn’t understand it. My sins were responsible for His death, and then He cleansed me with His blood. With tears streaming from my eyes, I kept thanking the Lord over and over again in deepest sorrow that my sins had caused His death and in deepest joy that all my sins were washed away in His precious blood. It was too good to be true, and yet it is true! I began to thank Him that He had brought me so low, into a wheelchair, so He would be able to raise me up a saved soul. “God, who is rich in mercy . . . even when we were dead in sins . . . hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:46). What a wonderful place to be in. My wheelchair experience, which sometimes seems long and extremely uncomfortable, is really only a brief moment compared to an eternity with my Lord and Saviour - an eternity overflowing with joy and praise and sweet fellowship with the Son of God.
Don’t you want to share that wonderful eternity with us? Come to Jesus and let Him wash away your sins in His precious blood, and you will. Whatever the price is for you to come to Him, it’s more than worth it!
ML-03/18/2001