| “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). |
| More than 75 years ago, a Christian man was preaching the gospel in a simple room with only a dirt floor, and quite a few had come to listen. In order to illustrate that salvation was a free gift, he held up a bag of money. In that bag were many coins, and each coin was worth as much as a man would earn for working a whole day. Then he said, “Anyone who comes up here in the next minute will get one of these coins free.” He looked at his watch, and the seconds ticked by — 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds. But no one came up. The time went on — 40 seconds, then 50 seconds. Suddenly a boy came up from the back of the room, held out his hand, and with a smile the preacher gave him one of the coins. |
| He turned to go back to his seat, but an old man who was sitting at the front said to him, “Let me see it, boy.” So the boy handed it to him, and the old man took the coin and threw it against a rock that was sticking out of the floor right in front of his chair. Why did he do that? He wanted to see of the coin was real, for the old man thought it was probably just fake money. But when the coin struck the rock, it gave a metallic ring that told the old man that it was real money. He shouted out, “It’s good! It’s good!” |
| You can imagine what happened then. Immediately everybody in the room came to the front to get a coin too. But the preacher looked sadly at his watch, then at the crowd, and slowly said, “No, for I told you that you must come up within one minute, and now the minute is past. No one will get a coin tonight except this boy, for he believed me when I offered it.” When the preacher told me this story, he said that there were enough coins in the bag to give one to each person in the room, if they had believed him and come up to the front during that minute. Yet only one boy received one. |
| Most of these meditations have been written to Christian young people, but perhaps someone who has been reading them is not saved. It is important not to be like those people who did not believe that the preacher would give them real money. They did not get a coin that night because of their unbelief, but it is far more serious not to believe God, and to miss out on the salvation of your soul. God does not promise us that salvation be available tomorrow; He says, “Behold now is the accepted time.” |
