While passing out Sunday school papers in a hospital recently, I met a young man who refused to take one. “I’m Jewish,” he commented. I turned to the book of Isaiah and asked him if he believed the Old Testament scriptures. He said that he did, so I began to read in chapter 53.
As I showed him from the Scriptures that it was the Messiah that was spoken of, he appeared to be much impressed. We had talked for about 15 minutes when a nurse came with a wheel chair. “You have to go down for some x-rays,” she said.
As he was helped into the wheel chair he said to me, “You’ll never know how much this has meant to me. He is....”
He was cut off by the nurse; “Excuse us, please.”
As he was being wheeled out of the room I told him I would be back tomorrow.
“Please come back,” he called back.
Returning to the hospital the next day I went straight to his room, but found his bed empty and no sign of his having been there. I inquired at the nurse’s station and was told that he had died the night before.
What was it that he was about to tell me when the nurse interrupted? Was it “He is mine"? I can only hope that he had accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour. “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near.” Isaiah 55:66Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: (Isaiah 55:6).
ML-06/22/1980