I was lying on my hospital bed, waiting to be taken to the operating room. The operation was to be a dangerous one, and for the first time in my life I seriously took my bearings. What would it mean for me to wake up in eternity? Where would I spent it? How can I meet God?
These were questions that demanded an answer, and promptly too. All I had depended on in the way of religious profession was giving way under me. I realized that the question of my sins was unsettled. It could be that I was going into the presence of God with my sins unforgiven.
Oh, how I longed for some little bit of the Word of God upon which I could rest for peace and assured salvation, but who could give it to me at that moment?
God Himself gave it for as quick as a lightning flash a verse from the Bible shot into my mind: "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." 1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7). I had learned it from my mother when I was a child.
I seized it with all the eagerness that a drowning man would show in gripping a life buoy that had been thrown to him, knowing that there was no time to lose. I said to myself, "I will meet God with that!"
As in simple faith I thought of God's testimony to the virtues of that precious blood, sudden peace filled my troubled soul, such peace as I had never known before.
I was able now to go to the operating table with perfect confidence and calmness, and was, through God's mercy, brought safely through. Now I have come back from the very gates of death, able to say that trusting in the precious blood of Jesus, the worst sinner can meet God without a doubt in his heart.
You, too, may have only a little time to live. Don't wait as I did! Listen to the words of Scripture: "Come NOW, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Isa. 1:1818Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18).
Precious, precious blood of Jesus, Let it make thee whole;
Let it flow in mighty cleansing O'er thy soul.