His mother asked him to read his Bible every day, but Jack went to sea and didn’t give his Bible another thought. One day he took sick in a foreign port and was rushed to the hospital. In the next bed to him lay an older sailor, dying.
“Mate,” he said to Jack, “I’ve got something here that is very precious to me.” And he pulled out a package of printed gospel messages. “I was a very wild fellow,” he went on, “but reading these has brought me to believe in Jesus Christ as my Saviour, and I’m certain of going to be with Him in heaven when I die.”
Jack took the bundle of papers, but he was so embarrassed he didn’t know which way to look. He remembered how his mother had asked him to read his Bible, and he felt ashamed that he never took the time to read a chapter each day.
“I want you to read these gospel messages,” the dying sailor said, “and may God bless them to you. And will you do me a favor? Write a letter to the man who preached them and tell him that God blessed his messages to my conversion and that I hope God will bless them to you.”
Jack began reading those printed messages right away. After the older sailor had gone home to be with his Saviour, Jack, too, was convinced that he was a sinner who needed to trust Christ and to turn from his sins.
Later he wrote a letter to the servant of Christ who had preached those messages, and he told him the good news that God had used them to lead a dying sailor and himself to faith in Christ.
ML-10/21/1979