“Anybody that's one hundred years old is news in any language," a newspaper editor once told his staff. Recently we talked to a Toronto man who was born in 1875, "born again" in 1885, and still able to tell the story in 1975.
Here is the account of his conversion to God as he recalled it some 90 years after the fact. Truly our God is both "mighty to save" and "able to keep.”
It was Sunday, his 10th birthday. In the evening, as usual he attended a gospel meeting. The speaker, turning his attention to the children present, remarked:
“Wouldn't it be nice if one boy or girl were saved, here tonight!”
With these words still fresh in his mind the boy walked towards home. Behind him walked a lady who had also attended the meeting. She, knowing the boy, called him by name and when he turned, she inquired, "Stanley, are you saved?”
“My father and mother are," he replied.
“But you must be saved for yourself!”
Here the short dialog ended. Arriving home, the boy went upstairs to his room. He quickly prepared for bed, extinguished the light, and he slid under the covers to think about what he had just heard—not the sermon, but what the lady had said:
“You must be saved for yourself!”
As he thought on these words, he felt suddenly aware that there was someone else in the bed beside him. Whoever it was, it whispered in his ear:
“Don’t you think about what that lady said to you. You are too young. Think about those things when you are older.”
He leaped out of bed, realizing that it was the devil himself who had whispered this lie.
He dropped on his knees beside his bed and called on the Name of the Lord, and told Him, he wished to be saved for himself.
That did it, for “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Acts 2:21. And ninety years later he was still able to tell others of “so great salvation.”
“How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” Heb. 2:3.