It was a beautiful clear night, and the stars twinkled in the sky. Two small girls, Nancy and Alice, were on their way home from a gospel meeting. The speaker had read from Revelation 21, and his subject was “The glories of heaven.” He had thought to impress upon the minds of his young hearers the beautiful description given of the heavenly Jerusalem, the blest Home of the redeemed—that fair city, with its street of pure gold and transparent walls, having “the glory of God.” Then, in order to impress upon them the need of being saved before they could enter that city, he read to them the dark description that God gives of the unconverted sinner in Romans 3, ending with the words, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
The speaker had told the story of a small boy, named Charlie, whose little brother the Lord had taken to be with Himself. Charlie had received Jesus as his Saviour into his heart, and he was so happy. He knew now that he too was ready for that glorious mansion, where little Willie had already gone.
Often Charlie would go out at nights and look up at the stars, wondering what Willie would be doing away up there beyond the sky. One night he told his mother he thought the stars were like “nail holes in the floor of heaven, to let little rays of the glory shine out.”
This strange idea of Charlie’s seemed to take possession of the minds of Nancy and Alice as they walked along the road, and several times they stood looking up, saying to each other, “What a bright place heaven must be, when the light shines out like that through the nail holes in the floor.”
“I’d like to go there when I die,” said Nancy, the elder of the two. “I wish I was ready.”
“Me too,” said her little cousin. “But I’ve done lots of naughty things, and teacher says it’s only white and pure ones that go there.”
“Yes, but he said too, ‘the blood of Jesus makes us white, and if we believe on Him we get all our sins washed away,” said Nancy.
“Then I’ll just believe in Him now, and get mine washed away,” said Alice.
“Teacher says we have nothing to do, because Jesus did it all, long, long ago,” Nancy went on. “The hymn says:
“It is finished, yes, indeed,
Finished every jot;
Sinner, this is all you need.
Tell me, is it not?’”
The two little girls walked together, talking of the things of the heavenly kingdom, and from that night onward they knew and confessed the Lord Jesus as their personal Saviour. There was no deep awakening, no alarm of coming judgment in their case. They heard the blessed gospel message of God’s love to guilty sinners, and of how Jesus died to fit them for His holy, happy home above. They simply believed what God said; they took it in as His Word of truth; and they were saved. Their young hearts were won for Christ and for heaven. They were born again, converted.
And now, dear reader, there is no other way for young or old. Only one way—God’s own choice. If you, like Nancy and Alice, will believe God, you will know and rejoice in His salvation. But if you trifle with the gospel message, if you prefer the sins and follies of this present world to Christ, then remember, as you live you must die, and according as your choice on earth has been, so will your destiny be in heaven. As dear little Alice said, “Only white ones and pure ones go to heaven,” and if you are not made white by the blood of Jesus, you could never fill a place in God’s holy, happy home above.
ML 06/13/1965