A servant of God was once asked to go and see a Jewish infidel, who lay at the point of death. He called at the house, but was told by the Christian landlady that it would be of no use for him to see him, for he refused to listen to a word about eternal things. She had warned him of his danger, she said; she had pointed him to Christ as the Saviour of sinners, but it was all in vain.
“You talk to me of my soul,” said the dying man. “You talk to me of God; you talk to me of eternity, of heaven and hell. If I were drawing my last breath, that breath should be spent in laughing at you.”
Not long after (I think only a few hours), some friends — or enemies, to call them by their true name — came to see the dying man. While they were with him he called for a pack of cards, which lay near, and asked to be propped up in bed. “One more rubber of whist,” he exclaimed, “and then down into hell!”
On the brink of the precipice, on the verge of everlasting flames, he sat and played away the last few moments left to him — played away his last chance of salvation. Ah, how Satan triumphed as he watched that game!
Suddenly there was a pause — an awful pause — and then the dying man cried aloud, “Hold me up! I’m sinking into hell!” Another moment and he was gone. Those were his last words. The dying breath which he had said should be spent in laughing at God’s message of salvation, was spent instead in pronouncing his own eternal doom.