“Here, Dad, you may have my watch! Where I’m going I won’t need it any more!”
Raymond’s Dad knew what he meant. He remembered the day Raymond had come to his mother and had earnestly asked, “Mother, how can I be saved?”
Mother had asked Raymond why he felt he needed to be saved and Raymond had answered, “I know that I’m a sinner, Mother. I don’t always obey you. I want to have my sins forgiven and be sure that I am saved.”
Mother then told Raymond again the story of God’s love in sending the Lord Jesus to die for his sins upon the cross of Calvary. Together they knelt, and Raymond received the Lord Jesus as his own Savior.
Raymond was only eight years old at that time, but he was a very happy Christian boy, and tried in every way to live to please the Savior who had died for him. He learned that the Lord Jesus would someday return to take those He loved to heaven, and every day Raymond looked for Him to come.
“Mother! Dad! Come quick!” he called one day. “I think the Lord is coming!” The sky was glowing with lovely colors that seemed to look like the reflections from the “city of gold.” Then he realized that it was only the sunset.
“Oh! it’s only the sun! I thought it was the Lord Jesus corning!” he said with real disappointment.
Some of Raymond’s schoolmates began to make fun of him for being a Christian. They would even shout out to him, “Hi, Raymond! How’s your God today?”
It hurt a lot to hear them say that, and afterward he said to his mother, “They don’t know what they’re saying, Mother.”
One Sunday Raymond helped himself to quite a few tracts from the rack at Sunday school. His father noticed and scolded him a little, for he was afraid that he would waste them. But Raymond insisted that he would use every one. The tract he selected was, “I’m Not Going To A Christless Grave, Are you?”
The next day he took them to school and gave one to his teacher, and one to each of the children in his room. Then he put one inside of the cover of each of the books in the back of the room. After school he took what he had left down to the railroad station, and gave them to the people there.
The next night Raymond suddenly became very sick. He was rushed to the hospital, and soon found himself in a white room with nurses and doctors busy caring for him. Although he was sick, Raymond told them about the Lord Jesus and His love for them. He gave them tracts and then asked the nurse to take tracts to the other sick folks in the hospital around him.
When his father came to see him in the hospital, Raymond smiled cheerfully, but after they had talked a while he took off his wrist watch that he was very fond of, and gave it to his father, saying, “Where I’m going I won’t need my watch any more!”
Raymond’s father could hardly answer. “You’re going to stay with us, Raymond. Don’t you want to?”
“Yes; I would like to stay with you, Father, but I would rather go to be with the Lord Jesus!” he answered simply.
Very soon Raymond was in heaven with the Savior he loved so very much—in that land where no one needs a watch. God’s eternal day had begun for Raymond in the place where there is only joy and gladness!
Raymond did not go to a Christless grave—will you? Stop and look at your watch, or at a clock right now. How many more minutes, or hours, do you suppose you will have to live? In this life we use our watches constantly, but someday for each one of us it will be TIME to meet God! Then there will be an endless eternity ahead where watches will never be needed.
Will you go where Raymond went—to be with the Lord Jesus?
“For it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Heb. 9: 27-28).
Receive the Lord Jesus as your Savior now!