DURING one of the battles fought between Paraguay and Bolivia in a jungle zone called “The Chaco,” a chaplain was called to the side of a seriously wounded soldier in the night. Many brave men had died that day, and many more had been wounded in the bitter fighting. The Christian chaplain’s soul went out to the men in deep sorrow. All day long and on into the weary hours of night he spent his time seeking to help and comfort the wounded.
About 2:00 in the morning, just as the chaplain had lain down to get a little sleep, a messenger came from a sergeant requesting him to come immediately. A soldier was dying; he was not ready to meet God and he wanted to know how to be saved.
Kneeling by his side in the trench, the chaplain heard the dying man ask faintly, “Chaplain, will you help me to die?”
“I would help you to die, if I could,” replied the chaplain. “I would carry you on my shoulders into heaven if I could; but I can’t do that. However, I can tell you of One who can.”
“Who is he?” asked the dying man.
The chaplain told him of the Lord Jesus Christ, of how this blessed Man was his Saviour, and that He had come into this world to seek and to save that which was lost. Profound silence reigned, and the chaplain thought the man had gone, but then he heard the voice of the dying man asking again: “How can I meet God? How can I be saved?”
Then the chaplain read to him John 3: 16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
The poor fellow lay there with his eyes riveted on the chaplain’s face. It seemed as if every word was going home to his heart.
“Chaplain,” he would whisper, “please repeat those words ‘that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’” Slowly the chaplain read again the wonderful words of life, and then the dying soldier spoke again. “O sir, stop! Is that really there?”
“Yes, it’s here in God’s Book.”
“Please read those words again! Do repeat them, please, chaplain!” So he read them a second and a third time.
The dear fellow folded his hands and the chaplain read on, but before he had finished, the dying man had closed his eyes. Suddenly he opened them again and the look of terror had changed into a sweet smile of peace. All fear of death had fled. The chaplain bent over him and heard him whisper faintly, “Whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Again his eyes closed, but once again they opened. Then fixing them on the chaplain’s face he whispered, “That is all I want, sir,” and he was gone — gone from the battlefield to be with Christ — “absent from the body, present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:88We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:8)).
ML-07/01/1973