“You have no right to thank God for what’s on this table; it was provided for and paid for by me and no one else! Besides, I don’t believe there is such a Being,” and Henry Hart struck the table with his clenched fist.
“I’ll tell you what,” he continued, “THERE IS NO GOD. If there is, here’s an opportunity for Him to display His power.”
Placing his watch on the table, he said, “I’ll give God five minutes and defy Him to His face to do His worst with me.”
With one hand on the table and the other held high, the atheist awaited the issue of his challenge.
It was the custom of the Hart family for all the members of it to meet together once a year. On this occasion the meeting was at the house of the oldest son Henry. The elderly father, a Christian, had just given thanks to God for the food they were about to eat, when Henry jumped to his feet and shouted his defiant words.
Amid deathlike silence the minutes glided slowly by. One, two, three, four - at last the minute hand told the tale that Henry’s five minutes had run their course.
“Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed derisively. “What about your God now? WHERE IS HE?”
“Henry, my son,” said the old man, “when you were a child I gave you to the Lord, and I have never taken you back. From the moment you put the watch on the table, Henry, I have been praying to God for you. You will be a converted man yet; I may not live to see it, but I know God will save your soul.”
Years passed away; the old Christian was called home to his rest. Henry became a confirmed drunkard as well as an atheist, a ringleader in the paths of wickedness and profanity.
Walking along the street one day he fingered the coins in his pocket. He might have enough, he decided, to get a couple of drinks. As soon as the thought entered his mind he began walking faster toward one of his favorite haunts.
Suddenly he paused; the long-forgotten past, his misspent life, rose up before him like a mighty mountain. His daring defiance of God and his father’s memorable words, spoken so lovingly and tenderly to him at the family gathering years before, were brought vividly to his memory. Swift as the lightning’s flash the arrow of conviction entered his soul.
“O God! let my dear old father’s prayer be answered! Have mercy on me - a vile and guilty sinner!” The prayer came from his heart.
He turned around and hurried home where, alone with God, he told out the anguish of his soul.
His wife had a Bible; he opened it and read the record of God’s love to guilty man. “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, CHRIST DIED FOR US” (Romans 5:58). Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, whose mission it is to direct souls to the Saviour, Henry Hart found “joy and peace in believing” and passed out of death into life.
Perhaps you wonder why God did not take Henry Hart at his word when he uttered his defiant challenge. Come with me to Calvary. You think it strange that a holy God should bear with a poor creature of the dust, who dared to lift his arm in defiance against his Creator? That terrible three hours of darkness when Jesus was on the cross of Calvary explains it.
Jesus, the Son of God, out of pure love to guilty sinners, voluntarily entered that thick darkness where, alone, He sustained and exhausted the judgment of God against sin.
Never before, in the history of man, had the appeal of the needy been made to God in vain. But listen: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? . . . Our fathers trusted in Thee: they trusted, and Thou didst deliver them” (Psalm 22:1414I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. (Psalm 22:14)).
This is the cry of the Lord Jesus, the sinner’s substitute, from amid the gloom of Calvary. This explains why God can now be just and yet the justifier of every poor sinner who believes in Jesus. Are you still a stranger to God’s salvation? Then listen and believe.