Where is he now? He, is yet living somewhere, but where? Is he now in heaven?
I know a father who is a professed Christian. He had one child that he loved more than the rest, and that child died. And now, though years have passed, the thought of that lost child is a source of bitter anguish to that father’s heart. He fears his boy is not in heaven. He remembers his child was a sinner, but he does not remember that he ever repented. He knows that business kept him from teaching his boy the way to heaven and God. He cries,
“O, that I could believe otherwise. My boy! O, my boy! Is my child in heaven?”
That father neglected the soul of his boy, that he might heap up gold for him; but the boy is gone, and now the father would gladly give all his gold, could he bring him back for one week, but it is too late now.
O, that those parents who are string so earnestly for the present welfare of their children, and are so careless about their eternal good, could look on the anguish of this father.
To him the thought of meeting that neglected child in the judgment is agony; and would not the same thought cause others like pain had they as clear a view of a lost soul as he?
“Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” Deuteronomy 6:7.
ML 09/09/1945