One day I was passing near an encampment of Gypsies, and decided to visit them. After buying some of the metal skewers they were making, I was told that a young lad among them was ill. I begged to be allowed to see him. The father asked me: "Do you want to talk about religion to him?”
"No," I said.
"What, then?”
"About Christ.”
"Oh, then you may go in; only if you talk religion, I'll set the dog on to you!”
In the caravan, a sort of covered wagon, I found the lad alone and in bed. He was evidently in the last stage of tuberculosis. His sunken eyes were closed, and he looked like one already dead. I bent over him, and very slowly in his ear I repeated the scripture: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16).
I repeated this precious verse five times without any apparent response. The poor boy seemed deaf to all earthly sounds and not able to hear even with the outward ear. As I finished repeating it for the sixth time, he opened his eyes and smiled. To my delight he whispered: "He did that for me? And I never thanked Him! But nobody ever told me! I 'turn Him my thanks. Only a poor Gipsy chap like me! I thank Him kindly!”
He closed his eyes with an expression of complete satisfaction. As I knelt by him, I thanked God. His lips moved again, and I caught the whispered, "That's it!" There were other words from the barely moving lips, but I could not decipher them.
I went again the next day, and found that the dear lad had died (or rather, had fallen asleep in Christ) eleven hours after I left. His father said he had been very "peaceable," and had died a "tidy death." There was no Bible or Testament in the encampment. I left one of each. The poor man wished me "good luck," and gave me a little bundle of skewers the "boy Jemmy" had made.
It was apparently the first time this Gipsy boy had ever heard of God's salvation. With unquestioning faith he took God at His word, and with his dying lips he thanked Him who so loved the world as to give His Son for him, "a poor Gipsy chap." God is satisfied with the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This poor lad was also satisfied; and this mutual satisfaction meant instant and everlasting salvation for him. In eleven short hours, through his new-found faith in Christ, he exchanged that forlorn, rickety caravan for the paradise of God. There he has found that God's Word is true.
Friend, if you have not with your heart said "Amen" to God's way of saving lost sinners, you are on the extreme verge of that great abyss which God calls "eternal." He alone has the keys of death and of hell. But the "grace of God that bringeth salvation" is brought before you this day. Will you refuse it and pass on into eternity without the Savior? The judgment lies ahead of you; and there, without Christ, you will find your portion in the fire that "never can be quenched." Will you now accept God's salvation, and 'turn Him many thanks"?
Fellow believer, may God forbid that anyone within your reach or mine should ever have occasion to say, with regard to these everlasting realities, the awful words: "Nobody ever told me.”