A gentleman rode one day to a distant town on horseback, and while returning in the evening was overtaken by a very severe storm. The rain poured down in torrents, and it got very dark; then in crossing the fields he lost his way.
After going some miles in the fierce storm, with not a single star to be seen, and no friendly light in a window, suddenly he was startled by a vivid flash of lightning. For a moment the whole countryside was lighted up. But what was his horror to find that he was galloping along upon the edge of a steep precipice, and both horse and rider might any moment have been dashed to pieces below! Quickly he turned and dashed back to safe ground.
Was the lightning flash a friend or an enemy? Why, a friend of course, although it gave both man and horse a fright! Now, he saw his danger and was able to escape from it.
Perhaps this story may come to some readers like the lightning came to the man, and startle them, but that will not matter so long as it shows them their danger, and leads them to flee to a place of safety. The wicked jailer in Acts 16 was dreadfully startled by the earthquake, and came trembling and cried out, “What must I do to be saved?” He too was on a fearful brink — the brink of a lost eternity. But he turned back just in time, and found the only place of safety; for when the Apostle Paul told him to “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” he believed, and was saved.
In Acts 24 we read that as Paul “reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come,” that “Felix trembled”; but, foolish man! he put off coming to Christ till a “convenient season” — which never came. How many there have been like him since, who put off the matter of their soul’s salvation until it was too late — and they were eternally lost!
I was holding a meeting some years ago in a big building with a sloping roof, and it was the depth of winter. The snow was deep, but hundreds came through it night after night, and many were coming to the Saviour.
One night, in the middle of the address, the snow came down from the sloping roof with such a crash, and made some of the children jump! No doubt it sounded all the louder because of the great hush over the meeting. That night there was a wonderful work done for eternity, especially among big boys from thirteen to fifteen years old. I remember well two of them who were the worst boys in the place. Both these boys were converted, and both became preachers of the gospel. Years afterward I saw one of them in London, and he told me that it was the snow falling off the roof that night that started him thinking about his soul; he thought the judgment day had come, and he was not ready.
ML 03/29/1959