DR. ROBERT ANDERSON, the gifted Bible teacher, was vising with some relatives. It was Sunday afternoon, and a young university student, home on vacation stopped in also for a visit and stayed for supper. The young fellow came from a wealthy home and was quite talented.
After supper the Doctor said he was going to a gospel service at the nearby mission and invited the young man to go along. He did so and the two friends listened with some curiosity to a gospel address by a sailor whose English was far from college level. Certainly he did not handle his subject in a way that would appeal to educated men. Going home from the meeting the two friends agreed that they had not been edified nor impressed.
They joined the family at supper and about ten o’clock Dr. Anderson walked with his friend down the drive to say goodnight at the gate. It was snowing hard and very cold. To their astonishment, sitting at the gate who should they see but the sailor-preacher, his teeth chattering with the cold.
Getting down from the gate, the sailor excused himself for speaking, and as Doctor Anderson said when telling the story, “if he could not put two sentences together in the hall, he could scarcely speak at all now from the cold.”
But he said, addressing the university student, “I have been waiting to ask you, sir, if you are saved.”
The young man condescended to reply in a few words expressing his tolerance of such a question, but that was as far as it went, and the sailor went on his way.
But that was not the end of the matter for the young man said to Dr. Anderson, “Well, I never saw anything like it in my life. That poor fellow has been waiting all these hours to ask me that question. It is quite clear that he has got something that I haven’t!”
So impressed was he by that one and only thing that was clear that after some further conversation he accepted Christ as his Saviour that night. The change in his life proved that God had used a poor uneducated sailor to bring the Light of Life to a man to whom education was, till then, the only equipment for a successful career.
ML-04/23/1972