JANIE was nine years old, and lived happily enough with her parents and brothers and sisters, until one day, when opening a large family Bible, she saw a picture which greatly startled her. The artist had tried to paint a picture of judgment to come, when Satan first and then unbelievers will be cast into the lake of fire. It was a terrible picture and Janie looked and looked at it. She felt it must be true, as she had been told that the Bible was God's word and that every Christian believed it.
She looked long and earnestly until it became impressed on her memory. She saw the crowds of careless, pleasure-loving people amusing themselves, dancing, singing, card-playing, and acting, on the broad road and all gradually nearing their terrible end, the lake of fire. It was indeed an awful picture, and Janie thought of it in bed at night, and wondered if she too was on the broad road to destruction.
One evening her parents invited some friends in to dinner, and afterward Janie was allowed to join them. She sat on a stool by her mother and watched the guests, and it struck her that they were just like the people in the picture in the Bible. They were laughing, dancing, card-playing, and there was no thought of God in their minds.
The little girl was really alarmed and turning her distressed face to her mother she said in a voice of terror: "I believe we are all going to hell.”
Her mother was shocked at her remark and silenced her, but was she right?
Who are the people who are going to hell? It is very important to find out so that you may not be in the company. Let us see what God's word says, for nothing else is reliable.
“But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burned; with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." (Rev. 21:88But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. (Revelation 21:8).)
Were these friends believers or unbelievers? Did they love God, and had they faith in Christ? Were they trusting in His precious blood? They were, alas! "the unbelieving.”
So Janie was right. She could not forget the picture, but as she grew older she made up her mind to refuse to believe it. The others did not trouble about it, why should she? she argued. But this was not so easily done, for at the bottom of her heart, in spite of her words, she knew that there was a God, and that heaven and hell were realities.
The years went on, until one day Janie, now growing up, found herself, in answer to a kind invitation, sitting with a number of fisher folk in a hall in a seaside town. They were listening intently to a preacher who was giving them a message from God. Let us hear her own words about it. The speaker opened the Bible and read the wonderful words of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. It was the word of the living God, and it held up to view the Son of God, as a despised and rejected and bruised Man.
Have you seen Him thus?
“A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
Word by word the wondrous message fell upon the listening crowd.
Was there a guilty, sin-laden one?
“He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.”
Was there one in the company who had no peace?
“The chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." Was there a self-willed soul there?
"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Groaning, distracted soul, where then are thy sins? If already dealt with, why thine alarm? Judgment lies behind thee, and not before thee. To the soul that shelters under Christ, the judgment is a past thing. What have death and hell and the lake of fire to do with such?
This was the wonderful message, but it was not only for the sailors and the weary hard-working women that it was given that night. Janie, amazed and half-ashamed to be seen in the company of such humble people, had drunk in the good news, and the light of the glorious glad tidings had reached right down to the innermost part of her being.
Where were her fears? Gone. Where was the darkness? Gone, too. Where were her sins and her unbelief? Gone. She had seen the Lord Jesus, seen Him as her substitute, stricken, smitten, and afflicted. What more did she need? She could now give herself wholly to Him, and He claimed her as the fruit of the travail of His soul. The picture of the judgment day no longer terrified her, for she saw clearly that Jesus had conquered death and the grave, and put away sin, and her sins by the sacrifice of Himself.
This being so, she felt she must confess to her parents what had happened. One evening when they were alone she told them that the Lord Jesus Christ was her Lord and that heaven would one day be her home and not hell, for she trusted Him, who had made a way into heaven for her.
Janie was indeed happy. No thoughts of judgment to come terrified her now. She could sing with others who had learned the same glorious truths:
Death and judgment are behind us,
Grace and glory are before;
All the billows rolled o'er Jesus,
There they spent their utmost power.