An engineer brought his train to a standstill at a little town in Massachusetts. A woman came along on the platform to his cab and said: “The conductor tells me the commuter train at the next junction leaves fifteen minutes before our arrival. It is Saturday and that is the last train today. I have a very sick child in the coach and no money to stay over and none to hire a taxi to go such a long way into the country. What shall I do?”
“Well, I wish I could tell you,” said the engineer.
“Would it be possible for you to hurry a little?”
“No, ma’am! I have a schedule and the railroad’s rules, and I must run by them.”
She sorrowfully turned away, leaving the tenderhearted engineer quite distressed. Soon she returned and asked, “Are you a Christian?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Will you pray with me that the Lord may in some way delay the train at the junction?”
“Why, yes! I will pray that with you, but I have not much faith.”
Just then the conductor cried, “All aboard!” The woman hurried back to her sick child and away went the train climbing up a steep grade.
“Somehow or other,” said the engineer, “everything worked like a charm. As I prayed, I couldn’t help letting out my engine. The more I prayed, the faster we seemed to go. Somehow I couldn’t hold her! Knowing that I had the road, I let her go, and we dusted up to the station six minutes ahead of time. There stood the other train!”
“Will you tell me,” said the other engineer, “what I am waiting for? Somehow I felt I must wait till you came tonight, but I don’t know why.”
“I guess,” said the conductor, “it is for this poor woman who has a sick child. She is very anxious to get home tonight.” But the man at the engine and the grateful Christian mother Knew why the train waited! One train was held, the other hurried on, that this child of God might reach her destination. So does our God hear and answer prayer.
This suggests another thought. The delayed train is like the long-suffering of God. “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
This is why the gospel of the grace of God is still being preached, why the Lord still waits for sinners to come to Him and why God’s train of grace has not yet moved away. He is “not willing that any should perish,” but “the day of the Lord will come.”
How many are saying, “Where is the sign of His coming?” How many are saying, “The Lord delays His promise. He promised to come nearly 2000 years ago, but there is still no sign of His coming. All things continue as they were.”
They are just doing what people did in the days before the flood. Noah preached one hundred and twenty years, warning them faithfully, but they mocked, laughed, ate and drank, married and were given in marriage, enjoyed life and undoubtedly said, “Where is the sign of a flood? No sign! No sign!”
But the same day that Noah went into the ark the rains came; the heavens were opened, the fountains of the great deep opened up and they were swept away. And “as the days of [Noah] were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” They “knew not”—and yet they had been given one hundred and twenty years of warning! And are people any wiser today? There have been 2000 years of warnings. Truly, God is “not willing that any should perish”! There can be no excuse for failing to receive His mercy—failing to accept the sure escape from judgment while it is offered.
God has told us in His Word, the Bible, that there is a time for every purpose and every work. He further says that “now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).
He is waiting in patience, urging men to repent. He sends warning after warning by the dreadful catastrophes and unusual weather conditions we are experiencing. Do not let these warnings pass unheeded. “The Lord is . . . not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9).
The day of grace—God’s now—is soon to end. Until the end of that day the invitation will go out, saying: “Yet there is room.” The house is not yet filled; the door is not yet closed. God is still saying, “Come.”
But, even as God has appointed a time for every work, He has also “appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained” (Acts 17:3131Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. (Acts 17:31)). When that day has come, when that hour has struck, there will be “time no longer.”
No more delay, no more waiting in grace. No more an open door, no more room. Now God offers eternal life and forgiveness to “whosoever will” on the ground of the work accomplished on the cross by His own beloved Son whose blood “cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:77The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. (John 1:7)). Then it will be too late. Now is the “accepted time.” Then there will be “time no longer.”