My father led me to Christ. He was a mailman in old Russia. His job made it necessary to travel between Germany and Russia, and he found it comparatively easy, of course, to do a bit of smuggling on the side.
Twice he was caught and pushed. Then he was warned that if there was a third time, it would be Siberia for him.
Life in Siberia was a fate too grim to be considered! But to break off his smuggling—that was impossible! There was the devil who held a grip on him, too powerful to break. He could see no way out—no way out but to flee from his homeland. And this he did.
After arriving in America, one day while he was at work a slip of paper was placed under the door. Mother was certain it must be a very important paper or it wouldn’t have been delivered in this way. But she couldn’t read it. She carefully put it away until Father returned. Father was learning English, but he could not read the paper yet.
“But it must be very important,” said Mother. “Don’t you think so?”
My father agreed that it must be important all right, so they must find out what it said. They couldn’t take the chance of doing something wrong, or not doing something they should do in this land where they had made their new home. They took the paper to their neighbor. The neighbor obligingly read them the message, for it was a gospel tract.
“Who is it that’s saying these things?” asked my father.
“I guess it is God,” replied the neighbor.
“Oh then it is important indeed,” said Father.
“I suppose it is,” said the neighbor.
Father had fled from Russia and the punishment of his sins before a human court. He knew God’s judgment for his wrongdoing would be much greater than what he would have received in Russia. To have the slate wiped clean and all his sins forgiven because Another had borne the punishment in his stead sounded almost too good to be true.
However, both my father and mother believed the message from heaven and were wonderfully saved by the grace of God.
Father worked six days a week to provide for his family, and then started to give away gospel tracts on Sunday.
One weekend a gospel preacher visited our home. Father came home from his tract distribution rather discouraged. He hung up his large empty bags saying, “I’m afraid I’ll have to go to heaven empty-handed. I don’t know of one who has been saved-and I have given away thousands of tracts.
The visiting preacher asked, “How many children do you have, brother?”
“Ten,” Father answered; “five boys and five girls.”
“How many of them are truly saved, washed in the blood and on their way to heaven?”
“Why, all ten of them!”
“Well,” said the Lord’s servant, “I would not worry any more about going to heaven empty-handed. ‘He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.’ " Psa. 126:66He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. (Psalm 126:6).
ML-02/10/1980