Three Minutes.

COMING from a service a messenger met me, requesting that I would go at once to a neighboring house to see a young man who was considered to be near his end. I hurried to the place accordingly, and, knowing the time was short, I came at once to the all-important subject, and said, “My dear friend, I see that you are very ill. Are you prepared for what may be before you?” “Oh, if I only were!” he replied, giving me a look in which despair and importunity seemed strangely blended; “and if I could be spared two or three weeks I believe I might be prepared; but the doctor tells me I can only live a few hours.” “Three weeks in order to be saved!” I exclaimed in great surprise; “let me tell you how you may be saved in about three minutes.”
So saying, I opened the Word of God, and read: “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His Name.” (John 1:1212But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: (John 1:12).)
“If I gave you this gold watch,” I asked, “how long would it take you to receive it? Could you not take it at once?” He assented that he could. “The gift of God is eternal life” (Rom. 6:2323For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)), I said, reading again from the Bible. “What have you to do with a gift? Do you buy it, or beg it, or wait a long time to be prepared to accept it? Will you take Christ, God’s gift, just now?” “But how can I take Him? Tell me actually the way to do it,” he exclaimed. Turning to Romans 10:9,9That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (Romans 10:9) I said, “Here we have the way told exactly, ‘If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’ Now, if you want to be saved just receive the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, and tell Him so.”
Late that night he passed away. Almost his last words were, “Isn’t it wonderful? He showed me how I could be saved in three minutes when I thought I must have weeks.”
A. J. Gordon, D.D.