Following an open-air gospel meeting in Hyde Park, a man in farm laborer's attire asked if he might speak. Permission being granted he addressed the crowd with these words: "I'm but a poor laboring man, so you'll excuse my simple way and let me tell you how the Lord saved my soul.
"I was plowing beside the road, and had just sat down against the fence to have my bit of bread and cheese, when I spies a gentleman leaning over the gate. Presently he came over and said it was a fine day. And I said it was so, with the blessing of God.
"However he pulls me up sharp, though in a kindly voice. Says he, " ‘Do you know the blessing of God in saving your soul?'
"It took me aback, and I says, "Of course, we all wants to be saved, and hope we shall before we come to die.
"Then he spoke a great deal to me as never I heard the likes in my life; about being born again and all that.
"Before he goes, he takes out a Book and says: " 'I should like to give you this Book. Will you read the chapter where I turn down the page?'
"I thanked him with all my heart; but told him I never had no book learnin'.
" 'Well', says he, 'never mind that; you get the first person you see that can read to read this chapter to you.'
"So he left the Book and I've never seen him from that day to this.
"After a bit I hears a boy come sauntering home from school, whistling. Thinks I, 'He'll do!' So I calls: " 'Hey, boy! come here'.
"He comes over and I tells him to sit down and read out of a Book a gentleman just gave me. "I axed him, 'Can you read?'
" 'Ay, can I! And write my name too.'
"He reads away and I sits listening with all my might. He reads about a man what came to Jesus by night. I never knew anything take such hold on me as them words did. I was wholly stunned when he read about being born again, for that was what the gentleman was saying to me before.
"Then I lost what he read for a bit, for thinking to myself... 'Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God! Now I wanted to go to heaven. And I always thought if a man did the best he could he would surely go to heaven in the end. But this floored me, this being ‘born again'. I was sure I wasn't.
"Suddenly something the boy read made my heart jump. I called out to him to stop and read that last over again. As he read what he told me was the sixteenth verse, the light began to shine, and I thought.
"This explains it! This is what being born again means:
" 'For God so loved the world that He gave
His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.'
"Yet I couldn't half think it was for me; and there was one word that I couldn't understand, so I axed the boy: " 'Can you tell me what that word whosoever means?'
"But he seemed to know as little as myself and said:
" ‘I can't for the life of me tell you what it means.'
"But I wasn't to be put off and said, 'you're a good scholar, and can write your own name. Surely you know what this word means.'
" 'No, he says, unless it means you, me, or anybody else.'
" 'Why didn't you say that at first?' says I. 'I can understand that easy enough! Read that verse again and put them words in instead of the long one.' So he read over again: " Tor God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son that you, me or anybody else, believing in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life.'
"I lifted my heart there and then for such mercy to a sinner like me. I says the verse to myself over and over again, enthusiastically, as I went on plowing. The rest of that afternoon my heart was singing with joy as I plowed up and down the field."
"When I went home the first thing I says to my wife was: "Wife, with the blessing of God, my fortune's made! I have received everlasting life.'
" 'Thank God,' she said, 'then my prayers are answered. But how did you come by it?'
"I read to her—or rather said to her, though I opened the book at the sixteenth verse of the third of John.
"I was so full of my new-found happiness that as soon as I had my supper I felt I must go and tell my mates the good news, thinking of course they'd be glad to hear it.
"We were accustomed to meet at the tavern and talk of all the gossip of the country; it was a regular scandal shop. So I goes down there this night with my Bible in my pocket.
"When I gets there my mates, and the landlord especially, begin to cry out how late I am, that I must have something good to tell. Then when they were quiet I tells them what I telled my wife, and pulls out my Bible and says John three and sixteen to them.
"Well! they stared at me and hadn't a word to say. At last the landlord spoke up: " 'Come, we don't want any of that sort of stuff here. We have enough preaching on Sundays by lamed men, without your setting up to be so good.'
" 'Is that the way it is, landlord?' I answers him. 'Well, it opens my eyes to what the friendship of the world is worth. If I musn't speak about my Savior, then I can't come here anymore indeed. Here's the three shillings I owe you, Goodbye old mates, I would to God you would take the words of Jesus and thank Him for it.'
"But the most part laughed at me. Only two, I believe (and thank God for them!), gave any heed.
"In my place now, they call me Whosoever, for I must say it again and again. It's just 'whosoever'— 'whosoever believeth.'
"But let me warn you, there is another 'whosoever' in God's Book, and if you are not a believer, you must be one of the ‘whosoever’s' of Rev. 20:15,
"And whosoever (you, me or anybody else) was not found written in the Book of Life, was cast into the lake of fire.' "
Here the lowly farmhand ended, leaving each one in his audience wondering: "Which whosoever applies to me?"
Reader, which of these two "whosoever’s" applies to you?