I had just run upstairs for a second. My brother had stayed home with me that night, entertaining me with stories (and some preaching too). Now, as I rushed back down into the kitchen, eager to hear more, I found the kitchen empty. He was gone. An eerie silence filled the house. I was alone! Could the Lord have come? Could it have happened so quickly? With horror, I ran to the window and peered up into the sky. There was nothing but blackness. “Yes,” I thought, “the Lord has come!” I frantically pulled my hair and started to cry, running to the telephone. As I started to dial, my brother emerged from behind the chair saying solemnly: “That’s what it will be like when the Lord comes.” This made a deep impression on my young mind.
How privileged I was! Twice a day, breakfast and supper, my family read the Word of God together, and bowed down on our knees to pray. When my father was away for weeks and months at a time, preaching the Gospel, a faithful mother maintained the same routine. How often we would find her on her knees by her bed after the dishes were done or before a Gospel meeting, wiping her tears away!
I was privileged, but how responsible I was as well. The other boys on our street knew nothing about their sins, eternity, God’s love, or Christ’s death for sin at Calvary. I often thought: “What
ever will my hell be like if I don’t get saved?” Many times as a boy I’d wake up from a dream in a cold sweat, thinking I had been left behind. Heart pounding, I would creep down the old attic steps and tiptoe into my parents’ room to see if they were still there.
Nearing my teenage years in my sins, I was stubborn and rebellious. But God moves in mysterious ways. Gaius Goff’s wife had to be hospitalized during the P.E.I. Conference in 1969. While awaiting her recovery, Mr. Goff and Mr. Wallace Buckle had a few Gospel meetings. God worked mightily and approximately 30 souls professed.
One night in my attic room, my heart was smitten with my lack of concern. While friends, cousins and siblings were stirred and getting saved, I was careless. The realization I might never be saved hit home. I cried, “O God, I want to be saved.” As I was pouring over verses, I heard heavy steps on the stairs. I told my father I wanted to be saved that night. Leaving me with a few verses, he said, “I can’t save you – it is between you and God.”
How clearly it came to me that this favored Christian’s child deserved nothing from God but hell because of my sins. How sweet it was when that first shaft of light brightened my young troubled heart as I read Romans 10:9. Jesus died for me and God was satisfied with His death for my sins. I knew it because He raised Him from the dead.
Could my eternal destiny be settled so simply? “Lord show me something else from Thy Word to assure me,” I asked. No theologian could take from me the verse He gave me while I lingered on my knees: Acts 3:26. The truth came to me like this: “Unto you first, Peter, God having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to bless you, Peter, in turning you away from your sins.”
What a beautiful peace salvation brings – peace with God, the barrier of sins removed. For the first time I could switch off the light and rest my head on the pillow, knowing that if the Lord came during the night, I would go to be with my Savior for ALL eternity.
Libraries of this world record man’s landing on the moon in 1969; you’ll search in vain for the record of a youth in an attic bedroom striking it rich for eternity that same year. But Heaven’s record captured the event. My name is indelibly written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. That’s what really counts! Is your name written there?
