Where is the train gone? It puffed away down the track one summer night, leaving a young man named Jacob standing all alone at the station. He had just stepped off the train to spend a happy week-end with some friends, but he did not know, in the darkness, where to find their home.
What did Jacob need? Well, he needed to be sure of the way. It would be foolish to follow some unknown road in the dark, so he decided to wait there until daylight. That was a wise decision, but just then he heard a long “Yoo hoo” in the distance.
“Ah,” he thought to himself, “my friends have heard the train stop and are calling for me to come. “Yoo hoo,” he answered eagerly, as he started off down the track in the direction of the call.
Now Jacob thought he was right, but human thoughts are very doubtful coanions. God says He hates them. (Psalm 119:113113SAMECH. I hate vain thoughts: but thy law do I love. (Psalm 119:113).) Are you following human thoughts on your way to eternal happiness? Do you think that if you do this or that, you will be pretty safe for eternity? Has someone told you that they think, if you try to be a good boy or girl, you will get to heaven? Let me tell you that you will find, after all, that God hates thoughts, and wants you to follow His own precious Word.
Well, Jacob walked on in the daress, and the same encouraging “Yoo hoo” sounded again. On he went further still, but before long he found out he was mistaken. He was going in the wrong direction and it was not his friends who were calling at all.
Jacob found his friends in daylight. They told him that the voice he had followed was the cry of a loon, a big bird swimming in the bay. How Jacob laughed at his mistake! How foolish it all appeared in the light of day! But listen, my reader, if you wait till God’s day of judgment comes upon this world, your mistake will be no laughing matter. It will then be forever too late for salvation.
It isn’t too late now for you to find the way to eternal joy and happiness in the presence of God. But you must follow the right voice. You must be sure that you follow the right voice. Whose voice? Not man’s, but God’s. The Word of God tells us that the only way to the Father is through the Lord. Jesus, the One who died that we might live. His way is not hard and toilsome. It is not long. It may be settled this moment, if you will but put your trust in that blessed One who died that we might live.
ML 06/17/1951