Dear young Christian: If you love Christ, let me entreat you to be very careful what sort of companion you choose. From the very outset do not keep company with an unsaved person; pray to God to guide and keep you. Very many young Christians have started out well, but after a while have accepted the attentions of some unsaved person, and finally married against the direct Word of God.
Many Christian young men have been led away to marry unsaved girls, and made themselves unhappy for life, besides displeasing the Lord and spoiling their testimony for Christ in this world. Young women have also taken this sad step, and many of them have thought that they might afterward win their husbands to Christ; but this is very rarely done. In the first place, how can they count on God to answer their prayers for the salvation of their husbands, when they have directly disobeyed God in marrying them? What can be plainer than: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel (unbeliever, JND)?” (2 Cor. 6:14-1514Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 15And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? (2 Corinthians 6:14‑15)). Many have reaped the sad consequences of such marriages, and I want to tell you of one.
I went to see a young woman one day, and had you been with me, you would have wept as I did. There she lay on a bed (if I may call it a bed), a young woman only twenty four years of age, with a little baby on her dying arm, and a little boy, three years old, crying in the desolate room. As I entered she was saying, “O, my poor babes! what will you do now that I am dying? No mother to love you, no friend to help you-Lord, take my children to heaven.” I broke in upon her prayer by saying, “Thy will be done.”
She looked up and said, “O sir, let me tell you my sad story.”
She told me she had been brought up in the fear of God, and when she was eighteen, had accepted Christ as her Saviour. Shortly after this, a young man began to pay attention to her. Many a time her father and mother entreated her to give him up, being persuaded that he was not saved; but she thought she could persuade him after she was his wife. Against her parents’ wishes and the Word of God, she married him, and for a few months all went well.
Then he refused to go with her to any religious service, and would invent various reasons to keep her from going. To preserve peace at home, as she thought, she stayed away as he wished until she lost all inclination to go. After a time he began to spend his nights away from home, return drunk, curse, and abuse her, not even giving her enough money to buy food. When the first child was born, she and the babe would have died from want, if her father and mother had not cared for them.
“One night, with a starving baby on my breast, I followed him,” she said, “and what were my feelings to find him where I did? When I spoke to him, he jumped at me, struck me, and ordered me to leave. I left him there with a sorrowful and wounded heart, and he did not come home for four days. I had to beg a little food for myself and child, from my neighbors. O, I cannot tell you all I have suffered through marrying an unconverted man! Two nights after this baby was born, in the depth of winter, he turned me out in my night dress. Yes, my husband is my murderer. Look at me, sir, twenty-four-years old, and dying, all through being unequally yoked.”
I kneeled down and prayed with her; and while praying, her mother came in. No one could have witnessed that scene and not have wept. I could not stand to see them crying together and left. Her mother called to me, requesting that I come back and see her daughter again.
When I called again, the young mother lay dying; but she spoke to her mother in my hearing: “This, is all through being unequally married. O, mother, that I had hearkened to you. But mother, will you take my children, and teach them about the Lord Jesus?”
“Yes, my child, I will.”
“You will be a mother to them, won’t you?”
“Yes, my child.”
The dying mother kissed her babes and said, “Lord bless them,” and died.
Should these lines fall into the hands of one who has already entered a path which might lead to marriage with an unsaved person, do be warned, and stop at once before it is too late. Obedience to the Word of God, faithfulness to Christ, and your own future happiness require that you retrace your steps now.