The boy you see in our picture today is Erwin. He is just twelve years old and was a regular attendant at our little Sunday school. One Lord’s day afternoon his seat was empty and the boys told me Erwin was sick in the hospital.
Directly after class I took the Sunday school paper to the hospital. Visiting hours were just over, and there was Erwin as well as many other children in the bright public ward, reading funny papers which their parents and friends had left.
Erwin was glad to see me and promised to read the Sunday school paper when he had finished the funnies. He told me he had mastoids, but was getting better.
“Suppose you had got worse instead of better. If you had died where would you be?”
With a kind of half smile he replied, “In hell, I guess.”
I told him how glad we all were that he was getting better, but urged him to take Jesus as his Saviour.
During the week, a girl in the class told me Erwin was on the “S.I.” list. Seriously ill and going to hell! I rushed at once to the hospital. Nurses in their white starched uniforms rustled through the corridors. I was asked to make my visit brief, for “he is a very sick boy.”
Entering the room it was easy to see the truth of the words. His breathing was in short fitful gasps. Ice water tinkled in a glass by the bedside. I took his little hand in mine and asked, “Erwin, do you know the Lord Jesus? Are you saved?”
“No,” he said, “I don’t know how.” Just think, Erwin had been in my class nearly three hundred Sundays. He knew all the answers in class but had never let Jesus into his heart. Asking God’s help, I read very slowly Psalm 23 and then that precious verse, “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” ¤ John 1:1717For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. (John 1:17). “Jesus died because He loved you, Erwin, and His blood can cleanse all your sins away.”
His eyes were closed, and he was lying still and silent between the white sheets. Presently he raised his head and the radiance of heaven filled his happy face as he said, “I belong to Jesus. To think you told me every Sunday for so long and I didn’t believe it until now!” And then after a pause, “Tell my mother I belong to Jesus.”
“No, Erwin, I won’t do that — you must confess Jesus as Lord, yourself.”
At that happy moment his mother entered the room and I left.
It was my privilege to spend eight hours each day at the bedside of that little boy. Gangrene had set in and he grew steadily weaker, though he lingered for twelve days. Just a few hours before the Lord took him Home he raised his little head and looking at his mother’s tear-stained face, he said, “I’m going to be with Jesus, Mother. Meet me there.”
I shall never forget the happiness that filled his young face as he said those words.
My dear boys and girls, it is a real thing to know Jesus as your Saviour, and to know that you are clean enough for heaven because the blood of God’s own Son cleanseth from all sin. This is the ONLY way to have a happy deated.
Four of the boys from Erwin’s Sunday school class carried the little casket to the grave. After the service Erwin’s mother came over and putting her hand in mine she said, “Just to think, God had to take away my boy to make me yield my heart to the Lord Jesus.”
“We know there’s a bright and a glorious home,
Away in the heavens high,
Where all the redeemed shall with Jesus dwell:
But will you be there and I?”
ML 07/22/1956