A little while ago a poor old woman on crutches sat down beside me. Pointing to the Bible in my hand, she asked, “Been to church, my dear?”
“No,” I answered, “I have been reading the Bible to some dear old Christians who love to hear it but who cannot read it for themselves because they are blind.”
Here she interrupted me, exclaiming, “What would you think of a minister, if you had sent to him three or four times over, and he refused to come to you? Isn’t that a shame?”
“Did you particularly want to see the minister?” I asked, wondering whether her needs were physical, financial or spiritual.
“Yes, I did,” she replied and began pouring into my ears a list of complaints.
I listened for a few minutes, then I asked her, “Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior?”
Angrily she spoke, “What a foolish question to ask anyone of my age! Do you know how old I am?”
“Age has nothing to do with it,” I answered. “There are many people as old as-and older than-you are who do not know the Lord Jesus as their Savior. It is one thing to say, He is the Savior, but quite another thing to be able to say, He is my Savior.”
“Don’t say another word! I know all about these things a great deal better than you do. I knew them before you were born. I am eighty years old!”
As I started to say something more to her, she stopped me, saying, “I don’t want to hear another word. Don’t say anything more.”
How strange to trust to her age alone for salvation! If she lived to be 100, would she find the secret of eternal life? Age alone will not tell her, nor will good deeds and living a “moral life” open that gate for her. Anything apart from Christ and His finished work is a false foundation. Jesus died, “the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:1818For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18)). There is no other way.