Down—and down—and down—Sam had gone nearly to the bottom. Devotion to alcohol had cost him his job, his wife and his children. Little was left but life itself—a derelict life, to be lived on the streets—and then—?
One night as he staggered on his way, he had to cross the railroad tracks. In the dark he stumbled and fell. There he lay and slept for hours, unconscious of danger.
Suddenly a hand was on his shoulder and he was jerked aside. Thinking it was a policeman, he told him to be gentle and he would go quietly along with him to the station, but a voice called to him out of the darkness, “Lie perfectly still!”
To his horror, the next instant a freight train roared past where he had lain. He was now thoroughly sober and awake, and well he might be! Had he lain there another minute his soul must have been rushed into a lost eternity.
Shocked and shaken, he was deeply conscious of the inevitable death that must have been his, had not a hand rescued him. A friend’s hand? A passing stranger? To Sam it was the hand of God that had reached out to snatch him from a horrible death.
The thought of what might have been haunted him and he could not rest. God had spoken to him, and he could not close his ears to that voice. The terror of hell was his, and he realized that one more minute would have landed him there forever.
Saved from death, he now was concerned to save his soul from hell. He turned to the only Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, for eternal salvation. Death, in whatever form it comes, is no longer a terror to him, for he has received God’s promise: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:3131And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (Acts 16:31)).
“When we were
yet without strength,
in due time Christ died for
the ungodly.”