THE NATIVES of Central Africa used to call their homeland “The Long Grass.” They gave it that name because the grass there for nine months of the year is thirteen feet high, and the sky you see is a strip of blue above.
In “The Long Grass” there lived a notable chief called “Smoking Firebrand.” He was a cannibal and had slain sixty-seven Belgians. The question was, “Who is going to tackle him?”
Dan Crawford, the missionary, spent many years in “The Long Grass,” and told how he tackled this formidable chief. First he sent a message to him: “Man of God coming.” When Crawford arrived, the chief let him into his hut. “Now tell me,” said the missionary, “why you have killed all these innocent people?”
The chief had wonderful reasons for his murders.
Then Mr. Crawford began to read his Bible to him — passages which spoke of God’s judgments against sins he had committed.
“I do not know that Book,” cried the chief. “That is a foreign Book,” and he drove the missionary out of his hut.
But Dan Crawford had found a shaft in the Book which was to pierce even this hard heart.
“Why,” said he, “you are down in this Book. This may be a foreign Book, but you are here.” He then read to him a verse in Isaiah 7: “fear not, neither be faint-hearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands...” v. 4.
The old chief stood with his brow puckered and a puzzled expression on his face.
“Anything more about me, the Smoking Firebrand?” he asked.
“Yes, here’s something more,” the missionary read again: “Ye were as brands” — that is, smoking fire. brands — “plucked from the burning.”
That shaft went home too. “Anything more?” he asked, now thoroughly interested and roused.
“Yes, here is one more: ‘Others save, plucking them out of the fire’ — plucking them out, that is, as you pull out a smoking firebrand.”
I wish we could tell you the old chief got converted. However, we know that from then on he had an immense respect for the foreign Book, which contained his name, and which could tell him so much about himself. And your name and mine is there too, sinner friend, for we are all sinners.
“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation; that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” I Tim. 1:15.
ML-09/25/1966