Five days of the special gospel services had passed by. The preacher had chosen his subjects from the life of our Lord, and traced Him from the cradle to the judgment hall.
“That last night,” Mr. Moody afterward wrote, “I made the greatest mistake of my life. If I could recall the act, I would give my right hand.”
The meetings had been held in the old Farwell Hall in Chicago. A mournful October wind surged round the old hall while the preacher spoke, and on that last night the wind ran high.
In the middle of the sermon the fire-bell at the Court House began to clang, but it sounded so often that neither preacher nor congregation noticed it.
“What shall I do with Jesus?” asked the preacher. “That is the important question for you to ask yourself.” He paused, and the bell filled up the interval until he spoke again.
“Now, I want you to take the question with you, and think over it, and next Sunday I want you to come back and tell me what you are going to do with it.”
What a mistake!
“It seems now,” he afterward told a friend, “as if Satan prompted the words. Since then I have never dared to give an audience a week to think of their salvation.”
As the speaker and his friends went downstairs to another meeting held in the same building, he heard in the diance a voice singing:
“Today the Saviour calls;
For refuge fly.
The storm of justice falls,
And death is nigh.”
On their way home the red glare of the great fire of Chicago shone in the sky and turned night into day.
“This means ruin to Chicago,” said Mr. Moody.
About one o’clock Farwell Hall caught fire, and immediately afterward the building where Mr. Moody had preached went down before the devouring flames. The special gospel meetings ceased. Everyone was scattered. He never saw that audience again.
“My friends,” wrote the evangelist, “we don’t know what may happen tomorrow. NOW is the accepted time!”
There can be no better time for such a decision, for deciding for Christ, than NOW — at this very moment.
The Holy Ghost saith, “To-day.” Dare you say “Tomorrow”?
ML 08/23/1959