Quezon Memorial Medical Center

“What is this for?” asked the aged gentleman.

He had watched him for some time, standing almost motionless beneath the merciless sun of one o’clock in the afternoon, waiting for the passers-by to come near enough to receive a tract. There he stood, enduring the heat, his hand extended toward those who might take one.

“Sir, it is for your hour of death.”

“Oh, but I shall be gone in a little while.”

“But where will you go when you depart?”

“Why, I shall wake up in hell, where every religious person will be.”

He handed him a tract. “Here, sir. You may find out for yourself what you are belittling.”

“These people—pastors, priests—they will all be in hell. Those born-again rich leaders will be there. All of them. They are deceiving people.”

“Sir, if these people are deceiving others, what makes you so certain that you are right, and that you yourself are not among the deceived?”

“I do not look to these people for salvation.”

“Quite right, sir. This is precisely why we need a Saviour. Look not unto men, but unto Christ alone, and unto His finished work upon the cross.”

At this, the old gentleman mumbled something in reply, then turned his back upon our brother and returned to the place where he had stood before coming over.

And so the conversation ended.

He remained beneath the heat, continuing in the work appointed unto him, while the gentleman went back to his former place. Whether the words spoken unto him shall remain in his thoughts, or whether he shall give them no further consideration, who may know? But the matter itself remains solemn. A man may speak much of the errors of others, and yet be no nearer to the truth concerning his own soul. The sins of religious men cannot save us, neither can their failures excuse us before God. Our hope is not in pastors, priests, or any man who bears the name of Christian. Our hope is in Christ alone, and in the work He finished upon the cross.

May the Lord be pleased to use even that brief encounter to bring that aged soul to consider where he stands, and where he shall spend eternity.