“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”Jeremiah 17:9
“He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.” Psalm 24:4
All scripture references are taken from the Authorized (King James) Versions unless other wise noted.
There was a man who once lived alone, he was what is often called a hermit a vagabond. He had never been told of God, Jesus or the gospel as given from the Bible. He knew in his heart, that there was something, something outside himself, something was needed to make himself complete.
Several years previously while scrounging and looking for anything useful he discovered a Bible. He put it away, safely where he lived and forgot about it. Some years later there was a harsh winter storm, frozen deep snow had completely shut him in. Although secure in his abode and safe from the destructive winter he would survive. He had no electricity, no television, radio or internet, he had no idea that such things even existed. He had learned as a child to read, but poorly. His parents had died from in an accident early on in his life and he was abandoned, left to fend for himself, he was alone. During the course of that winter storm that had him shut-in he came across the Bible that he had previously tucked away. Before this he hadn’t a reason to read it but now being alone and no other items of interest he for the first time started to read “The BIBLE”. There in this cold shelter by the dim light of the fire burning in the dugout he had constructed in the wall of the dwelling he began; “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” He read of the creation, the flood, Abraham and Jacob. He read of David, Isaiah, Daniel and others. He couldn’t understand why man did what man did. himself also must be included though. He began the gospels of one named Jesus who was born of a virgin, and His life. How that man had killed Him for jealous reasons and of fear. He remained lost in his questions, who was this man who had been born but not of man. How could this be, was it possible, he couldn’t get his head around this man Jesus. He came to Acts and begin to see how this Jesus was a different kind of man.
He read of a different kind of man who like himself hadn’t believed but was also persecuting those who did. He read of this mans transformation to a believer from a visitation from this same Jesus he had read about earlier in the book. He was intrigued by the story and the book was hard to put down, many a time he had went to sleep reading, what a peaceful sleep he experienced. The man was named Paul, he started to read those chapters where Paul wrote of and answered his questions that where rumbling around in his head. He had learned what sin was and how it came to be but this man Paul explained the answers to his questions more precisely, it started to make sense, this agony, this pain he had never experienced before. As he read he saw himself in what he was reading. Then he read of others, James, Peter and John; he recalled reading of them before, but they were different than this Paul fellow. Then he came to that last writing called Revelation and saw how it was speaking of future events which ended by reading “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, Amen”
He set the book down and thought to himself, “Wow, what a book”. He had remembered reading what the gospel was and that it was to be believed. He believed.
He would never again read that book that he believed, he never got baptized nor went to church, never said a sinners prayer, walked an aisle, never gave money. But he knew in his heart that by the reading of that book what he had been looking for was discovered and he “BELIEVED”! The question is was this man saved?
More over brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and where in ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scripture; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third according to the scripture.” 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 [AKJV].
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