Message to my friend Fred

This is a little tape to my friend Mr. Fred Lowe I haven't seen for quite a while and I thought I'd just tape you a little by way of remembrance. I hear from Millie that your sight isn't too good which of course is to be expected when a man gets as old as you are and there's nothing like having sight for eternity, spiritual eyesight. At present a young man and I, a young man by the name of Robert Orr, we have been having some gospel meetings at Black Earth and among others who have been coming to the meetings is a man that's blind.

He's about 68 or 69 and stays in a rest home and he's quite interested. He is never been saved. He began to lose his eyesight at eight as a result of getting a piece of steel in his eye and it wasn't properly treated and infection set in and had to take the eye out and it eventually affected the other eye so he has been blind for years and we've been praying for him thinking what a wonderful thing that if he would be able to read his title clear to a home in heaven and know that when life is over he'd go to be with the Lord Jesus and then he'd be like him and then of course he would see forever because there'd be no blindness in heaven, there'd be no imperfections there, no disappointments, no tears, no parties, so how beautiful and wonderful heaven must be.

I was telling him of a time when I was up in about 20 years ago up around Ontario, Wisconsin and visiting out the country and I met another blind man that stayed in the farm with his brother. He was perhaps along about 40-45 then and invited him to the meetings and he had been attending some healing meetings in Tomah and he told us he was figuring on getting his eyesight and I asked him when. Well he thought next Saturday night he'd go and he'd be healed.

Well I said that'd be wonderful if you would get your eyesight. I certainly don't blame you for wanting to get it restored or I don't think he ever had eyesight but I said supposing you don't. Well he thought then Sunday night.

I said have they been preaching anything from the Bible how you can know you're saved and that you can know that you have everlasting life and when life is over that you go right to heaven. No he didn't seem to know anything about that. Well now I said supposing that you would get your eyesight and in six months you die or get killed but then well he didn't know.

Now I said if you'd come to the gospel meeting and hear the gospel and see your need as a sinner of the Lord Jesus and trust him and believe on him and get your spiritual eyesight so you could understand from the Bible you're going to heaven. Well I said then if you didn't get your your other eyesight why it wouldn't be so bad it'd only be a few short years and then you'd see forever but he didn't seem to be it was all taken up with getting his natural eyesight which most people are. They're more occupied with their health.

They'd go miles to a doctor where they wouldn't go across the street to a gospel meeting which of course is very sad and while we're on this subject my wife has a cousin that lives in Parkersburg Iowa. He's now 76. He lost he's been blind for I would say at least 35 years with both eyes.

The first eye he lost possibly 40 years ago or more when he was cutting kindling wood and a stick flew up or or a chip and put out his one eye. It was a day of labor and some years later he'd been thrashing but there was a rain and they couldn't thrash for a couple days so a neighbor asked him to come over that morning and help him wreck cars and he said he'd help him and he had purchased a pair of good strong glasses for protection a few days before but he forgot them and before noon a piece of steel flew up and took out the other eye and he's had two artificial eyes now for all those years. Between the time of the first eye loss and the second eye he was brought to Christ and saved and he's a happy Christian.

He always says the first person that he will ever see is the Lord Jesus Christ the man that died for him upon a cross to redeem him and to save his guilty soul from hell. I hope this finds you feeling normal for your age and and above all that you too Fred are assured that when life is over there won't be long for any of us. You're older than I am and you can attest to the fact more than I can that it doesn't take long to get old life will soon be over and the Bible says what is our life it's even as a vapor.

We're here today and we're gone tomorrow. It's a beautiful day here and I thought well maybe maybe I'll just sing you a verse of a song. I thought of a song I can only memorize the first verse it goes like this.

Our friends on earth we meet with pleasure as swift the moments fly but often comes the thought of sadness that we must say goodbye we'll never say goodbye in heaven we'll never say goodbye for in that land of joy and song we'll never say goodbye. I often thought after I was convicted of my sin and heard the gospel explained songs that we sang in Sunday school when I was a boy would come back to me. For instance a song I'm sure you're familiar with it.

Blessed assurance Jesus is mine oh what a foretaste of glory divine heir of salvation purchased of God born of his spirit washed in his blood this is my story this is my song praising my savior all the day long this is my story this is my song praising my savior all the day long. Yeah many a person has been blessed through a song. The story perhaps you have heard it is told of Charlotte Elliott who wrote that song that has been a blessing to so many just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me O Lamb of God I come to thee I come I come.

She was troubled about her soul and her name was Charlotte Elliott and after a meeting one night the preacher had spoken on come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. And she said to the preacher how can I come he said to her just come as you are and she went out into the night and the way home and come to her but I can come with all my sins just as I am to the Lord Jesus and she came in simple faith and she found the assurance of salvation and went home full of joy and she sat down and she composed that a wonderful hymn just as I am and waiting not to rid my soul of one dark blot to thee whose blood can cleanse each spot O Lamb of God I come. Another interesting thing about this blind man is that in that home there's another man he's just in his 60s rather a simple fella but he has arthritis bad and the two of them have bicycles that are bolted together and they're often seen going uptown the man that has arthritis he doesn't have much strength to pedal but he has the eyes to guide the blind man he does the pedaling and furnishes the power and so they ride side by side and when they come to the highway which separates the rest home and town they wait till the traffic has gone by and then they pedal over so it's quite a thing these two men each one a blessing to the other and so we this one this blind man he's rather embittered wondering why God allows this to happen to him he was married has seven children but about three four years ago his wife divorced him and of course this is rather embittered him but we've been telling him that oftentimes God allows things like that to happen to make people think about the nothingness of life and to cause them to think about their latter end and and that God can speak to them and bring them down and that's what we're hoping with him I told him I said his name is Archie I said Archie if you would just humble yourself and own your guilt and come down as a lost sinner and trust the Savior God would save you and then you'd look back and you'd see and how God's hand guided God preserves you the Bible says that God is good unto all he doeth good he is good and he doeth good so it's the worst thing that can happen to a person if he develops a bitter spirit and and blames God for everything whereas when we think of the wickedness that's in the human heart and we think of the corruption that prevails that God who sees and knows all can look down and love a sinner just the same it surely is more than tongue can tell so happy is the person that sees things as God sees them I know in my own experience I were entirely ignorant of God's ways but I thank God that when I heard the gospel preached by those that knew Christ things began to unfold to me and I began to get God's thoughts and the more I got God's thoughts the more I saw my nothingness and the more I saw the wonders of his love and so I can't thank God enough that he's been merciful to me many a time but like others I could have been cut off in my sins yet he spared me so God would have us to reflect upon these things I always or I think quite often of that scripture where it says finally brethren whatsoever things are true whatsoever things are pure whatsoever things are lovely and whatsoever things are good report think on these things the devil is successful through tv and gossip and our wicked hearts were to think continually on the rot and the corruption and the ungodliness and the lust that fills this world and it's getting worse day by day surely we are in the days of which second timothy three speaks of in the last days perilous times will come then will be lovers of their own selves lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God and having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof and without natural affection and truce breakers and children disobedient to parents this we we see that on every hand today the world is full of deceit and covetousness and the last days that the bible speaks of are upon us the lord might come at any moment and take his people home and then of course would be ushered in the tribulation days and the beasts the false prophet and vile after a vial of god's wrath being visited upon this world and in famines and catastrophes and yet we read in the book of the revelation that the men will will gnaw their their teeth for pain and yet they will refuse to repent god will strongly send them strong delusions that they'll believe the devil's lie the lord jesus told the pharisees and scribes he says me you will not receive but there's one coming that you will receive they look forward centuries ahead to when the antichrist the man of sin will appear and we can see in politics and all this talk of inflation and they don't know what to do men's hearts are failing them for fear and yet it seems they are unwilling to sacrifice themselves they're full of greed and they want to use their position to make more money and have little sympathy for the downtrodden but god is overall and he'll he will uh fully fulfill his purposes there's nothing that happens without his permission and that which is prophesied in his word is surely going to be fulfilled we plan to close the meetings here on sunday night and go home monday we're about oh probably 210 miles from home we've been here four weeks and and although there has been some interest that we think it's time to close the meetings as far as i'm concerned i'll be glad to get home always work around home i saw my wife last weekend there was a conference at blue river but of course she went back and we came back here i haven't been really home to stay home for four weeks now and well i saw millie and she says well dad isn't very good and i'm sure uh he can't see he'd like to hear from you so i said well i'll try and take a little time and and put something on the tape she tape is a half hour you know that's quite a while it isn't so long when you listen but when you've got to uh produce the uh the material to fill a tape it sometimes uh isn't so easy there was a man in illinois we called him wooden shoes he's dead now his name really was richmond and uh he hitchhiked years gone by a good deal he'd come out to see his relatives in iowa and so on and wasn't able to work one time years ago he was coming out heading for parkersburg iowa which is just five miles east of us and it was a sunday morning and was an intersection in cedar falls and uh mr smith who preached the gospel out there he was quite in the habit of picking up hitchhikers and then he talked to him and preached to him so he noticed this man standing in the corner he was going out to a meeting uh out our way for that sunny morning and so he wheeled over and he picked up this crippled man and so he started to talk to him and uh this man he told him that he was a servant of the lord oh he says sheltered under the blood so he saw he had some knowledge but he wasn't saved so we asked him to go along to the meeting he said sure he didn't have anything else to do and so we went along and he went so he listened to the preaching and he witnessed the christians uh remembering the lord and bringing the bread and drinking the cup and he was quite uh convicted and after the meeting some of the the brethren there they were talking to him outside and the man professed to be saved well he is he'd have to go back he stayed there he had a sister that took care of him he went back to illinois eventually and later on the christians were right to he'd come out and visit later on he was baptized and and he was received at the fellowship of the meeting there at stout so we kept track of him until a few years ago that uh he died but he was quite a uh a quite quaint fella and uh the way that he got uh crippled was when he was a boy of about 10 for a joke uh one of the members of the household uh pulled the chair away just as he was going to sit down and it injured his tailbone and eventually he got tb and he had several operations and uh then he got arthritis and finally he got uh so he couldn't lace his shoes so he wore wooden shoes he could slip into them and that's how he got the name uh wooden shoes but he was another trophy of god's grace and he used to say some things i remember used to say he says god answers all my prayers but most of the time he says no and another thing i remember him saying uh the expression you know that as you get older time goes faster well we know time doesn't go any faster but it seems like it so he used an illustration he said it's just like when we come into this world we're just like the spokes of a wheel and when we're small and young we're near the hub and uh but as we get older we get out near the end towards the rim and he said the wheel doesn't make any more revolutions to the outside than it does to the inside but it goes around faster i thought that was the best illustration that i ever heard of the oft quoted statement that when you get older time goes faster but we know that time doesn't go any faster but it just seems to another man among us used to say time has no mercy regardless of what we may do or try to uh hinder the progress that's something we can't do the clock ticks on the seconds go into minutes and the minutes into hours and the hours into days and the days into months and the months and years and and soon the years end and then eternity there's no end to eternity it's quite a uh thought-provoking subject and very solemn to think that when a child is born to this world it starts on a journey and that journey will never end it ends in time but it's endless in eternity and every soul has a destiny there's two paths all men are traveling and there's two destinies to which all are going those destinies are heaven and hell and there's no such thing as annihilation the bible speaks of everlasting life and it speaks of everlasting torment everlasting burnings certainly a person is a fool if he doesn't make sure that it's well for eternity what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul what shall a man give in exchange for his soul god puts more value on the soul of a sinner than he does all the world and it costs god more to save a sinner than to create the world because when he created the world he he just make it into existence but when he made provision for for sinners to be saved for our souls to be saved he had to give his own begotten son he didn't spare him and how he could love us so as and knowing full well what the lord jesus must suffer what love it was that he could give his son and as it were just uh withdraw or stand by and watch men torment him and wound him falsely accuse him hurl at him every bitter accusation that their evil minds could conceive and then inflict upon him the the most cruel death of that day crucifixion suspended in the hot and jerusalem sun shall we say no wonder he cried i thirst his bones were out of joint his hands and feet were pierced his brow wore the crown of thorns his back had been torn with a roman lash until it was a firm field he had bruised him they had smitten him he had spat in his face they plucked the hairs from his cheeks they gave him vinegar to drink and he was left to die alone then those last three dark hours god punished him the old testament really explains it more graphically it speaks of god the waves and billows of god's wrath it's the i sink in the deep mire where there's no standing we looked for comforters we found none he cried my god my god why has thou forsaken me we i think of another song i'll sing you a verse or two alone upon the cross he hung that others he might say forsaken thus by god and man i know his life he gave he bore it all alone he gave himself to save his own he suffered bled and died alone alone can you reject such matchless love can you his claims disown alone come give your all in gratitude nor leave him thus alone oh to save his own suffered, bled and died alone, alone.

There was one who was willing to die in my stead, that a soul so unworthy might live. And the path to the cross he was willing to tread. All the sins of my life to forgive.

They are nailed to the cross, they are nailed to the cross. Oh, how much he was willing to bear. With what anguish and loss, Jesus went to the cross.

And he carried my sins with him there. He is loving and tender and patient with me. While he cleanses my heart of its draughts.

But there's no condemnation. I know I am free. For my sins have been nailed to the cross.

They are nailed to the cross, they are nailed to the cross. Oh, how much he was willing to bear. With what anguish and loss, Jesus went to the cross.

And he carried my sins with him there. Just as I am without one plea. But that thy blood was shed for me.

And that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come. I come.