recorded upon the great Book of Life, for the seals had been opened and the names and the record of their lives were all recorded upon that great book. Then the angel led me back to the earth that I might console these people. Rev. 20:11, 12, 13.

THE FIRST person I met was a man, who was going through such agony of mind that my heart was filled with compassion for him. I tried to console him, assuring him that he would be all right. He answered, mourning and crying, “But you don’t understand! Look at them! Oh, look at them!”

I said, “Who are they?” He answered, “They are haunting me, and I cannot get away from them.” Again I asked, “Who are they?” And he replied, wringing his hands and moaning, “I am a surgeon, and all these people were my patients, and I operated upon them and caused them to lose their bodies. Now they are condemning me, for I did it for money. Oh, I did it for money! They would have gotten well, but I destroyed their bodies for the sake of money. I did not know that the human body was the temple of the living God; so, for the love of money, I caused hundreds of human beings to lose their eternal bodies, and now their eyes follow me everywhere I turn. They are crowded around me and they will not leave me alone. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?” So great was his despair that no words of comfort could penetrate his mind. I had to leave him to his sorrow and turn to someone else.

Lying prostrate on the ground was a man weeping and praying for mercy. He, too, was reading the terrible pages of his Book of Life. I bent over him to try to comfort him. Then he said to me, “I was a real estate dealer, and I foreclosed on the properties of others to gain more for myself. I put the defenseless poor out of their homes to face suffering and despair, when I should have been merciful unto them and helped them to save their possessions. They had little ones depending upon them and I was a very rich man, according to the world’s wealth; now I am left desolate, for all my property is destroyed and I have nothing left in the world but the memory of a selfish and misspent life. Oh, what did it profit me to gain that wealth? In the twinkling of an eye it has all been destroyed, and I cannot forget the ones I have wronged.”

⥳ previous page | next page ⥴