It’s an old cemetery off the beaten track. Maybe it was a busy thruway for horse drawn buggies of the past – but today it’s a quiet country road near Dunkerton, Iowa.
The cemetery was quiet and old but not quite abandoned. Some headstones were broken, others were moss covered and most looked very old. A century and a half earlier families and friends watered the soil with tears, lingered in silence and then quietly left Lester Cemetery. Another one gone.
I couldn’t help but notice one of the taller headstones. Who was Enos Wood? A man of prominence? His life ended in 1888. It was hard to read the words engraved on the stone but it was obvious it was no ordinary cemetery cliché like ‘rest in peace.’ With a lot of effort and rubbing, the words became legible:
We want our paradise on earth –
Not saints but honest men
Whose lives shall need no second birth
Or Saviour rudely slain.
Mr. Wood apparently died ‘wanting’ rather than leaving peacefully, satisfied and contented. Wanting a paradise on earth. Wanting a world of honest human beings. If he came back today would he be impressed with how much closer the world has become to paradise? Would he think we were well on our way to achieving blissful paradise on earth? Would he be convinced that our honesty and goodness had risen to substantially higher levels than when he was here 100+ years ago?
Mr. Wood was obviously familiar with the teachings of Christ. Jesus taught that humans need to be born again if they are ever going to be in God’s kingdom. (John 3:3,7) He was also familiar with the sufferings of Christ as the Saviour of sinners but he mocked it all as either unnecessary or as a piece of Christian fiction.
Atheists, humanists and existentialists die always wanting. Wanting this world to become a better place; wanting the human race to ascend to a higher level of decency and goodness; and wanting for themselves a nice and tidy finish marked by success and fulfillment.
The reality is the human heart will not grow better nor will we evolve into a higher, safer and cleaner species. Are movies becoming more decent? Is the language on school buses getting cleaner? Are schools safer? Are cities growing less violent? Is there deeper peace and greater security around the globe? The list goes on.
Mr. Wood of bygone days and the atheists and humanists of today can wish and dream all they want. The evidence is
unmistakably clear and fully supports the Bible teaching that we have been irreparably damaged by sin since the time of Adam. Our hearts are polluted and it is only the constraints of society and the norms of respectability that keep us, individually, from acting on more of our dark impulses and desires.
Humans need to be rescued from their sins. Contrary to Mr. Wood’s statement, we DO NEED the Saviour. Christ had to die for our sins or there would have been no rescue possible. Only the second birth can produce the change of heart Mr. Wood wanted. The paradise he wanted he never got.
Christ the Saviour, the new birth, a new heart, and a new eternal home were all available to Mr. Wood but he turned it all down. But what an empty dream he was pursuing! Oh the emptiness and remorse when his glittering bubble burst and he stepped into God’s eternity.
Christ the Saviour, the forgiveness of sins, a new heart and a new home is available to you right now. Will you let it all slip through your fingers or will you personally bow before Christ and humbly accept Him as your Saviour just now?
“But as many as received HIM (Jesus),
to them He gave the right to become the children of God,
to those who believe in HIS Name:
who were born,
not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,
but of God.”
John 1:12-13