"COME! LIVE! DIE!"
Years before I received Jesus when I was a cadet, there was a time when my dad was commanding an artillery regiment. Whenever I was on leave I used to take my .22 rifle and go shooting in the outskirts of the regimental lines.
One day, as I was walking through the snake-infested overgrown jungle of trees, vines and bushes in the area, I stumbled upon a crumbling old wall. I climbed over the wall and found myself in an ancient abandoned cemetery. I began to read the inscriptions on the gravestones. They were very old, some from the early 1800's. Some graves stood alone, others were in pairs, some were of entire families buried side by side, husbands and wifes with children in graves of varying sizes.
As I read the inscriptions I understood that these were graves of Englishmen and Scotsmen who had come to India as missionaries and had died in the mission field. After reading the inscriptions I walked away from there. As the years went I forgot all about the place.
Decades later one day the Holy Spirit reminded me of that old, crumbling and abandoned cemetery in the Punjab. I did not know anything then, but today I know something about the history of missions to that region. Missionaries from England and Scotland, full of zeal for Jesus and for His Gospel, left everything and took their families with them to the field. With all the diseases around those days, the rate of attrition was very high. These missionaries knew that the chances of their coming back home was almost nil, so they packed their belongings in wooden coffins instead of cases or trunks. They preached the Gospel, facing terrible odds, and many died on the field preaching to the lost rather than quit. Their families died with them. I remember the graves of 1 and 2 year old children buried beside their parents. Today their bones lie forgotten in abandoned old cemeteries all over the foreign field, thousands of miles away from home. England and Scotland have forgotten them, but they are known in Heaven where their names shine brightly as the stars in the sky.
As they lie there in their graves, they are waiting to hear the sound of the Trumpet when Christ returns. They were buried in weakness but they shall rise in glory!
As a new believer, the stories of such men and women moved me, inspired me. We who have given our lives to the preaching of the Gospel to the lost today, carry the heritage left behind by those heroes of old. We are reaping with joy the harvest from the precious seed that they sowed with tears. Our lives are far easier and more comfortable than theirs, but we still have to pay a price, and that is laying down our own ambitions and lives to take up the Cross and follow Jesus. We are walking on paths of Glory, treading on the bloodstained footsteps of our Master, and of His saints who gave everything for the sake of the Gospel.
Tonight my thoughts go back to those whose bodies lie in that forgotten cemetery outside the regimental lines of that field artillery regiment. I can hear our Lord Jesus saying, "Follow me, and I will make you Fishers of men" (Matt 4:19).
I can hear Him say "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it" (Luke 9:23-24).
In the words of my old mentor George Verwer, who God used to light the Fire of Missions in my heart, "COME! LIVE! DIE!"
Originally posted on Facebook by Pastor Christopher Alam