Message from the Dying
Sam Jones
The curtains were drawn. Inside the sick chamber a mother lay dying. A thin, sallow-faced boy stepped to her side.
"I need you, Mother," he begged, while struggling to hold back the tears. "Don't leave yet."
Her voice was gentle. "Sam, I will never be able to return to you." She gasped for breath, then almost like a prayer added, "But you can come to me."
Sam Jones never forgot the words of his dying mother.
Just before he was scheduled to enter college, he became ill. Even though his father was a Methodist minister, he began drinking, thinking that alcohol would help his "nervous stomach."
Then he rallied, and in between spells of drinking be began studying law. He was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1868, and called, by a judge, "the brightest boy ever admitted to our state's bar."
He married a lovely girl, but his drinking increased. When he was sober enough to try a case, he was acclaimed, "Sam Jones, the brilliant lawyer." Too many other times he was "Sam Jones, the drunkard."
News came to Sam while he was on a six-week drinking
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binge that his father was seriously ill. He hurried to his bedside.
"How are you, Dad?" the prodigal said, trying to hide his breath.
"I'm weak in the body, boy," the man of God replied. "But spiritually I'm strong. When every other prop fails me, Jesus stands firm."
Sam squirmed uneasily. He had been one of the props that had failed.
His father grew weaker. The relatives were called in to say good-bye. Sam stood at the foot of the bed listening to the farewell messages. When his father asked for him, he moved to the head of the bed.
"My poor, wayward boy," the dying man gasped. "You have broken the heart of your wife and have brought me in sorrow to my grave."
Sam looked away as salty tears flooded his bloodshot eyes.
"Promise me you'll meet me in heaven."
Overcome with emotion, Sam took his dying father's hand. "I promise!" he shouted. "I'll quit drinking and set things straight. I'll meet you and Mother in heaven."
His father died. Sam never took another drink. The following Sunday he went to hear his grandfather preach. At the close of the sermon, he went forward requesting the prayers of the church.
He continued to listen to his grandfather's sermons. A few weeks later he plodded up the aisle again, saying, "I want to give all that is left of me to Christ."
One week later, Sam Jones delivered his first sermon from his grandfather's pulpit. That began a long career in evangelism.
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Sam Jones was popular with saint and sinner alike. He was best known for his colorful language. Like, "Many a fellow is praying for rain with his tub bottom side up"; and, "It tickles me to see an old sinner come in and pull out an old, dwarfed member of the church, lay him down and measure by him, and say, 'Look here, boys. I'm as long, as broad, and as good as this man.' "
From Boston to San Francisco, great crowds flocked to hear him preach. Thousands were converted through his ministry. D.L. Moody once took time off just to hear Sam Jones preach. President Theodore Roosevelt asked for his counsel.
Sam Jones, the drunken lawyer, became Sam Jones, the evangelist, who, as one admirer said, "put the fodder down low where the poor folks can reach it."
