The Man That Died
For Me
I am
Missionary Richard Yerby, speaking to you from scenic mountainous central
Japan, where I daily preach Christ Jesus in public to multitudes of Buddhists
idol worshippers.
I
highly recommend the book titled STORIES WORTH RE-READING, subtitled 72
Heart Touching Stories, published by A.B. Publishing, Inc.
Please
listen to us now as we read the story that touched my heart most
compassionately for lost sinners. The title of that true story is: “The Man
That Died For Me”, told by a devout Christian woman, Mrs. J. K. Barney. No
date or time frame is given in the story, but it likely occurred in the latter
half of the 1800s.
For many years I wanted to go as a foreign
missionary, but my way seemed hedged about. At last I went to live in
California. Life was rough in the mining country where I lived, with my husband
and little boys.
While there I heard of a man who lived over
the hills and was dying of consumption. The men said: “He is so vile that no
one can stay with him; so we place some food near him, and leave him for
24-hours. We will find him dead sometime, and the sooner the better. Never had
a relative, I guess.”
This pitiful story haunted me as I went
about my work. For three days I tried to get some one to go see him and find
out if he was in need of better care. As I turned from the last man, vexed with
his indifference, the thought came to me: “Why not go yourself? Here is
missionary work, if you want it.”
I will not tell how I weighed the probable
uselessness of my going, nor how I shrank from one so vile as he. It was not
the kind of work I wanted.
But at last one day I went over the hills
to the little abode. It was a mud cabin, containing but one room. The door
stood open. In one corner, on some straw and colored blankets, I found the
dying man. Sin had left awful marks on his face, and if I had not heard that he
could not move, I should have retreated. As my shadow fell over the floor, he
looked up and greeted me with an oath. I stepped forward a little, and again he
swore.
“Don’t speak so, my friend,” I said.
“I ain’t your
friend. I ain’t got any friends,” he said.
“Well, I am your friend, and---”
But the oaths came quickly, and he said:
“You ain’t my friend. I never had any friends, and I
don’t want any now.”
I reached out, at arm’s length, the fruit I
had brought for him, and stepping back to the doorway, asked if he remembered
his mother, hoping to find a tender place in his heart; but he cursed her. I
spoke of God, and he cursed him. I tried to speak of Jesus and his death for
us, but he stopped me with his oaths, and said: “That’s all a lie. Nobody ever
died for others.”
I went away discouraged, saying to myself
that I knew it was of no use. But the next day I went again, and every day for
two weeks. He did not show the gratitude of a dog, and at the end of that time
I said that I was not going any more. That night as I was putting my little boy
to bed, I did not pray for the miner. My little boy noticed it and said:---
“Mama, you did not pray for the bad man.”
”No,” I answered, with a sigh.”
“Have you given him up, mama?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Has God given him up, mama? Ought you to
give him up till God does?”
I could not sleep that night. I thought of
the dying man, so vile, and with no one to care! I rose and went away by myself
to pray; but the moment that I knelt, I was overpowered by the sense of how
little meaning there had been to my prayers. I had had no faith, and I had not
really cared, beyond a kind of half-hearted sentiment. I had not claimed his
soul for God. O, the shame of such missionary zeal! I fell on my face
literally, as I cried, “O Christ, give me a little glimpse of the worth of a
human soul!” Did you, Christian, ever ask that and mean it? Do not do it unless
you are willing to give up ease and selfish pleasure; for life will be a
different thing to you after this revelation.
I remained on my knees until Calvary became
a reality to me. I cannot describe those hours. They came and went unheeded;
but I learned that night what I had never known before, what it was to travail
for a human soul. I saw my Lord as I had never seen him before. I knelt there
till the answer came.
As I went back to my room, my husband
said:---
“How about your miner?”
“He is going to be saved.”
“How are you going to do it? he asked.
“The Lord is going to save him; and I do
not know that I shall do anything about it,” I replied.
The next morning brought a lesson in
Christian work which I had never learned before. I had waited on other days
until afternoon, when my work being over, I could change my dress, put on my
gloves, and take a walk while the shadows were on the hillsides. That day, the
moment my little boys went to school, I left my work, and, without waiting for
gloves or shadows, hurried over the hills, not to see “that vile wretch,” but
to win a soul. I thought the man might die.
As I passed on, a neighbor came out of her
cabin, and said, “I will go over the hills with you.”
I did not want her to go, but it was
another lesson for me. God could plan better than I could. She had her little
girl with her, and as we reached the cabin, she said, “I will wait out here.”
I do not know what I expected, but the man
greeted me with an awful oath. Still it did not hurt; for I was behind Christ,
and I stayed there; and I could bear what struck him first.
While I was changing the basin of water and
towel for him, things which I had done every day, but which he had never
thanked me for, the clear laugh of the little girl rang out upon the air.
“What’s that?” said the man eagerly.
“It’s a little girl outside waiting for
me.”
“Would you mind letting her come in?” said
he, in a different tone from any I had heard before.
Stepping to the door, I beckoned to her;
then, taking her hand, said, “Come in and see the sick man, Mamie.” She shrank
back as she saw his face, but I assured her with, “Poor sick man! He can’t get
up; he wants to see you.”
She looked like an angel, her bright face
framed in golden curls and her eyes tender and pitiful. In her hands she held
the flowers that she had picked from the purple sage, and, bending toward him,
she said: “I’m sorry for ‘ou, sick man. Will ‘ou have a posy?”
He laid his great, bony hand beyond the
flowers, on the plump hand of the child, and tears came to his eyes, as he
said: “I had a little girl once. Her name
was Mamie. She cared for me. Nobody
else did. Guess I’d been different if she’d lived. I’ve hated everybody since
she died.”
I knew at once that I had the key to the
man’s heart. The thought came quickly, born of that midnight prayer service,
and I said, “When I spoke of your mother and your wife, you cursed them; I know
now that they were not good women, or you could not have done it.”
“Good women! O, you don’t know nothin’ ’bout that kind of
woman! You can’t think what they was!”
“Well, if your little girl had lived and
grown up with them, wouldn’t she have been like them? Would you have liked to
have her live for that?”
He evidently had never thought of that, and
his great eyes looked off for a full minute. As they came back to mine, he
cried: “O God, no! I’d kill her first. I’m glad she died.”
Reaching out and taking the poor hand, I
said, “The dear Lord didn’t want her to be like them. He loved her even better
than you did, so he took her away. He is keeping her for you. Don’t you want to
see her again?”
“O, I’d be willing to be burned alive a
thousand times over if I could just see my little girl once more, my little
Mamie!”
O friends, you know what a blessed story I
had to tell that hour, and I had been so close to Calvary that night that I
could tell it in earnest! The poor face grew ashy pale as I talked, and the man
threw up his arms as if his agony was mastering him. Two or three times he
gasped, as if losing his breath. Then, clutching me, he said, “What’s that you
said t’other day ’bout talkin’
to some one out o’ sight?”
“It is praying. I tell him what I want.”
“Pray now, quick. Tell him I want my little
girl again. Tell him anything you want to.”
I took the hands of the child, and placed
them on the trembling hands of the man. Then, dropping on my knees, with the
child in front of me, I bade her pray for the man who had lost his little
Mamie, and wanted to see her again. As nearly as I remember, this was Mamie’s
prayer:---
“Dear Jesus, this man is sick. He has lost
his little girl, and he feels bad about it. I’m so sorry for him, and he’s
sorry, too. Won’t you help him, and show him how to find his little girl? Do,
please. Amen.”
Heaven seemed to open before us, and there
stood One with the prints of the nails in his hands and the wound in his side.
Mamie slipped away soon, and the man kept
saying: “Tell him more about it. Tell him everything. But, O, you don’t know!”
Then he poured out such a torrent of confession that I could not have borne it
but for One who was close to us that hour.
By and by the poor man grasped the strong
hand. It was the third day when the poor, tired soul turned from everything to
him, the Mighty to save, “the Man that died for me.” He lived on for weeks, as
if God would show how real was the change. I had been telling him one day about
a meeting, when he said, “I’d like to go to a meetin’
once.”
So, we planned a meeting, and the men from
the mills and the mines came and filled the room.
“Now, boys,” said he, “get down on your
knees, while she tells about that Man that died for me.”
I had been brought up to believe that a
woman should not speak in meeting, but I found myself talking, and I tried to
tell the simple story of the cross. After a while he said:---
“Boys, you don’t half believe it, or you’d cry;
you couldn’t help it. Raise me up. I’d like to tell it once.”
So they raised him up, and, between his
short breathing and coughing, he told the story. He had to use the language he
knew.
“Boys,” he said, “you know how the water
runs down the sluice-boxes and carries off the dirt and leaves the gold behind.
Well, the blood of that Man she tells about went right over me just like that.
It carried off about everything; but it left enough for me to see Mamie, and to
see the Man that died for me. O boys, can’t you love him?”
Some days after, there came a look into his
face which told that the end had come. I had to leave him, and I said, “What
shall I say tonight, Jack?”
“Just good night,” he said.
“What will you say to me when we meet
again?”
“I’ll say, ‘Good morning,’ over there.”
The next morning the door was closed, and I
found two men sitting silently by a board stretched across two stools. They
turned back the sheet from the dead, and I looked on the face, which seemed to
have come back nearer to the image of God.
“I wish you could have seen him when he
went,” they said.
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, all at once he brightened up, ’bout
midnight, an’ smilin’, said: ‘I’m goin’,
boys. Tell her I’m going to see the Man that died for me;’ an’ he was gone.”
Kneeling there with my hands over those
poor, cold ones, which had been stained with human blood, I asked that I might
understand more and more the worth of a human soul, and be drawn into a deeper
sympathy with Christ’s yearning compassion, “not willing that any should
perish.”
1. Would you be free from the burden of sin?
There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;
Would you o’er evil a victory win?
There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.
2. Would you be free from your passion and pride?
There’ pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;
Come for a cleansing to Calvary’s tide?
There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.
Chorus. There is pow’r, pow’r,
wonder-working pow’r
In the blood of the Lamb.
There is pow’r, pow’r,
wonder-working pow’r
In the precious blood of the Lamb.
3. Would you be whiter, much whiter than snow?
There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;
Sin stains are lost in its life-giving flow;
There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.
4. Would you do service for Jesus your King?
There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;
Would you live daily His praises to sing?
There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.
Chorus. There is pow’r, pow’r,
wonder-working pow’r
In the blood of the Lamb.
There is pow’r, pow’r,
wonder-working pow’r
In the precious blood of the Lamb.
“Abba Father, please show great mercy upon me, the chief of
sinners, to work within me a heart truly repentant toward Thee, for my
sins. Please grant me true, pure faith in Thy Son, The Lord Jesus Christ, God’s
Saviour for all mankind. Make me fully desirous for
Jesus Christ to save me to the utmost. In the manner that Jack testified, I
plead for the shed blood of Jesus Christ to flow over me, washing away every
sin stain and taking away all dross, cleansing me perfectly from
sin, and leaving only gold. Then stir up my heart to testify of God’s Saving
Power to everyone. AMEN!
Back
in the springtime of 2008, a Japanese mother whom I had never met before, asked
me to teach English conversation in their rural home, about eight miles from my
house in central Japan, to her two children: an 8th Grade son and a
2nd Grade daughter. So I started teaching them in early April a one-hour
class twice a month at 6 p.m. Both of these Japanese kids were smart and
well-behaved, studying diligently, so it was a joy to teach them.
Only
one month after we started classes, as we were chatting together at the end of
our third session, out of the blue the 8th Grade elder brother
calmly said to me, “I want to die, but I don’t know what happens after death.”
When he was about nine years old, his parents divorced, his dad ceasing to live
with his wife and two children. Those three moved in with the wife’s parents in
their large, quaint, old-fashioned Japanese-style house.
The
two kids and I had our English lessons to ourselves in a nice straw-mat floor
parlor. So six-and-a-half-year-old younger sister and I are the only two people
who hear this remorseful declaration by elder brother as we sit on the straw
mat floor. No chairs in this room. Five or more Buddhist idols sit in this
nicest room in this large house, worshipped by this family from generations
past. These two kids have never attended any church and have heard nothing, or
next to nothing, about their Creator God and eternal hope and bliss found in
Jesus Christ. I silently, earnestly pray for Holy Ghost power and guidance as I
spoke to this 13-year-old boy who wanted to die.
“The
Holy Bible clearly tells us what happens after death. If a person has asked God
to forgive their sins and believed on Jesus Christ to save them from the
punishment of their sins in hell, that person is saved from going to hell and
goes to heaven when they die. If while living a person rejects God’s savior
Jesus Christ, then God sends that person to hell to receive the punishment of
their sins.”
Brevity
makes for a good sermon, so I stopped with that short vital truth, prayerfully
waiting. I did not verbally urge him to receive Christ. Such urging is the work
of God the Holy Spirit who is faithful. Praise God!
In
about three seconds, elder brother spoke up, proclaiming, “I believe on Jesus.”
I
was thrilled to hear that, but that is only the half of God’s glory I saw this
night in this parlor full of Buddhist idols. I know not if younger sister
sitting nearby on the floor had ever before heard elder brother utter his death
wish. Anyway, she has been silently listening to all our words, and she
immediately followed elder brother’s example by speaking up, of her own accord,
no prodding by any human agent. “I also believe on Jesus.”
From
then on, at the end of each English session, I led those two souls in Bible
reading and prayer.
A
year later as elder brother entered 9th Grade and younger sister
entered 3rd Grade, their mother told me that a girl classmate of
younger sister wanted to join the class. “Would you please teach two separate
classes, elder brother alone and the two girls together?”
“Yes,”
was my ready reply. We planned for the two girls to study first each evening,
followed by elder brother. Thus when I show up again two weeks later, 3rd
Grade younger sister and girl classmate are romping around gleefully in that
attractive parlor, playing amongst those idols carved of wood. Younger sister
introduces me thuswise. “This is teacher. He told me about Christ, and I
believed on him.” Younger sister spontaneously gave that glorious testimony
without any prompting from any person. Buddhism is girl classmate’s family
religion, as in most households around here. Those Buddhist idols before her
eyes are practically the only gods she knows, thus extending her arms towards
those false gods carved of wood to indicate them, she questioned younger sister
with one word: “These? Are these what you believed on?”
I
purposefully kept my know-it-all Christian missionary mouth shut tightly to see
what would come forth from this eight-year-old knew Christian believe in this
Buddhist household.
“No,
Christ is different from these,” younger sister clearly proclaimed. Perfect
truth that sermon be. And brief enough not to put any listener to sleep.
About
six months later, another girl classmate joined this girls’ class, and I
continue these fun English and Bible classes in this Japanese home for more
than three years after that, during which time I took the girls to Sunday church
once and to short church camps twice.
Elder
brother was born about 1995. Younger sister was born in 2001. Christian friend,
please calculate their ages now and pray earnestly with me that their entire
extended family will repent and trust in Jesus Christ to save them. Please pray
that their dad who walked out of their lives when they were small would repent
and become the best Christian dad possible.
As
younger sister entered her teens, they ceased having me come to their house to teach
them. From then on, I customarily posted younger sister a birthday greeting
three days or so before her birthday and called her on her birthday. The first
time I called her after she had graduated from high school, I asked what she
was doing. “I’m a university student,” she replied.
I
had well observed that God had created her with a brilliant mind, so I thought
to myself that as an 18-year-old university freshman, likely she is intent on
striving madly for all this world has to offer. So I asked her, “What are you
studying?”
Her
answer did my heart ever so much good. “Agriculture,” she replied.
“What
do you plan to do with that university degree?”
She
answered, “In Japan, farming families are steadily decreasing. Governments on
all levels realize that, given time, this trend will bring a food crisis. So they
are starting up programs to induce and encourage people to farm. I want to work
in such government programs.” Presently, most young Japanese men and women her
age are madly in love with the destructive powerful high tech world for their
work and their play. Thus mental illnesses, crimes, and suicides are rapidly
increasing among them. Christian friend, please intercede with me for the
salvation of young Japanese souls, and pray for Holy Ghost power upon my daily
public preaching as I hold forth the Word of Life amongst the Japanese race.
Near
the start of God’s Holy Bible in Genesis Chapter 3 versus 23 we read, “Therefore
the Lord send him, Adam, forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from
whence he was taken.” If the human race desires to eat, then of necessity it
must till the ground, exactly as its creator God ordained for it here when all
the human race was in the loins of Adam. I perceive younger sister to be a
particularly chosen vessel of her creator. Christian friend, please pray for
her good. Please pray for our Savior to likewise choose many more Japanese
Buddhists in the manner that he has chosen her.
As I
speak this in my tiny straw mat floor living room the first weekend in April
2025, I gaze out my window at the lovely cheery tree nearby, now budded out and
coming into full blossom. I look farther past it at the majestic, steep, rugged
mountain range in the distance, my heart overflows with joy because I have been
highly exhalting Jesus Christ in Japan for more than
51 years now, and am most privileged to have this lifetime missionary calling.
Lord willing, I plan to spend the remainder of my days on earth here in the
slap, dab middle of this nation of numerous idols and deep spiritual darkness,
letting the true light shine.
Thank
you who pray for me and who pray for the salvation of the many lost Japanese to
whom I preach Christ Jesus. Also, I greatly appreciate you folks who send an
offering occasionally so I can buy brown rice, sardines, seaweed, and such to
fuel this ancient carcass of mine as I daily go and tell the good news.
Please invite everyone you can, to listen to this audio
recording on Richard’s website. That URL is Christ Is All Dot US. Separate
those 3 words with 2 dashes. Christ dash is dash all dot US.