p. 87 | Untitled article

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, January 21, 1868

DEEP DELUSIONS.

Some years ago the writer was called as a minister of the glorious gospel, to visit a criminal confined in prison, and condemned to die for a capital offense. He visited him a number of times, held frequent conversations with him, and found him invariably under the infatuation that he would not be executed. He did not dispute the fact that he had committed the act for which he was condemned, but he was under the impression (for which he had no warrant, and of which there were no indications) that he would be reprieved and pardoned. No remonstrances, no facts, no testimony however reliable, could shake this delusion. It appeared to be the strongest conviction he had, and kept him calm and firm until the end. Various measures were resorted to to convince him if possible, of his infatuation, and that the law in his case would certainly take its course.

A short time before he was executed the keeper of the prison resorted to an expedient to break up, if possible, this wonderful infatuation. His coffin and shroud were brought into his room, and placed before him, as the certain evidence that he must die, and that the time had come. He was again, with varied importunity and deep earnestness besought to “prepare to meet his God.” He looked for a moment upon the coffin and shroud, then round upon the company assembled in his cell. When his eye rested upon the writer it glared with infuriate passion. His whole frame was convulsed with demoniac fury. His precise language was, “I see through the whole of it. You are all engaged in a conspiracy against me; you think to frighten me, but you cannot do it. All the devils in hell cannot frighten me.” In one hour he was in eternity.

This solemn fact is not stated under the idea that any of your readers manifest such dreadful wickedness and delusion as this. To go to such an extent requires a long continued course of crime, and, as a just chastisement, Divine abandonment. But in one respect, every one of your readers who is untaught of God, and a stranger to Christ in his overtures of mercy in the gospel, may see his own perfect likeness. Young or old, moral or profane, hardened or comparatively tender, all are alike in this—a dreadful delusion enthralls and perverts their active energies. They are under a more fearful condemnation than this—yet do not seem to care for it. Either they do not believe it, or hope for a reprieve and pardon, when they have reason to know that they have not fallen in with God’s method of mercy through the glorious gospel of his Son. They are condemned, and yet do not fear and tremble. No anxious days, no sleepless nights are passed, until they have the assurance that their pardon is granted, sealed and secured in the new and living way of the gospel of peace. No earnest importunities are made for Christian counsel, sympathy and aid; no application to God is made for pardoning mercy through Christ as a merciful and faithful High Priest, and prevalent advocate before the throne.

Here, then, in this infatuated and wretched criminal, every unconverted man or woman, in all the variety of wickedness, or unbelief, may see his, or her own perfect likeness. Reader, how is it with you? If all the solemn warnings of the word and messengers of God, if all the divine judgments, and all the devils in hell, of whom you read in God’s authenticated word, do not make you fear and tremble, so as to humble you before God and seek forgiveness, are not you in this respect precisely like this infatuated criminal?—Journal and Messenger.