Converted by Wire

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 22, 1908

Converted by Wire

A TOUCHING incident was related at a noon-day prayer-meeting in Pittsburg some years ago. A stranger said that a young man at Zanesville, Ohio, a telegraph operator, was converted while asking for prayers in a church. The case was one of peculiar clearness and power, and the incident was related in a meeting in Cincinnati by a Christian man.

At the Cincinnati meeting a young gentleman, also a telegraph operator, was present, and, though interested in the account, doubted the facts. He went from the meeting feeling somewhat embittered against Christianity and its advocates. The same evening in his office, while thinking the matter over, the business upon the wire being unusually slack, he concluded to inquire by telegraph, of the Zanesville operator, whether such a case as that related in the Cincinnati meeting occurred. He tapped the signal sound, and Zanesville answered the Cincinnati call. Touching the mystic key, he asked for information, giving in a few words the story, and the name of the young man.

“Yes,” answered the operator at Zanesville, “it is true, and I am the man myself.”

Thereupon a conversation was carried on along the wires between the two operators, and Christ Jesus was presented to the inquirer. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” came in eloquent utterance along the line, like a message from above. “Pray for me now,” said the penitent to his unseen friend, two hundred miles away. The two knelt, one in Zanesville, the other in Cincinnati; a new line of communication was opened from earth to heaven, petitions went up straight to God. An answer came quick as an electric touch, and the two young men rejoiced together, in spirit, at the conscious power of saving grace.—Selected.