e
wide world over.

"Let me say, right here, that my friend and colleague, Mr. Tom Hammond,
the originator and late editor of 'The Courier,' was in the very act of
explaining the wonderful, expected return of Christ (expected by him
though scoffed at by myself) when he was 'caught up' from my very
presence, and then I knew what a fool I had been to neglect God and His
salvation."

The nut-cracking interrupter in the gallery, with a burst of laughter,
began mockingly to sing the old revival chorus, "Come to Jesus, come to
Jesus, come to Jesus, just now, just----"

"Silence! you blasphemous, ribald fool!" The words leaped from the
lips of Ralph Bastin, in a tone of command that literally awed the
interrupter. The effect, too, upon the hesitating, vacillating mass of
people was, for the moment at least, to arouse their sympathy with
Ralph, and a little murmur of applause followed.

At the same time a soldier in uniform, a man of giant proportions, who
was sitting almost immediately behind the disturber, rose in his seat,
and addressing the man in front of him, cried, in a stentorian voice:

"See here, mouthy, we're about fed up with your gas, so if you give us
so much as one wag of that cursed red rag of yours, I'll pick you up
and snap you in half across my knee, as I would snap a stick."

This time the applause broke out all over the crowded church. When it
ceased, Ralph standing straight as a larch, and looking up at the
soldier, gave a military salute, as he said: "Thank you, brave soldier."

Coming back to his audience, he went on, as if there had been no
interruption:

"I, too, like the gentleman who addressed us just now, have read the
whole of the Bible through, and the New Testament _twice_, and I can
find no _definite_ provision or Revelation for those who are left
behind--that is as to the _how_, I mean, of salvation. Yet that there
are to be many saved during the next seven years, is evident, since
there is to be a great multitude come out of _The Great Tribulation_,
and thousands of these will be martyrs for God, refusing to wear the
Mark of the Beast.

"In one of the pamphlets I have been studying on 'The second coming of
the Lord,' I have found this statement, that Christ, during His
ministry, preached the Gospel _of the Kingdom_, which is explained as
referring to the fact that, as a Jew, as the Messiah, He came to His
own people the Jews, the chosen _earthly_ people of God, and that if
they