“Owing to certain floods in the country, he (a Christian in South Africa traveling the country) had to stay where there was a kind of saloon or public house. He was amazed and saddened at the sight of the farmers, many of whom, he noticed came there and spent in a few days all the money that they had been able to earn and save as the result of their hard work through the year. They had a powerful craving for drink that they could not conquer.
He was especially attracted to one poor man who seemed to be a particular victim to this terrible affliction, and he began to talk to him. First, of all he began to reason with him, pointing out the suffering that his wife and children had to endure. The poor man admitted it all and told the story of how he had been almost unconsciously led into it and found himself a helpless slave to drink before realizing that anything had happened- how he would give the whole world if he could stop it, but he was now a victim of it. Then this Christian went on to tell him about faith, the possibility o overcoming, and told him about the Lord Jesus Christ who had come into this world to save us. He told him that if only he looked to Christ and relied on Him, he would be enabled to overcome this thing, and the man was given faith to believe that. He was a simple, illiterate man, and all he was anxious to do was to find the name of this person about whom this Christian was speaking, and he was told the name was Jesus.
That poor man went away and, having worked again, came back to this same place to sell his grain. There again the tempters came, but he did not go with them, and his own wife and children were amazed. This Christian visitor came back in a year or so to find the man entirely changed. He began talking to him and asked him how it had happened. And the man’s simple testimony was this: ‘I went back the first time, and my friends came and tempted me, and I felt weak. But suddenly I remembered the name- Jesus. I could do nothing but keep on saying to myself, “Jesus”; I cried to Jesus to do what you told me He would.’ His faith was as simple as that, but it was enough, and he overcame; he did not go back, he was emancipated.”
