Free Charbonneau by Win Blevins Page B

his evening teaching ran considerably more toward death in the days after.
    He took as his text one evening, for their devotional time, Isaiah XXXIII, 12-13-14: “And the people shall be as the burning of lime, as thorns cut up shall they be burnt in the fire. Hear ye that are far off what I have done; and ye that are near acknowledge my might.”
    “‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,’ Hebrews X, 31,” he expounded, “yet when we die, we all must fall into his hands and stand before his terrible judgment.
    “Death is God’s curse upon man for his disobedience, for the sin that through Adam is born unto all men. And for that Original Sin must we all answer. No man may think to escape it. For him who does, lo, there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Nothing on earth is to be feared as the day when all sinners shall find themselves in the hands of an angry God.
    “On that day all men are equal in the sight of God, the mighty and the low alike, and all who are not washed in the blood of Jesus, cleansed by the blood of Jesus of their sins, shall tremble before His awful and inevitable judgment. ‘As thorns cut up shall they be burnt in the fire.’
    “For the Lord sees all, the sins committed in the shadow of the night, the sins committed in the darkness of the closet, the sins committed in the closeness of our very beds”—Welch looked at his sons to see if they were squirming—“and the sins committed in secret thought. At Judgment Day some of us, the few, shall be white as snow, and others, the many, black as tar. Some shall be saved unto life eternal, and the others shall hear the dread words ‘Depart from me, I know ye not.’ And they shall be plunged into everlasting torment. ‘For behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebukes with flames of fire,’ Isaiah LXVI, 15.”
    Yves was asleep now. Baptiste was still, looking at his hands. They kept jumping oddly.
    “For the body is but the shabby house of the soul,” Welch went on. “The body carries, even in life, the insidious disease of mortality. In time the putrescence which is native to the body shall overthrow it. In time, it shall creep like a fog through the limbs and render them still, it shall creep through the blood and make it black, it shall cloud the brain and still the tongue. And in time the body, surrendering the soul, shall pass unto the earth whence it came. It shall be placed in the grave, and dirt shoveled onto its face—dirt that is the same as the face, which shall become dirt.” Welch paused a moment and considered. His silence made Baptiste even more jittery than his talking. “Dirt to dirt, ashes to ashes—such is the fate of all mankind, the curse of Adam.
    “And the earth itself shall dishonor the body. The flies shall feed on its blood. The worms shall crawl into the flesh and eat thereof. As the flesh rots, it shall reveal itself by its very smell as the excrement it is. At last it shall become nought but mud and slime.
    “I pray,” Welch perorated, “that Christ may come again in my lifetime to take the saints to be with Him in glorious light in heaven. I pray that we may not pass through the decay of the grave. I pray it fervently.” Welch stared into space, his right eye divergent from his left. “But the time of the second coming is known only to almighty God, and it shall be as the twinkling of an eye. Let us therefore be prepared to meet Him. Let us now call on His holy name, knowing that all ye who know Him not must surely perish. Let us be prepared for the destruction of the body and the judgment of the soul.”
    He closed his eyes for a moment of silent meditation.
    “Reverend Welch,” Baptiste burst in when Welch opened his eyes, “what about those who don’t know about Jesus and can’t call on his name?”
    Welch looked at him solemnly. “They must surely perish.”
    “It isn’t fair,”