If you want to know what it’s like to reach out to others with the Gospel in apocalyptic times, let me tell you about Mabel Francis. God called her to minister in the city of Hiroshima shortly after the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Mabel, a New Hampshire native, had gone to Japan in 1909 as a missionary. When World War II broke out, she determined to remain in Japan, even if it meant an internment camp. She wanted to be present when the conflict ended, knowing the Japanese would need the Gospel.

As soon as Emperor Hirohito surrendered and Mabel was released, she set her sights on Hiroshima. “It was just like a desolate wilderness,” she later wrote. “There was no escape, no getting out. Many people saw their loved ones burned alive. Those in the center of the blast just disintegrated with no trace of them left. Stones fused together under that light. The concussion, when the sound came, was so terrible that people’s eyes were pulled right out of their heads.”

Mabel managed to find some land to erect a church building, and it quickly became a center of evangelism. On the first night of the meetings, a woman came who later gave this testimony: “That morning when the bomb struck, I was at my home up on the mountainside. My two little children were playing on the floor—a one-year-old and a three-year-old. I stooped down to pick up something, and in that second, that awful flash of light came! I was startled, and stood up to look around, and when I looked back, my two children were charred at my feet—both dead. I didn’t know then that I was all burned, I was so concerned for my little ones. I picked them up and laid them aside, and pretty soon, I began to feel the pain in my own body. Then I found how badly I was burned.”

In the following weeks the woman dragged herself to every pagan shrine and temple she could find, searching for answers and comfort, but finding none. “But tonight,” she told Mabel, “you told us of this God’s love, and that it was He who created us, and you said my children are with Him—I believe it! I believe it! My heart is comforted. Light has come to me.”

This woman and many others were saved in that time, for one brave Christian determined: “Today is the day to reach out.”

Today Is the Day to Serve the Lord

While I believe Christians will be taken to heaven before the Tribulation erupts, we have a job to do until then. We’re living in pre-apocalyptic times, and our greatest concern is for lost souls. Today is the day to reach them, for Christ may come for us before the next sunrise.

Perhaps today is the day for you to reach out to someone you’ve been planning to win to the Lord. We tend to procrastinate in our efforts to win others, but the biblical writers stressed the urgency of today.

• “Consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, that He may bestow on you a blessing this day”—Exodus 32:29, emphasis added
• “I have set before you today life and good, death and evil…. Therefore choose life”—Deuteronomy 30:15, 19, emphasis added
• “Today, if you will hear His voice: ‘Do not harden your hearts’”—Psalm 95:7-8, emphasis added
• “Son, go, work today in my vineyard”—Matthew 21:28, emphasis added
• “Exhort one another daily, while it is called ‘Today’”—Hebrews 3:13, emphasis added

We can’t do tomorrow’s work today any more than we can pass backward in time to reverse yesterday’s failures. The Lord assigns our work in the present tense, distributes His grace in the present, and tells us, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).

In Isaiah 55, we have an urgent biblical warning about salvation: “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord… for He will abundantly pardon” (verses 6-7). But the same chapter also stresses the urgency of sharing the Gospel with those needing Christ: “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven… so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void” (Isaiah 55:10-11).

If the Lord could come at any time, then He could come today. That’s why today is the day of salvation. How sad to wait too long! When it comes to being saved—or to sharing the Gospel of salvation—today is the day to act. If you need Christ as your Savior, you can trust Him right now. In prayer, you can quietly and simply ask Him to forgive your sins and to change your life. You can acknowledge Him as your risen Redeemer and commit your life to Him right here, wherever you are as you read these words.

Today Is the Day to Share the Lord

When it comes to sharing your faith, you can decide right now to become more proactive. We’re not responsible for results, but we are responsible for actions that can yield results. Call a friend today and invite them to church. Build a friendship with an unsaved friend. Spend time with some non-Christians, invite them to dinner, and show them the love and care of Christ. Offer to help them as opportunities arise, and whenever possible put good Christian materials in their hands.

Tactfully share your faith in emails and social media. Pass along Bible verses in note cards, birthday cards, and Christmas cards. Ask others how you can pray for them, and do so faithfully. Share your personal experience, work on your testimony, and make sure you’ve memorized a simple plan for leading others to Christ.

Work in your church. Volunteer. Take part in children’s ministries, knowing that many people make lifelong spiritual decisions in childhood.

I’d also like to suggest you “talk prophecy” with people, for that subject intrigues almost everyone. People want to know what the Bible says about the End Times, the Last Days, the state of the world, death, hell, and heaven.

When you’re burdened for the lost, you never know how the Lord may use you. The blind hymnist Fanny Crosby was speaking to a group in Cincinnati many years ago. She felt an overwhelming burden that some young man urgently needed to be saved. It was then or never. She mentioned this to the crowd, pleading, “If there is a dear boy here tonight who has perchance wandered away from his mother’s home and his mother’s teaching, would he please come to me at the close of the service?”

Afterward a teenager approached her. “Did you mean me?” he asked. “I promised my mother to meet her in heaven, but the way I have been living, I don’t think that will be possible now.” Fanny had the joy of leading him to Christ. Returning to her room that night, all she could think about was the theme “rescue the perishing,” and when she retired that night she wrote the hymn, “Rescue the Perishing.”

Many years later while speaking in Lynn, Massachusetts, Fanny recounted the story behind “Rescue the Perishing.” After the service, a man approached her. “Miss Crosby,” he said, “I was that boy who told you more than thirty-five years ago that I had wandered from my mother’s God. That evening you spoke, I sought and found peace, and I have tried to live a consistent Christian life ever since. If we never meet again on earth, we will meet up yonder.” He turned and left, unable to say another word.

If I could set this article to music that would be my song: “Rescue the perishing, care for the dying; Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.” Every passing day brings us closer to the most climactic days our world has ever seen. Just ahead are the events of the book of Revelation. Perhaps today is the day to trust God. Perhaps today is the day to claim victory. Perhaps today is the day to reach out, serving the Lord and sharing the Lord.

Perhaps today you can rescue the perishing and care for the dying.

Jesus is merciful; Jesus will save.