Far up the Amazon River a Southern Baptist missionary was using a flannelgraph to aid her in telling a group of school children about Jesus. As she talked, an elderly man, with stooped shoulders and gray hair, joined the children. He listened to the missionary with rapt attention.

After the children were dismissed, the old man came up to the missionary with the question, “May I ask, madam, if this interesting and intriguing story is true?”

“Of course,” the missionary said. “It is the Word of God.”

With countenance and voice revealing his doubt, the old gentleman said, “This is the first time in my life that I have ever heard that one must give his life to Jesus to have forgiveness from sin and to have a life with God forever.”

Then with a note of finality he concluded: “This story cannot be true or someone would have come before now to tell it. I am an old man. My parents lived their lives and died without having heard this message. It cannot be true or someone would have come sooner.”

Although she tried hard, the missionary could not convince the old gentleman of this truth from God’s Word. Turning to make his way back into the denseness of the jungle and the darkness of sin, he kept repeating the words, “It cannot be true. It cannot be true or someone would have come sooner.”

Originally published as “Is It True?” The Commission, October 1958, p. 12-13.