Here’s the story of Tokichi Ishii as told by William Barclay.
A man who had sunk to the lowest depths of crime and degradation.
One would imagine that in him all fine feelings had been obliterated. Anyone who stood in his way, whether man, woman or child, was ruthlessly murdered. Finally, this bestial criminal was captured and put into prison under strong guard. There he awaited death.
He was visited in prison by two Canadian Christian women who tried to talk to him through the bars of his prison cell. He glowered at them like a savage animal and would make no reply. Defeated in their effort to speak with him, they gave him a Bible in his own tongue, which he flung across his cell in a paroxysm of rage. But when the ladies had left him, bored and having nothing else to do, he read it. Providentially he did not start at Genesis, nor did he hit on a brutal massacre or a revengeful Psalm.
He started with the story of the Crucifixion. When he came to the words of Christ on the Cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” he stopped.
“I was stabbed,” he said afterwards, “as if pierced by a five-inch nail. Shall I call it the love of Christ? Shall I call it His compassion? I do not know what to call it. I only know that I believed, and that henceforth my heart was changed.”
Later, when the jailer came to lead him to the scaffold, they found, instead of a surly, brutish man, one with a great light upon his facer and a composure and serenity that surprised everyone.
In the last hours of his life he had been born again through reading the Bible.
A man who had sunk to the lowest depths of crime and degradation.
One would imagine that in him all fine feelings had been obliterated. Anyone who stood in his way, whether man, woman or child, was ruthlessly murdered. Finally, this bestial criminal was captured and put into prison under strong guard. There he awaited death.
He was visited in prison by two Canadian Christian women who tried to talk to him through the bars of his prison cell. He glowered at them like a savage animal and would make no reply. Defeated in their effort to speak with him, they gave him a Bible in his own tongue, which he flung across his cell in a paroxysm of rage. But when the ladies had left him, bored and having nothing else to do, he read it. Providentially he did not start at Genesis, nor did he hit on a brutal massacre or a revengeful Psalm.
He started with the story of the Crucifixion. When he came to the words of Christ on the Cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” he stopped.
“I was stabbed,” he said afterwards, “as if pierced by a five-inch nail. Shall I call it the love of Christ? Shall I call it His compassion? I do not know what to call it. I only know that I believed, and that henceforth my heart was changed.”
Later, when the jailer came to lead him to the scaffold, they found, instead of a surly, brutish man, one with a great light upon his facer and a composure and serenity that surprised everyone.
In the last hours of his life he had been born again through reading the Bible.
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