“I covered myself in the blood of another to escape death.”

Pupils in the Mpondwe Lhubiriha Secondary School in Uganda were singing gospel songs before an attack by suspected militants on Friday, a woman who lives opposite the school says. The students usually sing before bedtime—and at first, she and her daughter thought the noise that interrupted their songs at around 11:00 pm on June 16th suggested that they were having a bit of fun. But it soon became clear that something horrific was under way at the school, which had around 60 boarders living in a small compound. More than 40 people—most of them students—died in the attack on the secondary school in the small town of Mpondwe on Friday night. Six students are believed to have been abducted as the militants retreated to DR Congo.

Student Julius Isingoma told the BBC how he miraculously survived a nighttime assault by suspected rebels on his school dormitory in western Uganda. Julius was among six people who managed to survive the assault which lasted for several hours. “I smeared the blood of my dead colleagues in my mouth, ears, and on my head so that the attackers would think I was dead,” he said, when we met him at Bwera General Hospital in Kasese district. He did not identify the attackers, but said they were gun-wielding men who launched their attack.

They came to the boys’ dormitory, but the students had locked it after realizing they were in danger. Julius was standing behind many of the students who had formed a shield near the door and were shot dead when the militants got into the dormitory. There were cries as the students were gunned down, hacked, or shot to death. He quickly climbed to the top of a bunk bed, removed some of the wooden planks of the ceiling, and jumped inside to hide. From there, he helplessly watched his colleagues being brutally murdered by the assailants, who then set fire to mattresses and left.

“I was overwhelmed by the smoke and dropped back down into the dormitory with a thud,” he said. The militants heard the thud and came back. It was at that point that Julius knew he had to come out of the attack alive. “I lay next to the bloodied bodies of my friends and thought very fast. Then I smeared a lot of blood into my ears, mouth and on my head and when the militants came, they checked my hand for a pulse and left,” Julius said.

Dear friend, tragedy most often strikes unexpectedly, without warning. It comes as a shock, abruptly cutting off pleasure and comfort, and shattering the normal course of life. “As the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them” (Ecclesiastes 9:12). Tragedy “cometh suddenly at an instant” (Isaiah 30:13). There is no greater tragedy than losing your life on earth to face eternal death, hell, with no end to pay for your own sins and spend eternity in torment and regrets when many times you were offered the gift of God’s love of a perfect substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. Julius was saved by the death by applying the blood of another on himself. The Lord Jesus on the cross paid for your sins by His life, by His blood (for life is in the blood and without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins; Leviticus 17:11, Hebrews 9:22) God the ultimate Judge has decreed. God’s word says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood” (Ephesians1:7), that is, the complete setting free and bringing back by virtue of a price paid, that price being the blood shed by the Son of God. Only God can measure the greatness of that price.

Have you applied the blood of the Lord Jesus to your heart? Have you come to Him and accepted Him as your Savior, the One who gave His life for you to save you from eternal death and give you His life that death and judgment can not touch or take away from you, life eternal?

“The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

“He that heareth My Word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24).

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).