My Testimony
It could be said of me, as Paul did of Timothy in 2 Tim ch 3 v 15; ’From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.’ Both my parents were Christians, having trusted Christ as their Saviour, Due to this, from an early age, I was taken by my parents along with my siblings to the local Assembly, which met in a rented hall.
In the mid 1950s a new Gospel Hall opened in which my parents were in fellowship., A few years later, when I was around 5, there was a Gospel campaign which I was taken along to, and on one of the evenings I was put under pressure to profess faith in Jesus and have my sins forgiven. I, as a young boy of 5, said the words I was given to say, “Jesus I will trust Thee, trust Thee with my soul, guilty, lost, and helpless, Thou canst make me whole.” Whereupon I was told I was saved, and as a 5-year-old you do not argue with the grownups. However, as I grew older, I began to wonder about my salvation as when I heard the Gospel preached, and I heard the word repentance keep cropping up, and that because of our sins we were at variance with a holy God. ‘For all have sinned and come short of the Glory of God.’ Romans ch 3 v 23
I attended all the meetings. 3 times on Sunday and 2-week-nights. There was a text at the front of the hall from Amos ch 4 v 12, which states, ‘Prepare to meet thy God.’ This troubled me as I knew that I wasn’t ready because I wasn’t saved, as I hadn’t repented.
A frequent Gospel message regularly preached was the coming of the Lord Jesus (the Rapture) for those who were saved, which would be followed by the final Judgment of the unsaved, called the Great White Throne. This question, which troubled me, and is what faces every person today, was I / are you prepared to meet God? Have you repented of your sin and trusted the Lord Jesus. in Act ch 17 v 30-31: we read ‘God commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because He hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained.’
As I approached and entered my teens, that verse, and the coming of the Lord Jesus, began to play on my conscience causing me to query my salvation. However, I was in a quandary as to how you deal with parents, siblings, and the other Christians, we met with, at the local assembly? However by the grace of God and the promptings of the Holy Spirit, I realised what was missing from my conversion, it was the act of repentance as a sinner, 2 Peter ch 3 v 9 The Lord is...not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Having now realised that I was not saved, and that I needed to repent before God, in the knowledge that only he could forgive my sins, In simple faith I did that, and knew the joy and peace that comes with Salvation. I cannot give you a date for this as I had kept it to myself due to the circumstances noted above.
In 1969 I applied for baptism, and the brother who interviewed me, (who had known me all my life) asked about my salvation (I think he knew I wasn’t saved as a five year old) and I told him how it had only happened recently. He understood what I had gone through, and I was soon baptized and received into assembly fellowship.