the psalms

Testimony of Brother John’s experience of the grace of God

The following account is a true and accurate record of the events in my life which led up to me becoming a Christian during January 1979. These events began on New Year’s Day, when I almost died of alcohol poisoning, and came to a life-changing conclusion a few weeks later when I received Jesus as my Saviour and Lord.

I was born in 1952 and born again in 1979. It was this being born anew by God’s Spirit which transformed my thinking; without it, I would still be a confirmed sinner, and have very little thought of either God or religion. So I put my current happy state down to the grace of God and nothing else. Since that time when God saved me, I have worshipped and praised Him for His great love for lost sinners, giving thanks to Him continually. After all, He has forgiven me all my sins and given me full assurance of possessing eternal life. I am on a pilgrimage to heaven.

A bit of background

At the time of my conversion, I was an ordinary 26 year old man with a regular job at a local radio station. In my spare time, having a fanatical interest in progressive rock music, I regularly rehearsed with my own band, doing local gigs, but having little success. Apart from that, I enjoyed spending time fishing or attending sporting events. Looking back, I see it as a pitiable lifestyle, focussed entirely upon myself – living for SELF, without any thought of my Creator, the Almighty God, nor of other people less fortunate than myself. The best descriptive word I can think of to sum up my life before my conversion to Jesus Christ is – UNGODLY!

A horrific New Year’s Day experience

On New Year’s Eve 1978, it was quite usual where I lived in England for people to gather in the Town Centre to welcome in the New Year with great celebrations. There would be excessive drinking in the various public houses around town; it was all a part of the pagan ritual. Although earlier in the evening I felt I really ought not to drink any alcohol, once I had found my friends in a favourite pub and been offered a drink, I soon found myself drinking normally, which gave me a warm glow inside. By the time the clock chimed midnight, I was swaying about and probably singing something stupid. It was now 1979, and little did I know that in a couple of hours I would be right on the edge of death; indeed, I would actually stop breathing and my heart would stop for more than a few seconds. A friend had invited me back to his house to listen to records and open a few bottles, and I foolishly accepted, and was soon laid back on a couch listening to Pink Floyd, and pouring drinks from bottles without even seeing what was in them. In the early hours we eventually all turned in, and I was directed to the guest room where I flopped down on the bed in a drunken stupor. Immediately I felt as though I was floating about on a choppy sea, making me dizzy, and feeling sick in my stomach. Then the pains began. Down both arms, down both legs. Then a terrible pain in my chest. My heart!! My breathing became difficult, I could hardly take a breath. My heart started racing, several beats per second. Then it would stop, or go very slowly. Then it would stop completely, and I believed I was about to die. To make matters worse, I recalled seeing a sign someone had painted in red on the side of a building not far from London. It was during a train journey to London about ten years previously that I had spotted this sign, and although the paintwork was flaking off, I clearly read the words “PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD”. The building itself, as I found out later, was Harley Hall in Harlesden. It was the meeting place of a brethren assembly, and obviously someone from the church had painted the sign especially to catch the eye of people passing by on a train, because the building was so close to the tracks.

It is no exaggeration to say that at this point I was terrified. Not only was I on the edge of dying, but I suddenly realised that I would shortly stand before GOD the Almighty Creator of the world. And I had no doubt that He would pass instant judgment on me and cast me into hell. This would have been justice, and I would not have tried to argue with Him. Fear gripped me even harder, and as that Bible text says, I prepared myself to meet God.

But God………

Over the next hour or so, by the grace of God, I held on to life. Eventually I fell asleep, my breathing becoming gradually more normal, and my heart functioning better. When morning came, and I found myself still alive, I was overjoyed and rejoiced in my good fortune. But I soon forgot all about God, and carried on with my life as though nothing of importance had happened. Such was the foolishness of my heart. Although it is true that I ceased drinking alcohol from that day onwards, I did not investigate Christianity, partly because I knew no Christians, and partly because I was bewildered by all the different church denominations, so I did not know where to turn for advice, even if I had felt the need.

A week or so later

Carrying on with my life, and scouring the local paper for a sound-on-sound tape recorder with which I could compose and record synthesiser music, I soon found just what I wanted. It was for sale only a few miles from me, and it was a Sony tape machine with stereo detachable speakers, and only £55.00. Perfect! I was offered with the machine a box of tapes of various sizes, which went with the recorder, and I purchased it immediately. The owner said a relative had once owned it and there was a lot of religious recordings in the box. I said I had no use for them, but hey, I’ll take the box of tapes anyway. Now the thing about magnetic tape is that after recording on it, if you don’t like it you can record over the top and it will wipe the first recording clean. So my thinking was, I can use all these tapes again, and the ‘religious nonsense’ (as the owner called them) would be wiped. Excellent, that would save me having to purchase new tape. What a fool I was! I did not see the hand of God in this! Yet!

Trying out the Sony tape recorder

Of course, once you wipe tape clean, whatever was recorded there is gone for ever, so when I set up the machine to try it out, I realised I would have to listen to all the tapes first, so that if there was anything I wanted to keep, I could mark the tape reel as such. Can you imagine it? I had decided to listen to all this ‘religious nonsense’ before consigning it all to its final resting place. [This is no hyperbole, this was exactly my thinking; after all, I was very keen to begin recording my music and had no new tape reels which I could use for that purpose.]

What was on the tapes?

There was at least a dozen or so tapes in the box, and there was a mixture of recordings. Some were just music, which I enjoyed listening to, but others were of speech, and such speech as I had never heard the likes of before. There were three men in particular who impressed me immediately. They were unconnected with each other, but all gave a very similar message: the love of God for sinners, and the way of salvation through the death of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and His glorious resurrection and later ascension to heaven to be once again at the right hand of Almighty God. Yes, all the messages were about the Christian faith, and how God saves undeserving sinners.

Too good to be true?

Here was something good, extremely good! And from what I could gather from the testimonies, all that was needed to be saved and begin pilgrimage for heaven had been accomplished by Jesus Himself. It seemed as though it was a free gift from God; that although the wages of sin was death, the gift of God was eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. From the moment I heard the first words from these men, I never doubted once that the message they were preaching was true; that it was vitally important, not only for me, but for the whole world.

God visits me in my bedsit

Let me say firstly that I never saw anything with my eyes, nor heard anything with my ears. But as I was listening to these tapes, something within me sensed that Jesus Christ was present with me. It was both awesome and frightening. That presence filled the room with a sort of clean, holy atmosphere. And the moment He came, I felt unclean, wicked, sinful. Yes, sinful, because the consciousness of having broken the laws of God made me understand what a sinner actually was. If anyone had asked me previously if I was a sinner, I would have said, “Certainly,” without any shame. But this was different. I saw sin in all its ugliness, and I saw that God must punish all sin. Therefore I was not merely a sinner like all men, but I was under God’s wrath and judgment, as are all men without Christ. This experience was to remain with me day and night for the next five or so days. It made me weep greatly, that I was in such a predicament, and even though I had heard for the first time of God’s love in Christ, I believed myself ‘beyond the pale’, without hope of being forgiven all my sins. Like Peter in the gospel, I could have said, “Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinful man.”

And yet there was a change in my attitude

Although conscious of my sin against God, a new desire had come upon me. It was unexpected, and not asked for, but I actually wanted to begin living for God. My old way of life I wished to leave and never go back. I wanted to follow the Lord Jesus Christ as His disciple and be obedient to Him. In a word, I desired to be a Christian. But as yet, I did not understand the message of the gospel. I did not know what to do!

Back to the tapes, listen again

Not knowing anyone who was a Christian, the only spiritual instruction I had was a few recordings, so it was to these that I turned. My mind was focussed entirely on trying to understand the message, and I must have felt somewhat like the ungodly jailer at Philippi who, fearful for his life, asked the apostle Paul and Silas the question, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved!” (Acts 16:30.) Now as I listened again and again to the messages (two of which were over an hour long), the following scriptures began to enlighten my mind, to the degree that I thought I was ‘getting it’, slowly but surely.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

Romans 5:6 “While we were yet weak, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”

Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Hebrews 2:10 “For it was fitting for Him, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through suffering.”

Revelation 3:20 “Listen! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him, and he with Me.”

At this point in the proceedings, I knew I had to PRAY. But I did not know how to. Yet my attitude must have been similar to the tax collector who prayed, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” (Luke 18:13.) And to the apostle Peter, who cried out to the Lord Jesus while drowning, “Lord, save me!” (Matthew 14:30.)

A conflict of thoughts

Two conflicting thoughts assailed me at that time. Having been convinced and convicted of having been a wicked sinner, I naturally thought that the Lord had come to ‘take me away’, to ‘neutralise me’. His wrath seemed to lay heavy upon me, and this produced fear. Yet I also seemed to sense something of the love of God, that perhaps He could forgive me and show mercy to me. So it was that I concluded two very important things: one, if I did not get saved, I would perish in hell for ever; two, if I really wanted to be saved, I would have to simply and humbly ask for it (which is what praying is all about?). Another text I heard showed me this.

Romans 10:13 “For, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

The Lord was taking me through, bit by bit, and yet all these things happened in the course of a few days.

A necessary procedure

I was now in the midst of a necessary procedure, which later on in my Christian life I discovered in the book of the prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah 55:6-7 “Seek the LORD while He may be found, call you upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the LORD, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”

Theologians say that faith and repentance always make a successful approach to the Creator of the universe. This has been the experience of countless millions of sinners since the resurrection of Christ and His ascension to the right hand of God the Father, where He has been given all authority and power both in heaven and in earth.

A necessary word

At this point I will stress that in giving this testimony I have used no exaggeration, no hyperbole, nothing that I have made up. The sequence of events that followed, are etched in my mind for ever, and I am able to draw on these memories and write them down with remarkable accuracy. I am under no compulsion to comply with any church, chapel, or religious group, in order to be accepted by anyone or further a religious career. What others believe about me is no concern of mine; I am simply giving my testimony of what happened to me in January 1979, over forty five years ago, which event produced in me a complete change of direction which has lasted until this very day in 2025.

A decision

My belief in the fires of hell as my eternal destination was very strong, but my belief in the Lord Jesus was growing, and it was at this time that I made a simple decision: if salvation came through calling on the name of the Lord, then I would immediately begin praying (as best I knew how) and I would go on praying to God for His forgiveness until He saved me. If I died, my last words on this earth would be, “God have mercy on me, a sinner!” I did not know what to expect, but somehow I figured that if I cried out to God with genuine remorse, it would not be long before He responded to my prayer with kindness and mercy, and that I would know His salvation through the infilling with the Holy Spirit. My biblical knowledge was very small, but that was my thinking as I began to pray.

Four days of prayer

My prayers began in earnest, and I am not ashamed to say that they were accompanied by tears. Over the next five days, weeping was a regular feature of my very basic prayer life. Now although I hardly knew what prayer was, there were certain facts of which I was absolutely convinced: one, that Jesus Christ had been resurrected from the dead after His crucifixion in Jerusalem; two, that His death was all part of the plan of God for the redemption of sinners; three, that I was a sinner for whom Christ had died; four, that if I cried out to God and asked Him to be merciful to me, a sinner, I might be fortunate enough to experience the salvation I had been hearing about. And so I began. During the day I would listen to the recordings and try to understand the message of the gospel, and at night, when I turned in, I would pray and ask God to save me. On that first night, lying down and looking up, I could sense the awesome presence of God, but received no confirmation that He had answered my cry for mercy. I still did not know what to expect, but I gathered from the preaching that I would KNOW when my sins were forgiven and had been made at peace with God. And so I drifted off into a fitful sleep, very worried about my eternal state, and determining to listen again to all the tapes, in case I was doing something wrong. This pattern continued for four days, and I began to wonder if there was perhaps no hope for me after all.

The fifth day of prayer – the happiest day of my life

On the fifth day, I went bed as usual. It was midnight, and my pillow was already wet with tears, even though I had not yet started praying. Indeed, no words came from my lips! Instead, there was a yearning from deep within me, a sort of crying out to God without sound. If there had been words, they would have been “Lord, save me!” But there were no words, only this terrible sense of being an unforgiven sinner in the presence of a holy God. But tonight was different! Almost immediately, I was aware that the presence of God, which seemed to tower over me, was drawing closer and closer. My first thought was, surely He is coming to save me! And in anticipation of that, I simply looked upwards, and waited.

Somehow, and I do not know how, I sensed the presence of God coming right up to me. And then something unusual happened; it was like this: in a very similar way to when you feel mist or fog touching your skin, I felt this presence touch my skin. And not only touch it, but pass right through it, until it was inside of me. At that moment, I knew instinctively that I was saved. God had forgiven me all my sins, and He had given me eternal life. My whole being was filled with a joy I had never known before. Peace enveloped me. Knowledge seemed to pour into me, and I felt that all was well between me and my Creator God. My mind was filled with thanksgiving towards the Lord Jesus Christ. I was confident that from that moment, my life would never be the same again.

The next few hours

I had to get out of bed. There was no way I was getting off to sleep tonight, I was too excited, too thrilled, too engaged with heavenly beings. So I made a large pot of tea, and just kept drinking tea and chain smoking cigarettes, while encouragements from heaven poured into me, assuring me of my salvation, and telling me never to have any more fears, because Jesus Christ was coming again.

I replayed all the tapes I had, and they were now full of clarity; I had a far better understanding of the words. [In later years I understood far better what had happened, for I discovered that Christianity was all about one thing in particular – CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY (Colossians 1:27) – and that every true Christian is indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:9). But at the time, I knew only one thing – I was saved! I had become a Christian!

Around five in the morning, I eventually returned to bed, and fell asleep with peace and joy radiating from me. It had been the best day of my entire life.

In conclusion

I conclude this testimony by saying that not all conversions to Christianity are as dramatic or definite as mine. All conversions are a work of God in the heart of a sinner, and He draws them to Jesus Christ as the means through which they can be reconciled to God. They all repent of sin to some degree or other, and they all believe that Jesus Christ is the living Son of God who died for their sins and rose again. They all become indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and they all follow Jesus lifelong. But in some cases it can be a very gentle process, especially so in the young who have not sinned very much. Or it may be even more dramatic, such as those like Saul of Tarsus who sinned greatly. But all cases are alike in this: they were all born again of the Spirit of God, and live the rest of their life indwelt by God’s Spirit, who seeks to change them into the likeness of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

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