Over the last three and a half decades the Christian moral foundations of America have been replaced to large extent by a pagan and heathen attitude toward sin. Even most ministers are so far from God that they are no longer sensitive to the destructiveness of the sins that permeate society. Thus, true piety and holiness are scarce in this great nation that was once the bastion of the Christian faith.
Parents all over the land blandly accept the fornication of their children and make no real effort to halt their drug use. Adultery is at an all-time high and divorce is so common that in some states it can be obtained by E-mail. The nation is awash in the blood of unborn babies slaughtered in our abortion clinics. AIDS has become a worldwide epidemic because of blatant homosexuality, and violence in our streets is like an epidemic of the Black Death. As a matter of fact, every facet of traditional Christian morality has been abandoned or radically changed in these last days.
With each passing day the world sinks deeper into madness and the world as we know it is headed for destruction. Billions of people will plunge into hell as the world spins out of control. For this reason I wish to tell you how I escaped from this doom and found peace and reason in all that is happening. This is my story, the story of my personal experience with God.
My first real visitation from God came in 1953 when I was 22 years old. I was recently discharged from the Army due to wounds received in action in Korea. I remember that my mind was shattered by the trauma of the war and I became very conscious of my sinful condition. I greatly desired to be clean and to find peace with the Lord. But I knew not how to find a lost God. I wanted deliverance from the sins that controlled my life. I cried out to God in the church of my youth, but He was not there. Instead I found only corruption and pride in both priest and people. It never occurred to me that I was seeking the living among the dead.
I started in college in 1954 and came under the influence of an agnostic professor. I had become disillusioned with religion because of my failure to find God in my church and I embraced this doctrine with great zeal because it relieved me from the responsibility for my actions and gave me a kind of peace in my sins for a while. Being of a philosophical turn of mind, I loved to discuss the meaning or lack of meaning of life. I could see into the vanity and hypocrisy of traditional religion and frequently used the favorite arguments of ignorant and evil men against the Bible and the divinity of Jesus. In other words, I was not just an agnostic, but I was an articulate proponent and preacher of that doctrine.
Young college students are so susceptible to agnostic views because they generally have no direct experience with God. And if their parents' faith is only traditional, they have no foundation on which to stand. Thus, they are overwhelmed by the foolish arguments of the agnostic. With shame I confess that I gladly dealt the death blow to the faltering faith of many.
In 1956 I went to the University of Colorado to do graduate work in physics. By this time I was steeped in my godlessness and I had adopted the situational ethics of the day, i.e., if it feels good, do it. This view is a natural result of agnosticism and paganism and I marvel that ministers and their people, who claim to believe in the God of the Bible, could uphold such a view. After all, to believe in God is to believe in an absolute. But if we are to believe these preachers of sin and wickedness, the Jewish prophets and the Christian martyrs of old spilled their blood in vain.
I continued in this manner for some time, not caring for anyone but myself. But underneath my carefree appearance I was miserable. For truly, I was among the most wretched of men, as are all agnostics, whether they will admit it or not. How empty was my life! Nothing to live for but the fleeting and disappointing pleasures of the moment and nothing to hope for, since true hope must transcend the dark regions of the grave, beyond which the agnostic refuses to tread.
One moonless night I left my office in the physics building and began to walk home through a woods. The night was very dark and the sky was sparkling with the multitude of stars that are visible in the higher altitudes. I was walking along, deep in thought about the incomprehensible vastness of the heavens. Having studied astronomy, I was aware of stellar distances and my mind was filled with awe by the panoramic view above me. And as I walked along, a voice came smashing through my own thoughts with such power that I literally staggered and almost fell to the ground. That voice filled me with indescribable terror.
It said, "But suppose that you are wrong?" That is all. Nothing more. But, oh, how my heart sank within me! What terror gripped my soul! I knew that it wasn't referring to astronomy. I knew what it meant. It meant my agnosticism. And I couldn't fool myself. If I was wrong, I was doomed to eternal misery. For a fleeting moment I came face to face with God, with the living God, the Judge of all flesh. But my wicked heart didn't let me acknowledge Him in whom I have my being. So light came but I loved darkness rather than light.
With a Herculean effort of the will I managed to regain my composure. I quickly assured my quaking heart that what I had just experienced was merely my imagination. So a measure of calm was restored to the troubled waters. (I wonder how many others have passed up a visitation from the Lord in this manner?) Although I remained uneasy for some time, I refused to recognize the divine visitation. The powers of darkness had won the victory.
A few months later my wife became pregnant with our third child and I decided to leave school. I took a research job with Convair Aircraft at San Diego, but I soon began to yearn for the classroom. I was offered a position at Indiana State in Terre Haute, Indiana, as an Assistant Professor of Physics. I accepted the position and we moved to our new home in the fall of 1959. We little expected that soon our lives would be completely changed, to the bewilderment of all who knew us.
The next year or so was uneventful. But in November of 1960 my wife had an experience with God which I passed off with the words, "If you feel that you need religion, that's your business. But don't bother me with it and we'll get along fine." I was so estranged from her that I was unaware that God was changing her life. But she began to pray for me in the belief that God could reach even such as I.
In March of 1961 one of my ex-students was going to the Marine Corps. My wife and I were invited to a party at his house but she refused to go. I decided to go for just a couple of drinks, (I was always going for just a couple of drinks) and then I would come home. But as was usually the case, one drink led to another which led to another, etc. I don't know how or when I got home, but I do remember staggering into the house at some time before daylight. Then I was blank until I awoke several hours later in the afternoon.
When my eyes opened, I looked around to see where I was. Suddenly, a sense of shame filled my heart. What a mess I was! God let me see myself and people like myself in a totally new light. I saw that most college professors were egotistical fools and that I was chief among them. My life was empty and meaningless and some day I would die and nobody would really care. I can't find words to express what I felt that day. But if I had known the Bible, I would have cried, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!"
I got out of bed and went into the living room. My wife was sitting in a chair reading the Bible. I knelt down beside her and said, "Honey, I'll never drink again and I'm going to stop running around with the boys." I had said this before but this time it was different. This time I seemed to have an inward strength given to me which would not be defeated. To my great surprise I really did stop drinking. And I really did begin to act like a good husband and father. For the first time in years my wife could know when I would come home. But make no mistake about it. This was not conversion. In no way did I associate my reformation with God and I still held to my agnostic views. But in retrospect, I can say that God was working in me in a mystery.
Sometime in May my wife picked me up at the Athletic Club and on the way home we somehow got on the topic of religion. She told me that while she was reading the Bible one day, the Scripture, "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it to you," came suddenly alive to her so that she had faith to believe. She looked up to heaven and said, "Lord, save my husband!" And she heard a voice say, "It shall be done," and she believed God that He would do even as He said.
Needless to say, this was rather strange talk to me. As a matter of fact, I thought that it was ridiculous. Who ever heard of God talking to anyone? And not only that, what was I supposed to be saved from? Wasn't I now a pretty good fellow? I merely smiled and said that if she was right about these things I most certainly did not want to go to hell and I hoped that He would save me. But although in my heart I was laughing at her, I was not laughing about hell. I didn?t believe in hell, but I knew that if it existed I most assuredly did not want to go there.
Scarcely two months later as I was walking across campus, the same thing occurred that happened in Colorado. This heavenly voice came crashing through my own thoughts in great power saying, "But suppose that you are wrong?" This time I knew that it was God. Once again terror seized my heart and a great sense of lostness swept over me. Suddenly I found myself again face to face with the great and terrible Lord of all the earth. Like Jonah I tried to run from the presence of the Lord. But where could I go that He would not be there? My agnosticism crumbled and fell to the dust. How could I any longer deny the existence of a personal God when He was even now calling me to accounts for my wicked ways? Oh, woe was me, for I was undone! Eternally lost! Eternally lost!
For about a week I went through my daily chores with a sense of dread, and a great weight of sin and guilt was hanging on my heart. The hell that I once derided was now a living, burning reality to me. With the Psalmist of old I could say, "My bones wax old through my roaring all the day long; for day and night thy hand is heavy upon me!" I knew that I had sinned greatly against the King of kings and that hell was my just portion forever.
Finally, when all hope seemed gone and the gates of hell were gaping beneath my feet, the Lord by His Eternal Spirit showed me that there was One, even Jesus Christ the Righteous, that could save me. He showed me that I must yield myself up body, soul, and spirit to be the Lord's forever. I saw that my life would never be the same again.
Although the Lord didn't show me anything specific at that time, I saw that there was much hidden sin in my life and that the Lord would require it of me. For about a week I resisted God. I didn't want to go to hell (which was ever before my eyes) and yet, I could not bear to be numbered with the fools by my colleagues. Oh, wretched man that I was!
Finally, on the l3th of August, 1961, God laid down His ultimatum. All day long I knew that this was my last day. I knew that if I rejected God's offer of mercy that day, He would leave me, and though I lived to be a thousand years old, He would never again visit me in mercy. Many people don't want to believe this, but I saw it plainly from the Lord and doubted it not in the least. Oh, the dread that gripped my heart! Oh, how I pleaded with God not to require such hard things from me. But to no avail. Had not Jesus died the death on the cross for me that I might be delivered from the guilt and power of sin? And was I not willing to bear His reproach? I was in the valley of decision.
At about 9:00 PM I fell to my knees and yielded all to Him forever and ever. I didn't know how to pray. I merely said, "Lord, You know my heart. I am Yours." And when I said this, I felt a heavenly hand reach into my heart and lift out that heavy load of sin and guilt that had weighed me down for two weeks. And the good Spirit filled my heart with peace and witnessed to me that I was now a child of God. In that very moment He cleaned me up and made me into a new creature.
Since that time God has truly been a Father to me. He guides my life, instructs me in righteousness, and chastises me if I stray from the straight and narrow way. He has filled my heart with love for holiness and purity and lost souls on the one hand and with an abhorrence and hatred for sin and wickedness on the other. He has filled my heart with a joy and happiness that I did not know existed. He has spoken with me as really as I have spoken with my children. Oh, the blessedness of His voice! This is hard for many people to bear, but it is nevertheless true. His sheep hear His voice.
Dear Reader,
Have you experienced the
transforming power of God in your life? It is not enough to believe in Jesus or to accept
Him as your Saviour. That is a delusion of Satan. You must also accept Him as Lord of your
life and repent. Then you will know Christ in you, the hope of glory. You will know the
power of Christ to cleanse your heart and life from sin and to give you victory over the
world, the flesh, and the devil. As the great apostle says, "Examine yourselves,
whether ye be in the faith, prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that
Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" Do you honestly know that Jesus
Christ lives in you? Do you live in VICTORY over sin?