Sorry, I forgot to get dressed. There we go. Now we're sort of ready. Good to see you all here this morning.
It's nice to see summer is continuing. It's nice and warm, it's a beautiful day. And hopefully you get out to enjoy it at some point. Let's look to the Lord for a moment in prayer before we start.
Father, thank you, this morning we can be here. Thank you for the Lord Jesus our Savior. And we thank you, Lord, this world is filled with many struggles and many battles. Lord, we call upon you as the battle belongs to you.
Lord, strengthen us for the battle. Strengthen us for the day. Strengthen us in the Lord Jesus that we may walk in joy with Him. And Lord, we just look to you this morning that you would guide us our thoughts.
And as we share at this time from the scriptures, Lord, may you speak to our hearts that we may be affected in a way that we are changed, if we are believers, to be more like our blessed Savior, the Lord Jesus. And if there's any here this morning who don't know the Lord Jesus, Lord, you know every heart in this building, you know every heart that will be watching this online either today or later, you know every heart of the people who will listen at some point, even for a few minutes on SoundCloud. And if any who do not know you, hear your word, may it impact them and they come to know the Lord Jesus Christ. Ask it in Jesus name, amen.
This is kind of different, so I'm not sure how it works. But do I still do the pushy button thing? And I think it works and then, but you guys change the slide at the back or something, can you see me do this? So yeah, I'm here this morning, kind of been, anybody know what a pinch hitter is?
A pinch hitter is the guy who's on the, sitting on the bench and they need somebody to go in and hit because the guy who's supposed to go up and hit, this is baseball, baseball season. The guy can't, for whatever reason there, they don't want him to swing the bat. So what the coach used to do is come along and he pinched the guy, that's where it comes from. He pinched the guy usually on the backside and that meant get up there and bat.
So that's what's happened here. So I thought what am I gonna do? I wasn't quite sure. I don't have enough prepared on the next message concerning the lamb.
Last week somebody was at my home and I had an opportunity to share my testimony with him and I thought, maybe I will do that here. I feel very awkward doing this. I might as well tell you right now my hands are sweaty because I don't mind preaching from the scriptures but I really find it very hard to talk about something very this personal. So, and I feel like you can go into, it feels to me, we had a guy used to come to our office.
I won't mention his name because everything was gonna be broadcast of the world. But you'd hear him in the boardroom and he would just be mouthing of the whole time. And my boss, I never heard this expression before in my life. He said, he is the worst, most shameless self promoter I've ever heard in my life.
And I'm thinking, oh, I so don't wanna be like the guy named Roland. I really don't wanna do that. So what I wanna do in sharing my testimony, I want to be a Christ promoter. I wanna promote Jesus Christ to you.
There is a book that's on my shelf. I confess I haven't read it. I believe it's Tozer, it's called the pursuit of God. I believe it's Tozer wrote that is, yes.
And I think I started it and it's among all the, it's in the pile of started books. That would be my bookshelf that I haven't finished. So I could call this subtitle it To Pursuit by God. I was not pursuing God.
I did not for 21, 22 years of my life pursue God. I tried, but I could not say that I pursued. But he pursued me. And I look back on it and I think how he pursued me, all of my life.
It's the testimony is the greatest story you can tell. It's your own life. But it tells the greatest story of the greatest one. Greg Laurie calls it the one minute message.
And if you know me, this will not be a one minute message. Nowhere near. So actually somebody is going to speak in November and they're going to give their testimony. And I'm looking forward to that.
And I want to encourage the men who speak. The ladies have done this at their fellowship. Becky Michaels gave her testimony at the last one. I've been wanting to encourage the men who have an opportunity on the platform.
Just consider giving your testimony. Well, let's see how it goes for me. If you throw tomatoes at me, then don't do it. But I'd love to hear John Wells' testimony or David Hanson's testimony.
I'd like to hear sometime. I'd like to hear a Lord of his testimony. I'd love to hear the whole life story kind of put together. But it really is not my life story.
It's the story of Jesus Christ and how it intersected my life. Three verses I want to read to start. The first verse is Romans 10 verse 9. It says that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For whoever calls, Romans 10 verse 13, just a couple of verses down, for whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That is repeated three times in the scriptures, I believe, that verse. And then finally, these verses from Ephesians chapter two verses one to nine, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formally walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, and of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them too.
Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh, and of the mind, and were by nature, children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, but God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us. Even when we were dead in our transgressions made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So that in the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, excuse me, it is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast. It's important to remind yourself of that. There is nothing that I can say in and of myself that I have done to be able to stand here this morning to speak with you. There is nothing.
It is all of him. My whole future is in verse seven. So that in the ages to come he might show this, what, how great I am, what I've done, my works, no. So the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
That's what is going to be coming in the future for us. So how did it all begin for me? Well obviously the same as everybody else has born. But I grew up in Sydney as you probably know, if not you know from my accent.
And I put this verse up, it says, Paul writes this to Timothy, he says, I am mindful of the sincere faith within you which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother, Eunice. And I'm sure that is in you as well. Now I didn't have a grandmother Lois, I had a grandmother, oh Amelia, but they called her Millie, but I did have an ant Lois and she's the one standing here. These two ladies, I grew up in a home that was not a Christian home in that my parents were not believers at the time, but my dad came from a Christian home.
My parents respected the gospel. My parents wanted me to hear the scriptures. They wanted me to actually to know the Lord. But they did not attend, they did not attend church, they did not, the Bible is not read in our home.
My parents were not saved when I was growing up. But I had these two ants, still living, they're in their 90s, still very precious to us. And they took me to Sunday school and to gospel meetings. From the time I was this little guy's age, from the time I was a baby, this little guy's age.
I probably knew John 360 when I was Mertik's age. And by the time I was a teenager, I knew much of the Bible very, very well, but I didn't believe. I was not a believer. And I tried, I tried many times.
I would say prayers at nighttime, that God would preserve my life. I would say our father, which was not something that I would grow up with saying in the gospel hall in Sydney, in this building here. I would ask God to preserve my life. I would ask God, would you save me?
But it was kind of ritualistic sort of stuff. And I was trying really hard. And I remember sitting in gospel meetings and saying, I know I need this, I want this. But I'm trying so hard, how can I be saved?
I wanna, like I wanna believe this, but I can't, how do I believe? I don't know. I like him on for me a couple of years ago, when Ray Hannah was here. He said, I was trying, he said of him, but I was trying to put faith in my faith, rather than faith in the object of faith, which is the Lord Jesus.
I was so caught up in trying to figure out how to believe, trying to figure out how to have faith, that I got my eye off Christ and my eye was on faith itself. And I could not muster up enough faith. That might not make sense to you, but that's what it was for me. I wanted the security of salvation.
I wanted my friends more than salvation. I knew I could not have the lifestyle that went with my friends that I was living and doing, which I really, really liked at the time, and call myself a believer. So then what happened? February 4th.
Oh, I guess when you do this, then animation doesn't work. And February 4th, 1974, very important day in history. Patricia Hurst was getting out in the US. Now I'm looking at most of you here, and you have no idea who it is.
Or Randolph Hurst was the largest publisher in the US. He was the publisher of many, many, many books, like magazines and periodicals and papers. He was the king. He was probably a billionaire long before, and he was a billionaire.
And his daughter, Patty, Patricia, was kidnapped. I think she was, yes, she was 19. Kidnapped on the night of February 4th, 1974. On that night, I was taken away to a different prison for the next seven years.
On that night, that man that you see on your right, he's a new friend lander. His name is Burke Joyce. Some of you may know him. Janice, I don't see Janice here, and I don't see Bob and Berth here, so maybe none of you know him.
Burke Joyce was a fiery preacher. But he was a gentleman. His hands were bigger than two of mine put together. And one night I sat there and listened to Burke Joyce preach, and he said, okay, I don't remember anything else he said, but I remember this one thing.
He read this verse, he said, he believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And he closed his message by saying, now I want you to go home tonight. Put your head on the pillow. If I only imitates his voice, I can't, because I don't have the depth of volume to project it out, but he says, go home tonight, put your head on the pillow, and say to yourself, I'm condemned already, and then go to sleep.
As a 14 year old boy, I shook. I just shook in my seat. How do I do that? I stopped him, I said, I gotta talk to you.
And we sat kind of like where Fola is, up the front here in that little gospel hall. We sat in a chair, and he shared the scriptures over and over again, he said, can you understand? I said, no. He said, I'm gonna read you a verse.
Jan 3, 36, he who believes in the sun has everlasting life, he does not believe the suns shall not see life with the wrath of God of God on him, where are you in that verse? First half, last half, it's the last half. Okay, let's go through it again. Jan 3, 16, and a number of verses, a number of verses from Romans, and he went through it and threw it and threw it with me.
He says, where are you now? I said, I'm in the last part of that verse. He said, you just need to believe. I said, I don't know how to believe.
He said, wow, okay, let's keep talking. At the same time, there was another man who remained nameless at the back of the little hall. That's almost a chapel. At the back, and he was praying, which I appreciated.
But he was praying, like, every time I say, I don't get it. And then he asked me again, he said, David, are you in the first half of the first or the last half of the verse? It's the last half of that here. Oh, from the back.
Then finally, the man came up, he was exasperated. Bible twice the size of this one. He says, it's plain, why don't you get it? Like that in my face, 14 year old boy, terrified.
I get it now, this is what I said, I get it now. Good, good. If you get it, you're saved. I said, okay, I guess I'm saved.
I walked out of there, stepping on my heart because it was in my shoes. I knew, I knew I had nothing. I knew it was fake. I knew now that I had to go tell everybody that this happened to me when it didn't happen to me.
The seed was snatched away, almost in a moment. It was the weirdest thing. I felt like the work that this man was doing, that the word that was penetrating my heart that was working on me just disappeared in a moment in that outburst. I tell you this, because we wanna share Christ, but we wanna be godly when we do it.
We wanna be gentle. These are souls that we speak to. These are people who are struggling in soul. And I don't wanna be used to snatch away seed.
And I felt that seed was snatched away at that time. So I had a false profession. I told everybody that I was saved. Everybody rejoiced, I wept.
Seven impossible years. You know, Brian, you don't have a pharmacy anymore, but if I walked into Brian's pharmacy when he was running it, you're a lucky, retired guy. But if I was to walk into Brian's pharmacy and just get behind the counter and say, yeah, I'm a pharmacist, let's go, let's get going. What a disaster.
What a disaster that would be for everybody, especially for me, because I know I'm living a lie. I know I'm poisoning people every single day, sending them with the wrong medications, too much medication, not enough medication, whatever it might be given them bad advice. So here I am going around telling people, yes, I got saved on February 4th, 1974. Yeah, knowing in my heart, I'm not impossible.
So what does that live lead to? It leads to living as a Christian in front of Christians and living a godless life with your friends. Double life. I was godless, totally in my heart.
But I would come and sing hymns, I would say the right words, I'd offer the Bible to quote the right scriptures. I had nothing. I was miserable, absolutely miserable, every day. I think my, excuse me, I think my aunts, I'm struggling with my voicemail today.
My aunts and my grandmother kind of could see this because they continue to pray. So then I'm an off to university, study science. Made a decision then. I'm done with this, I'm done with religion.
I want nothing to do with this. In fact, there was a gentleman from a local church here who, the last person, you would ever expect if John Moses here would throw his name, but I'm not gonna throw his name because John Wells is not here to throw his head back and laugh at that. Because he would, this guy, the most unlikely person to ever do this, he walked all the way through the residence and all the filthy here and everything else that come to my door and said, hope that the door, nobody knocks in your door and residence. I mean, just in that of everybody's room all the time, I open the door and I said, hey, what are you doing?
So I'm here to pick up, take you to a gospel meeting. I said, I'm not going. He said, I'm here to get you. I said, no, I'm not going.
I don't, you don't understand, I'm not going. You waste your time. I felt so bad. Such a nice gentleman.
I felt so bad. I thought I had gone. I started living a godless life in every possible way. Got into sins that I didn't want to be in, but I still got into it.
I tried to enjoy it as much as I could. In the back of my mind, I still feared God. I still knew. I still knew what I was doing was wrong.
Nobody had to tell me that. And so I believe that there was a god and I would need to be right with him, or I would end up in hell forever. But university did an awful thing to me. I was deceived very, very quickly.
That science rules, I kind of came to that point. Science rules, man, I'm learning so much. Look at the knowledge that I'm picking up here. I believe the Bible is true, but kind of so is evolution.
You got to have God in the fact of evolution because there is God and I know that. And I got to mix all this together. I remember I enrolled in a course that was required for what I was studying was called evolutionary biology. Now what in the world would I want to do with evolutionary biology?
But I sit in there, what else would I expect? But Ryan, you may have taken that course. I don't know what the hell. But yeah, this gentleman that was the profs said, I want to start off and tell you something here.
We will not be entertaining anybody who has the notion that God created life. I went from there to the Registrar's Office and dropped the course. An unbelieving, partying university student decided, I can't handle that because I know he's wrong. In my heart, I cannot sit through a whole year of that knowing that he's wrong.
So I dropped the course instead of to paleontology. So it didn't take too long for that to work on my heart. And as time went on, I just went down a spiral to the point that I just didn't know what to believe anymore. My heart was darkened.
I put this verse up, even though they knew God. Huh, even though they knew God, I knew of God. They did not honor God or give thanks. They became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.
I'm not talking about my professors, I'm talking about me. That's what this verse is about, it's about me. Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and birds and forefooted animals and crawling creatures. I was so fascinated with science that I just laid aside everything I believed about God.
And then it started to hit me. What about God? What about God? I got to do something.
I got to be able to at some day stand before God and not be told to go there, where there's weeping, gnashing of teeth, separated forever. I know that's coming. How do I deal with that? Well, I consider converting to Judaism.
Believe it or not, this is how darkened, how quickly? I thought if I can convert to Judaism, then God cannot hold me accountable for anything in the New Testament. And therefore, heaven obeyed one mosaic law, by the way. But therefore, because I'm not accountable to the New Testament now, I can argue with God.
Like, he's a judge, but I'll be a great lawyer and I'll stand up and tell him, hey, but I converted to Judaism. He didn't put that New Testament away. Now, imagine being that darkened in your heart. I had a friend who tried to move me into Catholicism.
He says, oh, you got to do man, just show up and they'll get you there, huh? That's what he said. Okay, okay, I went to Mass twice with him and I said, this isn't gonna work. And then I thought in my warped mind, somehow I am gonna close the deal with God before I die.
I will get saved the way I'm supposed to be saved. I'll believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I'll be saved, but I'll do that just before I die. Yeah, how do you know when that's gonna happen? You don't.
I became so taken up with science, I started to question everything. And I realized that science couldn't bring any meaning to life either. You know why? Because I kept running across these words and it hit me every time I ran across them.
Where it's like, perhaps may have believed to be. Geology's full of that. What happened here? Well, we believe perhaps maybe this happened and then this might have been thrust over that and there may have been nearby volcanic activity that drove some mud flows through here.
Oh, okay. So we don't know for sure. Well, it looks like that. The model represents that.
Oh, okay. Hey, what about this fossil? Well, that fossil may have been put there by may have. There's no answers here.
Nobody's telling me anything, this happened. This is how it works. So here I am, partying, studying, lost, and I know it. Very much like the people we encounter on Spring Garden Road and Art Law Street.
Very much like them. I cannot bring myself to ever look down on the people that you try to reach on the streets. 40 years ago, I would have been there. I would have been one of the ones.
I would have been one of the ones that said, yeah, I grew up in a home. I know what you're saying is true. I know all of this, but I just can't believe. Leave me alone, I'm just going into the bar.
That would have been me 40 years ago. Then all of a sudden, I thought something's happening here. Something is going on. I didn't put it in my notes here, but I went out to visit my aunt in Vancouver in 1979, I think it was.
And when I was out there, believe it or not, I was in the same church where a little eight-year-old John Wells would have been going to Sunday school. Believe it or not, John Wells would have been there with his parents. And the group of young people went to a place called Cultus Lake and they would go up there and have a little time of testimony and singing together and there was a great mass of them. And I sat there with my heart just bursting.
And I thought, I want to be like them. This is joy. I want what they have. How can I get it?
And I almost stood up and say, like, somebody tell me how I can have what you have, but I didn't do it. And I came back and I pondered that. I thought, there's something about this. This is for real.
Well, my two sisters came to Christ that summer, the next summer, rather. And I'm in a relationship now with somebody. Sorry, I started to tell you this. But I'm in a relationship with somebody.
And my sisters now filled with this new zeal as new Christians invite her and I, and I say, I'm not going, to go out and hear the gospel. And she says, I'll go. I'm going home. Goodness.
Oh, you're about to go from Mrs. Right to Mrs. Right now. This is going to be good.
You're going to go to this. You're going to get saved. And now I'm going to be in trouble. I can see this coming.
She came back from that. She said to me, she said, we got to talk. And I said, uh-oh. And I'm thinking, she could save.
And she said, I said, so what do you think? And she said, that was the most ignorant garbage I ever heard in my whole life. And if we ever get married and have kids, they will never hear that message. They will never set foot in that place.
I thought, ooh, it's over. I'm not saved, but it's over because that's the truth of God. That's the truth of God. And you're calling it garbage.
It's over. And it was over. So that's when things started to happen. I end up with a summer job in what was then called in our first territory.
That's why I drew that line that you might be able to see up to this place up here. This market's interesting for me, but probably not for you because the time is going by. So these guys that you see here, who are they? They were my roommates in that room who are the guys standing at the tent.
We stayed at the tent with a, how dangerous is this? A tent with an oil stove in the middle of the room. Made out of canvas that was like 100 years old. I'm sure it would burn in a microsecond.
And so we're staying in this thing. And this young guy right here, his name is Ian. Ian McGinnis. And I look over one night and I said, hey kid, the camp cooks help.
We're up there looking for you, and he said, yeah, I said, you're reading the Bible. He goes, yeah, I am. I said, hey, good for you. And the other guy, David McLeod from London, Ontario says, yeah, I'm in to bring my Bible up.
I thought I have time on my hands to walk up here. I was going to bring a Bible and try to read through the Bible. I said, do you go to church or do you have an interest in the Bible? No, I just thought it would be cool to read through it.
I said, well, you know what? I packed one for good luck here in my bag. I did. I really did.
I thought just in case, remember I'm going to close a deal with God before I die. If I get in a helicopter crash, I hope I can get to that Bible. So I get it. I open it up and I'm saying, here's this blue Bible.
I said, this is not my, that's not the one I packed. Where did this come from? I said, hey, but how better? Just give it back to me at the end of the summer.
All right. He opens it up, opens the front, fly leaf of the thing and where the, you know, the present of two David McDonald by David McCloud, his name in the Bible, he goes, whoa, whoa, what's this joke? And I said, what do you mean? He said, my name is in here.
Oh, yeah. The president of the Gideon's at the time was a personal friend of my dad's name was David McCloud. In fact, my first name David is after David McCloud. That's childhood buddy.
So here's this kid, he, or this young guy, he's 20 something like me. And he says, my name's in the Bible. I said, well, you can't have it, but you got to give it back to me. But so I explained the story to him.
So he said, you know what would be really cool. He said, you have another Bible? I said, yeah, I did tack one. Yeah.
I thought this blue Scofield one. And he said, why don't we just, like, it would be a lot quicker if we just all read out loud. We just take one chapter each and we go around the room and read it out loud. Okay.
I'm good with that. Whatever. We got time and the sun's up all night long. It's the Arctic.
So we start reading through. Here's where this guy comes in. Whoops. The unknown missionary.
His name is Sam Nagi. Sam Nagi is an Inuit guy from Baker Lake. Sam was there listening with his brother, I think of his brother, or his good friend Victor. Two Inuit guys sitting there.
And we're reading through and we start reading about Noah and the ark and the flood. And he said, well, that's really cool. I've never heard that from your book of legends before. He said, you have a book of legends.
That's really cool. Or he didn't use a word cool because we used something else back then. He said, groovy. Groovy or swell or whatever it was.
But he probably said it in Inuit. So I didn't understand it. Anyway, he said, he said, we have a story just like that in our traditions. And I said, you do?
Yeah. Well, tell me about it. So he told this story. Okay.
That's too identical to be a coincidence. You've never heard this before. No. You've heard that one before.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Parents told that when we were children. Maybe there's something to all of this.
Maybe there's something real in all of this. I thought this is amazing. I return from there. I'm going to party through my final year.
I'm only going to take four courses instead of five. So I get that extra one and a half hours of lecture time to party through the last year of school. That's down. I'm going to move in with these guys and find a tower on the same floor, by the way, as where you nine lives.
Same floor, the other end of the hall. I had a tear on my cheek when I come out the elevator that night thinking about where I lived. I looked right at the door. I was going to move in with these guys and we got a party.
Just before that, I got this call from this guy and says, hey, my name is Dave. You don't know me. My dad works with your dad. But I know your sister.
I know what you want. I want a roommate. I need a roommate that doesn't smoke. What do you mean?
I'm in Fed MacTower. I need a roommate that doesn't smoke and I heard that you don't smoke. I don't smoke. Where do you live?
He told me right next door to the guy that's going to move in with and party my face off for the year. I thought, hey, this guy, if he knows my sister, my pro. He probably knows her from church. He'd be a quiet guy.
I can study there and party next door. I only have to walk out the hallway and into the next thing. I never made it into the next door apartment, by the way. So I moved in with Dave.
First night, we were in this room. Fed MacTowers. I'm in one bed. He's in the bed on the other side.
First thing he does. I'm telling you, this guy's boldest day at the time. He opens up his Bible. I still have that blue Bible.
Pull out the bottom drawer. Get the blue Bible out. All right. If I go along with him, by the way, I'm not offended.
I pull out the bottom drawer and I start reading. He says, hey, buddy, boy, where are you reading? Luke. What are you reading about?
I don't know. I just started. The first part, that part with all the begats and begots and stuff. He says, oh, okay.
That's cool. Everything about heaven. In what way? It's going to be so great, isn't it?
He's talking to me like I'm a Christian. I'm listening to him. I'm listening to him. I'm listening to him.
I'm listening. I'm thinking this guy is interesting. He's irritating, but he's interesting. Then I met all of his friends.
I'm reading the Bible competitively with this guy. I meet all his friends. I'm going, whoa, whoa, what a happy bunch. I mean, happy in a good sense, not whacked.
But they love Jesus and they're serious about it. They really do. I've not met people like this before. So I thought, I said, okay, what do they have?
What is it? What's going on here? Why are they so enthusiastic about this? My best friend got saved at the same time.
My best friend. Last of my friends. My Jewish friends were going to get saved before Doug was. That's the way I always felt.
My sister led him to Christ. He comes down to Halifax. He says, I got to take care of coffee. See how I was going.
I'm going to go over to Quinnpool Road when the Tim Wharton just to be there. If the building was still there, I take care of the spot. He said, I got to tell you what happened to me. I said, I know what happened to you.
Remember the letter he wrote me. He said, yeah. He wrote me a letter and told me his testimony. I took the letter to the bar and read it to our friends.
We could have a laugh at our old friends who has become religious. We just had a great laugh over that. I said, look, you wrote to me. He told me, let me tell you.
Let me tell you right to your face, man. I got to tell you to your face. I said, all right. So he tells me to my face.
He said, what do you think? I said, I think I need exactly what you've got. I need exactly what you've got. You need to pray for me.
You're going to get this, man. You're going to get this. This is the way Doug would talk to you. He's right in your face.
You're going to get this. And I loved it, of course, that he's doing this. You don't hear very often somebody comes to you and say, pray that I get this. Do you warn?
Not too many people come up to you on the street and say, I know what you've got and it's wonderful. I want it. Please pray for me that I get it. I don't even know where those words came from, but they burst out of me to talk.
So then I go home for the holidays. My roommate shows up at my door the first Sunday morning. Nine o'clock in the morning. Hey, buddy, boy.
Stop. You said, we're going to church. I said, no, no, no. You promised.
Remember that night we were reading back and forth and we're talking about this and you said, yeah, you come to church with me. Yeah, yeah. Sometime. He goes, you're coming today.
You promised. We only have two Sundays here. Come on. Get your stuff on.
I'm going to my jeans. Come in your jeans. Really? Yeah.
I'm wearing my Toys R Us t-shirt. I'm wearing a toy R Us t-shirt. All right. Fine.
I'll show them how a non-Christian dresses. I go to church with them. Breaking of bread. Breaking of bread.
I'm sitting there terrified. I'm sitting there. I'm sitting there. You're sitting there.
You sit in the circle. I just wouldn't touch anything coming by. And I thought, okay. The way they're talking here, they really know this for Jesus.
They love him. They are crazy about him. The stuff that they're sharing. The stuff that the way they sing.
This is different. Something different going on here. And I remember almost talking back and forth with the Lord in all of this and thought, what is going on? What is going on?
Something is happening here. And then the message to the guy get up and spoke, trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean on to your own understanding. And I thought, never a man, speak like this, man. I found out afterwards that the people in that church said, oh yeah, he was kind of filler that day.
Like he's like our worst speaker. We just put him in when we got to fill. Just like today, you got to fill a spot on the schedule. So this John, he was speaking, this guy.
And I said, wow, I've never heard a message like that. Then my buddy Dave comes and says, we're going to a different church tonight. I said, oh man, like, all right, I'll go. So we go to this church, this Presbyterian church, and they have a big pipe organ.
Like they struck out three times with me that night. They had a pipe organ where I grew up. We didn't have any music in the church. It was not allowed.
They sang Christmas carols. We never sang Christmas carols in church. And they stood the same. Yikes.
And nobody said standing as your abel. They just knew when they're on the pipe organ. Everybody got up. And I thought, this is so wrong.
Oh, this is so wrong. And the man got up and spoke about the visitation to Mary by the angel. And I said, wow, I know that guy this morning was good, but never a man spake like this man. And I left there and I thought, OK, OK, I've got a lot of religion today.
So now what do I do? I leave there, the church that got it all wrong. And buddy boy says to me, let's go visit my friend John Oldham. I said, oh, is he a Christian guy?
Because yeah, I said, oh, I've kind of had enough. He says, he's a really cool guy. He's like you, he's a scientist. Oh, really?
Well, let's go and see how much cerebral cortex we can fill the room with. So I go over, I think it's cerebral cortex, isn't it? OK, good. Yeah, that stuff's all by the time I look at it.
It's a fossil, and that stuff's all gone. So I go over to his house. That picture was taken probably within days of when I was there. Here he is with his five kids.
And this guy, I mean, his face always looked like that. Always. Like just the epitome of joy. So we're sitting down, we're talking, trying to get to know me.
And my buddy Dave is asking all kinds of questions. And John's looking at Dave. I thought you knew this. But anyway, OK, so we're talking about prophecy.
We're talking about science. We start talking about science. He's a microbiologist. I'm studying geology.
And at that time, I'm studying some astronomy. And so we start talking. And he said, wow, does this guy know his Bible? I've never met somebody who knows their Bible like this guy.
The answers, the stuff that he's saying, it's amazing. And then we started talking about astronomy. And I said, you know what amazes me about astronomy? And I want you all to look at this the next time we got a cloud or clear night in December, probably.
Because I heard it's going to be overcast for the next few days. So but the next time you have a clear night, look out and look at all those stars and think of they look like they're close together, they're so far apart, so, so very far apart. In fact, it takes the nine minutes for the light from the sun to get here at 300,000 kilometers per second. And that's the sun.
It's so far apart. And that's just in our little home turf here. And I was talking about this. The universe is so vast.
And we're sharing data back and forth with two of us. And he says, you know what the amazing thing about all of that is? He said, the earth is so small. I don't even know how God sees it.
It's so small. But he said, if I was the only person on this little speck of dust in this whole great universe, Jesus Christ would have come and died for me. What? Immediately I started to think.
I didn't need to hear that I was a sinner. I knew that. I didn't need to hear that I needed to repent. I knew that.
I didn't need to hear that Jesus died on the cross. I knew that. I didn't need to hear that he died for our sins. I already knew that.
I needed to realize he died for me. Now I realize that. At that moment, I bowed my head and I thanked him for dying for me. My son and my brother-in-law, my house last week, they were talking about their own salvation.
And what they said, it was like a huge load was taken off of their back. Like a backpack with 100 pounds was just lifted off their back. That's exactly what I experienced that night. I felt like the biggest load has been lifted from me.
I went out that night. It was 2 o'clock in the morning to get in the car to go home. I had never seen so many stars in my life in the skies. So clear.
A black sky with bright stars. Never had I seen it like that before. So that's why the sky chart that you see up here on the side. Now daughters have a way to make you cry.
Right, do you mind? Yeah. Sons get you mad. Daughters make you cry.
Right, Warren? Especially when you have a favorite daughter. Which I do. She's the only one.
Brian, you know what I'm talking about. So a couple of years ago, Christmas, I was given this. This is a mock up of what was given to me, this picture. It's a sky chart of the stars over Sydney, Nova Scotia.
At the moment, I came to Christ. With my favorite verse on it, I've been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
And underneath that it says, in the angels of heaven rejoiced. And there's the chart. Sydney, Nova Scotia, December 20, 1981. Well, I was a puddle for the rest of the day when I saw that.
It's up prominently in my house. It's my witness on the wall. So that's it. That's how I came to Christ.
Now the rest of my life. I'm only 22 then. So here you go. Now I've got 40 years to cover.
So what's next? I quickly learned some truths that I've tried to carry with me for the past 40 years. Remember what's the name Dave Letterman had the top 10 list? So I'm going to just quickly go through these.
I'm not going to take a whole lot of time. And I know that time is late and that clock is fast. First of all, I've learned that the Bible is a familiar book, but it's new each time you read it. You come to men's study.
You come to lady's study. You open the Bible yourself in your own room and read it. And it's funny how you read through something. I knew that story.
Yeah, OK, let's go through it again. And it's something will come out. A word will jump off the page. I never noticed that word before.
You read the account of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at the break of the brain. I never noticed that before. Has that ever happened to you? After 40 years?
After 30 years? After 20 years? You opened the Bible and you read something and say, I didn't notice that before. The Bible is always new.
Every time you open this. The other thing I found is the answer to all the issues of life are found in the Word of God. The scriptures, I don't even want to mention the Word. But the scriptures will not make COVID go away.
But it helps me understand that I can have hope despite COVID. It helps me understand that I can have hope in this world. I've suffered a lot of loss this year. I've lost friends.
I've lost family. I've lost a job. I've lost all kinds of things this past year. But you know what?
The scriptures have been a great comfort to me. They point me to my father. They point me to the one who loves me and is concerned about me, who gives me the greatest hope of my life. I learned that the Lord is mine and I am his and that he will never, ever leave me.