MY CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY

I was educated in the Scottish Education system in the 60s and very early 70s. We only had a smattering of the Bible, and the occasional RE classes were boring and were sometimes mocked even by the RE instructor! The general belief was that we had evolved as per Darwinism.

I grew up in a Communist/Marxist home. My dad helped get me a job in a Glasgow shipyard where he worked. The Glasgow shipyards were a hotbed for Communism, commonly known as the “Red Clydeside.” The town where I lived even had streets named after Marxist/Communists, such as Engels!

For several years, I considered myself to be an Atheist. However, especially after marriage and children, during the 80s I moved to more of an Agnostic position. After reading Marx and Darwin et al, I found them never really satisfying my “How did we get here?” questions. The “Big Bang” never explains what exactly big-banged! Where did the exploding material come from? Nothing?

In the mid to late 80s I began wondering about the deeper things in life. I had a beautiful wife and three beautiful children, a house and a job. And I began wondering, “Is this all there is? You live and then you die? What’s it all about?” Darwin’s suggestion that it was “to propagate the species” didn’t seem like a satisfactory answer, (neither does Dawkins’s even less tangible “selfish gene” hypotheses).

I began reading about fossils. I read about Islam, the Jewish Kabbalah, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, among other things. I studied some of the writings of the Scottish philosopher, David Hume. However, growing up in Scotland I had heard about a thing called Freemasonry. I joined the Masons while living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I joined because I was searching for truth, the meaning of life. I had seen those weird televangelists on TV get into scandals, and didn’t trust Christianity.

I joined the Masonic Lodge because I thought maybe God was hiding in there somewhere. While people call Freemasonry a secret society, Freemasonry calls itself a society with secrets. I read a lot of dusty tomes in the Masonic libraries as I searched for God. I used to present papers I had written on what I had learned; some of which was very esoteric and occultist.

My Lodge honoured my hard work by presenting me with a Bible; which I read cover to cover. It was a King James’ Version Bible which I found extremely difficult to read with its archaisms. With Bible in one hand and dictionary in the other, I search to see if perhaps it had anything useful to say about God and how we and everything else got here. Prior to reading the Bible, my understanding had been. “In the beginning there was nothing. This nothing exploded and became everything!” I thought at least the Bible made more sense than this in its opening line, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Then came the “If God created everything, then who created God?” question. The Bible answers this by teaching that God is eternal, without beginning or end, that he is not part of creation, but outside of it.

However, it was particularly one verse that struck me. John 14:6 stuck with me, like the needle sticking on and old vinyl record, where Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.” I remember thinking, “Who does this Jesus think he is, God?! Get out of the way Jesus. I am looking for God.”

Sitting in my armchair in my Winnipeg basement with my Bible, I began having an existential crisis. I began philosophically wondering if I really existed. Maybe it was all a dream, an illusion. Maybe I was lying in some hospital bed in a coma, dreaming. I got myself into an awful state with it all. I even got to the stage where I was sobbing, crying out to God, “I want to know You God!” That verse, the second half of it, kept coming into my mind, “No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.” My cries to God became feeble, very feeble. The words of Jesus kept coming, “No one cometh unto the Father, but by Me.” Then the lights came on. An epiphany! I then realised that Jesus, as the Bible says, is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. He is Emmanuel which means God with us. Jesus is God! I started clinging to him for dear life! I later found out that he is the one that is clinging to me and that no one can snatch me out of his hand.

That was near the end of 1988. In 1990, with Dorothy and our three young children, we migrated from Canada to Australia.

In Canada I had been wandering from church to church looking for a spiritual home. Finding a Bible believing church can be hazardous, as not all churches hold to the clear teaching of the Bible. After visiting a different church on each Sunday, on my third Sunday in Australia, I walked into the Reformed Church in Toowong, Brisbane, (part of the Christian Reformed Churches of Australia denomination. The church building is gone now.) I was handed a hymnbook. In the front of the hymnbook there was a copy of the Heidelberg Catechism, which is a beautiful summary of many of the basic teachings of the Bible. After the service I asked if I could take it home to study and bring it back next Sunday. Like a good Berean (Acts 17:10-11) I studied all the footnoted Bible prooftexts to see if what the Catechism was saying lined up with the Scriptures. After much searching, I thought, “If these people believe this, then I have found my home!”

I left Freemasonry when I left Canada for Australia. For me, Jesus has all the answers.