The conversion experience in Christian preaching refers to the profound moment of turning from sin to faith in Christ, marked by repentance and new life (2 Corinthians 5:17). Illustrations often use vivid transformations—such as criminals cleansed, skeptics persuaded, or soldiers enlisted—to depict the instant yet deeply personal nature of this spiritual rebirth (Acts 3:19).
A tract found on a ship led a young man to salvation and eventually ministry.
The Rev. J. C. Smith gives the interesting history of a young man who was a friend of the captain of the United States ship Hornet; and had engaged to sail with him, from the Navy Yard, Brooklyn, as clerk on the voyage in which the Hornet was lost—probably in a hurricane in the West Indies. At the hour of sailing Providence prevented his embarking—but he had already, when alone in the cabin, discovered in the sideboard drawer a tract, (Heaven Lost, by Baxter,) having on the titlepage a cut, with the words, "If thou art lost say not that thou hast not been faithfully warned." "I was amazed," he says; "I trembled; I opened the book and read its few but powerful pages. The life, the energy, the reality I found in every paragraph are fresh in my memory. I began to pray, I searched the Scriptures. I had received a wound which nothing could heal but atoning blood." It was while in this state of mind that the cruise was abandoned. On his way home to Maryland, he found in a steamboat, and read with profit, another tract—on the authenticity of the Scriptures. The insignia of the navy were laid aside. A desire to make known the love of God to sinners was awakened in his heart; he began to prepare for, and in due time entered the ministry. God has owned his labors and blessed many souls through his instrumentality; and few ministers have a stronger hold on the affections of their people than Rev. A. W—, "the captain's clerk."
A simple gospel tract led a Socinian minister to surrender and become a devoted Christian.
At one of the anniversaries in Paris, a clergyman rose, and related the case of a Socinian minister, who had read many books of controversy respecting the Divinity of Christ, and the kindred evangelical doctrines, but still remained a champion of Socinianism, living himself in darkness and sin. While in this frame of mind, he was presented with a little tract, entitled "The Best Friend," which simply told of Jesus. There was not one word of controversy in it: But he felt that this was just the friend he needed. He laid the tract on the table, fell on his knees, and yielded up his heart to Jesus. "And now," says the clergyman, "I am that man." He is now one of the most devoted ministers in France.
A tract secretly given led a formerly sinful man to repentance and ministry.
BREAKER AND THE TRACT.—Hon. Mr. Wilson, agent in Vermont, writes that a respectable clergyman, while residing at the West, became acquainted with a very devoted minister who was converted under the following circumstances.
He was long a most abandoned, dissipated character. One night he was found trying to get into a neighbor's house at a late hour. The family were aroused by the noise, got up, helped him in and made him comfortable till morning, and then put a small tract in the crown of his hat, and sent him home.
When he discovered the tract, he wondered how it should have come there. He read it again and again, still wondering where such a message should have come from. He was finally brought under deep conviction for sin, and fled to the Savior; was drawn to the ministry, and is now a very successful preacher of the gospel.
# 420. Revivals and Numerous Conversions.
A changed life convinces others of true conversion from death to life in Christ.
William Booth tells of an unfortunate woman who had been at one of his meetings, where she was noticed by a former companion in sin now converted. The reformed one approached the other and found her in distress about her soul. “Oh,” she said, “I listened to the speakers, but when I saw you standing there so wonderfully changed I could stand it no longer.” She was induced to attend the meetings, and soon became a witness to the truth that “we know that we have passed from death to life.”
The Holy Spirit, not medicine, changes the heart and brings true conversion.
The friends of a young Brahmin strove in vain to make him recant, but all in vain. Then they changed their tactics, and said that the missionaries had given him some medicine to turn his mind. “No,” he replied, “God has given me His Spirit to change my heart.”
A child's innocent reading reveals God's presence, leading an infidel lawyer to faith.
A skeptical lawyer had over the entrance to his private office-door the words, “God is nowhere.” One day his little girl, seeing it, began in her childishness to spell the words, and finally made them read thus; “God is now here.” As an arrow from the Almighty’s quiver this entered the infidel’s heart, and he became a believer and a Christian.
Even late conversion can produce passionate testimony for Christ.
Lyndhurst was nearly eighty years of age before he became converted. Desiring to be loyal for Christ, he used to hobble about the lobbies of the House of Lords, watching for an opportunity of bearing testimony for the Master. He would stop and plead with his friends there, while tears bathed his cheeks, and, in a voice tremulous with emotion, plead the Redeemer’s cause. He would say: “My soul is saved, but my life is lost.”
Conversion brings inner change that prevents spiritual breakdown and failure.
After a sewing girl had been converted, some one asked her what difference conversion had made in her life. She replied, “Before I was saved my seams would rip, but, please God, they will rip no more.”
Spiritual awakening often happens suddenly, not gradually, transforming lives instantly.
The Holy Spirit comes like a rushing wind upon the disciples, and in an hour they are new men. The jailer hears and believes in a night. Luther, while toiling up the stairs, holding to salvation by works, drops that scheme, and lays hold of salvation by faith. Ignatius Loyola, in a dream, has sight of the Mother of Christ, and awakes a soldier of Jesus. It is often so. We do not so much grow into the possession of new spiritual truths as we awake to them.
The Bible reveals our true spiritual condition and calls us to be born again.
The Bible is like an album. I go into a man’s house, and while waiting for him, I take up an album and open it. I look at a picture. “Why, that looks like a man I know.” I turn over and look at another. “Well, I know that man.” I keep turning over the leaves. “Well, there is a man who lives in the same street as myself — he is my next-door neighbor.” And then I come upon another, and see myself.
My friends, if you read your Bibles you will find your own pictures there. It just describes you. You may be a Pharisee; if so, turn to the third chapter of John, and see what Christ said to the Pharisee: “Except a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”
But you may say: “I am not a Pharisee; I am a poor, miserable sinner, too bad to come to Him.” Well, turn to the woman of Samaria, and see what Christ said to her.
A boy's conversion at mission school leads him to renounce stealing despite harsh home conditions.
A friend of mine, seeking for objects of charity, got into the room of a tenement house. It was vacant. He saw a ladder pushed through the ceiling. Thinking that perhaps some poor creature had crept up there, he climbed the ladder, drew himself up through the hole and found himself under the rafters. There was no light but that which came through a bull's-eye in the place of a tile. Soon he saw a heap of chips and shavings, and on them a boy about ten years old. "Boy, what are you doing there?" "Hush! don't tell anybody -- please, sir." "What are you doing here?" "Don't tell anybody, sir; I'm hiding." "What are you hiding from?" "Don't tell anybody, if you please, sir." "Where's your mother?" "Mother is dead." "Where's your father?" "Hush! don't tell him! don't tell him! but look here!" He turned himself on his face and through the rags of his jacket and shirt my friend saw the boy's flesh was bruised and the skin broken. [Illustration]"Why, boy, who beat you like that?""Father did, sir.""What did your father beat you like that for?""Father got drunk sir, and beat me 'cos I wouldn't steal.""Did you ever steal?""Yes, sir, I was a street thief once.""And why don't you steal any more?""Please, sir, I went to the mission school, and they told me there of God and of Heaven and of Jesus and they taught me, 'Thou shalt not steal,' and I'll never steal again, if father kills me for it. But, please sir, don't tell him.""My boy, you mast not stay here; you will die. Now you wait patiently here for a little time; I'm going away to see a lady. We will get a better place for you than this.""Thank you sir, but please, sir, would you like to hear me sing a little hymn?"Bruised, battered, forlorn; friendless, motherless; hiding away from an infuriated father he had a little hymn to sing."Yes, I will hear you sing your little hymn." He raised himself on his elbow and then sang:"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child;
Suffer me to come to Thee.
Fain would I to Thee be brought,
Gracious Lord, forbid it not;
In the Kingdom of Thy grace
Give a little child a place.""That's the little hymn, sir; Goodbye."The gentleman went away, came back again in less than two hours and climbed the ladder. There were the chips and there was the little toy with one hand by his side and the other tucked in his bosom underneath the little ragged shirt -- dead.-John B. Gough.
Spiritual graces begin simultaneously in a believer, though some are more noticeable first.
first Christian exercise of the converted soul. One contended that it was penitence or sorrows another that it was fear, another love, another hope, another faith, for how could one fear or repent without belief? Elder G———, overhearing the discussion, relieved the minds of the disputants with this remark:—'Can you tell which spoke of the wheel moves first? You may be looking at one spoke, and think that it moves first, but they all start together. Thus, when the Spirit of God operates upon the human heart, all the graces begin to affect the penitent soul, though the individual may be more conscious of one than another.'"
A simple prayer and invitation to come as you are can lead to genuine conversion.
A lady was one day at an evening party, and there met with Caesar Malan, the famous divine of Geneva, who, in his usual manner, enquired of her whether she was a Christian. She was startled, surprised, and vexed, and made a short reply to the effect that it was not a question she cared to discuss; whereupon Mr. Malan replied with great sweetness that he would not persist in speaking of it, but he would pray that she might be led to give her heart to Christ, and become a useful worker for Him. Within a fortnight she met the minister again, and asked him how she must come to Jesus. Mr. Malan's reply was, "Come to Him just as you are." The lady gave herself up to Jesus: it was Charlotte Elliott, to whom we owe that precious hymn,—
God can convict and save even the most careless sinner through His Spirit's work.
A certain youth was at a low playhouse. A scene occurred, in which a mutinous sailor was to be hanged, and, asking for a glass of spirits, he was represented as drinking his own health in the words, "Here's to my immortal soul." "Immortal soul," thought the foolish youth, "immortal soul!" He had almost forgotten that he had an immortal soul. It was a shot fired at the center of the target: it struck him home; he was ready to drop; he sought the open air and a place wherein to weep. The next Sabbath morning found the young scapegrace at a prayer-meeting, seeking his father's God, and before long he found peace through the blood of Jesus, and began preaching the Gospel, which he had so grievously abused. God knows how to get at the heart of sinners.
True good works flow from genuine conversion and ongoing grace in the believer's life.
When once the human heart is put under the microscope of Scripture, and we see it with a spiritual eye, we perceive it to be so vile that we are quite sure it would be just as impossible to expect to find good works in an unrighteous, unconverted man, as to hope to see fire burning in the midst of the ocean. The two things would be incongruous. Our good works, if we have any, spring from a real conversion; yet more, they spring also from a constant spiritual influence exercised upon us, from the time of conversion even until the hour of death. Ah, Christian, you would have no good works if you had no fresh grace day by day! You would not find the grace given you at the first hour sufficient to produce fruit today.
The Metlakahtla Mission transformed a cannibal tribe into devoted Christian converts.
Admiral Prevost gives this picture of the change wrought in the British Columbia tribes by the Metlakahtla Mission:
Peter Simpson had been chief of a cannibal tribe. Canoes were all drawn up on the beach on the Lord’s day, and not a sound was heard, save the hurrying of the whole population to the house of prayer. The admiral watched the incoming of throngs--here a notorious gambler, there a reclaimed drunkard, a lecherous leper, a defiant thief, a widow snatched from the jaws of infamy, a murderer who had first slain and then burned his own wife--all converts to Christ and children of God.--PIERSON, “The Miracles of Missions.”
Christ’s righteous anger at temple sin led a gambler to repent and seek forgiveness.
Rev. J. Hawksley, a missionary among the Indians of the Klondyke, was one evening holding a service and using a magic lantern. He threw upon the screen a picture of Christ cleansing the temple. An inveterate gambler in the audience was so imprest with the attitude of Christ that the words in explanation went straight to his heart. “If Christ was so angry at those who did such things in His earthly temple, I am sure He would never let such a sinner as I am come into His holy temple above. I will give up my gambling and ask His pardon.” And the man kept his word.
Grace can restore even the most decayed life to beauty and fruitfulness like a tree.
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That man steeped in iniquity can be won back by the grace of Christ to a life of decency and service is one of the marvels of the world.
Luther Burbank, the well-known botanist, finds in nature this renewing and generating quality. He can take a tree that shows distinct evidence of decay, that looks as if it were beyond recovery, and treat it, and treat it again, until he rescues it from its bad habits of many years’ standing. He directs its energies so that they flow in new channels and, as “if by the shock of recreation,” what was once blighted and blasted becomes beautiful, fragrant and fruitful. (Text.)
A man publicly commits to Christ, leading to a major Bible translation for China.
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In 1855 some Hebrew Christians met in New York to observe the Passover. The meal being over, one after the other rose to testify to faith and love in Christ. One man sat with head dropt between his hands, then sobs shook his body, and those around saw that a mighty conflict was in progress in his soul. Suddenly he leapt to his feet and cried, “I will no longer deny my Lord! I will follow Him outside the camp.” God took that Polish Jew--for it was Bishop Schereschewsky--and through him gave the Mandarin Bible to the vast empire of China. The Passover had become the Supper of the Lord.
Conversion brings new purpose and vitality to a previously aimless life.
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Like a ship becalmed in tropic seas, whose sails hang useless in the breathless air, whose sailors wearily, idly wander about the decks or lean listlessly over the bulwarks looking into the waveless, torpid sea, and over which the heavy gloom of despair and hopeless waiting hangs like a stifling air, so is many a soul arrested in the voyage of life. Its energies are like the useless sails, its thoughts like the listless sailors, the whole spirit of its life like the dull, weary scene of the idly drifting ship. And when at length the welcome wind comes rippling the sea’s dead calm, filling the drooping sails, lifting the ship onward in its course, what music in the rustle of its coming! what joy in the new force it brings to the forceless ship! what animation of life, revival of hope, fleeing of all the dull, dreary spirits which haunted the scene a moment before! So is a soul who has lived with no great, good purpose which gave progress, importance, and interest to life, when at length it seizes on the great Christian purpose of living unto God. (Text.)--W. R. BROOKS, _Baptist Examiner_.
A simple act of persistence in prayer leads to a man's salvation.
See CREATURE, A NEW.
CONVERSION AND A BUTTON
In the life of Charles G. Finney there is an account of the conversion of a prominent merchant. He went to hear Mr. Finney preach and was powerfully affected. Mr. Arthur Tappan, the eminent merchant, sat near him and noticed his agitation. In telling his experience afterward he said that as he arose to go, Mr. Tappan stept up and took him gently by the button of his coat and asked him to stay for prayer and conversation. He tried to excuse himself, but Mr. Tappan held on till he finally yielded. He said afterward, “He held fast to my button, so that an ounce weight at my button was the means of saving my soul.”
True conversion is shown by changed character and self-control under provocation.
The convert is known by his fruits. Conduct, conversation, and character, are the infallible tests of a personality transformed within.
In a large iron factory one of the worst men in the place was converted. He had been a man of terrible temper, and could scarcely speak without swearing and blaspheming against God. After his conversion his comrades waited for his temper to break out as before, and to hear him give utterance to a string of oaths. But nothing of the sort occurred. So they prepared a trap for him, which they felt sure would cause his downfall. They heated a long bar of iron and tempered it so that it would look as tho it were cold. Then they laid it on the floor when he was absent, and waited for him to come in and pick it up. Presently he returned, and, stooping over, grasped the hot iron with both hands. His comrades now expected an explosion, for there was a badly blistered strip of flesh on each hand. But the man simply turned round and said quietly, “Men, I didn’t think you would do that.”
At these words, so different from what they expected, tears ran down the cheeks of those strong men; a revival broke out then and there, and many of those ironworkers found salvation, because that man had not lost his temper, but had shown the reality of his transformation.
Conversion is a natural, ongoing process of spiritual transformation like nature's renewals.
Why should people balk at conversion as if it was something foreign to the universe? The fact is that there is not a moment of time when the process ceases. Dr. W. L. Watkinson calls attention to it in this way:
You come away from your house leaving your inkpot with the sun shining upon it. You go back. Where is your ink? Why, if you look up into the sky to-morrow you will see it in the rainbow! Nature is absolutely full of cleansings, of refinements, of marvelous chemistries, upliftings, transformations, transmutations, transfigurations! And do you mean to tell me that in a world where you see every day the miracle of renewal, the miracle of transfiguration--do you mean to tell me that the only thing in it that can not be changed is the human soul, that which it is most desirable to change? (Text.)
A converted old man faces death calmly rather than deny his faith in Christ.
Mr. C. T. Studd, a missionary to China, tells the following:
A white-haired old Chinaman, over fifty years of age, an old opium-smoker, came to us, and having learned of Jesus Christ, was converted, went home and took down his idols. The elders of the village came to him for a subscription to their heathen temples. “I now worship the true God and can not henceforth pay any money for idol worship,” said the old man. When his reply was known, his village and a neighboring village took counsel and decided that they would kill him. One day, as the old man sat in his chair, a mob surrounded his home yelling and cursing. He sat quietly praying. One of the six men who stood at the door ready to kill him shouted, “Now, old man, you come out.”
“No,” he replied quietly, “if you want me out, you must come and pull me out.”
A dispute arose among the representatives of the villages as to which should have precedence in this act of religious zeal, and the contention waged so high that neither one dared to kill the gray-haired old man. They dispersed to their homes, and after living peacefully a while longer, the old Christian passed quietly to his heavenly home in 1895.
A skeptic is converted to Christianity by witnessing the wonder of Halley’s comet.
The first conversion to Christianity by Halley’s comet was recorded to-day. As far as the available records show, this is the comet’s first convert.
At 4:30 o’clock yesterday morning a number of people who had shortened their matutinal slumbers to watch the great sidereal visitor from the roof of a Fourth Avenue apartment house were startled by a loud cry from one of their party. The man, a professional skeptic, was standing with arms outstretched to the heavens, weeping profusely.
“This convinces me that there is a God,” he said to his friends. “Hereafter I shall always live as a Christian. These stars could not be unless there is a God.”
The profound impression created on the man by the spectacle had not worn off to-day, and he assured his friends he meant to attend church regularly hereafter and to conduct himself as a Godfearing man should.
“I had never seen the heavens as I did then,” he declared this morning. “I did not realize what a wonderful world it is.”
The man’s name is withheld in order to save him from what his friends say would be embarrassing publicity. His agnostic beliefs have long been the despair of his well-wishers, who are elated over his curious conversion.--Brooklyn _Eagle_. (May, 1910.)
A mother's love and an evangelist's kindness lead a prodigal son to Christ.
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This pathetic incident is told by Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman:
Mr. Moody told me that he was once invited to luncheon in one of the great homes in the city of New York. He noticed that his hostess was continually rising and leaving the room. He said to himself, “She must be in trouble. If she goes again I will follow her.” She did go out again and our great evangelist rose from the table and went out into the next room. When the mother saw him she was plunged into confusion. Her face flushed a fiery red. Seated upon the couch in the room was a boy with dishevelled hair, with bloodshot eyes, with clothing in rags. The mother recovered herself in a moment, walked across the room as if she had been a queen, threw her arms around her boy. Then, walking over to our great preacher, she said: “Mr. Moody, I do not think you have ever met my son. This is my boy, Mr. Moody; he is a prodigal, but I love him.” Mr. Moody said she put her lips up against the boy’s cheek and he suddenly burst into a flood of tears, dropt on his knees and, after Mr. Moody had spoken to him, he came to Christ. (Text.)
Persistent exposure to God's Word can break resistance and lead to conversion.
Rev. C. H. Spurgeon used to tell this story:
A woman in Scotland, who was determined not to have anything to do with religion, threw her Bible and all the tracts she could find into the fire. One tract fell out of the flames, so she thrust it in again. A second time it slipt down, and once more she put it back. Again her evil intention was frustrated, but a third effort was more successful, tho even then only half of it was consumed. Taking up this half, she exclaimed, “Surely the devil is in that tract, for it won’t burn.”
Her curiosity being excited, she began to read it, and it was the means of her conversion. It was one of the sermons published in “The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit.” (Text.)
True repentance is a complete turning around, changing mind and life direction.
No more vivid illustration of what evangelical repentance is can be framed than that which is found in the Greek original, “_straphate_,” rendered “convert,” which means to face about, or turn around, in allusion to the movement of a ship when it is put about on an opposite course; or to the action of a flower when it turns its face toward the sun. The change of mind becomes a change of life.
