In this sermon, the speaker shares his personal testimony of how he became a child of God and found salvation. He describes a moment when he was sitting at his mother's fireside, feeling lost and darkened, when suddenly God spoke to his soul and he felt convicted of his sin. He immediately accepted Jesus as his Savior and was saved. The speaker emphasizes the completeness and perfection of salvation through Jesus Christ, stating that nothing can be added or taken away from it. He also highlights the marvel of God's creation, such as the intricate design of the human hand, eye, and heart, and emphasizes the need for belief in our complete sinfulness and Jesus as a complete Savior.

Friend, I believe with all my heart that you couldn't have saved, you couldn't have saved and not know it. You can't show me in the word of God, you can't find it in any of the hymns that is ever written. You've never heard a clean-cut testimony that ever talked like that. Whenever you get anybody that's really saved, genuinely, spirit-born and blood-washed, glory to God, they know it. Not only do they know it, but they show it. You couldn't have Jesus Christ in your heart and the devil in your heart at the one time. When Christ comes in, the devil goes out. If Christ's not there, then the devil's there, Christ's on the outside. But a man that's saved, a man that has come for salvation to Jesus Christ, has accepted Christ, and the devil has been kicked out in all his furniture. And so when Christ comes into the heart, glory to God, he says that he brings light and life with him and the Spirit of God gives us the witness and also the outward evidence that Jesus Christ is really in our heart. We begin to show it, we have the evidence of a changed life. We're new creatures in Jesus Christ. Old things have passed away and old things have become new. If you're not sure that you're really born again, dear friend, to me, I give every thought and anxiety to make sure that I was really born again, because if you're not sure, you may be dead sure that you're not born again. You hear so many talk about, I hope I'm saved, I think I'm saved, I trust I'm saved, I believe I'm saved. That's all nonsense, that'll never keep you out of hell or get you to heaven, dear friend. That's not God's salvation, that's not God's way of it, according to his word. You know this is a no-soul salvation. It's a heart experience and the Spirit witnessing to our spirit that we're born again. And then we have the evidence of a changed life, a new life, in the Lord Jesus Christ. You and I wouldn't allow such uncertainty in any other department of our life. Supposing you were going to build a house, bless your heart, you wouldn't, an architect could tell you that he's got all the degrees and medals and he's got all the certificates and show you exactly what a wonderful fellow he was in college, but he couldn't draw you out the plan of a house and tell you that so many feet of this and so many feet of that would cost you this. No! Well, you wouldn't trust him to build a dog kennel, in spite of all that he talked about going through college and knowing. Same thing if he went to a doctor, and he tells you that he's a degree man and a gold medal man in examinations, and yet he says, I know so much in that I don't know anything about what you've got or how you feel or any remedy for you. Well, you wouldn't go near him, you wouldn't send a cat to him. If you want to make a journey, you go down to the agent and you say, I want to make a journey, say to London. Well, he says, I've been 15 years in transportation business and I couldn't tell you how much it'll cost you, what time you leave, what kind of conditions you travel under, and so on. Well, bless your heart, he wouldn't hold his job five minutes. And isn't it a strange thing when it comes to this all-important matter of salvation? The matter that's going to determine your eternal destiny, whether you live with God through eternity in heaven or live as long as God lives in hell with the devil in the dam. And you say that we're not to know and that we don't know, and you're satisfied with that uncertainty. I can't understand such mentality as that at all. If you get into a train and you're not sure where you're going, bless your heart, to me you're the most miserable creature under heaven until somebody comes along and assures you and gives you the satisfaction that you're on the right road. If you're driving your car along the road and you don't know whether you're on the right road or not, you're not enjoying the journey very much. At least that's the way I've always felt about it. And when you come to somebody, you say, could you tell me, is this the right road or not? I remember one time crossing the continent here when we struck the Atlantic coast. We were in a motel that night. Next morning, instead of turning north to go to New York, I took the turn south and was making for Florida. And after it had been three hours on it, went into a station to get gas, and the fellow said, where are you going? I said, I'm going to New York. He says, you're going to Florida. My word, that fellow had a hard job convincing me that I wasn't going to New York. But there I was going down south. But my, whenever I got to know that I was on the right road, was enjoyment you had on your journey. And you mean to tell me that you can go through life and you know that you're going to live for as long as God lives, live forever, either in hell or heaven, and you're satisfied to be uncertain as to what it's going to be. Boys, I think you need to get your head examined and see whether you're really compass menace or not. Why, it's only natural that a person wants to know just exactly the road they're on, and want to know, make sure that they're really on the right road, and certainly about this matter of our salvation. Why is it so many lack the assurance? They say they believe in Christ, they say they're trusted in Christ, they've decided for Christ, they've held up their hand, they've gone into an inquiry room, they've signed a card, they've joined church, they've been baptized, they've taken a communion, they profess all that, say, are you saved? Are you born again? And then they wonder how they are, and I hope, I think, I trust, I believe, but they don't know. Why is that? Why is it? Why is there so much of this uncertainty about this matter? In the reading some time ago, I was reading a sermon by old Dr. Horatius Bonner, a man whose name is fragrant in Scotland, as fragrant as the name of Morimichi, and for 40 odd years was a minister of that big west-born church yonder in Glasgow. Many a time I preached there, his son-in-law was minister at that time. Now, Dr. Bonner, in his sermon, he said that the reason for so much uncertainty about the matter of salvation, the lack of assurance about this matter of salvation, was disbelief in three things. Now, I'm going to take just exactly these three things that old Dr. Bonner says the disbelief in was the cause of this uncertainty and lack of assurance. He said, first of all, it was disbelief in the fact that we all, by nature, by birth, by natural birth, are complete sinners. That is, we're perfect sinners. Couldn't be any more perfect, couldn't be any more complete than we are. We were born in sin and shaken, shaken in iniquity. You know, when you look at your hand, what a marvelous thing it is, how wonderfully shaken. Some 50 odd joints there, and glory to God, mine have been 76 years there, and there's never been an oil can on the joint. Did you ever see a piece of mechanism that you could use the same as you could use your hand? What a wonderful thing your eye is. And it's so shaken, you couldn't get anything better to give a man vision than the eye that God has made. It's just the same with your heart. What a marvelous, what a marvelous piece of mechanism that is, pumping away there so many gallons every hour through your body and mind, and never a squeak on it, never a squeak on it, if it's kind of healthy and well cared for. And what a marvelous thing. Could you invent anything that would be a substitute for the heart? I believe that they're trying to get a kind of a mechanical one made to keep a fellow alive while they're doctoring up with the old one. I don't know whether they can manage it or not. But my, what a wonderful thing God made when he made your heart. Same with your lungs, the same with the different members of our body. They're shaken, they're shaken. Could you know anything more shaken to give a bird ability to fly than a bird's wing? Did you ever think anything more shaken, beautiful than a fish, for living in the water and doing without air? And so a sinner is just as perfectly shaken as anything that was ever made. God didn't make us that way, mind you. When God made us, he made us perfect. But when man fell, and man is not only a fallen, but he is a fallen sinner. And he's perfect, he's complete, as a sinner. That's why you never had to teach a child to go wrong. You never had to teach a child to lie. You never had to teach a child to deceive. You never had to teach a child to make belief. Why is it just as natural as a wee duck taken to the water or as a wee bird taken to the air? The child just took to wrong and to wrongdoing. Before I got married, I had a kind of a doubt about that. I thought, well now, we're born and born pretty good and all that, and it's only when you do wrong that you become wrong, and it's only when you sin that you became a sinner, and so on. But boy, when I got married, it made a change in things. I remember a wee boy came to our home, and when he just was learning to talk a bit, one day his mother made a batch of cookies and went downtown and did some shopping and came back and laid the table for tea, got everything ready, and went into the pantry to get her cookies, and they were gone. She thought to herself, blessed by heart, I'm sure I've baked them. Surely I can't make a mistake about that. And then she looked at the wee fella, and she said, did you take Mama's cookies? No. And yet his wee tummy was just bulging with them. My, when I looked at him, I said, listen, I'm thirty-odd years older than you, and I couldn't have done better, and I couldn't have told a better lie. The first lie he told was a mature lie. Where did he get it? My, bless your soul, he was a born liar. He was born in sin. He was shaped in iniquity. He just took to sin just like a duck taken to water. You can baptize them and catechize them and vaccinate them and scalp them and educate them and do anything you like, but you can't change that old nature. It is not conformed to the law of God. Neither indeed can be. You couldn't be a more complete sinner than you are. You're perfectly adapted for living in sin. You're perfectly adapted for continuing in sin and for continuing sinning in sin. You couldn't be more perfectly adapted than you are. And so, dear friend, if you've any doubt regarding that fact, why, bless your heart, how could you expect to be saved? Because those are the only kind of people that God loves. Those are the only kind of people that Jesus died to save. He didn't come to call the righteous. He didn't come to call good people. He came to call sinners. Lost sinners. Guilty sinners. Ruined sinners. Fallen sinners. Falling sinners. Sinners that were condemned already. Blind and dead and desperately wicked. Sinners that were incorrigible, incurable in the disease of sin. But the Bible is a great description of how complete a sinner we are. That's why you think it's just as natural for you to go wrong as it is for a bird to fly as a duck to swell. You've no difficulty about that. All you've got to do is let yourself go. And you're just as naturally going to drift down the stream and down the stream to a lost eternity. And so, dear friend, if you've any doubt on the fact of total depravity, that's a real old, good old-fashioned theological term. Don't hear it much used nowadays. These are days when we spell God with a wee G and man with a capital M. God's the wee fella. Man's the big fella. And so we think that man's this, that, and the other. And boy's what he is and what he is and the other. He's just a complete sinner. That every particle of him has gone wrong. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. It's wounds and bruises and putrefying sores that can never be notified. His heart's deceitful above all things. And desperately wicked, who can know it? And the Lord says that the thoughts of his mind and his imagination is evil and only evil continually. You can never change it. The leopard cannot change its spots. Can't change him. You can't turn a lion into a lamb. You can't turn a hog into a sheep. You can't change the nature. You can do as you like with it. You can educate it. You can cultivate it. You can domesticate it. You can do anything you like. But you can't change that nature, dear friend. There's only one can do that. And Jesus Christ has made that possible by his life and death and dying and resurrection for you and me. You know that's about the hardest thing anybody's got to accept. The biggest job under heaven is to get men and women is to get men and women to believe what God says about them and to accept that and humbly accept that before God. Oh, pride's a desperate thing. Oh, there's more people damned with pride than ever was damned with any other sin the devil had. Pride was such a thing that it could reach up into heaven and get the hold of the greatest being that God ever created and that is Satan, Lucifer, son of the morning, guardian of the throne of God and could take the hold of that perfect creature, perfect in his beauty, perfect in his wisdom and that creature could hurl him down until the bottomless pit was dug for him and for his fallen angel. Well, that's a novel thing. Pride took the heart of Eve and Adam, perfect creatures created in the image of God. God could walk with them and talk with them and have fellowship with them and yet pride got in there until they believed the lie of the devil and wanted to be as God himself and know as much as God. It's a terrible thing, pride. And whenever the word of God comes to you, whether you read it or whether somebody's preaching it to you as I am, it gets your back up and you get annoyed. You say the preacher's vulgar, he's rough, he's coarse. You call him everything under God's heaven just because he's telling you God's simple truth about the matter. Dear friend, you'll never know you're saved. You'll never be saved or know it until you take your place as a poor, lost, guilty, hell-deserving, hell-born, undeserving sinner. And until you do that, there's no hope for you ever having that blessed assurance that Jesus is yours. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. Then says old Dr. Bonner, first of all, the disbelief is caused by disbelief in the fact that we're complete sinners and second, that Jesus is a complete Savior. You know, these are days of motherness and there's nothing modern about it. It's as old as the devil and the garden of Eden. The only thing modern is it's got a frock coat and a stovepipe on it. But it's all old and it's been repudiated again and again and the theological battlegrounds are covered with the defeats of it. Yet it crops up its head with all the arrogance and conceit and pride inoculated by the devil to think that this is motherness. But however, it's abroad. It's in our churches. It's in our pulpits. It's in our pews. It's in our Sunday schools. It's in our literature. And you meet it there right and left. And it's this. Our Sunday schools. It's in our literature. And you meet it there right and left. And it's this. A kind of a thing they call evolution. Some philosophy of life that some old fella invented some years ago. And that man's the big fella and he's rising to nobler things than his dead self. And all that kind of thing. And of course, whenever you get that, you get the making light of the Savior. That Jesus Christ was a mere man. Well now, dear friends, you want to remember that when you begin to get on ground like that, you're on sinking's hand. You're getting into blasphemy against the Holy Ghost when you begin to touch the deity of my Lord. If Jesus Christ was a mere man, then he was born out of wedlock. You know what that means. Do you need to say that Jesus Christ was illegitimate? That Jesus Christ, let me use that awful word, that terrible word, was Jesus Christ a bastard? That's what it means. If Jesus Christ was a mere man and Joseph his father, then Jesus Christ was born out of wedlock. Don't forget it, dear friends. They hide it. They talk about the biological impossibility of the virgin birth and the incarnation and so on. And what they're doing is saying in a refined and scholarly manner that Jesus was ill-born. And if Jesus Christ was a mere man, he was the biggest liar that the world has ever known. There's no other man ever lived, claimed to be God, except this nigger that's running around calling divine something. But in the ages that have gone by, never took the place that they were God, God Almighty. Jesus took that place, accepted that whenever they called him that, when they worshipped him as God, he accepted him. And if it wasn't true about him, then he was the biggest liar that ever lived. And if Jesus Christ was merely a man, he was the biggest fraud that ever lived. He lived like God. He acted like God. He talked like God. He wrought works that only God alone could do. Don't you see the terrible position you get into, dear friend, if you deny the completeness of Jesus Christ as the Savior? That he was not only the Son of God, but God the Son. That he was God of very God. That he was virgin-born. That he lived a virtuous life, sinless life. That every word he spoke was with the authority of God, infallible, inerrant word of God. That he spoke with all authority, all power given unto him, in heaven and on earth. In him dwelling all the fullness of God, the fullness of wisdom, fullness of knowledge. And yet you get these motherness telling us that he was a mere man, a great teacher, a perfect man, and wonderful founder of religion, and class him with other great leaders and philosophers that are dead in love. Well, if he's all that they say he is today, a mere man and all this, did ever a man save another man? Why, he couldn't save himself, however perfect he might be, however great a teacher he might be, however wise he may have been, however wonderful the life he lived. He couldn't save himself. There's no man can atone for the sin of his own soul, and if Jesus Christ was a mere man, he was a sinner, never mind how great a man, never mind how wise a man he was. But you and I know from the word of God, dear friend, that he was not only the Son of God, but God the Son, and that he is a complete Savior, the Lamb of God, without sin, without spot, without stain, separated from sinners. My, my, my, that's the only one that could save us. The blood of ten million angels couldn't atone for my sin. The blood of all the archangels and charitables that ever lived and seraphims couldn't attain, couldn't redeem a soul like your soul and mine. It took the very blood of Deity, the very blood of God, to atone for your sin and mine. We're not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold. We're redeemed with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. God, my Savior. Whenever I bow to Jesus Christ, I'm not bowing to a mere man. I'm bowing to God. I've never worshipped any man. I've never bowed my knee to any man. It doesn't matter whether he's a king on the throne or a ruler of an empire. He's only a sinner with a crown on his head. But Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords. And glory to God, when we bow to him, we're bowing to absolute Deity. And so Jesus Christ is a complete sinner. Now, if you've any question about that matter, you're a free moral agent, you're living in a free country, you can deny Christ's crown rights and covenant, you can call him what you like, but dear friend, you can never be saved. Doesn't matter what he may be. You may put him on the highest altar, you may, like Renon, say the most wonderful things about him, but rob him of his Deity. He can never save you. Doesn't matter who he is or what he is. He can never save you. It's only God can save you. It's only God, my Savior, can brought out my sin. There's none but God can atone for a guilty sinner and brought out his sin. And so if you've any question regarding the Deity of Christ, how could you have any assurance of your salvation? And then old Dr. Bonner says that the lack of assurance is caused by disbelief, first, that we're complete sinners, second, that Jesus is a complete Savior, and third, that Christ saves complete sinners completely. Completely. Glory to God. There's nobody can add to that perfect word. When he sadly lived, when he died on Calvary's cross, he said, It is finished. And in the original, it's one word. Finished. Reverberating down through the centuries. Reverberating down through the caverns of hell. Finished. Finished. Nothing can ever, never, never can be added to it. Nothing can be ever taken from it. And there's no substitute for the salvation and the work of Jesus Christ. No substitute would ever. It's a complete, it's a complete salvation. Fifty-three years ago, the 22nd of last May, sitting at my mother's fireside one Monday morning at half past eight in the morning, I'd come home from sea, I was a cadet in the mercantile marine, and I was home at the end of the four years. Sitting there, poor, lost, drunken sinner, sitting at my mother's fireside, reading the paper, smoking a cigarette. Suddenly, do you hear me? Suddenly, God spoke to my soul. Glory to God, conviction seized me. I knew I was lost. I not only knew it, but I felt it. And the pains of hell got hold of me. And I said, Lord, I come. I yield. I accept you as my Savior. And friend, I was instantaneously I was, I would say, I was instantaneously, I was consciously, glory to God, eternally safe. In a moment's time, from a child of the devil, I became a child of God. From the road to hell, galloping sixty minutes in the hour, twenty-four hours in the day, glory to God, I started on the road to heaven. Then the old mother came in to lay the breakfast things, says, I, mother, I was her baby boy, the Benjamin of the home. Says, I, mother, your prayers are answered and your anxiety is ended. She says, what's happened? I am safe. What? She says, when did it happen? Right now, says I. And she says, how do you know? No, says I. God says it. Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise test have. And friend, although I have served God for fifty-three years and wandered up and down this world more than a dozen times round it and preached to nearly every country in it and sacrificed and suffered and rejoiced everything you could think of, do you know I'm not one more converted and not one more saved than I was the moment I was saved? That moment I was saved, I was eternally, completely saved. And if I had died, I would have gone to heaven and been like Christ and saved as if I had never sinned. Why do you hear that? Isn't it wonderful, this my marvelous salvation? This is none of your half-crowned or ten or six feet kind of salvation. This is God's salvation, a complete salvation where our sins are blotted out from the very memory of God, where we are made new creatures in Christ Jesus and the old thing's gone, gone. We're new, we're Christ-like, we've got the nature of God, we're children of God and I'll be as like Christ as one pea is like another through all eternity. Glory to God. What a complete salvation. I was born of my mother sixty-three, seventy-six years ago, the third of last April and I became my mother's son but I was just as much my mother's son then as I am now and I'm no more my mother's son now than I was then. In spite of all the good or bad that I'd ever done, anything you ever did never made you more a child of your mother than you were the day you were born and when you were born again into the family of God, glory to God, you became a child of God, as much a child of God that moment as you are now after all these years and you're no more a child of God than you were then. Maybe you can be more like it. Oh, I've learned to appreciate it. I've been born of a mother and I've learned to appreciate what a wonderful thing to be a child of God but that didn't make me any more a child of God. It's made me more like a child of God and not only that, it's taught me to enjoy such a relationship and to appreciate such a relationship and to revel and delight in such a relationship as that day in and day out. Now do you see that, dear friend? Now if you think that you've got to do this, that and the other to add to your salvation, how could you ever be sure you're safe? When will you ever have done enough? How do you know when you've done enough? Don't you see the awful fix you're in? But if you take your place as a complete sinner and believe that Jesus is a complete Savior, God of our God, and you've accepted Him as your Savior on the ground of God's free grace, then glory to God, you're eternally, completely, perfectly safe. You couldn't be any better saved and you couldn't be any more saved than you were the moment you decided for Christ. Maybe you can enjoy it better and you appreciate it better and you marvel and wonder more at it as the days come and go. Why, every day it's a marvel to me I'm lost in wonder, love and praise when I think of the love that sought me and the blood that bought me and the grace that has brought me to the fold. Wondrous grace that has brought me to the fold. And so, dear friend, have no doubt, oh, have no doubt. Take your place as a bona fide, complete sinner. Believe that Jesus Christ is God your Savior and accept Him as your Savior and believe it with all your heart for He has given you the assurance and the witness that you're completely saved. All the means of grace and the word of God and prayer, all that is not to make you more a Christian, it's to make you to enjoy being a Christian and to appreciate the wonderful salvation of God. Oh, blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine, heir of salvation and prevalent, washed in His blood, born of His Spirit and washed in His blood. Praise God. Amen. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of His glory divine, heir of salvation and purchased at God, born of His Spirit and washed in His blood. This is my story and this is my song praising my Savior all the day long. This is my story and this is my song praising my Savior all the day long. Oh, what perfect delight, this vision's a perfect submission. All is at rest. I am my Savior. Oh, I am happy and blessed.