My Testimony

I grew up in a non-christian home, and it was not only a non-christian home, it was a haunted home. Sometimes evil multiplies and layers itself and lines itself against a person. Satan doesn't want to lose his grip on you, so he doubles down, so to speak.

The only time I heard my father talk about God was when he was taking God's name in vain. There was a lot of evil in that home. When we first moved in there, we were sitting downstairs in the living room watching TV when we heard loud footsteps up above us.

It sounded like heavy footsteps slowly going up and down the hallway above us. My dad tried to laugh it off by saying, spooks. But we soon discovered it was no laughing matter.

Our house was haunted by an evil presence. One night, as we were sitting downstairs, we heard those heavy footsteps go plop, plop, plop. And I ran upstairs to see if there was an intruder in our home, but there was no one there, at least no one I could see with my eyes.

But I felt that there was some awful presence there. I believe when something bad happens in a home, that bad thing can sometimes linger there. My wife had a hairstylist who bought an old home in Midtown Memphis, and he told my wife that he kept seeing a six-year-old boy appear in the rooms of that house, and then that boy would vanish.

He kept seeing the apparition of this little boy. Well, I ended up knowing the man who lived across the street from that house, and he said that in the early 1960s, a boy had drowned in the bathtub of that home. I believe you can see the unseen world at times.

My own daughter was swimming with a friend in a swimming pool at night when she was in grade school, and her little friend came up out of the water screaming that there were two men in brown uniforms at the bottom of the pool. It took several minutes to calm down this hysterical little girl who claimed she saw two dead men lying there. Well, the owner of the house then confessed that about 20 years ago, her husband was fixing a floodlight in the pool at night, and he was still in his work uniform when he got electrocuted, and his neighbor jumped in to rescue him, and he got electrocuted and died there too.

Both those grown men had died in that pool, but my little daughter and her friend didn't know the history of that tragic accident until the lady of the house confessed it when the little girl saw those two men lying at the bottom of the pool in their brown uniforms. I believe in an unseen world. I believe there are demons all around us, and if you could see them, it would make your skin crawl.

I know this for a fact, friends, for I used to know a Satan worshiper. I had a Satan worshiper share with me how he got involved in dark magic. It began with a Ouija board, and then he began praying to Satan until finally a demon manifested itself to him.

The demon had an ancient name, and the demon ordered him to do certain things like to go out at night to a neighboring farm and steal a goat and cut its throat and then offer its blood to the devil. This Satan worshiper shared with me that his spirit guide, his demon, touched his eyes one night, and his vision was permanently opened to the unseen world. This man told me he could go to a shopping mall and see demons walking between people in the mall.

This man told me he saw demons all the time out in public, and he said the most demon-infested city on earth was the city of Rome. He said that when he had visited Rome, it so disturbed him that he never wanted to return there because the place was crawling with demons like it was overflowing with hell itself. Like I said, I believe in an unseen world that is all around us.

The prophet Elijah showed his servant the unseen host there on the hills around them on their armies of horses. Anyway, back to my story about my parents' home that was haunted. As disturbing as hearing those heavy footsteps was the fact that that compared to nothing to what would occasionally happen downstairs in that home.

There was a hallway door under the stairway. There was a little closet in there like you would call a storm closet where you would go in a bad storm. Well, every once in a while without warning, and quite suddenly a pounding would begin on that door, and it was so disturbing it would freeze you in your tracks.

I remember I was 14 years old, and I was home alone in that house, and it was a hot August day. It must have been over 100 degrees outside because our little window air conditioner was just blowing hot air in the room when all of a sudden there began that pounding on the door, and I was so sick and tired of having to always deal with that pounding that I rushed over to that door, and I grabbed the doorknob and pulled open the door, and when I did that it was like standing in a deep freezer for a blast of cold chilly air came out of that closet and made the hair on my arms stand up. Not only did I grow up in a non-Christian home, I grew up in a troubled haunted home.

How does someone become a Christian out of that godless background when everything is against you? Well, my neighbor across the alley was the pastor of a little church, and he saw an awkward teenage boy who was living in a non-Christian home, so this man began to pray for me. This man began to ask God to save me. This man didn't want me to go to hell.

This man gave me my first Bible. Has God ever put someone on your heart like that friend where God gave you a burden for someone's soul? Well, this man did, and he reached out to me. First, he invited me to come eat breakfast with his family one Saturday morning, and as I sat at his little kitchen table with his wife and his two sons, he did the strangest thing.

He began to pray. I'd never heard a man pray before, and he prayed for me. He said the blessing for the food we were about to eat, and he thanked God that I was there.

I'd never had a person pray for me before, but this dear man did. Well, it wasn't long after that he offered me my first job of working in his Bible bookstore. I worked the old metal cash register and sold Bibles and gospel tracts.

That's where I developed my love for tracts. That little Bible bookstore had a rack of tracts that told fascinating stories of sea captains and adventurers that appealed to a teenage boy. There was one tract about the Indian pearl diver who found a pearl so big it made him a fortune, and then it told about the pearl of great price, of inestimable value, worth selling all for, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, I began to attend their little church, which was a group of Plymouth brethren. These people didn't dress like the world. They didn't act like the world.

None of them would own a TV. They were godly people. One week, my pastor friend brought in a traveling evangelist from Canada to hold a revival meeting, and it was during this revival meeting that I made a public profession of Christ at the age of 14.

I was so happy I couldn't wait to get home and tell my parents what I had done, and when I did, they cussed me, and they cussed that pastor, and my mother forbade me from ever going back to that church again. We moved out of town soon after that, and I never saw that pastor again, and soon it wasn't long I was back in the world again with no Christian friends. Well, eventually I got married, and my wife was a Christian, so we joined a church, and I tried to fit in the best I could.

Then we moved to a different part of town, and we joined a big Baptist church. Soon I had a bunch of Christian friends, and if you were to ask them about me, they would tell you, sure, I was a Christian, but I felt like I was always missing something. Something didn't feel right.

I even went through evangelism explosion as a trainer, and I went out on Tuesday evenings knocking on doors and sharing the little EE tracks some of you may be familiar with, of which I speak, the little tracks that had two question marks on them, and they had two questions. You were to ask folks, you'd ask, if you died tonight, do you know for sure if you'd go to heaven, and if they answered yes, you would have to ask them, well, what would you say to Gabriel to let you into heaven, or what would you say to God to let you into his heaven? Well, I soon memorized the answers, and this made me feel more like a Christian. I was getting religious, and I quit this bad thing, and I quit that bad thing, and cleaned myself up the best I could, but deep down something still didn't feel right.

I felt I was living a lie. I knew all about God, but I didn't know God. You see, friends, we accept Jesus today as our personal Savior.

Instead of giving ourselves to him, there's a difference, and it's the difference between heaven or hell. I'd accepted him as Savior, but I'd never made him Lord. There's a difference, and it's the difference between heaven and hell.

I had, as a 14-year-old boy, accepted Jesus as my Savior, but I'd never made him Lord of my life. I never had surrendered my life to him. There's a difference, and it's the difference between heaven and hell.

Well, I remember one day I was home alone because my wife and daughter were out of town visiting her family, and I was alone that day, and I began to pray to God. I had been reading a sermon by Solomon Stoddard, the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards, and something he said in that sermon disturbed me. It bothered me enough to get me down on my knees to pray, and while I was praying to God, God showed me I was lost and on my way to hell.

I began to pound my fist into the carpet, and I argued with God that I didn't deserve to go to hell because I was a good church member, and I'd done this for God, and I'd done that for God, and therefore He had no right to send me to hell. I went on in this course of arguing back and forth with God for about the space of two hours until finally I saw clearly that not only was I on my way to hell in my current condition, but I saw clearly that I deserved to go there. Somewhere between that revelation and getting up off the ground, I got saved, for right then and there I gave myself up to Jesus to do with me what He wanted to do.

I surrendered all I was to all He was. That day He became my Lord, and my life was changed. Well, when my wife got back in town, I didn't tell her right away what had happened to me because I was too embarrassed to confess to her that she hadn't married a Christian man after all, so I waited until the right time to tell her, and it was after about three weeks.

We were standing in the kitchen one morning, and I turned to her and said, I have something important to tell you, and you need to listen to me. She looked worried. I looked her in the eye and said, I want you to know that while you were away, something happened to me.

I got saved. I really got saved. She studied me closely, and then replied, I know.

Since I've been back, I've noticed a difference in you. What had felt so weird about my life before that was that I knew something wasn't right in me, because you can't live as a Christian in this wicked world, friend, without power from above, and before I got saved, I was trying to live for God without His power from above, and it can't be done. It's a sham religion and phony testimony that doesn't have the life of God in the soul of man through a regenerated heart.

You must be born from above and washed in the blood. I had to learn about the badness of my heart and Christ's reception of sinners. I had to throw down my shotgun of rebellion at the nail pierced feet of a crucified Christ.

It's renouncing self and taking up a cross to follow a crucified Christ, for when sin is exposed and self is crucified, then you don't care about dying. There's no fear of dying, and then you are dangerous to Satan. I believe D.L. Moody was dangerous to Satan.

I believe George Whitefield was dangerous to Satan. I believe Sam Jones was dangerous to Satan, and I believe any person crucified with Christ is a dangerous weapon in the hand of a holy God.