Testimony, Larry Steers

I got to read with you in Psalm 87. Psalm 87, and we'll just read one verse. Psalm 87, and we'll read the sixth verse of the chapter.

Psalm 87 and verse 6, the Lord shall count when he rateth up the people that this man was born there. That's all that I'm going to read. A while ago at a family funeral, the cemetery was probably about a mile north of the house where I was born.

On the way out of the cemetery my son was in the car. He had heard me tell how I got saved a number of times, but he had not been in that particular area, and so he asked me, Dad, show me the house. So we drove about a mile south of the cemetery, and I stopped the car, and I pointed Stephen to an old house down a long laneway, and I told him that's the house in the upstairs bedroom of that house.

It's the place where I was saved. I'm going to tell you a few details about that. I'm going to shorten it a fair little bit, a number of details that I could tell, but there are some hymns that we sometimes sing.

One of them I sing with a note of thanksgiving, at least one stanza of the hymn, with mercy and with judgment, my web of time he wove, and I the dews of sorrow were lustered with his love. Oh, bless the hand that guided, bless the heart that planned, when thrown where glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land. The other hymn that we sing, and I have to acknowledge that there are times I bow my head and give a note of thanksgiving to God, hardly able to sing the words because of the solemnity of them.

Preserved by Jesus when my feet made haste to hell, and there should I have gone, but thou does all things well. There are many memorable moments in life that I'm going to pass over. Sometimes you would mention them when you tell how you got saved, but the scripture declares what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and in the end should lose his own soul? What should a man give in exchange for his soul? And there are times when I think of that verse that it frightens me to think of so few things of so little value that one would exchange for the salvation of their soul.

I was born into a house where my mother and father were not saved. My mother was raised in a Sunday school in the gospel hall in St. Thomas. She knew the gospel well.

My father, if he was anything, was an Anglican, though I do not ever remember him ever going inside the Anglican church building in the little town where I was born. They heard the gospel. I'm not sure how old I was when they were saved, but I do remember when my parents were baptized.

I was baptized in the same stream that they were baptized in, just a little stream outside, sitting on a blanket on a bank of a stream, watching my mother and father go down into the water to be baptized, wondering why they were going down with their clothes on because they never went swimming with their clothes on. They were baptized by an old brother. I think likely no one here would recognize the name, Mr. Thomas Tuzo, who was one of the Lord's servants.

He baptized my mother and father. He had a rather long white beard, and as a young child, I suppose I was four or five at the time, I remember the strands of that beard floating on the water as he bent over to baptize my mother and father. That's the recollection that I have.

Our little home changed from that point on. What my father had never done before, he began to do. We would sit at the table, my brother and myself and my mother and my dad would get the Bible out.

He'd only been saved for a very short time, and he would read a chapter from the Bible. And then I remember that he would pray with us, and I remember that as a young believer himself, he would cry to God that his two sons would get saved. As time went on, they were in fellowship in the assembly.

I remember sitting between mom and dad when dad would stand up to take part on Sunday morning. We went to Sunday school. We went to gospel meetings.

We went to series of gospel meetings, a good number of series of gospel meetings. And during that time, as I got older, I longed to be saved. I wanted to know the Savior that my parents knew.

And I had tried as hard as I could, sitting in Sunday school class or sitting in a gospel meeting. I had tried, maybe like some younger folks here have tried. I tried to believe.

I worked as hard as I could. I remember doubling my fist and closing my eyes and concentrating, making an effort to believe, never seeming able to succeed. My dad took seriously ill, spent a long time in the hospital.

I was a little older, frustrated with the gospel, not being able to get saved. And so I told my mother. My mother was a little lady.

I was as tall as I am now. And with dad in the hospital, I told my mother that I was not going back to the gospel hall. I suppose I was about 13 at the time.

And really with a boy my size and with her little size, that there really wasn't much she could do. And so I determined that I was going to take my own pathway through life. I was probably discouraged with the gospel, discouraged with trying to be saved.

So I felt I will never be saved, so I might as well enjoy my life. I never got into any really deep sin. I never took drugs in my life.

It was unheard of in my day. My heart goes out to young people today who have to face things that I never had to face. But I lived a rather careless life.

I love sports. I joined the town baseball team. Love baseball.

Baseball games were on Sunday afternoon. That's when the Sunday school was being held. But I wanted to baseball.

I remember in high school, we played football. I wanted to play football. I was deeply involved in that kind of activity.

I had a number of very good friends. All of my friends went to what is known as the United Church up our way. And so I went to the United Church with my friends.

Hardly can imagine that, going from a gospel hall to a place where the gospel was never preached. But that's where my friends went. And so I felt that I was having a good time with my friends.

My dad got seriously ill. I sat up with him one night, all night. I didn't know at that time that I was sitting beside a dying man.

A doctor was called early the next morning. In fact, he came twice that day, until the ambulance came to take my father to the hospital. I remember standing in the hospital doorway beside my brother, looking at my father in that bed, and the last words that I heard my father say were like an arrow, a dart to my soul.

The last words my dad ever said was, goodbye boys. Never heard him speak again. Phone call came early the next morning.

I answered the phone. The doctor, who was with my mother when I was born, born in the downstairs bedroom of that house. The doctor, who was almost a family friend, used to call me laddie.

I will remember that phone call as long as I live. I answered the phone and the doctor said to me, laddie, I have done everything I could, but your father just slipped away, passed into eternity. I remember thinking at that moment of the opportunities that God had given me to be saved.

When I stopped going to the Gospel Hall Sunday School and Gospel meetings, I had decided, now I'm 18 years old, that I was going to leave home. I was going to get away from Gospel Halls and Gospel Hall preachers as far as I could, and so I determined, this is before dad died, he was in the hospital, I determined that I would go to the city of Toronto because in Toronto there would be all the things that I thought I would enjoy. The football games and the hockey games and every other activity that I could be immersed in and could occupy myself with.

My bags were packed. I'm standing at the kitchen door saying goodbye to my mother. She said to me, where are you going to stay when you get to Toronto? I hadn't crossed that bridge.

I thought my mother was a little slow, you know, maybe there's some here who think your parents are just a little slow, but I discovered that my mother was a step or two ahead of me, and with a man you would recognize the name, someone recognized the name, you would know Hugh Garnham, you know Don Garnham. Well, their father was in the assembly where my folks were, and they had connived behind my back to get me a place to stay in the city of Toronto, and as I was leaving the house, my mother gave me a slip of paper with a name on it, and I thought, well, I have no place else to go, so when I got to Toronto, I looked the place up, and I rang the doorbell. It was quite obvious when I looked back that that man knew I was coming, and when I went in, the first thing that I saw were the gospel text on the wall, and then I was in the backyard that afternoon building a fence, and I found out very quickly that the man that I was building the fence with to keep the children in of the brother and the sister who owned the house, this was the sister's father, and I understood very quickly that he was a gospel hall preacher, but he was a missionary.

You would recognize the name. He was a missionary in Venezuela, Mr. Gordon Johnson, and the very man that I was trying to get away from, I'm in the backyard of a house building a fence with him. At supper that night, I was informed that there was a series of gospel meetings on in the gospel hall, and the man of a house said to me, everyone in this house goes to the gospel meeting, and he said that very definitely, very clearly, cleanly, and I at least I had enough sense to realize that this man has given me a bed and a pillow to put my head on.

I might be very wise if I don't refuse, but I felt I was coerced in going to that gospel meeting. I will never forget that either. When the car stopped in front of the Pape Avenue Gospel Hall, there was a large banner across that hall, special series of gospel meetings, and the two speakers were two men that you'd know one of them for sure, you'd like to know the other man, Mr. Harold Paisley, Mr. Albert Joyce.

When I walked into that hall, the man who took me there, I started up to go into the main auditorium up a flight of steps, and he's pulling on the back of my jacket pointing downstairs, and so I went downstairs with him and opened the door and walked into the basement. I saw something I'd never seen in my life before. I saw a large circle, and in that circle there were 40 men on their knees praying, and beside that, behind that circle, there were 40 chairs, and there were 40 women sitting in those chairs praying.

The man pointed to a chair, and I'm down on my knees, not saved, not really wanting to hear the gospel. And the first thing that I heard was Mr. Alec Walker, one of the elders in that assembly. I got to know him very well, and he's praying that God will save that young man that's being brought to the meeting tonight.

Shortly after that, Mr. Saunders, another elder in the Pape Avenue Assembly, I got to know him very well. He is praying that that young man that's being brought tonight, that God will save him. I realized I'm the young man.

I'm the one that they are praying for. I have told my brethren, I'm going to say it again tonight, that if I had my way, I would take every sinner to a prayer meeting before a gospel meeting. I would encourage sisters to gather and pray.

You wouldn't be surprised when I tell you that there were a number of souls got saved in that series of gospel meeting. The Christians were working, and they were bringing souls. Souls were trusting Christ.

I sat and listened. I had to go to the very front seat. The first speaker was Mr. Paisley, and I told him after, after I got saved.

I didn't get saved that night, but I told Mr. Paisley that I didn't like the way he preached on hell that night. Second speaker was Mr. Albert Joyce. I'm sure that some of the older Christians here would know Mr. Joyce.

As someone rebellious, trying to get away from the gospel, trying to immerse myself into the world to find something that I could enjoy, I sat and I looked at Mr. Albert Joyce, and as that man preached, I thought this man has a love for my soul. There was a tenderness to Mr. Joyce that spoke very solemnly to my soul that night. I got up from that hall, and I left, and I had to go back home.

My dad was in the hospital. My mother really needed a little help at home. It was at that point that my dad died.

Strange the determination that can lie in the heart of a sinner. I determined that I was not going to shed a tear at my father's funeral. I had a job that, by that time, was a newspaper in the city of St. Thomas.

I enjoyed the men in the office. We were doing a few things together, and I thought if I brace myself, if I just keep control of myself, and if there's no emotion, then in a couple of days this will be all over, and I will get back to my job, and I'll be able to forget all of this and go on with the life that I had planned to live. I remember in the funeral home, someone behind me saying that if he would only shed a tear, but I would determine a steel, like steel, that I would not shed a tear at my father's funeral.

After the funeral service, the undertaker did something that I don't know. I've never seen it done before. Maybe they do in other places, but before they closed the casket, the undertaker made the announcement that if any of the near family would like to gather around the casket to pay their last respects, they could do so just at that moment.

My mother got up, my brother got up, my aunts got up, several of my cousins got up, but I stayed in my seat, determined, resolutely, there would not be a tear shed, and I knew if I walked up to that casket, if I looked at my father, I knew that my father loved me. I knew that he prayed for me. I heard him pray for me.

I knew that I wouldn't be able to control my tears if I walked up to that casket, so I stayed on my seat. They all came back. They all sat down, and just as they were coming down to close the casket, I couldn't sit there any longer, so I got up all by myself, and I walked by myself up to my father's casket, and I looked down at the face of a father that he knew loved me, and a father that I would never hear him speak again.

Those words, goodbye boys, were in my soul, and I stood for a few moments at that casket, looking at the face of my father. My father was buried with his face covered with my tears, broke, standing at my father's casket, and I knew that my dad was in heaven. I was on my way to hell.

Long journey to the cemetery that cold January afternoon, gathered around the open grave. I don't know what they said. I don't remember.

My eyes at that point were riveted upon that casket, and I knew that if my body was in that casket, my soul would be in hell. I knew God had spoken to me so many times before, so I determined that if I was ever going to be saved, I would have to speak to the man that took the funeral that afternoon. We went down to the little family house, the house that I was born in, and as was the custom, all of the neighbors and the family and the relatives were all gathered.

But at that point in time, in my experience, I had one concern on my soul. I wanted to be saved. I remember walking up, going up the stairs to the upstairs and into the bedroom upstairs, and sitting down on the edge of the bed, and the man who took the funeral, just a local brother, handed me his Bible.

And he said to me, I want you to read a verse. He told me what the verse was. Well, I could quote it.

And then he gave me another verse, and I could quote that. I had memorized all of those verses. I think he was frustrated with me.

And then finally he said, no, I want you to read this verse. So he opened his Bible. The verse that he had opened the Bible to was the fifth chapter of John, and verse 24.

So I read the verse. I could quote that one too. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, into judgment, but is passed from death unto life.

Then he said, I'm going to read the verse to you, but I'm going to make a little alteration in the verse. The alteration, I have told many since, doesn't alter the meaning of the verse. But right at that moment, it meant something to me.

And so he read the verse in this way. You'll notice the change. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life.

That little word, on. When that word, that's what the revised rendering is, by the way, that I just quoted, and believeth him that sent me. I don't recall the man saying anything else.

But I remember going over in my mind, believeth him that sent me. That was God, who sent the Lord Jesus Christ. I sat beside a young girl a while ago, and I gave her John 5 and 24.

That was the last night in a series of gospel meetings. She went home, and after she got home, she had told her mother and father that she had got saved that night. So I sat down beside her several weeks later at a conference, and I asked her to tell me what happened.

And so she said she found out in John 5 and 24 that the Lord Jesus had died for her. I went out into the corner, and I told the brother who was having the meetings with me what she had found out in John 5 and 24, that the Lord Jesus died for her. I won't tell you his name, but he said, how did she get that out of John 5 and 24? I'm going to quote the verse again.

Barely, barely I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. I'm going to tell you very quickly how I discovered in John 5 and 24 that the Lord Jesus died for me. I knew that God could not lie.

And it was just that little expression, believeth him that sent me. And in my mind, I went over the times that I had heard the gospel. And I knew Romans chapter 3 and verse 23, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

I knew that verse going over in my mind over and over for the few moments that I sat there that God said I was a sinner. I accepted that. I had no question about that.

I had known that for a long time that I was a sinner. And I knew that if I was in that casket where my father was, I would be in hell. That's where my soul would be.

But going over in my mind, I thought of another scripture. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. So God said, believeth him that sent me.

And in a moment of time, on a cold January afternoon, and I can't tell you the time on the clock because I wasn't looking at the clock, but I would gather probably sometime between 3 and 4 o'clock that afternoon, I realized that as a sinner, God had sent the Lord Jesus to die for me. And at that moment, I was born again. Mr. Frank Pearce, he used to tell when he was saved in his in his house by himself, mother and father weren't there, that he wanted to tell somebody.

That's the first thing that you want to do. You want to tell somebody. Mother and father were out of the house, Mr. Pearce, in his own unique way, told us a number of times that he came downstairs looking for his mother and father, couldn't find them, but the dog was there.

So he said, I told the dog how I got saved. I went to the top of the steps, long stairway, and my cousin, whom I had the opportunity a number of times to speak to her about her soul, as far as I know, died not saved. I asked her to send my mother upstairs.

My mother came up and sat down beside me. And I don't know whether you can understand this. I don't know whether you can really picture this in your mind just for a moment.

Sitting beside me is a relatively young woman. She's 47. My father was, she's 46.

My father was 47 when he passed away. My mother's eyes are red. She had been weeping.

The tears were still coming down her face. A widow at 46. Her husband's gone.

And I put my arms around her, and I looked into my mother's face, and I said, Mother, I just got saved. And in a fraction of a moment, those tears of sorrow became tears of rejoicing that her eldest son had just got saved. I don't believe that there's a holy place on this earth as far as particular locations are concerned, but there's one place that means very much to me.

Three or four weeks ago, I was down in that part of the country again. And I do this every time. And I drove down to that old laneway.

The house is gone now. But in the upstairs bedroom, I was born twice in the same house. Born in the downstairs bedroom of Sinner.

Born in the upstairs bedroom when I trusted Christ. I stopped the car, and I looked down that long laneway, and I bowed my head and thanked God for the moment that I was saved in the house that was on that spot. When I arise from earth to soar up to my home in heaven, backward I'll cast my eyes once more to where I was forgiven.

The poet has put it this way, that those who know no second birth labor to write their name on earth. My joy is this, that love divine on heaven's scroll has written mine. Some people say they have no regrets.

I do. I have two regrets. One is that so many years of my life were wasted in my sin, not saved.

When I had heard the gospel from the time I was five until I got saved. Well, my other regret, I sat beside another young girl in the Welland Gospel Hall the last night again of seven weeks of gospel meetings. Valerie had determined that she was going to get saved in that series of meetings, and now the last night has come, and she's not saved.

Sat down beside Valerie for a few moments, gave her a few verses to read, and then left her by herself. Valerie looked around. She announced that she just trusted Christ.

I won't go into the whole story, but here's what happened after. I walked down the aisle of the hall with Valerie. We opened the doors at the front of the hall and down a few steps into the landing, and there was her mother and father standing.

And I watched as Valerie flew into the arms of mom and dad to tell them that she just got saved. What's my regret? I wish that I'd had the opportunity to stand before my father and tell my father that I just got saved. I would love to have had the privilege of looking into his face, of seeing his response, and I know that it would be a response of thanksgiving, an answer to prayer.

I never had the opportunity to tell my dad that I just got saved. That's why young people here should be very serious about the matter of God's salvation. I feel as I stand before you at this moment that in order for me to be saved, and as I stood in that cemetery that afternoon, I was convinced that God was speaking for the last time.

Take the opportunity while it is available. The Lord shall count when he righteth up the people that this man was born there.