About my conversion

As I mentioned in a previous post here, I and another brother from our church make it a practice to visit a variety of other churches in our area to see first hand what is happening in the churches of our community. I selected a Fundamental Baptist church for a personal reason, really. I had been brought to faith by the Spirit back in 1964 and the first church I was sort of drafted into was a Fundamental Baptist Church in West Texas (Big Spring, to be exact). I was 22 years old at the time, back from a military stint in Turkey, in an area of Turkey known in the New Testament era as Pontus (some maps show Bythynia). I did not have a clue as to the importance of that geographical point of interest, for I was a sinner lost and undone at the time, having no interest in religion at all, indeed, scornful of religious people as those who were weak in the mind and required some sort of crutch to get through life. I had always believed that men who took to Christianity were just a little bit too effeminate for me, for in the military in my day it was considered common knowledge that the men who became pastoral assistants at the base chapels were predominately homosexual men, if not all of them. But I finally returned from my tour of duty on the backside of the world, transferred to the backside of the desert in West Texas.

My Backside of the Desert Experience

Little did I know it at the time, but the very first day I reported for duty at my new station in Big Spring (Webb AFB, a pilot training base), I met the man that the Lord had commanded to preach the eternal Gospel of Jesus Christ to me. His name was Jack Burkholder. He was a military man, too, and had only professed his faith in Christ a short time before. He began to witness the Gospel to me, but I was *not* a willing recipient. He began to list my house on the Thursday evening visitation which his Fundamental Baptist church conducted every week. Being a generally polite Midwesterner, I was reluctant to just tell them to go away, so I would let Jack and one of the deacons into my home and listen, if a little impatiently, to their assertion that I was a condemned sinner before God and that the only answer for my sinful condemnation was to believe on the Lord Jesus.

Having a gifted mind and a pretty good vocabulary, I discovered a multitude of ways to be sarcastic, mean and insulting to the men who came to my house. Tactically placed expletives were often used, and downright nasty epitaphs were common in my speech. I was determined to drive them out of my life. Mind you, that was difficult, for Jack was also assigned to my unit on the base and I saw him every day. But I was determined to make them so uncomfortable that they would leave me alone.

Drifting …

The months passed by, and they continued for a time to visit my home, enduring my incessant insolence and insults towards Christ and them personally. I am sure that they were extremely discouraged after some months had passed. After a while, I began to make sure that I was gone on the nights of visitation from the church, or sometimes did not answer the door, though I am sure that they knew I was home. They endured the embarrassment with what now I know to be Christian courage. In a conversation with Jack at work, I angrily told him not to return to our house at all, to stay away. He reluctantly complied with my wishes and they suspended any further contact.

Again, weeks and then months passed, with little or no contact from the church. During the time that they first were coming, I was coerced into going to the church on at least one occasion, but I hated every moment, and believed that the men had “briefed” the pastor on all the things that I had ever said so that he could hone in on me. My response, however, was not conviction, but anger and disdain for anything Christian and against that church and Jack. I was, for all practical purposes, separated from them and for the most part had achieved my goal to be left alone. I settled in to enjoy life without their interruptions.

“The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth”

Weeks and months go by. As the days and weeks slipped by, I suddenly became aware of a morose feeling in my mind and heart. Suddenly I was depressed, sullen and withdrawn. A sense of dread entered my mind and I fell into what today they would probably call a kind of clinical depression. I was not easy to live with and had this constant foreboding mindset and attitude. I suddenly felt that I was utterly worthless and completely without hope in life. Nothing made sense anymore, and I was in desperate despair, perhaps the lowest time in my life, now that I think about it.

That Withering Work

All those things that those men had read from the Scriptures kept leaping into my mind. I heard the Gospel preached, not now by the men, but from my own mind which had absorbed the things that they had said without even realizing it. But now something was different: I saw my condition and my condemnation so clearly that I was what the Scriptures would call “nigh unto death.” I did not know what to call this until much later. I had come under what Spurgeon called the “Withering Work of the Spirit.” I had been born from above, regenerated, brought from death to life and into a withering sense of sin and degradation. I recall that I had the idea that I was beyond the help of God; that I was without hope of ever recovering from this awful sense of sin and degradation. I was a miserable man, in the fullest sense of that word. What to do?

On the level of the flesh, I was far too embarrassed to tell Jack what was or had happened to me, for I knew he would say, “I told you so!” So, I continued alone in my misery for a number of weeks, slowing crumbling under a heavy load of sin and shame.

“I woke, the dungeon flamed with light…”

I do not know when it occurred, nor do I recall any verbalized prayer or anything, but one day I internally cried out to God for mercy, confessing my sins profusely before Him, privately surrendering my wounded soul to Jesus Christ in a way entirely antithetical to the thinking of the old Vic Edwards. Such a confession would have been out of the question for the old Vic, and only something explosive could bring me to that point of desperate and utter surrender.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, I was relieved of my guilt and despair and was immediately granted a spirit of joy. I can think of no earthly words to describe it. All of the guilt, of all the pain and despair was gone, nailed to the cross by Jesus Christ as the men had told me so many times. I had been running from God all my life, and in these last days was in a mad rush to run from the influence and drawing that I was experiencing. At no time could I remove the thoughts of Christ and the cross from my mind. Those thoughts haunted me like the hounds of heaven. I hated it at the time and tried desperately to use every ploy I could think of to escape the awful presence that I felt. Yes, there was even terror, which I could only admit much later after I was a believer for some time. I actually thought that God would kill me for my rebellion and hatred toward Him and his servants, and I experienced moments of abject terror in my mind.

No Seeker, I

I will tell you that I was never a “seeker” of God. Until the very last moment, I was running hell-bent from Christ and from God and from everything Christian. I thought that it was those things that were causing my agonies and pains, and in a way, that is what it turned out to be. Years later, I was to share my testimony with Dr. Curt Daniel, now a friend of mine, and I recall telling him that God chased me down, wrestled me to the ground and put a new heart in me so that I was enabled to come forth out of that spiritual grave. This is still my testimony. I never sought God; He ALWAYS sought me, with a relentless purpose that I now know was His sovereign purpose according to election. I was truly born from above, given new birth from above by the washing of regeneration, a compete and utter translation from the kingdom of darkness into the light of the kingdom of God’s dear Son, all in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. One reason that I am a convinced Calvinist today is my own experience of the work of God’s salvation in my soul. I have no illusions that my faith warranted salvation; my faith was a gift of God’s almighty power enabling me to see the kingdom of God. I hated God one moment and loved Him the next. I cannot explain that, I can only report it.

Peace that Passes Understanding

Now that I have been in the Lord for more than 41 years, I have had many opportunities to reflect and do some analysis of that work that God had performed in my soul. Every time I do that, I am wonderfully blessed more than ever by seeing the awesome sovereign good pleasure of God at work to bring this filthy sinner to faith. I have little patience for those who claim that it was because they “decided to receive Jesus into my heart” that God then saved them. That is not my experience at all, indeed, quite the opposite. Since that time, I have been blessed to learn of Him more and more that “Salvation is of the Lord,” and not of him who runs, or of him who wills, but of God who shows mercy and effectually calls His sheep. Blessed be the name of Christ for His infinite love for this condemned sinner, and for the gift of His grace to give me new birth from above so that I might believe the Gospel and enter into that eternal kingdom of God!

If you become a regular reader of my blog, you will soon learn that my conversion experience plays a huge part of my understanding of doctrine and the ordo salutis, or how God goes about the work of saving His elect sheep. I am a convinced Calvinist for two reasons, primarily: 1) because that seems to be the manifest teaching of the Bible, and 2) it is entirely consistent with my own personal experience with God’s Spirit in His work of salvation in my soul. The work of God in my soul was for me no less dramatic that the work of the Spirit in the soul of the Apostle Paul. Both he and I were brought to faith while actively hating and “kicking against the pricks,” as Jesus said when He appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus. I have no illusions of wanting to come to Jesus, for there was nothing in my soul prior to the work of God Almighty to want me to do that. Only His sovereign, powerful work, the same power by which He raised Jesus from the dead, raised me from spiritual death to spiritual life. I owe an eternal debt to my Lord Jesus Christ for this great love with which He loved me. I am fully aware that there is no way that I can fill up the measure of my debt to him, but I can surely die trying. May God grant that desire of my heart.

My prayer: That God will finish that good work which He began in my soul; that my life will be spent praising and rejoicing because of this great redeeming love of God; that I might obey Him in every way, in honor of His great sacrifice for me, the greatest of sinners. May His name be glorified in my life and in my obedience to my precious Lord Jesus Christ and to God the Father who sent His Son into the world to save sinners like me. Soli Deo Gloria!