JESUS: WITNESS OF TESTIMONY

WITNESSES FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Augustine.

      In the summer of A.D. 387 Aurelius Augustine, a native of Tagaste in North Africa, and now for two years Professor of Rhetoric at Milan, sat weeping in the garden of his friend Alypius. Under the preaching of Ambrose, Augustine almost broke with the low morals to begin a new life, yet he lacked the power to resist. As Augustine sat, he heard a child sing in a neighbor’s house, Tole, lege! tolle, lege! (‘Take up and read! take up and read!’). Augustine related, “Immediately my countenance was changed, and I began most earnestly to consider whether it was usual for children in any kind of game to sing such words; nor could I remember ever to have heard the like anywhere. So, restraining the torrent of my tears, I rose up, interpreting it in no other way than as a command to me from Heaven to open the book and read the first chapter I should light upon.” Picking up a scroll which lay at Alypius’ side, he let his eyes rest on the words: “Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom. 13:13b-14). Augustine said, “No further would I read; there was no need; for instantly, as the sentence ended, by a light, as it were, of security infused into my heart, all the gloom of doubt vanished away”(Augustine, Confessions 8.29). With these verses of Scripture, Augustine’s fear of holding to the old nature and not breaking with the past gave way to victory in Christ. Later, when one of Augustine’s former companions unexpectedly crossed his path, the young man ran. She followed crying, “It is only I.” Augustine said, “I run, because it is not I!”

Billy Bray.

      In 1794 Billy Bray of Cornwall, England, was born. By Bray’s own testimony, the miner served the devil with all his might, often drinking the night away. Billy Bray rarely came home sober on pay-day. While working in Devon, Billy Bray claimed “I became the companion of drunkards, and during that time I was very near hell.” He returned to Cornwall a drunkard, spending all the money he had on ale, rather than to feed his wife and children.

      Yet, the reading of John Bunyan’s Visions of Heaven and Hell awakened Bray to his lost condition. After a time of conviction for sin, Bray experienced a marvelous conversion. Billy Bray became a wonder to all who had known him.

      Charles H. Spurgeon recounted (Billy Bray, The Uneducated Soul-winner), “This worthy was once a drunken and lascivious miner, but grace made him an intensely earnest and decided follower of the Lord Jesus.”

“Beautifully simple and touching are his own words:—‘I said to the Lord, “Thou hast said, They that ask shall receive, they that seek shall find, and to them that knock the door shall be opened, and I have faith to believe it.” In an instant the Lord made me so happy that I cannot express what I felt. I shouted for joy. I praised God with my whole heart for what he had done for a poor sinner like me: for I could say, the Lord hath pardoned all my sins. I think this was in November, 1823, but what day of the month I do not know. I remember this, that everything looked new to me; the people, the fields, the cattle, the trees. I was like a man in a new world. I spent the greater part of my time in praising the Lord. I could say with David, “The Lord hath brought me up out of a horrible pit, and out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings, and hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto my God.” I was a new man altogether. I told all I met what the Lord had done for my soul. I have heard some say that they have hard work to get away from their companions, but I had hard work to find them soon enough to tell them what the Lord had done for me. Some said I was mad; and others that they should get me back again next pay-day. But, praise the Lord, it is now more than forty years ago, and they have not got me yet. They said I was a mad-man, but they meant I was a glad man, and, glory be to God! I hare been glad ever since.’”
“He tells us, soon after his conversion, ‘I was very happy in my work, and could leap and dance for joy underground as well as on the surface.”’

      Billy Bray said, “If they were to put me into a barrel, I would shout glory out through the bunghole!” Billy Bray’s favorite saying was, “I am the child of a King.”

He died on 25 May 1868.

Mel Trotter.

      Born in Illinois, Mel Trotter grew up with little education. Mel’s father was a drunkard and three sons followed that path, often tending bar for their own father. By the age of nineteen, Mel Trotter addicted himself to drinking and gambling. Trotter said, “I would stay sober a little while, and I really wanted to. I’d say, ‘I’ll never take another drink as long as I live.’” But it seemed the devil would get hold of Mel, and he would turn again to drink. Mel Trotter’s new wife often experienced heartbreak.

      On one occasion after eleven and a half sober weeks, Mel Trotter sold his horse and went back to drinking. During the next six years, the drinking spells lasted longer and longer with Mel Trotter staying away from home–four days, a week, and longer. After hospitalization, Trotter walked out, sold the medical kit, and in fifteen minutes began another drinking spree.

      God gave the Trotter’s one baby, but Mel Trotter paid little attention. Finally, Trotter returned after a ten-day drunk to find the child dead in Mrs. Trotter’s arms. Heart-broken, Mel Trotter talked of committing suicide. Over the dead child, Trotter made promises to never take another drop. Two hours after the funeral, Mel Trotter stumbled home drunk.

      On the night of 19 January 1897 Mel Trotter stumbled drunk toward Lake Michigan, determined to jump into the icy waters. As Trotter staggered along Van Buren street in Chicago, a doorkeeper at Pacific Garden Mission helped him inside the mission. Harry Monroe, superintendent of the mission, prayed, “O God, save that poor, poor boy.” Monroe told the men that night, “Jesus loves you.” At the invitation Mel Trotter lifted his hand for prayer, and Harry Monroe led Trotter to Christ.

      The Lord dramatically changed Trotter’s life. Mel Trotter lost the thirst for alcohol and received complete victory. When Monroe died in 1912, Trotter served as general superintendent, overseeing Pacific Garden Mission until 1918. Over the years Trotter helped found at least 67 other rescue missions across the country. As Trotter preached the Gospel from coast to coast, people called him “The happiest man in the world” and “The man who raves about Jesus.”

Billy Sunday.

      Billy Sunday was born in Iowa 19 November 1862. After a series of family hardships, Billy Sunday went as a child to live in the Soldier’s Orphan Home in Iowa. Sunday left the orphanage at fourteen and worked several odd jobs on his own.

      In 1883 “Cap” Anson, manager of the Chicago Whitestockings noticed Billy Sunday’s baseball talent. Sunday played professional baseball from 1883-1891 for Chicago, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Billy Sunday held the record of 95 stolen bases in a season until Ty Cobb broke that record in 1915.

      However, along with other baseball players, Billy Sunday began to drink heavily. One evening in 1887 Billy Sunday sat with five other players on a curbside of Van Buren street in Chicago.

      Billy Sunday related, “It was Sunday afternoon and we got tanked up and then went and sat down on a corner. I never go by that street without thanking God for saving me. It was a vacant lot at that time. We sat down on a curbing. Across the street a company of men and women were playing on instruments–horns, flutes and slide trombones–and the others were singing the gospel hymns that I used to hear my mother sing back in the log cabin in Iowa and back in the old church where I used to go to Sunday School.”

“I sobbed and sobbed and a young man stepped out and said, ‘We are going down to the Pacific Garden Mission. Won’t you come down to the mission? I am sure you will enjoy it. You can hear drunkards tell how they have been saved and girls tell how they have been saved from the red-light district.’ I arose and said to the boys, ‘I’m through. I am going to Jesus Christ. We’ve come to the parting of the ways,’ and I turned my back on them.”

      Billy Sunday got out of baseball, and for thirty-nine years preached on the “sawdust trail.” Mrs. Sunday estimated that the acrobatic evangelist appeared before 85,000,000 while preaching the gospel and fighting the devil.

Charles W. Colson.

      One hot Sunday, summer night in the midst of the 1974 Watergate hearings, Charles W. Colson, former White House counsel to Richard Nixon, sat in Tom Phillips home and listened to how Jesus Christ changed a successful businessman’s life. Colson related, “To me Jesus had always been an historical figure, but Tom explained that you could hardly invite Him into your life if you didn’t believe that He is alive today and that His Spirit is a part of today’s scene.”

      Colson left that home with a copy of Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. In the driveway tears began to flow uncontrollably. Chuck Colson pulled off the side of the road sobbing with emotion. Colson wrote, “And then I prayed my first real prayer. ‘God, I don’t know how to find You, but I’m going to try! I’m not much the way I am now, but somehow I want to give myself to You.’ I didn’t know how to say more, so I repeated over and over the words: Take me.”

      That week Colson went on vacation in Maine preoccupied with the book Mere Christianity. Colson wrote, “The central thesis of Lewis’s book and the essence of Christianity, is summed up in one mind-boggling sentence: Jesus Christ is God. Not just part of God, or just sent by God, or just related to God. He was (and therefore, of course, is) God. The more I grappled with those words, the more they began to explode before my eyes, blowing into smithereens a lot of comfortable old notions I had floated through life with, without thinking much about them.”

      Later that week, Charles W. Colson prayed, “Lord Jesus, I believe You. I accept You. Please come into my life. I commit it to You.”

      Soon, news of Colson’s conversion reverberated through Washington D. C., a conversion as shocking as that of the Apostle Paul’s. Truly born-again, the former White House counsel became one of the most influential, modern Christian voices.