An Atheist, Then a Religious Hypocrite, Now a Lover of Christ - Testimony

What is your life?

It is a vapor.

The Bible says your life

is like a puff of steam.

There for a moment, and then it's gone.

My name is Kevin.

I grew up in Manchester in England

in the seventies,

into a background in those days,

you were either considered
a Roman Catholic,

or like us, we were considered an Anglican

which is Church of England now.

We never went to church.

All that means is I was
christened as a child.

Infant baptism is a big ritual there.

It's a big superstition.

People believe that you
can't get into heaven

without some sort of infant ritual.

So the only times in my childhood

I set foot in a church

was at one of these christenings

or was at somebody's wedding.

And then, when I got to secondary school

or high school

I just professed to be an atheist

back in those days.

Really, even though I didn't know much

about the Bible back then,

and I didn't know much about Jesus Christ

I did really know one thing.

I knew deep down it was all true

even in the days when I professed

to be an atheist.

There was just something inside of me -

a nagging thought - my conscience

which told me it was all true.

And so as time went on,

I left school and I just became

a big sinner.

I drank up as much sin as I could

in various ways.

And I did things which are
real shameful to speak about

in that time.

And so time went on and I became

a worse and worse sinner.

And I got to my mid-twenties,

and I started asking those questions

that everybody asks at some point in life.

Why are we here

and what happens when this life is over?

And I would philosophize.

I remember each day

I would just philosophize more and more.

And I'd come up with the silliest
interpretations of things.

This would keep on going.

But I knew there was a God at this time.

I just looked at the whole creation,

the Bible says, declares His handiwork.

And my conscience again
just keeps telling me

this is true.

At first, I would look at other religions.

I wanted to become
anything but a Christian.

And I remember, I looked
at things like Buddhism.

But it was just all fairy tale stuff.

It was just nonsense really.

And then eventually,

I started to open the Bible and look at it

as like a history book.

It was an old Bible that was passed down

in the family from my granddad,

and I just started in Genesis 1:1,

"In the beginning, God created

the heavens and the earth."

And I just kept on reading

and it seemed to make sense.

Now, I didn't really
understand it at that time,

and I was trying to interpret it

through my atheistic
worldview I still had.

Even though I wasn't an atheist,

I still had a naturalistic worldview.

I remember reading about

the manna in the desert.

I was thinking, well, that must be snow.

These people must not really understand -

these primitive people.

But I still knew it was all true.

And about the same time,

I started to go to a high Anglican church,

which is basically like Catholicism

but without the Pope.

It's all prayer book rituals.

The sermons there were
only 10 to 15 minutes.

And there wasn't really
the Gospel preached there -

the message of how to get saved.

And what truth I did hear there

was all surrounded in hypocrisy.

It was all filtered through that.

Now, I was doing things in that time

that I just become
more and more religious.

I thought I was a Christian
for about six years.

I went to that church,

but I never knew Jesus Christ.

I never really knew Him.

But there was so much hypocrisy going on.

For instance, me myself,

you would have thought

that for an hour and a half on a Sunday

I was deeply religious.

But for the rest of the week,

I just lived like a complete hypocrite.

You know, I'd go to nightclubs and things

and do shameful things

and then I'd be in church on a Sunday.

Now, I knew that was wrong,

but I'd look at other people in the church

and they'd be getting blind drunk as well

on a Saturday night.

And I'd just think, well,
they've been Christians

longer than me.

So this time just went
on and on like this.

Eventually, I always knew

that there was something
more to Christianity

that I didn't have.

Now, of course, it was Jesus Christ,

because in this time,

God was just always a distant deity to me.

I didn't really know Him.

I had a cliche - I would say,

I've got a relationship with Jesus.

Christianity is a relationship with Jesus,

but I didn't really know Him.

And so I started to listen to sermons

and messages and look at teachings

outside of the church I was in.

And I was going through a series

on the Sermon on the Mount,

and then one day I sat in the garden

listening to a sermon

and I heard the words of Jesus

from Matthew 5:27-30

where Jesus said, "You have heard

that it was said of old,

'you shall not commit adultery,'

but I say unto you, if you look at a woman

to lust after her,

you've already committed adultery with her

in your heart."

And Jesus went on to say there,

"cast your eye out, because it is better

to enter heaven with one eye

than to enter hell with both."

Now, the context there
is of course adultery.

It's not saying it's a sin

for a man to have sexual
desire for his wife

and vice versa,

but Jesus does clearly say in those verses

that to lust over someone
you're not married to

is a sin that will surely take you to hell

if it's not repented of.

Now, I had heard those
verses many times before.

And in fact, I remember discussing it

only a few weeks earlier.

I explained them away every time

saying surely it doesn't mean

what He says there

because everybody does that.

Everybody just lusts all the time.

But that day, when I
heard those words of Jesus,

I knew He meant what He said.

I knew for the first time,

I realized that God was a holy God

Who I could no longer play games with.

And in all this, it just felt like

the love of Jesus Christ

because I realized that God could have

killed me.

I mean, my life is in His hands,

and He could have killed me

and put me in hell a week before,

or a year before or two years before,

knowing the shameful things I did.

And He would have been
perfectly just in doing so.

But the kindness and
the long-suffering of God

which is meant to lead
a person to repentance,

led me to repentance,

because I just saw the great love of God.

And I'd been mocking Him for so long

and playing games with God.

And He just loved me.

And He just died for me.

In 2 Corinthians 5:21, the Bible says,

"He Who knew no sin became sin for us

that we might become

the righteousness of God."

Jesus Christ on a cross 2,000 years ago,

He became a sin offering for us.

He became a sin offering for me.

He died in my place.

And on that cross,

all the guilt of my sin,

the shame of my sin,

just all my wrongdoings I ever did

were placed upon Jesus on that cross.

Not only did Jesus pay for that,

and take away all my sin,

so there is therefore now

no condemnation left for me

because Christ has already been condemned

in my place.

But He also lived a
righteous and perfect life.

You see, the greatest commandment

in Scripture we are told

is to love God the Father
with all our heart,

soul, mind, and strength

and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Now, in the life of Jesus,

He always perfectly loved God the Father

with all His heart,
soul, mind, and strength

and He always perfectly loved His neighbor

as Himself for every
millisecond of His life.

But since becoming a Christian,

we never do that for even one second.

We never perfectly love God.

But from the moment
I believed on Jesus Christ;

from the moment I saw
His great love for me,

then not only was all my sin gone,

gone forever,

as far as the east is from the west

the Bible says,

He remembers our sin no more,

but God now looks at me

as if I have lived the perfect,

righteous life of Jesus Christ.

So, God now looks at me and says

this is My beloved son,

in whom I am well pleased.

The cross of Jesus Christ

is such a wonderful thing.

There's an old hymn that goes,

Oh my sin, oh the joy
of this glorious thought;

my sin, not in part,
not just part of my sin,

but the whole,

is nailed to the cross

and I bear it no more.

Praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord, O my soul!

And if you don't know Jesus,

if you were like me

with just not knowing your sin's forgiven,

not really knowing God,

then I plead with you,

Jesus really paid it all
for you on that cross.

He paid every drop of my wrath in hell.

All of my hell Jesus
paid for on the cross.

That is what He did for us.

If you will come to Him,

if you will surrender to Him,

I plead with you,

Jesus - He doesn't want part of your life.

He wants all of your life.

And He is so worthy.

He is so good. He is so kind.

All together lovely.

I had no life.

I just had a miserable, worthless,

and pathetic life

for so much of my life.

I wasted so much of my life.

But it was by coming to Jesus Christ

that I now have true joy,

true peace of the heart,

and true life.

He offers that to you

if you'll come to Him.

And He offers that to you this day.

You see, the love Jesus has

for the believer is just perfect.

The Bible says - as Jesus said,

"As the Father has loved Me,

even so, I have loved you."

You know, the Song of Solomon says

that Jesus - He comes to the believer

leaping across the mountains.

After all my sin and all
my shame before God,

when I go to Him,

Jesus comes running to me

with His arms open wide,

hands that were pierced for me,

with holes in them for my sin.

He just comes to us ready to embrace us

in His everlasting love for us.

Eternity!

The next life is forever.

there is nothing more important

than being right with God

for eternity.

The Bible says

it is appointed unto men

once to die, but after this,

the judgment.

After death, there are no second chances

to get right with God.

But you must make peace with God

before you meet Him.