Part 1
Raymond John, product of a broken home, son of an alcoholic father and ex- soldier from the Welsh Fusiliers who escaped the mines of the Rhonda valleys in Wales for the trenches of the 2nd World War. Eldest son, with a sister and two athletic and skilful soccer player brothers, so different from his studious disposition, who found his outlet and solace often times, in the nearest local library. A little lost soul, carrying the weight of his father's inebriated nightmares as he, like a drowning man would restlessly hit the surface of his fractured sleep, often reliving the horrors of those bygone days so graphically depicted in DUNKIRK. Today we are aware of P.T.S.D., unrecognised then, but certainly beyond the ken of this primary school child. who wrestled with his own pain at having to live with it.
John 16:8 And when He (Holy Spirit) is come, He....
1ST VISIT (though I knew it not): 10 Years of Age. Alone in my bed in the dark, I recounted all my family and those I loved and faced (or was led to) face the fact that one day and one by one each of them would die. The tears streamed down my face.
CONFIRMATION: (14 ½ Years of Age) Sunday School and Church of Ireland. I recited The Apostles Creed and, ”renounced the devil and all his works and ALL the sinful lusts of the flesh”. If only it were that simple.
2ND VISIT GRANDMOTHER'S DEATH: (16) This was the first death in the family and I was her blue-eyed favourite grandson. We were very close. I was devastated. I observed her in the coffin but knew beyond any shadow of doubt that that was not my granny. The body was there but the person I had known and loved was somewhere else. More frightening to me, was when the minister read from The Book of Common Prayer ,“for you brought nothing into this world and it is certain you will take nothing out”.
John 16:8 And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement;
THE EVANGELIST: 16 1/2 -
Promoted to another section of a large City Centre firm overlooking The city Hall. There were three of us in the office. I sat adjacent to the bosses son. He was a believer. A language I did not understand then but someone who was going through his own crises of faith, having just left a very exclusive Christian sect. Again a world of which I was completely ignorant. In the further Providence of God, the third person in the office had to leave from time to time to pursue his sales agenda. Conversations would then take place between Norman and me, the self righteous little prig from the Church of Ireland. who thought he was good enough. He'd never done any harm to anyone? He prayed and went to church. He believed Jesus was a great man even a prophet (The son of God bit he wondered about ), couldn't believe that, but anyway it didn't matter. He believed in a God of Mercy Who would never send anyone to hell and certainly not him, who after all was miles better than his own alcoholic, drunken, father. For 18 months, as opportunity permitted in the office, a verbal sword fight waged between us. Many a time (unknown to him) as I left the office I could have have strangled him. The 'clever' arguments I amassed were never answered to my satisfaction but again and again his being SURE of his salvation really irked me. It was to me unfathomable, (a very pale reflection of the preparatory work of The Holy Spirit in the conversion of Saul (later Paul) as he witnessed the full assurance of Stephen, even in the midst of death). Acts 6: 54 – 58.
Part 2
He passed on a book to me: “Who Moved The Stone”. Frank Morison was a lawyer. Every Sunday in church they recited The Apostles Creed, just like in the Church of Ireland. I learned it together with my confirmation vows. But he always clenched his teeth when they came to repeat,“I believe in the resurrection of the dead”. Cause he didn't believe it. Later when he drove past church goers he vowed that one day, when he got time he would disprove the “myth” and set people free from that delusion.
As a lawyer he eventually brought his mind to bear on examining the evidence. Taking (largely) the 4 Gospel stories, he proceeded to cross examine (as he would in a court room) those eyewitness accounts that were recorded, surrounding the final days of JESUS, including the events after the crucifixion and around the garden tomb into which His body was led to rest. The conclusion of his examination. He was persuaded of the truth of the resurrection!!!
Subsequently he had no qualms joining in wholeheartedly with all the faithful, whom he had once considered deluded, in the repetition of The Apostles Creed including that bit - “I believe in the resurrection of the dead”.
Part 3
Meanwhile what of that other septic? Recently I picked up a copy of that book in a 2nd hand book shop. I'm sure it's now out of print. It's a small book. It contains 192 pages, but small enough print to fit into an overcoat pocket. Well, I read that book through. I can't say that anything particularly struck me in all his neatly put together case for the “jury” to rest upon. When I got to the last page, I wasn't his case history, but his little imaginative conclusion, that struck a chord somewhere.
He writes - “I have an impression...that as dawn approached in that quiet garden, something happened which caused one of the watchers to awaken his companions and proceed to a closer inspection of the tomb. It may have been only the stirring of the trees or the clanging of a gate in the night breeze. It may have been something more definite and disquieting...(so that) the disciples were so immovably convinced that the Resurrection itself took place in the early hours of Sunday morning”.
3RD VISIT “ WHO MOVED THE STONE”
As I read these simple words a fear came over me and I was suddenly transported to that garden. It wasn't a vision or anything as obvious as that but I was momentarily there in that garden in the gloom of that Easter morning. His imagination and my own imagination had me there, but it was as real as the bedroom in which I was reading it.
Recently I came across a description of what I experienced. Otto refers to “the numinous” : (Latin numen, “spirit”) in which the Other, (i.e., the transcendent) appears as a mysterium tremendum - that is, a mystery before which man both trembles and is fascinated, is both repelled and attracted”. In my own case - I was not repelled. It was definitely another visit of the Blessed Holy Spirit carrying out the preparatory work promised by Jesus.
There was to be one final conversation not long after when Norman confronted me with bible prophecy. As a“last-ditch effort”, (He told me later he had said to The Lord that he had run out of things to say) to persuade this really questioning, skeptical, fellow. He had written a text on a tract, which I promised I would read (not the tract but a bible prophecy.) He didn't know that I had a totally unreasonable hatred of gospel tracts), ditching them if I was ever given one, and crossing to the other side of the street to avoid open-air meetings if I ever encountered one. (the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be). Rom. 8:7. I read the portion of Scripture because I promised I would. I might as well have been reading the Belfast Telegraph. Nothing registered. About a fortnight later, it was a Friday night. I was in bed early enough but at a loss for something to read – my usual practice, if not my ear glued to my little transistor and Radio Luxembourg. There was nothing, especially on my mind. No search for God. No wrestling with conscience. No conviction of sin. My old, largely unopened B B Bible was still sitting on the bedside locker. I was not in the habit of reading it and only had it out to read the bit I'd promised.
I once was a stranger to grace and to God, I knew not my danger and felt not my load;
….. Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me.
The marker was in the same place. I opened it and began to read. EVERY verse, one-by-one, of the first half of the chapter found a target.
4TH VISIT ISA 53: 1 - 7
I recognised - the arm of The Lord was REVEALED. The One with no form nor comeliness and with no beauty that we should desire Him, growing up as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground - was JESUS.
When free grace awoke me, by light from on high,... I trembled to die;
No refuge, no safety in self could I see - Jehovah Tsidkenu my Saviour must be.
HE was, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, from whom I had hid my face. It was Him I despised and esteemed not. Yet: surely He had borne MY griefs and carried MY sorrows yet I had esteemed Him smitten of God and afflicted. He was wounded for MY transgressions. He was bruised for MY iniquities and by His stripes, I was healed.
“My terrors all vanished before the sweet name; My guilty fears banished, with boldness I came
To drink at the fountain, life-giving and free - Jehovah Tsidkenu is all things to me”.
I was the sheep gone astray. I had turned to my own way. And The Lord had laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted yet He opened not His mouth. Just as I had been in the garden on the resurrection morning, now I was at the foot of the cross - the old rugged cross. But in body I was at the foot of my bed, the tears tripping me “mourning for Him as one mourns for his only son”. Zech 12:10 I have no problem believing this is yet to happen to the nation Israel because of the covenant-keeping God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob if they continue not in unbelief, (just like me).
Fascinating to discover later that multitudes over the centuries have “found” Christ through this passage of Scripture. Equally fascinating to find it in the book of the birth of the early church. This time not in a major city but in the middle of the desert. Philip the Evangelist was specifically directed there by that same Holy Spirit of Whom I have been speaking. The man, not a humble Bookkeeper this time, but the equivalent of Chancellor of the Exchequer to the queen of the Ethiopians, was sitting in his chariot and reading aloud this very passage. When the guy asked of whom was the prophet speaking, “Philip opened his mouth and preached unto him JESUS”. That accountant then asked to be baptised. Philip replied “If you believe with all your heart” to which the man replied, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God”. Acts 8:26 - 38 There is a long Christian tradition to this very day in Ethiopia.
The little tract also had on it a passage from John's Gospel. I am the door of the sheep if any man enters in he shall be saved. “Long my imprisoned spirit lay, Fast bound in sin and nature’s night; Thine eye diffused a quickening ray - woke, the dungeon flamed with light; My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.”
When I told my rector days later that I was now SAVED he told me that he didn't like that word. I was so ignorant of these matters that I could only reply that neither did I but that's what they called it in the office. But the little lost boy from the back streets of Belfast had found The Saviour or rather The Saviour had found him. Interestingly enough he told me that an older guy in the same parish had told him the same story weeks before. He didn't understand so he sent him to my house thinking he could help me. He didn't have to. When Sandy introduced himself to me, he and I, that same night (he had to drop something into an office. I think he was a trade union shop steward), walked all the length of the Ballygomartin Road to the bottom of the Shankill Road in deep conversation. Just like Christian and Hopeful, we discovered he too had begun the journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. He had lifted this poor boy from the dunghill and set him among princes”. 1 Sam.2:8 The rest of my life would testify to this.
And so “THROUGH MANY DANGERS, TOILS AND SNARES I HAVE ALREADY COME”- the earliest, grave one, walking unscathed from the home of the last Catholic family in a Protestant Estate, a short enough distance from our outreach centre which The Lord enabled us to operate. Within a stone's throw of, (then) Castlereagh R U C Station, I was visiting one of the Catholic young people with whom we had successfully shared the Good News. He hadn't appeared for follow up meetings for a fortnight. Unusually (but providently) he kept me in the hall and we sat on the stairs. It was Saturday night and his youngest brother was watching Match of the Day. 20 minutes later and rat - a - tat - tat - the sound of gunfire and the house shook. In broad daylight on a summers evening, someone had crept to the front window and pumped in a hail of machine-gun bullets, all along up the wall ahead. It pierced right through to the boiler in the kitchen, spurting water all over the place. In the ensuing silence, young Eamon opened the door into the hall and came crawling towards us dragging his leg. A bullet had pierced his thigh. But he would have had it in the head, indeed all three of us probably fatally wounded if we had been sitting on that sofa. The young guy had been sprawling on it with his leg in the air absorbed in the match. Obviously, the house was being watched and I mistook for an older brother returning home. Even more awful. Normally the mother would be doing her weekly ironing in that same room. Just that very day her daughter had persuaded her to go out with her for the evening, having been under enormous pressure with visits to the hospital. Her husband was lying there dying of cancer. The hazards of reaching out to the other community 40 years ago! “'TWAS GRACE THAT BROUGHT ME SAFE THUS FAR. AND GRACE SHALL LEAD ME HOME”.
