The Following is a Transcript of the Audio above, there may be minor mistakes
I’m going to be very brief, and I’m going to try and remember some of the things that’s profitable, and tell you how I got saved.
I’m gonna read in the Gospel of John chapter 14, and verse 5 and 6.
John chapter 14:5-6
[5] Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
[6] Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
That is the scripture that led me to the Lord Jesus in 1959.
I was born in 1931, just out the road here to the Cain family. And I must tell you, that if it had been my choice, I would have never been born into the life we had to live back then. Because we absolutely had nothing. Nothing.
We were poor, we were laughed at, it was just a horrible life. And you know, the thing that I can remember most of all is when I was a child, the first thing I can remember, my mother was carrying me in the room one day and she was singing to me,
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to him belong;
they are weak, but he is strong.
And my mother used to tell me stories out of the Bible, and of course, I was a slow learner, I wasn’t catching on to some of the things she was telling me. And I’m telling you that my grandmother, Robison, I’m going to give her credit too. She tried to tell me some things about the Lord.
But anyways, as I got older, my mother had family altar. And it was very, very difficult for her because she had a lot of opposition. And my father wasn’t saved, but he was a, my father was a quiet man.
And I was thinking as I was sitting here, you know, my father was 20 years older than my mother, which is a way too much.
And when I could never understand why we didn’t have a father when he’d come home from work. He was too old to, he was tired out. And I never realized how he felt til just now. I realize how he felt because I’m there. He was tired out, he wasn’t able to give to us the things. So that was one thing I missed in life was a father, to be always there for him. He was too old. But I loved him just the same.
But anyway, my mother had family altar. And I’m going to tell you something right now that my mother had the gift of prayer. And I never heard anybody that could pray like her in my life. We would get down in the morning, she’d read the scripture, get us down to these old benches, you know, the wooden benches, that’s who we had. And she’d start to pray.
Well, these men would come in going to the woods. They’d be going with my father to the woods. And what they did now, back then, they took an old can and they’d heat tea and stuff back in the woods in light of fire. And so when they come in the door, you’d just hear their knees hitting the floor when my mother was praying. They’d just go down onto the floor. You’d just hear bang, bang, and you’d look and two or three more of them there. Les Waite, the Curries, and all of them. They’d be down on the floor.
Well, I’m telling you, my sister Doris said something and I agree with her. There was nobody that could bring heaven down but my mother. She could pray. You know, we never know when we’re born into the world what disappointments lie ahead of us. It’s a good thing we don’t.
Isn’t that right? It’s a good thing we don’t know the disappointments that lie ahead of us. Because if we did, we’d get down under with sorrow. We don’t know.
But anyway, that was good. I started to school. I went to school in my bare feet in the summer with no shoes. And, you know, it was very difficult. Then you had from five to ten in one school room and there you were, you know. And back then they strapped you if you did anything that was wrong. I mean, you’d get strapped. It wasn’t like today. They would take those pieces of straps off of the old belts in the machines and they would give you that over the hands. You’d be red raw. So you had to behave yourself.
So anyway, that was all right. When I got older then, I often thought, well, why was I born? You know, why is all this happening? And anyway, I kind of got away from my mother’s prayers. I kind of got away from the things that I got thinking different in my mind. And kind of rejected everything I had heard.
And when I got older, I started to drink. And I started to smoke. And I started to go to dances. And I started to play music. And I started to do everything to take up my attention. And, of course, people would come to my place and they, we would party and this was a big thing, you know.
But, you know, as I get older, as I went into this, I got awful weary of everything. And I thought, well, you know, why is all this happening? Why is all this like this?
Oh, yes, I got a job over at the local store. And I’ll tell you how much I was getting a week and I was paying my board $7. My mother used to go and grade potatoes all day for 50 cents a day. That’s the way it was. No money.
My father, he was a painter. And when my father went and painted, somebody would trade work with him so he’d no money coming in. So, he’d go over and paint the store and all our bill would be wiped off. And then my mother would give me a list to go over. And I’d go over to the store and all these people would be around and I had to go through the embarrassment of being turned down in front of all these people.
Life wasn’t easy back then. That made me bitter. Anyway, I continued on with my drinking. Continued on with my partying.
There was two things happened in my life that God spoke to me now and tell me about. I’ve never told this before. I used to make beer. I used to make it with this malt. And you had to put this malt into the oven in water and get it so it would run. And I put the malt in the oven and I forgot about it, and the can exploded. And I was going to reach into the oven and if I’d have been 10 seconds there, I would have lost my eyesight. My eyes would have been burned out of my head.
And I knew that was God speaking to me.
Another time, I come out of the store and we had lightning rods on the store. And they put a sign up and they put these here pieces of steel thing to hold the sign from banging. And you know that I went out of the store and the minute I stepped out of the store and underneath that sign, the store got hit with lightning over my head. And the lightning just wound around my head. I lost one of my shoes and my mother was looking out the window. She thought I was dead. We were going to a party that night. Well, I must tell you, we didn’t go to any party.
That was God speaking.
Now God speaks once, yeah, twice in a dream and a vision of the night. And he may, you know, I thought the other day, you know, God shook me over hell that night. I tell you, I got some scared. And we never went anywhere that night. I was in shock and I knew it was God speaking to me.
And you know, I’ll tell you that this Mr. Hardy, I got to give him credit too. He was preaching in the United Church and Mr. Hardy and his wife both came to visit me and tried to tell me the way of salvation. He came in one day. He asked me if I had a Bible and I said, well, I’ve got a Bible somewhere. Now then I near tore the bureau doors to pieces trying to find the Bible they gave me one at Sunday school. So when I got the Bible out, I thought, look, this man is coming down and I’m going to read the Bible. But I got my genealogies and Matthew and it discouraged me, and so I stopped reading that.
But however, this life went on like this for a long time. But in 1959, I went out one night and I said, Lord, I can’t stand this anymore. I can’t handle it. I said, I can’t handle this. I said, if there’s a God up there, do something. I can’t handle it. I can’t. And you know that about two days after, Donny MacKenzie came. And he said, Elwyn, I just got saved. I said, you what? And he said, I just got saved. Well, I said, that’s wonderful. He said, we’re having meetings down in the hall.
Now listen, I’ll have to tell you, when you go to talk to somebody, don’t get into the third chapter of Corinthians tell ’em about the wood, hay, and the stubble, because I didn’t know anything about that. That’s what he got into. He was talking about the wood, hay, and the stubble. Well, I didn’t know about anything like that. I was a sinner on my way to hell. I wasn’t saved. What good was that to me? So when you’re talking to somebody, try and give them something a little lighter. You know, because that’s kind of heavy.
But anyway, he said to me, Elwyn, I want you to come to the meeting. I said, I will come. I will come. Because I knew that that was an answer, a direct answer to the prayer that I had prayed. I knew that that was God.
So anyway, I started going to the meetings, and I got troubled about my soul. I would go down in the basement in the store, and there were these great big pillars down there, and I wouldn’t know what I went down after. I was so troubled about my soul that I didn’t know what to do.
So anyway, I kept going to the meetings. I kept going to the meetings, and one night I read the scripture that I read to you in the corner. And Evan McDougall came to the meetings that night. I took a lot of people with me. They didn’t get saved, and we were sitting at the end of the table, at my table up in the little house. I got a house, and we moved out to ourselves so we’d be able to carry on. You know the thing. You know what the young people do. They move away from their parents so they can carry on and think nobody knows about them.
Well that’s what I did. But everybody knows what’s going on, so it’s no secret. So anyway, we were up there, and Evan and I were sitting by the table. And do you know that just in a moment of time God opened my eyes, and I said, Evan, I just got saved. I clapped my hands. He said, you did? And I said, yes. And you know what I saw that night? I didn’t only see that God was the way and the truth and the life, but I saw when that man died in the middle cross, he died for my sins. That’s what I saw. He was taking my place. That was it. Hallelujah. You know, he was taking my place.
Now listen. This is the thing that I want to tell the younger people. God doesn’t see you anymore in Adam. He sees you in Christ. He doesn’t see you in any Adam anymore. He’s taken all your sins, and he’s put them behind your back, and your sins and your iniquities will he remember no more.
The world won’t do that, and do you know why they won’t do it? They don’t want to see you rise above what you were. My niece told me that the other day, and I thought, how true. She was attacked by two Christians. Now listen. I want to tell you this. I didn’t know this until a year ago. When we’re feeding on somebody else’s sins, we’re feeding on the sin offering, and God is not happy with that. If you’re feeding on the sin offering through the week, and then you come to remember the Lord, it’s not a good thing. So when you’re feeding on someone’s fault, that’s your feeding on. If you want to feed on something that lifts your spirit, feed on the burnt offering. Everything’s for God, you see.
And so, another thing I see, we’re not seen in Adam, we’re seen in Christ. And you know the children of Israel, I noticed something, I want to tell you this. The children of Israel, they fed on the manna that fell down in the wilderness. They fed on Christ’s humiliation. But when they get into the land, they fed on the foot of his exaltation. So what does that mean? That means that God does not want you and I to spend our lifetime in the wilderness. Because we’re not on resurrection ground. When you’re on resurrection ground, when you move into the book of Ephesians, because that’s the place where we’re…
See, here’s the essence of the gospel. I’m going to give it to you. Maybe there’s someone here who isn’t saved. When man sinned, God put cherubims and a flaming sword to keep the way of the tree of life. There was a barrier that was put there. Man couldn’t go beyond that barrier. But here is the gospel, the center and core of the gospel. When the Lord Jesus died on the cross, when he shed his blood, when he gave his life as substitutionary death for you and I, he removed the barrier, he erases the sin question, he blesses you with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, he raises you up and seats you together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages of the ages to come he’s going to show unto you the exceeding riches of his grace.
Now listen, why linger in the wilderness when you can have these things? God has something for you and I to enjoy. And one man said something last week. I’ll tell you what he said. He said, was it your death that when you die you’re going to heaven? Yeah, yeah, I’m going to heaven to die. Was it your death that purchased heaven? No, it wasn’t. Then he said it was the death of another, you can enjoy heaven now. You don’t have to wait till you get there. You can enjoy it now. And that’s what God wants us to do.
And you want to get in the book of Ephesians because that answers to the book of Joshua. It’s not the land of Canaan, it’s not heaven, but it’s our… You know, I like Sidlow Baxter. The first two chapters he says is our wealth, The next two chapters are walking, the next two chapters is our warfare. And we wrestle not against spiritual blood, but against spiritual wickedness in high places. And God wants you to go in and put your foot in the land and he wants you to stand there and protect it. That’s what he wants.
Because Amalek came, he smote the children of Israel and the hinder parts, that’s the flesh. And that’s not going to be done away in our time. And that is the problem. Amalek. And you know when he had put the… Put the… In his stomach that he made, it says the dirt come out. And I thought, boy, isn’t that like the old flesh, the dirt comes out. You… But, you know, this… What the flesh tries to do is keep you from… Take, going into your inheritance, That’s what the flesh tries to do. That’s what he does with me. He tries to get… keep me from going into the book of Ephesians and taking what’s mine. See?
And so you… You have to reckon your self that I might know him, and the power of his… What? The power of his resurrection, the mighty power of his resurrection. And the fellowship of suffering that I might be made conformable unto his death. That’s Philippians. Oh, I was enjoying that.
Do you know what I took from that? Paul was dying daily. He was enjoying the things that belonged to him. Listen, Christian. You and I are wealthy. We’re sons and daughters of the man that’s on the right hand of God. And, you know, the Lord Jesus is exalted. And, you know, sometimes I think at night when I get in there, I think I can hear the seraphim’s wings rustling when I get in his presence. Such a wonderful place to be. And that’s what we need to do. We need to get into the presence of God, pray for one another, love one another. And that’s…
So I’m not going to say any more. I just want to leave you with those few thoughts because I’ve been enjoying it. And so I won’t say any more.