While I was in the midst of all this turmoil, I had the opportunity one day to hear a sermon given by a European missionary. As he was preaching, he suddenly asked his listeners, "Have you been born again?" His words struck to the core of my heart. When I'd been at the theological college, I'd been taught that it was because I was born again that I believed. I thought that since I believed I must be born again, even if I wasn't aware of it. When the missionary abruptly posed this question, however, I became confused. After the sermon, I went to see the missionary and had a private interview with him to discuss my problem. Deep down inside I knew that, even though I had lived as a pastor for ten years, if I wasn't born again, I would definitely end up in hell.

"I have always thought that I am born again," I told the missionary. "But today when you asked this question, 'Have you been born again?' I found I couldn't answer with a confident, yes."

"Dear friend," the missionary said, "do you, by any chance have doubts about your salvation?"

"No, I don't have any doubts." I replied. "I have a very firm faith, and I'm confident that if I were to die right now I'd go to heaven."

"In that case, what more do you need? If you are sure beyond any doubt that you can go to heaven, you have nothing more to worry about."

These words brought a certain amount of relief to my heart, but still in one corner there was a nagging feeling of uneasiness and dissatisfaction.

About three weeks later, on Saturday November 18th, 1961, I sat down early in the morning to prepare a sermon for the next morning's service of worship. In those days when I prepared a sermon, the floor of my study would be covered with books. To produce a good sermon, a pastor had to gather information from a lot of different books and fit them all together well. A sermon was just the connecting and weaving together of the words of various thinkers, literary men, philosophers, scientists, and so on. I thought that this was the way to write a sermon. So on that particular day, my whole room was covered with open books as I prepared my sermon. I took Romans chapter 1 verse 17 as my text and chose the title, "The Just Shall Live By Faith." I then took as my first theme the section of the text that reads, "the righteousness of God revealed," and began my research into what this means. It seemed natural to associate this theme with Romans chapter 3 verse 21 where it says, "But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested." As I thought about this verse, I suddenly realized exactly what it was saying and what it meant in regard to my own situation. I came to see that there was a difference between my righteousness and that of God.

Man's righteousness is the righteousness of the Law. I knew that I myself couldn't be righteous, but then I came to realize that Jesus Christ, the righteousness of God, had become my righteousness, and my conscience was freed from the terrible burden of the Law.

Thus I came to realize the truth - I knew that I was now justified before God through Jesus Christ. It wasn't just that I had come to understand; the constant torment in my conscience had come to an end, and my problem was solved. The chain of sin that had fettered my conscience for over ten years was suddenly broken and my conscience was set free. Now I could no longer find a single doubt, question, or problem in my conscience no matter how earnestly I looked.

I couldn't concentrate on my sermon preparations any more. From deep down in my heart a hymn of praise and thanksgiving burst from my lips:

I sang this hymn over and over again from about two o'clock in the afternoon until the sun went down. From that moment on, my whole life changed. I was surprised to find the Bible was now completely different. Each verse seemed new and it all began to make sense to me. It was as though the blinds were lifted from my eyes and I could see everything clearly.

I now saw the world in quite a different light. Everything seemed so trivial compared to the treasure that I had found. My attitude to preaching changed, too. As I looked at my congregation, I no longer paid any attention to how much money people put in the collection box, the social positions of the various individuals, how hard people worked for the church, how well people treated me as their pastor, and so on. Now my sole concern was for the spiritual welfare of my congregation and whether or not they were truly saved and would be able to go to heaven.

There are two kinds of faith. There is the kind of faith that is based on an intellectual knowledge of the Bible, God, and Jesus, and on an acknowledgment of the facts. Then there is the faith that is based on the liberation of the conscience. Most people get no further than the first of these and mistakenly think that they are thus saved. The faith that brings about salvation, however, is the faith that arises in the conscience. This is true faith.

From that day on, I could see no alternative but to preach for the sake of the spiritual awakening of my congregation, whether they liked it or not. I wasn't afraid of elders in influential positions or wealthy members of my church whose displeasure might affect my financial stability. I simply spoke up boldly and frankly for their spiritual well-being.

Before long, expressions of apprehension were relayed to me by the church secretary. People were wondering what had happened to bring about such a change in their pastor who had once delivered such beautiful sermons.

Nevertheless, I made a firm stand and told them, "Even if you ask me to leave, I will be crying out for the sake of your spirits as I cross the threshold on my way out. I can't help it. Even if it means that I must starve to death, I can't preach just to please the ears of my listeners." Each Sunday I would preach in this way from the pulpit, tears running down my face.

After about six months, one or two people amongst my congregation came to realize the truth, and the work of salvation began to spread among us. As this was happening, however, denominational opinion of me began to decline. Finally, as a result of my receiving baptism, my connection with the church was cut off, and I began to preach the gospel independently.

After that I had to face several years of hardship, poverty, and suffering, but all the time the gospel movement continued to spread as more and more people came to the knowledge of the truth. This isn't something that could ever have been achieved through human plans and efforts. We can only be thankful to the Lord whose work we believe it to be.