“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” Isaiah 1:18

A N Wilson had a rather dramatic conversion experience. A self proclaimed “doubting Thomas”, Wilson gives an account to the New Statesmen of his double conversion—one, to atheism, then another back to faith. Here is an excerpt:

By nature a doubting Thomas, I should have distrusted the symptoms when I underwent a “conversion experience” 20 years ago. Something was happening which was out of character – the inner glow of complete certainty, the heady sense of being at one with the great tide of fellow non-believers. For my conversion experience was to atheism. There were several moments of epiphany, actually, but one of the most dramatic occurred in the pulpit of a church.

…For a few years, I resisted the admission that my atheist-conversion experience had been a bit of middle-aged madness. I do not find it easy to articulate thoughts about religion. I remain the sort of person who turns off Thought for the Day when it comes on the radio. I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief “don’t matter”, that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return.

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Below is an excerpt from Charles Haddon Spurgeon:

“IN THESE DAYS a simple, childlike faith is very rare; but the usual thing is to believe nothing, and question everything. Doubts are as plentiful as blackberries, and all hands and lips are stained with them. To me it seems very strange that men should hunt up difficulties as to their own salvation. If I were doomed to die, and I had a hint of mercy, I am sure I should not set my wits to work to find out reasons why I should not be pardoned. I could leave my enemies to do that: I should be on the look-out in a very different direction. If I were drowning, I should sooner catch at a straw than push a life-belt away from me. To reason against one’s own life is a sort of constructive suicide of which only a drunken man would be guilty. To argue against your only hope is like a foolish man sitting on a bough, and chopping it away so as to let himself down. Who but an idiot would do that? Yet many appear to be special pleaders for their own ruin. They hunt the Bible through for threatening texts; and when they have done with that, they turn to reason, and philosophy, and skepticism, in order to shut the door in their own faces. Surely this is poor employment for a sensible man.

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If you’ve ever been depressed, really depressed, then you know that there is a place inside of you that no man, word, or medication can get to. You can patch it up with these things for a little while—but it is only for a little while. Eventually what has been brewing inside spills out. Like the flow of a swift river, it cannot be stopped. It takes over your entire being. The evidence of which can be desperation, anger, isolation, and deep depression. But, the worst of it, is a hardened heart. It is out of the heart, the Bible says, that these things, these feelings flow. Many of you out there are weary, you’re tired, you want to believe in God but in and of yourself you realize you cannot. There is something both inside of you and outside of you that you have no control over. One is your own heart, and the other is God. You cannot control your own heart because you cannot see it, nor do you fully understand it. And because of your unbelief, you have not been able to rely on the One who can.

The good news is God speaks specifically to you in His word, He says in Isaiah 51:1-2,12-13, “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sara who bore you”…“I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass, and have forgotten the LORD, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth,”

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“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ- by grace you have been saved- and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2: 4-9).

It is the doctrine of the Protestant faith that is utterly unique and altogether different from any of the other world religions. In no other religion can you pass from life into death with certainty about what awaits you. In every other religion your eternal destiny is dependent upon your works. The Bible tells us that our justification, our right standing before God, is never on the merit of our own works, but only made possible through the blood of Christ. I believe this doctrine is one of, if not the most, misunderstood teachings of all time. The reason is simple; our fallen nature limits our ability to comprehend grace. Throughout history, this misunderstanding has always caused people to revert to works either to earn their salvation or in order to keep it.

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“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to Him. ‘Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world’.

When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, ‘The Teacher is here and calling for you’. And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to Him…Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet saying to Him ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother (Lazarus) would not have died’. When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in His spirit and greatly troubled. And He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to Him, ‘Lord, come and see’. Jesus wept. So the Jews said, ‘See how He loved him!’  But some of them said, ‘Could not He who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” (John 11:25-29, 32-36)

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