From my earliest memories, I wanted nothing more than to know I was saved and on my way to Heaven.  I heard many people talking about the joy of salvation and their longing to be with the Lord Jesus, the One who loved them and died for them.  I listened to discussions about how soon the Lord Jesus was coming back to take Home all those who had trusted Him.  That made my very being recoil with fear.  I didn’t want to be left behind to face the judgement of God and then to face an eternity in Hell and the Lake of Fire.

My parents prayed for me and many times I saw them on their knees.  They were faithful in reading us the scriptures in our home and we learned many gospel verses in the Bible.  I had no doubt that I was a sinner.

Once when my little brother was five, he and I sat in my older brother’s room listening to him explain the way of salvation.  My brother was saved that night and not wanting to miss out, I said I was saved too.  I knew in my heart I wasn’t, but for a few years I tried to pass myself off as a Christian.  I tried reading my Bible, but it was all a lie, to make others think I was saved.

One night as we were getting ready for bed, my sister said to me ‘I don’t think you are really saved at all.’  I knew she was right and I desperately wanted to be saved for real.  ‘Believing’ was a problem for me!  I tried so hard to ‘believe’ and even looked words up in the dictionary to see if I really knew what they meant.  I was forgetting it was the Saviour that does the saving, not my ‘believing’.  I got into bed that night and while I was lying there, a verse came into my mind.  I had learned it when I was little and knew it well.  ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.’  Acts 16:32.   I just took God at His Word.  He does not lie!  I took it for myself that Jesus came into the world – and that He went to a cross and took the punishment that I deserved and died to take away my sin.  I trusted Him as my Saviour. 

I could not live without Him today.  He comforts me when I am sad, He helps me when I am troubled.  The best part is yet to come!  He is coming back for me to take me to Heaven for all eternity.

Bonnie lives in Ontario, Canada, with her husband Gary who writes the newsletter The Encourager on this site.

“If I die tonight, where will I be? Heaven or Hell?”   

the personal story of Avrell Bowden

God’s Voice in Car Crash
Personal story of Brian Crawford

“Come on boys, hurry up, we’re going to be late!”
I raced out of the house to jump into the big old Pontiac Strato Chief so that I would be able to ride “shot gun”. It was the summer of 1965 and we were on our way from the small town of Mindemoya on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada to South Bay Mouth where we were going to pick up my grandparents who were coming to meet us on the ferry boat. My three brothers and I settled in for the forty minute cross country drive using a few back roads to try to make up some time. While traveling down one of these gravel roads the car hit a series of pot holes that caused the back end to fishtail. My mother hit the brakes and being pre-ABS days the wheels locked up and put us into a skid. Mother fought for control as the careened from one side of the narrow road to the other. Miraculously, she avoided plunging over the side of the road into a deep creek.  Finally, the loose gravel dragged the car down into a deep ditch and with a sickening tumble a large boulder stopped us with the wheels pointing skyward. Although I was only not quite eight years of age, my short life flashed in front of my eyes.  This experience would lead me to a spiritual awakening beyond my years.

I was born in the city of Sudbury Ontario in 1958, the same year my father was transferred from the south of the province with the Provincial Police. I can honestly say that I don’t ever remember NOT being taken along to church meetings with my 3 brothers. Whether it was Sunday School, bible readings, ministry meetings or gospel meetings, nothing short of a debilitating, sick in bed type of illness would allow me to stay home. It was in this type of environment that I learned what the word of God had to say about the human race and most importantly, me. I learned many verses from the bible that taught me that I was a sinner “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), the consequences of sin “The wages of sin is death”, (Romans 6:23) the result of dying in my sins “Jesus said, if you die in your sins, where I am you cannot come (John 8:21). With the bible very clear that there are only two destinations for the soul after death, I knew that if I didn’t end up in heaven, I would be lost in that terrible place called hell! Yet most importantly, in the midst of all this warning we were also taught of a Saviour who loved us. Even though we deserved the judgment of God for our sins, “God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not PERISH but have everlasting life” (John 3:16) In spite of all this privilege and knowledge, I was as dark as the person who had never heard it before. Instead of acknowledging my need and trusting Christ as my Saviour, in my mind I didn’t really think I was all that bad and if Jesus loved me so much, He would never send me to hell. How wrong I was! Just further affirmation of the truth of the Bible, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9)

It wasn’t until 1964, when my father got transferred to Mindemoya that I found out how big of a sinner I was. A particular event took place which burst the bubble of my good reputation that folks had of me, thinking that I was the policeman’s nice little boy. By the time my personal shame and pain had passed, I realized that God was absolutely right about me. Not only was I a sinner, but also if I died that way I would end up in hell. That is heavy stuff for a seven year old but God was speaking to me and didn’t want me to miss His salvation.

It was with this knowledge that I remember hanging on for dear life in the pre-seat belt interior of the car. When things stopped moving, as you can well imagine, I was very disoriented having crashed around in the interior of the car. As I tried to focus on my surroundings, between what I thought was smoke and the crying I heard, I thought for sure that I had died and “IN HELL I HAD LIFTED UP EYES IN TORMENTS.” For a very short time I had imagined that I had missed Gods salvation forever. Thankfully and by the grace of God, what I had thought to be smoke was actually only the dust from the gravel road that had filled the car and the crying was from my youngest brother who had been thrown from his car seat and had split his nose open on the rear view mirror. With the car resting on its roof, we were all able to crawl out of one of the side windows and made our way back up to the roadway. When we turned and looked back down at the car, one of the rear wheels was still turning. What had happened in slow motion had actually transpired in less than a minute but the consequences could have been eternal. God had spoken to me loud and clear and although it would still be another 6 years before I trusted Christ as my Saviour, I had been awaken to the fact of the suddenness in which I could go out to meet God.

God was gracious and continued to work in my conscience but I continued to find excuse after excuse why I didn’t need His salvation right now. May 1971 found the Christians at the little Gospel Hall in Sudbury planning a series of nightly meetings to preach about mans ruin and God’s remedy. Of course, like it or not, I would be obliged to attend.

Two veteran evangelists came along and faithfully preached the gospel for four weeks straight. At first it was more than a minor inconvience to me as it was seriously cutting into my social life. Thankfully, as the meetings continued on, God started working with me again and I became concerned about my sin and where it was taking me. As the preachers gave it their all night after night, I was not hearing anything new and grew frustrated at my inability to get this thing called salvation. I was asking myself how could I know for sure this message was the right one.

The final night of the meetings came and I was frantic to get this matter settled once and for all. I felt that if I didn’t get it at this time, there would be no salvation for me. The first speaker got up to preach and being my favorite of the two, I had imagined myself getting saved when he was preaching. To my horror, he took the platform, spoke his message and sat down without me understanding a word he said. I felt that because of my unbelief, God had given up on me and passed me by and I was destined to die in my sins. The second speaker took to the platform and although there were others in the audience that night, it seemed like he was speaking to me and me alone. The Spirit of God had led him to address the very difficulty that I was having. He spoke of how in history class at school we read of people like Napoleon, his life and exploits and never once would question if what we are reading is true or not. He then held up his Bible and said “Here is the only absolutely true book ever written and it says CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS ACCORDING TO THE SCRIPTURES! (1Corinthians 15:3) If you can believe men, why can’t you just believe God?” With only 5 minutes left in the final meeting, what I had known most of my life, for the first time became very personal and real to me that the Lord Jesus Christ had died for MY sins. If the “God who cannot lie” (Titus 1:2) says it, it must be true. It wasn’t my believing that made it true but because it was true, I was saved. What joy and peace flooded my soul. To think that God would save a sinner like me!

Oh, by the way, my grandparents didn’t even make it to the ferry we were rushing to meet!

 Real Life Story of Annette Elliott

When I was a young girl, I received eternal life.  I was raised in a religious home where I learned about the Bible my entire life.  I grew up going to church services and Sunday School every week.  I remember sitting in my desk at school and analyzing my fellow classmates.  I would look at the girl sitting next to me and think, Wow, I sure feel sorry for that girl.  I bet she really needs to be saved.  Just the other day I heard her tell a lie to the teacher!  Of course I paid no attention to the fact that just that morning I had lied to my mom!  This pattern continued all throughout elementary school: I would pick apart my friends to look for their faults while ignoring my own.  I was always proud of myself and could not admit that I was just as bad off as those around me. 

Although I wouldn’t face up to the fact that I was a sinner, I was always very worried after hearing about the Bible-predicted event called the rapture.  I remember hearing about how one day, Jesus would return.  On that day, all of those who trusted in Him would be caught up in the sky and would be taken home to heaven.  I remember speakers in church reading verses like Matthew 24:44,

“Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” 

It scared me that the Lord could come any day now.  I remember sitting in those meetings and thinking to myself, Annette, if the Lord comes tonight, Mom and Dad will be in heaven.  They’ll be in heaven and you’ll be left behind.  Then the meeting would close and we’d get in the car and drive home. 

When we got home, I’d crawl into bed and think about what I had heard.  Then fear would begin to creep into my thoughts.  I would wonder if the Lord had come and taken my parents.  So I would crawl silently out of bed and creep into my parent’s bedroom.  When I heard my parent’s steady breathing, I would rush back to my room with a feeling of relief and climb back into bed. 

As I grew older, I began to realize that I needed to be saved right now.  The only problem was, instead of turning towards God, I decided to try my own methods.  Sitting in my bedroom one night, I reasoned that if I could work up some tears, God would take pity on me and save me.  So I sat there on my bed praying and crying my eyes out.  However, that didn’t do the trick.  My next plan was to reason with God.  Surely if He saw what a good girl I had been, He would forgive me of the “few” sins I had committed.  When that didn’t seem to work either, I simply gave up on ever getting to heaven. 

However, God had different plans for me.  When I was nine years old, I began to worry about my soul once again.  I would have terrible nightmares about Hell.  They were so horrible that when I woke up and saw the darkness of my room, I thought that I really was in Hell.  But when morning came, I pushed these thoughts out of my head and went about my day.

Soon after I began having nightmares, my parents started taking me to a series of church meetings.  I attended the meetings every week for quite a while.  The series was soon ending and I was starting to lose hope of getting salvation.  I knew now that I was a sinner with no hope of getting to heaven through my own works.  That night, the first speaker got up and I found myself listening very carefully.  I don’t remember much about what he spoke on, except for the very end of his message.  He was telling about the night he had received salvation.  He looked up and said, “ I always knew that Jesus died for sinners, but the night I was saved I found out that Jesus died for me.”  Right when I heard those simple words, I discovered the same thing.  It’s true, I thought, Jesus died for me!  I had heard those words my entire life, but it was not until then that I was ready to accept them.  I realized that I had been fighting God with my pride.  He will never force salvation upon you—you must make the decision for yourself. 

I am now fourteen and I have never regretted my decision to trust Jesus Christ.  He helps and guides me through my day, comforts me when I mourn, and rejoices with me when I’m glad.  Now I have a Friend who will not forsake me or turn his back on me.  I know for sure that when this life is over, I will be in heaven with Him forever. 

1 John 5:13 says, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” 

I am still amazed that God could love someone like me so much that He would send His son to die for me.  It doesn’t matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done.  Nothing will change the fact that Jesus died for you.  If you simply put your trust in him, you will be saved for all eternity.