Our sense organs 45

Personal testimonies:
Jesus found through a book
Many readers may now be asking: “How can I
repent? How can I disembark from the ship of
death? That’s what I really want to do! Could I use
this book to help me do that?” The basic answer
given by the Bible is that you must first hear the
message of Jesus’ redemption: “faith comes from
hearing the message, and the message is heard
through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). First of
all the message of Jesus must come to us. This
could happen through listening to an evangelistic
sermon followed by pastoral counselling, by talking
with an experienced Christian, or even by
reading an evangelistically oriented book.
That is precisely the purpose of this book – to
show you, in detail, the way of turning to Christ.
The necessity of salvation was dealt with in the
previous chapter. The process of redemption is
explained in detail in the next chapter. But first
I want to let a few people tell about their own
conversions. The first testimony is of a man who
came to faith in an unusual way by reading a
New Testament obtained from the Gideons (an
international association which distributes Bibles
in many countries of the world).
From Auschwitz to Christ
From 1942 to 1944, a certain man had to operate
the cremation ovens at Auschwitz. A Polish Jew,
he spent nearly six years in the concentration
camp. Though he hated Germans intensely, he
had of necessity learnt their language.
Eventually he emigrated to Israel, broken in spirit
and incapable of doing any work. After a long time
he got a job at the tunnel of Hezekiah. This tunnel
was commissioned by King Hezekiah, to channel
water under the city of Jerusalem from the Gihon
spring to the pool of Siloam. At this pool, Jesus
healed the man who was born blind (John 9:7).
And it was here that this Jew found a trilingual
New Testament (German, English and French) of
the Gideons, left behind by a tourist. He wanted
to throw it away, since he could only read the
German portion, and did not want to be reminded
of this hated language. He said later that he
was inexplicably prevented from throwing it
away. He found that he could not discard it, and
he read it secretly while waiting for new groups
of tourists. Eventually he had worked through
the entire text, from cover to cover. He had never
before heard of this Jesus Christ, but after reading
just the Gospel of Matthew, which he calls
the gospel for the Jews, he realised that Jesus is
the long-awaited Messiah of the Jews.
For several years this New Testament provided
his only spiritual nourishment. He did not know
any Christian, until the day that he met a German
youth who asked him to forgive the Germans for
all the wrong done to the Jews. This opened his
heart and for the first time he testified that he,
too, believed in Jesus Christ. He then joyfully
showed the youth his well-read Gideon New Testament,
saying: “I believe in this Jesus. What we
read here, is the truth. This Jesus is my Lord.”
Further examples: After lectures in many different
places I often meet people who tell me they
came to faith through some special book. The
following are brief testimonies from some of
these, from various backgrounds, of how they
were converted. I would emphasise that these
three examples were chosen subjectively. They
are not meant to represent any “standard” way
to come to Christ, which as already mentioned
could either be through a sermon, or a conversation
with a Christian, or a book, for example.
Their sole purpose is to help you with the step
now in front of you. Such a decision must be
deliberate, and in most cases it involves an inner
struggle. I therefore trust that the following personal
testimonies might help you.
A book that caused a restless night
I found faith in Jesus Christ at five o’clock in the
morning of the 3rd October 1992. My name is
Anja Raum, I am 36 years old and am now the
mother of three children. My life was strongly
affected by various circumstances – our first
baby, giving up my career as a teacher, moving to
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