Our practice, our usual practice that we would ask the visiting preacher to give their testimonies after the evening service. And so I'm very pleased to have this brother. I'm very glad that he now realizes he's in Cheltenham and not in Colchester. as he mentioned it yesterday. And you will certainly be coming back because it will make me look better as well, in terms of the length of the sermons and so on. So no complaints from now on, or I'll have him back. Come back to me, I'm always forgiven. So, sorry, I'm pulling your leg. Our folk are very used to it. So it is a joy. Obviously, I got to know this brother during COVID and hearing of him on social media and then getting in touch with him. I realized, actually, we have so many things in common. And I was trained at the Free Presbyterian College in Northern Ireland for four years. So I have those Free Presbyterian connections. And this brother as well realized that he has those kinds of backgrounds as well, and we knew very similar people. And then we both became Reformed Baptist as well, and came to similar convictions on a variety of things. And so I thought it will be a good thing for him to come and bring the word of God. And so we thank God for that. And also, I hope that he'll be able to tell us of how the Lord has worked in his life. And then you might have certain questions depending on how long it takes. You might have... You might have questions that you want to throw at him, and I might stop him and ask him some questions too, but may the Lord bless you. It's not that easy to stop me. Just hit me. So, well, may the Lord bless you, and please go ahead. Thank you. So, I was synthesized as somebody. I'm not very adventurous. I was born in Liverpool, and I've never really left Liverpool. Where I live now is like less than a quarter of a mile from where I was born. And my wife, Liz, was born in the street next to where we live, in the living room of the house, and then has eventually moved to the next street. I've never been anywhere else, but in that street and that street. We have lived in Walton, in the toughest, roughest, working class area all of our lives. It's a lovely place to be. We were in the hotel around the corner, and there's a hospital or police station, and there was sirens all night, and we were like, ah, fuck. Feels like home. It's great. Went out there for a bit of fresh air before. I could smell marijuana. So this is just like living in Walton. It's absolutely great. Home from home. Congregation of the church. Very like our church. Very similar. Great sense of humor. Everybody loves each other. There's a great bond and unity. Where do you start with a sermon? No, it's a sermon. Sorry, it's not a sermon. It'll feel like it is in a minute. Where do you start with a testimony? At the beginning, I suppose. I was born in 1966. You don't have to work that out, it makes me 37. So I was born in 1966, the year that England won the World Cup. Never won it since, keep going on about it. So yeah, I was born 1966. There's a song in Northern Ireland that says, It's the biggest mix-up that you have ever seen. My father, he was orange, and my mother, she was green. And that's the story of my life, because my mother was born in Crossmaghlen in Northern Ireland. If you know anything about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, that is bandit country, they call it. There was more British soldiers killed in Crossmaghlen than anywhere else in the whole of Northern Ireland. It is a place that was an IRA strongholds and an absolute Republican stronghold. If you were English and you went in there, you'd be killed. I had an uncle who was killed by the IRA because he was a postman. He was a Roman Catholic, he was a Republican, but he took a job as a postman. He was driving along the country road and he set off a bomb and incendiary device and killed him just because he was working for the British government and he had the crown on a van. No other reason. That's how ruthless the area was. My mother was a Republican, she was brought up Roman Catholic, she was convent educated and she was in a Republican family. She eventually, she married a soldier, he got killed and she was pregnant at the time and she lost the baby. It was in a car crash, he was killed and she eventually came over to Liverpool And she met my dad. My dad was an Orangeman. That doesn't mean he was on the sunbeds and had a dodgy tan. It means that he was in the Orange Lodge. I don't know if any of you know anything about the Orange Institution. King William III came to Brixton when this country was about to become Roman Catholic, and he came into the country, there was a glorious revolution, bloodless revolution, he came, and he came and he founded the Orange Association, because he was William of Orange, and from that point onwards in the UK, There was little associations, groups of people who called themselves Orangemen, and my dad was one of them. He was a very high, very similar to the Masons in their degrees, a sort of semi-secret society that marches on the streets. They have big bands, flute bands and accordion bands, and it's massive in Northern Ireland. But when Myself and my wife, Liz, were in the Orange when we were younger. There was over 20,000 people in Liverpool in the Orange. It was massive. The same as in Glasgow and Edinburgh. It is absolutely giant. Thousands and thousands of people. I was placed into the Orange Lodge when I was a child. You would think, how would an Orangeman and a Roman Catholic get together when Orangemen are actually not allowed to marry. Roman Catholics, my dad was very militant, loyalist Protestants. He was a member of the UDA, which was the Ulster Defence Association, which was a paramilitary group. It was eventually made into a paramilitary group. My dad used to gun run from Canada to Liverpool to Northern Ireland, and he'd run guns through for the UDA that were used to kill people. in Northern Ireland, Jordan the Troubles. So that's the background I've been brought up in. My mother's family, nicely of them, because they were so loving and kind, sent us a letter bomb in the post in the 1970s. Little bomb arrives through the post in an envelope. My dad said at the time there was lots of letter bombs being delivered to prominent loyalists and he said, This looked suspicious, especially since it had an ordinary Irish postcode on. So they got the army out, and the army defused it and done a controlled explosion, cleared the street. Lovely family my mother come from to send us those type of presents. So that made me avidly... angry and a hater of Roman Catholics and Roman Catholicism. I did not know anything about God. All I knew that I was a Protestant and I thought because I was a Protestant that automatically put me to heaven because God's not a Catholic. He's a Protestant, so obviously I'd get in because I was a Protestant, that's how I saw it. So I was just trusting in my religion and my christening and my religious upbringing, going out on the streets, marching on parades. I got involved with the Northern Irish paramilitaries myself while I was a young teenager, joined the Young Loyalists Association. I was a founder member of it. Of all things, I was the chaplain in the Young Loyalist Association, which was a young terrorist group that's on punishment, beatings, and drug dealing, and I was the chaplain. I was the one who had to read Bible verses out at the different meetings. Can you believe that type of stuff goes on in this country? Then I progressed into being part of the fundraising of the UDA and things like that. I had a background where, when I was younger, I was brought up... My mum and dad were great. My mum was a nurse, my dad owned his own business. I didn't come from a rough family. I say I didn't come from a rough family, it was a paramilitary terrorist family, but not rough in the sense of violent. But I had, I was talking to a young fella today, I had psoriasis, which was a skin condition, and that meant I got bullied a lot. When I was in school, I had rashes and things like that, and I got bullied when I was in school. But coming from the family that I'd come from, I used to think I was tough, so I constantly spent my time fighting. Then eventually, I went and trained and done jiu-jitsu, and I ended up a part of the British jiu-jitsu display team. I was a martial arts teacher. I was a player. And then when I was 16 or so, I broke my back. I snapped my spine in two places. I'm not going back to those two places. Anyway, forget it. So I broke my back in two places. I was paralyzed in the waist down for six months. They didn't think I'd walk again, but because I'd done martial arts, I had a good muscle structure in my back, and it set like a splint, the muscles, and eventually I got the feeling back. in my legs, but it left me with a serious chip on my shoulder. I was at that point almost like a professional fighter. But I couldn't do jiu-jitsu because you can't when you've got a broken back. Couldn't play rugby anymore. Left me with a serious chip on my shoulder. So I was very, very violent. I'd been used to being in displays, tossing over and fighting. So I thought that I had to carry that on in the pubs, just going into pubs and fighting with anybody, showing off how tough I was. Liz had a terrible time with me when we first started seeing each other. I've known Liz all my life. All my life, we've known each other. She's my sister's best friend, and we both played in the same Loyalist band together. We've been playing sweet music ever since. So me and Liz know everything about each other, with her being my sister's friend. So she knew what I was like, and she still took me on, even knowing my background and my life, and knowing what I was like. Brave woman, really brave woman. So we get together, me and Liz, and we are as two children. We've got two sons, two lovely sons, and one lives in Liverpool and one lives in Northern Ireland, of all places. We weren't married, we just got together. Our two children, we'd go out drinking all of the time and partying and enjoying our life. But in the background was this whole Loyalist thing going on and the violence going on and all that type of thing. So me and Liz knew nothing of the Bible except for the little bits that are read in the Young Loyalist Association and in Orange Lodge meetings when I would go to different meetings. So one day we, decided to get married. I won't go into all the details, there was nothing romantic about it. It cost us about 60 quid. And we got married, and we had the two lads. And nine days after we got married, Liz's mum died. Just suddenly, she's sitting, talking to her in her living room, and a blood clot stuck in her heart, and she just... fell down dead. Well, Liz and her mum, like most mother and daughters, were extremely close. Not just to the fact that we lived in the next street, not that type of close, but extremely close. And Liz was devastated. She started suffering from anxiety, panic attacks, depression. She'd been involved with spiritualists and mediums and spiritualist churches and all sorts of things. And she kept saying to me all the time, What will happen if I die? If this is a family thing and it's genetic, what will happen if I die? Where will it go? And I'd go, you're the Protestants. You go to heaven, of course. All Protestants go to heaven. So that's it. And it wasn't good enough for her. She was like, no, no, that's not good enough. So all of the time she kept asking questions. And one day there was that dreaded knock at the door like that. and it was the Jehovah's Witnesses. The JWs knocked at the door. Liz answered the door, and they spoke to her about God, about Jehovah, and they told her a whole load of stuff, and she woke me up. I'd been working nights on the taxis, and she came up and woke me up all excited. Some people have knocked, and they've told me all about God, and they've given me this magazine. It was a Watchtower magazine. So I knew who they were. Straight away, I went, They're a cult. They're the Jehovah's Witnesses. They're a cult. How do you know they're a cult? I just know they're a cult. They're not Protestants, so they must be a cult. So I said, I've nothing to do with them. They're knocking back next Thursday. They want to talk to you as well. That is all I need is the Jehovah's Witnesses. So I phoned me dad, because me dad, although he was involved in loyalist terrorism, He was godly in his own way. He knew the Bible, loved the Bible. We were not allowed to do anything on the Lord's day in our family. So it's interesting, you've got this interesting mix in it within loyalism. So I said to my dad, what are you gonna do? That's all this witness is. And he said, get in touch with the Protestant Suicide Society in London, in Fleet Street. They'll have some literature about Jehovah's Witnesses. So I phones up the Protestant Suicide Society first time, I come in contact with a real Christian. I says, excuse me, have you got any leaflets or booklets about cults? She said, are you a Christian? I said, of course I am, I'm a Protestant. She said, I didn't ask you that. Are you born again? I said, listen, love, do you want me money or not? That's what I said. And she said, I've got some stuff about cults, about Jehovah's Witnesses. But do you mind if I send you some free stuff as well?" I said, if it's free, I'll have it. So she sent out a whole load of tracts and literature like this. And me and Liz just split it in half and started reading. First time we'd ever come in contact with the gospel. I read some stuff, like the story of a Bible. And it was about a Roman Catholic lady who'd become a Christian. I was like, that can't happen. And then she gave this Bible to a priest. Well, he took it off her. And he ended up becoming a Christian. And when he was dying, he gave it to a nun. And she ended up becoming a Christian. I said, I'm having none of that. And I was like, I didn't believe that a Roman Catholic could get into heaven, no matter what. So I was like, no way. We need to get a Bible and check out this stuff to see if what it's actually saying is true. Because I believe the Bible was God's word. I just never looked at it. So we got a Bible, started reading it, and reading all of these tracts and leaflets and checking out that it was actually in the Bible. And we were like, oh no, we're in trouble. The Bible actually says this stuff. Well, one leaflet he sent was a little booklet called Have You the Spirit by J.C. Ryle, who of course, as I've mentioned, was the first bishop of Liverpool. So I read through it, and there was 10 marks of a person who has the Holy Spirit, and we didn't have any of them, not even between us, we didn't have any of the marks. One of the marks was, People who have the Holy Spirit like to mix with other people who have the Holy Spirit. So we can do that. We can go to church. So that'll be, we'll tick that one. So we'll have one out of 10. And as we go along our life, we'll probably tick off most of them. So we'll at least have six out of 10 and we'll be fine. And that's the way I thought it with this thinking of like good works. If I do the right thing, I'll get in. So there was the launch of the National Lottery. It was in 1994, I don't know whether any of you remember that. And we invited a load of friends round, we had a load of drink, and we thought we were going to win the lottery, and obviously we didn't. And I drank quite a lot, and I had a bit of a hangover the next morning, and Liz woke me up. and said, we're going to church. Last thing I wanted to hear, I'd rather have had her say the Jehovah's Witnesses not, so it's like, I'm not going to, I'm in no fit state to go to church. So she said, we're going, I'm up, I'm dressed, the kids are ready, we're going. So being a submissive husband, I said, okay, but I'm not getting a wash, not brushing my teeth, we're getting a car, going, get it over with, that's it. So we get in the car, we sit there, I said, where are we going? She said, I don't know. So you know. And I was like, I haven't got a clue where to go. So we sat there for a little bit, umming and ahhing where we'd go. And she said, my mum used to go to a church on Netherfield Road that was called St. Polycarp's. It was a Church of England church. And I said, that's interesting, because that church on Netherfield Road is now a Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster in Liverpool. It's Ian Paisley's church, and he's a Protestant. So it's good enough for me, it's a Protestant church. Off we go, I thought, it's non-ecumenical and all this type of stuff. Off he goes, arrives at the Protestant Reformers' church, we're Protestant Reformers now, and he pulls up outside, goes to the door, it was locked. So I'm like, great, let's get back in the car and go. And a couple came round the corner from Northern Ireland called David and Ruth, and they said, are you looking to get into the church? And I'm like, And Liz is like, yeah, yeah, and she said, we go in this way, and if it wasn't getting worse, we went into a cellar, down some stairs, and we goes into the basement of the church, and marches straight to the front, sits on the ground with the kids, marches straight to the front, which is unusual in a church, everyone sits at the back. And I thought, I don't want to see anyone, I just want to get this over with. Sat on the front row, the pastor comes in, fiery Northern Irishman called Hillis Fleming, and he preached a sermon called National Lottery, National Sin. I was like, oh man. And so we looked at each other, like we got our lottery tickets sticking out of our pocket, and everything he said, was to me, have you ever had that? The preacher is just preaching to you and I'm like, are you stalking me? You know everything about my life, everything that I'm doing. And we left, shook, great sermon, enjoyed that, thank you very much. Got out and said, we're never going there again. Me and Liz said, we are not going back to church. That was horrendous. Why did we put ourselves through that? Got in the car, Liz was crying. That's how bad it was. I mean, at least no one's crying when I preach. But poor Hillis, Liz is crying. So we get home the following week, Liz is like, should we give it another go? Might be better this week. He can't be speaking about the lottery again. So I'm like, OK, we'll give it a go. So off we go. And we hated it even more the second time. And we're like, what are we doing going in this weird, All the men are wearing overcoats. It's like something like the Stepford Wives. It's just totally strange. So we were determined not to go back, but the Lord took us back there again. So we kept going and kept going. And after a little while, we absolutely knew that we were different than everybody else. We knew that everybody had something that we didn't have. We didn't know what it was, but we just knew that they had something. And one day, the communion comes around, and they're going around with the bread, and me and Liz, were scared, like literally scared of him bringing it to us and he walks over and Liz at this point is sweating and he offers it to us and I just put my hands up and went, no thanks mate. And Liz said she was absolutely made up, that's a Scouse word, she was really happy. that I'd said no, because she just didn't know what to do, but Hillis had seen us refusing it, and he must have thought, right, they've refused it, so something's going on with them, with their conscience, so he says, come back to church again this evening, we've got a visiting speaker from Northern Ireland called Roy Stewart, and he's gonna come and preach, and we're all going back to my house afterwards for some food, and I thought, food, I like the sound of that, we'll go back in the evening. Do you want to ask any questions? No? Okay, go on. So, he goes to the church, and then he goes back to Hiller's Fleming's house, and there's a thing called Griller Pasta, that's nuts on food, they just put the pasta in the corner, and they grilled them, and they asked them loads of questions, but That same Northern Irish couple knew that we weren't Christians, and they were just asking them all the questions that we needed the answers to. He knew them. He must have been thinking, why are you asking these questions? You know the answers. And he was saying, so how's a person become a Christian then? And what's all this thing about sin about? Are we really sinners? Are we as bad? And he asked them loads and loads of questions. The penny just wasn't dropping. I was absolutely convicted of sin. I knew that if I died at any point I'd go to hell, and Liz knew the same. We both knew we were heading towards a lost eternity, but we didn't have a clue how to be a Christian. Not a clue. All the preaching, We just weren't getting it. There was a lot of religious language, redemption, justification. I'm like, I don't even know what that means. Talking about being born again. I didn't have a clue what born again was. That woman on the phone had said the same. I'm like, what are these weird people talking about? Being born again, grace and all this type of stuff. So he goes back and somebody asked Roy Stewart a question. I smoked a lot, like I was saying Liz did. I was smoking 40 ciggies a day. I was smoking weed. I was into everything. I was doing all sorts of stuff I shouldn't be doing. Involved in all sorts of different crime. And I couldn't stop smoking. I'd been coughing up blood. When I was a young lad, I'd ended up a welder by the time I was about 19 or 20. and my lungs were terrible, I could hardly breathe, coughing up blood, all sorts of stuff. So I tried hypnosis, I tried patches, I tried hypnotic tapes, I tried everything to stop smoking. Willpowered a lot and I couldn't stop smoking. Somebody says to Roy Stewart, What was the hardest thing that you found to give up when you become a Christian? He went, that's easy, smoking. And he went, why did you find it hard? He said, I had cut down, he said, to just three or four ciggies I was down to. But I was in Bible college, I was in the Whitfields, maybe he says that's something about the Whitfields, I don't know. He said, and he used to hang out the window in the toilet, having a ciggy. That reminded me of when I was at school. That's what I used to do, smash the window in the maths class so I could hang my ciggy out and put it back in and blow the smoke out. And I was amused by this, that he's training to be a minister and he smoked. I was like, this is classic, this. And he said, well, how did you give it up? or even why did you give it up? And he says, well, the Bible says it's sinful to have addictions. All things are lawful. He said this, I never knew what he meant at the time. All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient. So they're not good for us. All things are lawful and we must not come under the power of anything. And that word power means addiction, addiction or control. Like when you come under the power of drink or the power of smoke and weed or the power or addiction of ciggies, he said, it had control of me. It was controlling my life. It was controlling my life at this point because Liz smoked and she couldn't listen to a whole sermon. She'd be like 20 minutes in, she'd be like, I need a ciggy, I need smoke, I need smoke. And we'd go off for a smoke or whatever the case may be. It was absolutely hindering us. And they said, how did you do it then, Roy? He said, I didn't, God did it. He said, I came out of the cubicle and I thought, I've asked God to forgive all my sins, and he's forgiven all of my sins. I've asked him to make me a new person, and I'm a totally different person than I once was. I don't even believe the things that I used to believe. I've totally changed, but I've never asked God to take away this smoke, and I've never took it to God. He said, so I knelt down there and then in the toilet. I thought, imagine walking in, and he's kneeling in the toilet. He said, and I said, Lord, This addiction is beating me. It is beating me. But it can't beat you. Please, Lord, take it away. He said, I never smoked again after that. And that was it. The penny dropped straight away. There was a Bible verse that I had sort of memorized when I was in the Honor's Lodge and a young loyalist. And it was, ask. And now she'll receive, seek, and now she'll find, knock, and the door shall be opened unto you." And that was it. I thought, I have never asked God to forgive me. I never asked him to save me. And that was it. I was excited at this point for a few different reasons, but we ended up going home. I goes up to the bedroom, puts the Bible on the bed that we've got, and I knelt down. And this was my thinking. It was wrong thinking, but God is gracious to us even when we think wrong about God. I was thinking, this could be my way out. The Bible says, ask and thou shalt receive. It's a promise, it's a guarantee. If I ask and I don't receive, the Bible's a lie. It's as simple as that. If I ask and I don't receive, then what's the point of me believing anything in the Bible if I can't believe that? So I thought to myself, I'll ask. And if nothing happens, I can put the Bible in the bin within a couple of days and say to Liz, we'll jib off this church business, it's a load of rubbish. So I called out to God, I didn't know what to say, and I said, God, Give me this born again thing, that's what I said. I said, I don't know what it is, but I know I have to have it, because everybody's telling me I have to have it. Give me this born again thing, that's all I said. And while you're there, that's what I said. Oh, while you're there, as if I'm on the phone. Oh, before you go, while you're there, take away these 40 ciggies that I smoke, like he did with Roy Stewart. If you did it for him, you can do it for me. And it was almost like a get-out clause with me. I thought, I've tried everything and I can't stop smoking. So it was almost like, this isn't gonna happen. Not a chance, this won't happen. So I get up, I didn't hear any angels singing, there was no bells, there was no lights. I got up and I'm like, Right, and I went to bed, and off to bed we went, and that was it. I woke up the next day, I'm gonna sound like a charismatic when I say this, I never smoked again. I woke up, I was a non-smoker. The weirdest thing to this day, and I've seen lots and lots of amazing answers to prayer, I could keep you all night telling you about answers to prayer that I've had. And I just woke up and I looked at me ciggies, like scouse breakfast, a ciggy and a cup of tea, and I looked at them and I went, I don't fancy a ciggy. That is weird. So it gets up, thinking, well, that'll wear off. By the time I have a cup of tea, I'll have to have a ciggy. I didn't want to smoke. I had become a non-smoker. To this day, it was as if God went, What more can I do? What more can I do for you than I have done? My son has died so that you can have this born again thing that you desire. And now I've even proved it by taking away the smoking over to you. Where do you go from here? Well, I had a lot of things going on in my life, a whole lot of things. Becoming a Christian cost me tens of thousands of pounds, it really did. It was a massive cost. There were things I couldn't do anymore, things I couldn't get involved in and things. So it was a massive cost. So I had to absolutely be certain that it was real. So me and Liz used to go Walter Hillis Fleming and his wife June with hundreds of questions. What about this? What about that? What about... And we would just hound the poor fella with questions. I know how that feels now. I get hounded with questions. The pastor hasn't hounded me with any questions yet, which is good. And he just answers all these questions graciously, was patient with us, opened the scriptures, told us all the things that we needed to know. And I knew that God had worked in my life. Everything had changed. everything, my views, my beliefs. I even thought that Catholics would become Christians at this point, and I thought, I have gone off my head. So things are just completely radically turned around to be completely different. We're in a church now where probably at least half of the church are all converted Roman Catholics who've become Christians. God has a sense of humor with me on that one. And God really blessed us and blessed our family and blessed our sons. One of our sons is a missionary. He lives over in Northern Ireland. He's a missionary, been all over the world preaching the gospel. God has been so, so gracious to us. I was in a free Presbyterian church and it was John Hanna who was over, he was in Spain. And he'd come over and he was preaching. And at this point, I was happy to be a Christian, but I didn't really want to do anything. I was like, I'm happy to just go to church. I don't want to get involved too much. And he preached on how God is looking for a man to fill the gap, that there's this hedge with all these gaps in it, and he needs men to step up and fill the gap. And I'm like, yeah, because of course, coming from the loyalist background, I was always looking for men to step into for the cause. And I'm like, yeah, I can understand that God wants And then he says, that God says, who will go for us? So God's actually put it out there, look over at Manteville again, who will go for us? And Isaiah says, I'm a man of unclean lips who dwells amongst the people of unclean lips. I couldn't say a sentence without swearing. Honestly, I just, I used to have to bite me lip in church. I didn't know how to decode me sentence without swearing in it. And by the time I'd take the swear out, it'd work out at about three words. And it intended to be a long sentence. And I thought, that's me. I'm a man of unclean lips. Everybody I know swears their heads off. I dwell amongst the people of unclean lips. But Isaiah said, there are my Lord send me, and God used them. And I couldn't get that out of my head. Couldn't get it out of my head that God would use people who are sinful people, who are unworthy people. And I told my pastor about it, and he said, you need to go to Bible college. For one thing, you know hardly anything about the Bible, and it will do you good just to learn stuff. and get your theology right and stacked up in the right place. And another thing, by the end of it, you'll know if you are able to be a pastor and if God has called you. Off I went to Bible college. In the meantime, me and Liz had become youth workers. The pastor had put me over to youth work. We had a large youth work, we were working with street gangs in Liverpool and because of the background that had come from, it was no problem to me working with all violent gangs and lads carrying knives and stuff. It didn't flinch me in any way. So we'd, at this point, had moved to Stanley Park Church. We started running a youth work, and for 10 years we ran a youth work in Liverpool, getting the kids off the streets, starting football teams, managing teams for them. We saw loads of young people converted, some of them ended up missionaries, and God really blessed us. And then our pastor. comes in and says, I'm leaving. His mom was ill. He was traveling down south looking after her all the time. He said, we need to get somebody else in. So you preach every morning, Eddie, and we'll get someone in with a view of an evening, and then eventually you can call a pastor with the rest of the members. The church is a lot bigger then at this point. So off he goes, and I'm preaching every morning, still running the youth work. and getting other people in to speak, and a lovely Scottish lad, in a way that only a Scottish person could do, said to me, Eddie, your sermons are so long, they're not now, by the way, he says, your sermons are so long, why don't you just chop them in half, preach half in the morning, half in the evening, and you can be the pastor? So, and everyone was like, amen, anything to shorten me sermons. So I went, you know what, I'll give it a go, we're still doing the youth work, but I'll give it a go and I'll preach morning and evening. And honestly, Ian Paisley said this to me, I don't know if he ever says it to you, was having a chat with him one day, and I was, woe is me, something has happened, I don't know, and I'm whinging about myself, and oh, I've had this problem, oh, I've got a gas bill, I don't know what it was. And he said to me, you think you've got problems now? This is what he said to me. You think you've got problems now? If you ever become a pastor, the devil will jump on your back and he'll ride you like a rodeo horse. That's what he said to me. He said, so never become a pastor unless you are absolutely certain that that's what God wants you to do. The minute I become a pastor, the devil jumped on me back. For the first three years in ministry, it nearly killed me, nearly killed Liz to be doing the youth work and the ministry, and it was so hard for the family. I didn't know that being a pastor was so hard. Pray for your pastor. Oh, it's a difficult job. You don't understand the stuff that goes into it. Nevermind the preparation and the preaching. It is a difficult job. There's a lot of spiritual attack. If the devil can take out a pastor, he takes out the church. If he can cause that pastor to fall greatly and publicly, he will destroy the church. So he's constantly on trying to get, but, The pastor has God on his side, and one with God is always a majority. Greater is he that's in me than he that is in the world. So the first few years were difficult, and I literally was just doing funerals, left, right, and center. Three people died in a week. Somebody phones up, such and such has died, okay. Undertaker phones up the next day. It's the undertakers, all right, is that for Gina? No, no, it's someone else. So somebody else, and then the next day, somebody else died, three members of the church, and the members just kept dying one by one. I was like, how inconsiderate is that, that the members are all just popping off to glory and leaving me with this? And the church went right the way down, as I've mentioned, to three members, me, Liz, and Dorian, lovely godly lady, and an attendance of about seven to 12 people. I never for one second believed that the church was going to close. Never. Always thought, well, living in a day of small things, this is what God's called me to do. I'll do it. I never preached out in other churches. All of the years I was a pastor, 13 years of it, I didn't preach out because I didn't want to get anyone in to speak in our church when sometimes there was only four ladies that turned up to the meeting and I'd get up and say, welcome to the women's meeting on a Sunday and there they were. So I didn't know if anyone had turned up. So I just kept preaching and preaching and preaching for 12 years. Then all of a sudden, as we know, as I've already mentioned, Covid come along, and I'm like, what do we do? By this time, there's another guy who'd come along, Chris, and I went, what do we do? He said, stay open. I'm like, okay. And that was it, we stayed open. And whether it was foolhardy or whatever the case may be, we didn't know what to expect or what not to expect, so we just stayed open. And the Lord really blessed us, really blessed us, and we grew and grew and grew and grew. And the church now has 23 members, godly, sound, reformed members. Our membership is so tight, you'd wonder how we'd ever have any members. We've had a problem with some crazy hyper-Calvinists and some views that man didn't have a soul and all this type of stuff. So we had to put people under discipline and remove people out of the church. And from that point, COVID hit, and we just grew and grew and grew. God really, really blessed us. We made the membership that you must be non-charismatic, non-ecumenical, King James Bible user, 1689, conforming to it. just because we'd been so attacked by some real cults and dangerous people who'd come into the church. So we absolutely nailed down what we believe. And they still become members, even knowing all of these things. And God's greatly blessed us. We have about 70 or 80 people who attend the church now. Not all regular, we'd normally have about 50, 40 to 50 of a morning, 40 to 50 of an evening. And like I've been saying to a few people, of an evening we have a cup of tea after the service, and we stick around sometimes till half one, two o'clock in the morning, where people hounding me with questions. So they're getting their own back of what I used to do to poor Hillis Fleming. And the church is greatly blessed. The Lord has done exceedingly, abundantly above all that we can ask or even think. And I think, not that it's similar, but your church has grown as well, hasn't it, over the last few years. So God is really blessing the Reformed faith, and there's lots and lots of Reformed churches that have erred that are growing and are growing bigger. I'll shut up and ask, is there any questions? Anyone want to ask me a question? You're all asleep, aren't you? Some spiritual concern you have, something's going on in your life, something I've not answered correctly, or to your satisfaction, you can ask this brother. Not that scary. It's just they don't understand you. That's what it is, yes. Go on, I don't mind. Any question, I'm happy with any. Yeah, the problem was, Liz, as I said, she smoked 40 ciggies a day. And this is an act of faith in itself. She says, I'm not becoming a Christian because God will take away those ciggies off me like he did with you. So she already believed that God was able to do it. So that was an act of faith in itself. Or like, say the word and my servants will be healed. She was like, God will take the ciggies off me. So she knew. that she, and eventually she prayed, she handed her life over to God, and it's been plain sailing ever since. Happy, lovely marriage, as you said. Yeah. Go on. No, no, it was quite amazing, really. We're on a junction of a massive main road, and our church holds a thousand people, so when you put the lights on, it illuminates half of the area, it's just giant. If anyone's ever seen our building, it is just giant. And we've even got the big sign, we're thinking of Christ, with lights on it, so it's all little. So we turn up the chairs, we were meeting in the basement at this point, because we couldn't meet upstairs, it was far too big, and there was pigeons living in there and all that. So I didn't want to have a coup. Anyway, so we didn't use the top of the building. So we met downstairs, and as we grew and grew and grew, we had to renovate the upstairs of the building for the people to be able to get in. So we were then meeting in full, bright lights. And I was absolutely convinced that the police would come in and arrest me. Absolutely convinced of it. So we had a little group of faithful people go in the back room and they'd pray together while the service was on. Oh Lord, don't get Eddie arrested. Or maybe they were saying get Eddie arrested, I'm not really sure. And they'd just pray about it and I would just preach. And that was it and we just continued on waiting. Not at all. And our agreement was, with me and Chris, if anyone got ill, we'd reconsider it. We'd have a little think about it and think, what do we do now? Somebody's ill, what do we do? So honestly, it was the strangest thing. For everyone, it was the strangest thing, wasn't it? It was an unknown entity. Nobody knew what to do. We just made, it was easy for me because I'm Pope Eddie, I'm the only elder. I'm the pastor. It's like, what are you going to do? I'll do this. OK. And that's it. Everybody just agrees. So it's easy when you're the only leader. So I just said, we'll stay home and see what happens. And nobody got ill. But the mad thing was, And it is mad, don't try this at home. We didn't wear masks, we didn't social distance. We didn't wear masks, didn't social distance. We sang, I'd print all the hymns out on a sheet so we weren't coughing all over hymn books. Print out the sheets. And on the front I add, wear a mask or don't wear a mask, wear a mask or be barefaced, that's what I put. And I put social distance if you can because we live in this day and age and people like their safe spaces and I put all this funny stuff on the front. thinking that if the police come in, at least I could say, look, I'm trying my best here. And I'd say I'm sure some people didn't even get a wash for two years, just to play through the points. And the Lord just blessed us and we just grew and grew and grew. We had our Sunday morning service, evening service, men's meetings, women's meetings, parties for the kids, all sorts of things. and nobody got ill the whole time. And then at the end of the lockdown, when Boris said, you can get on with your life, COVID's gone now, or whatever it was, we went to the Bible study that week on the Wednesday, and 12 people got ill, really ill. I ended up really ill with COVID for three weeks. Coughing me guts up, couldn't breathe. Another person ends up in hospital. But it was after it had all finished, as if the Lord was saying, so if you're gonna brag and boast about it, and make it look like you're more spiritual than everyone else, you won't now. And that's it, we all got ill. So we had nothing to brag and boast in, and it wasn't an act of, we were more spiritual than anyone else. We just didn't have a clue what to do. Nobody did at the time. It just happens that I was reading through Hebrews, and it was not forsaken the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is, and the more as you see the day approaching, and I was like, the Lord knew this was coming, and he's in control, even if I breathe it in and I die, I mean, what can I do? I mean, we'll just meet, there's only seven of us, so we'll meet and see what happens. So it wasn't any big act of, I'm so faithful or not, and it was just, I didn't know what to do. I'm being ruthless in my past with my beliefs and loyalism and I'd be prepared to die for what I believed. I thought if I was prepared to die for the loyalist cause, if it cost me my life, I'd forsake it. So I didn't know what to do. It was just blind ignorance. I'm good at that blind ignorance, but I just, well, yeah. Can I just ask a question? Yeah. You say to someone who's struggling with assurance, struggling with, am I a child of God? Right, so you're not gonna like this, what I'll say. I said it to someone yesterday. Hillis Fleming said something to me, you have to put your fingers in your ears when I say this. Hillis Fleming was an XB Special, so he was a rough diamond, and he used to always say he was a hatchet man, he was really tough and rough. And that's why I liked him, because he just said it as it was. And I said to Hillis one day, even though all the smoking had gone and my life had totally changed and my beliefs were different, he said to me, Eddie, Are you saved? Because Liz had gone into the back room with Hillis and June and prayed a prayer with them and said, for God so loved Liz that he gave his only begotten son, that if Liz would believe in him, then Liz won't perish but have everlasting life. So she came out full of the joys of spring and Hillis said to me, are you saved? So after everything had gone, I don't know, I haven't been in the back room, I don't know. I thought you had to go in the back room to get saved. And he's like, has your life changed? Is everything different? And I said, yeah, everything's changed. He said, you're saved then? I said, I'm still not sure. He said, have you called out on God to save you? I'm like, yeah, I have. I've asked God to save me. He said this, go home, close your bedroom door, swear at God. And I went, What? He went, go on, get on your knees, swear at God. And I said, I can't do that. And he said, why? He's not listening. And that's what he said to me. Why? He's not listening, is he? And it was that immediately I got assurance. I'm like, I can't swear at God because I know he's listening. So why do I think he wasn't listening when I asked him to save me? Of course he was listening. It was a promise and he changed my life. And that immediately give me assurance. And every time I've struggled with any and then I thought, oh, and I've had the devil gone. If you were a Christian, which is, he uses the word if, remember in the wilderness he kept saying to Jesus, if you are the son of God, what a nerve, if you are the son of God, Jesus created them, if you are the son of God, of course he knew, but he just tried to put that if in, even with Jesus, and he'll say to you, if you were a Christian, you wouldn't do that, if you were a Christian, you wouldn't have said that, and when I had those if moments, I'd think to myself, Can I get on my knees and swear at God? And then I'd go, no, because I know he's real and I know he's listening. So I'd call out on him instead to help me with these temptations and these issues. So I'm not saying get on your knees and swear to God for assurance. I'm not saying that, but be absolutely assured that if you call out on God genuinely from your heart and say, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner, then you will leave this place justified. The Bible tells us that. Justified, never sinned, I have to explain that in a big long way. Well, thank you so much. My concern is it's about quarter past nine. Some people have to travel a great distance to get home. And we praise God that lots of children are here too and have heard the word of God. So very grateful to you. Tomorrow, I'm going to go to Fleetwood Street to Protestant Truth Society. I have some very difficult meetings there. And I'll meet Sarah. Sarah Ray. She's not Nigerian, but she's a black lady. who sent you the tracts and so on. So I'll be seeing her tomorrow and mention you to her. But she continues to faithfully with her husband, George, sending out tracts and books and all of these things from there. Never met her. Never met her. Maybe one day. Okay, I'll show her your picture. Yeah? Oh, that will scare her. She'll be sorry she sent them. That's right. And I was quite surprised how you managed to pay £60 for your wedding. Yeah, it's too expensive. I'll give you a few. I didn't pay anything. It was £50 in our day. Well, I made it go up, so technically I only paid £30. Yes, so that was surprising to me, you being a scouser. Sheepskate. Great wedding as well, I had a party and I've eaten, but everyone else paid. Well, we thank God for all the goodness and the grace of God in your life and for the Word of God, that He's made you a preacher of His Word and His grace. And so, dear friends, we all from different backgrounds, we all are from different, our past, you would not want to repeat it. Our brother has not repeated the sins that he was involved. We don't want to glory in these things. We don't want to emphasize these things. But all the way through, see from what mire God saves sinners. There is no one who has gone too far as long as you're alive, then the Lord can show mercy to you. We can be a church goer, we can be very upright, we can do all the things, we can be very casual about things, we can just don't care about things, and whoever we are, whatever our background is, God can reach down and save us. And so this is what grace is. It means we don't deserve this favor and the love of God and yet he shows mercy to us or grace to us. Mercy, the difference between mercy and grace is grace is the unmerited favor of God. Mercy is when God should punish us as our enemies and he does not do that. And he refrains from punishing us. but instead pours His love and affection on us. And that is what He does because of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ becomes that shield, that covering that we need. And we were singing this morning about the rock of ages cleft for me. It's this rock that a sinner hides himself in, and so the wrath of God does not touch us. because of Jesus Christ being our covering. So this brother has been covered by Christ's righteousness and grace with all of his past. He's not what he once was. And so that is the case for every Christian. And so that is why we like to hear different ministers who come here to preach, to hear how God dealt with them and graciously worked in their lives. So let us now ask God's blessing. Let us all pray before we leave. our God and our Father, how thankful we are for Jesus Christ. Without Him, none of us would be here. Without Jesus Christ and His gospel, this country in which we are living in, in freedoms, we would have destroyed ourselves long ago. We would have been taken over by the enemy and by the heathen long ago. Lord, we are so thankful to Thee then. for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And our Lord Jesus Christ spoke about his truth, that this truth makes us free. And oh Lord, we pray for those who are here tonight and they have heard these things and they have been intrigued by these things. And they wonder if these things are true or if these things can happen to them. Lord, work thou in their hearts that they might go home and seek thee while thou art found and call upon thee while thou art near. We pray, O God, for thy servant here and his wife that thou will continue to bless them and the church there in Liverpool. Make thy face to shine upon them and be gracious unto them. May they see more souls coming to know the Savior. May they see these men and women mature in the faith. and grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And may this light that shines forth out of that church in Liverpool would shine forth spiritually in that region and be a wonderful witness of thy grace in that area. We pray for ourselves too, the same things that thou must use us. As we go out, may we be epistles read of all men. May we be as those who people see our lives and not just hear our words, but from our lives they see people of faith who trust in Jesus Christ, who are rejoicing because of Jesus Christ, who believe in thy sovereignty over all things. Lord, help us to be faithful witnesses. Help us to be consistent in our homes, in our private lives. May we be consistent in public, always seeking to magnify the Savior. So Lord, we pray that thou will then bless everyone here, young and old. And we ask that We might see great fruit of the Spirit wrought in our lives, and Lord, maybe not be like that fig tree that we read of, or that vine, that vineyard that was fruitless. But oh God, teach us thy ways, and help us to take these things in, and to realize that thou art our only salvation, that Jesus Christ is the only Savior, and that thy word is the only truth that we have, not just now, but forevermore. So Lord, we ask that thou wouldst look upon us with thy favor and forgive us all of our sins and send us home, Lord, under thy shadow and bring us back, O God, in thy love and in thy fear and we shall give thee all the glory through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.