My Testimony - Updated

Along with the background that led up to my surprise conversion

“Church of the Lakes”, Inlet, NY, where my grandfather preached in the heart of the Adirondacks

This is a repost of an earlier story, with the addition of an audio version, along with a few minor changes and corrected typos. But you’ll want to at least skim the written version because there’s lots of neat pictures, plus links to a short Franklin Graham video and 2 other earlier articles.

I usually keep my testimony short, because I never know if someone wants to hear it – if it’s short enough, maybe even an atheist or agnostic will listen.   But with substack, I can tell the whole story. You have the option of settling in and reading the whole thing, or saving it for later, or skimming it, or skipping it if you have no interest in how I changed from a cut-up in Sunday school to an agnostic in college and finally to a sincerely committed Christian at age 27.

I was blessed with a wonderful mom and dad. My mom was a preacher’s daughter. Her dad was David Davies, a Presbyterian minister who graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton NY. (That was a big reason why I went to Hamilton, near Utica.)

                the chapel, Hamilton College campus - attendance was mandatory, every Tuesday

Grandfather died when I was only 3, so I don’t remember him. But I benefited greatly from his legacy. He died with an Adirondack guide boat on his back, hiking with a few of his preacher buddies to their annual hunting campsite at Brantingham Lake in the Adirondacks. Yes, grandfather Davies was a guide for fishermen and hunters in the Adirondack Mts, (ADK for short), the largest state park in the lower 48 states. His 308 Savage carbine rifle was handed down to me and I’ve handed it down to my son also. Guiding gave him a little extra income – preachers weren’t paid much in the early 1900s.

Adirondack guide boat

Church of the Lakes, Inlet, NY. One summer I was hired to paint the belfry.

From 1914 – 1924, he preached at the “Church of the Lakes” in Inlet, NY – right in the very heart of the ADK. The “manse” (house for the preacher, also called a ‘rectory’) next door was where my mom was brought up. Mom’s childhood in the ADK gave her a wonderful love of mountains, forests, flowers, birds, and wildlife, and she passed that on to me. In 2009 I went back East and backpacked and climbed 5 of my beloved mountains in the ADK for old times sake.

glacier-scarred top of St. Regis Mt, ADK picture taken by an old boyhood friend who lives in Lake Placid - he wanted to climb it with me

Grandfather would preach in the morning at Inlet, then walk 5 miles up to Big Moose Lake, where he preached in the upper part of a good-sized boathouse, until they built a chapel. I visited that chapel about 10 years ago – it’s still the most beautiful building I’ve ever been in, built with local materials by local craftsmen.     

 Big Moose chapel, on Big Moose Lake, NY

interior, Big Moose chapel

In his later years, Grandfather preached near Albany, NY, where my dad met my mom. They were married in 1928, just before the wall street crash.

After the depression, in about 1942, they bought a house in Poestenkill (silent ‘T’), about 8 miles from that Albany Presbyterian church. Gas was rationed during WWII, so in order to have enough gas for dad to get to work at John Manning Paper Mill in Menands, they started attending the Lutheran church in Poestenkill, where I was raised until age 12, when we moved for a temporary stay in Albany.

When I was about 16, and a fairly typically rebellious selfish teenager, I quit going to Sunday school, and I realize now how much pain that must have caused my parents.

By the time I graduated from college it was worse. College made an agnostic of me, largely thanks to the widespread “evidence” for the theory of evolution, which, if believed, obviously negated the early part of the book of Genesis. If Genesis was not a true account, how could I trust the rest of the bible? So I didn’t. I wasn’t an atheist – 4 years of physics, chemistry, and math gave me a healthy respect for the scientific method and the rigorous handling of verified evidence – so I knew that no one could prove that God did not exist. Atheists are intellectually dishonest when they say there is no God. How could they possibly know that, even if it were true? The problem was, I didn’t see how anyone could prove God does exist, either. So I was an agnostic - one who doesn’t know whether God exists or not. Spiritually, I was in limbo.

another thing I now know - there’s no such thing as staying ‘on the fence’ - a failure to believe in the gospel of Jesus IS a decision - as He said, you’re either for Him or against Him - no middle road

After graduating in ‘63, getting married and working at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, NY, as a beginner in very early laser beam research, I worked for a while as a quality control inspector in Lincoln Nebraska for Brunswick Corp on the 2^nd stage motor case for the Polaris Missile. Then we moved to Oregon, where eventually I worked as a factory rep (a glorified term for salesman) for 3M company in their electrical products division for several years.

That’s when the big change came. My 3M job required me to do a little traveling to central Washington and eastern Oregon. I would be on the road for 3-5 days, every couple months. It was lonely in the evenings, with nothing to do but go to a bar or a movie or sit in a motel room and watch TV. I got tired of all that and started taking library books with me to read in the evenings.

One time I left home in a hurry and forgot to take some books. I rummaged around in my motel room and found the Gideon bible and for lack of anything else to do, I started reading it. I knew practically nothing; it was a long time since Sunday school, and I confess I never really had paid attention anyway. The beginning looked pretty boring, so I started in the middle. Proverbs were interesting, and I gradually read some of the history and prophets too. I didn’t understand much of it, but always got just enough out of it to want to come back for more. It became a habit to look for a Gideon bible as soon as I checked in to a motel.

This went on for about a year, but only reading on the road trips – time at home was busy with a wife and 2 children by then; 4 eventually.

One time when there was no bible in my room I went to the front desk and complained. They found one for me. Later, when I told this story to the Gideons, they got quite a kick out of it and invited me to tell my story at their annual dinner meeting in Salem Oregon.

After about a year of intermittent and random bible reading, I began to believe it might be true, even though there was much I still didn’t understand.

They say you don’t really appreciate that your parents might have been right about a lot of things, until you’re about 25. My grandfather’s and my parents’ faith no doubt was a legacy that had an influence on me, even if subconsciously, and now I’m very thankful for it.

One of the things that got me thinking that God might be real and the bible might be true, was something that goes back to my physics training in college. It was in a course on nuclear physics.

Electrons have a negative charge and protons are positive. So they attract each other, which is what holds the electrons in orbit around the nucleus. But there is an apparent dilemma: opposite charges attract but similar charges repel. So what holds the nucleus together? The protons, all with positive charges, should repel each other and fly apart. So I went to the head of the physics department after class and asked him. He said “We call that the ‘strong force’.” I said “what’s the strong force?” He said “It’s what holds the nucleus together. O-o-kaaaaaay…  That stuck in the back of my mind.  I mentioned this incident in “How I Became Convinced the Bible is True” 

Years later, I read in Hebrews 1:3 “…[God] upholds all things by the word of His power.”  And then I found Colossians 1:16-17:

“¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

I was also impressed with the phrase “visible and invisible”, realizing that this could have been a reference to the fact that everything is made up of atoms that are invisible to the naked eye, so it’s a good evidence that the bible was inspired by God, long before people knew anything about nuclear physics.

Another incident that influenced me was on a summer job in the ADK when I was helping a carpenter who built summer cabins and floating docks. I was just the ‘gopher’ and the painter. One day it started raining, and one of the carpenters invited me to sit in his truck rather than eat my lunch sandwich out in the rain. When I finished the sandwich, I rudely lit up my pipe in the tight confines of his truck cab. He just looked at me and said “How can you blow smoke up in God’s face like that?” Needless to say, I put the pipe out, and have never forgotten that embarrassing moment. I realized he had faith in God, and I kind of envied him and wished I could have faith like that.

One more incident: A friend that I was working with several years later in Oregon, in a quiet moment, asked me a serious question. He asked me if I had purpose in my life. I shrugged it off and changed the subject, but it nagged at me. What was my purpose?

God is working in our lives even when we don’t know it. He’s calling you too. Are you listening to the call?

The Lutheran church I had been at in my teen years seemed shallow to me, with lots of hypocrites, although in fairness my perception was probably not accurate. In my skepticism, I figured most mainline protestant churches were just social clubs but worse because they put you on the spot by asking for money and passing a plate. That was a stupid and unrealistic attitude. How did I expect them to pay the bills, maintenance, and preacher’s salary without our contributions?

But after getting into the bible, actually reading it, not just listening to the opinions of non-believers (many of whom had never read it, at least not with an open mind), I wondered if I could find a church congregation that genuinely believed the bible and seriously delved into its teachings. One Sunday, back home from a road trip, I drove through town looking for such a church. I saw a sign “Church of Christ”, which I hadn’t heard of, but it sounded good, so I went in. It was on 4^th street in Gresham. Lo and behold, the sermon had already started and the first thing I noticed was the rustling of pages. Sure enough, almost all the people had their bibles open and were following the sermon passages closely in their own bibles.

When I walked into that church building in Gresham that Sunday morn, guess who was the first person I saw, and the only one I knew in that congregation? It was the friend who had asked me that nagging question about having purpose in life. He had been trying, in his own way, to get me to think about spiritual things.

I came back next week, and the preacher talked to me afterwards, and asked if I’d be interested in having a bible study in my home. He offered to come once a week for an hour. I said OK. I still had plenty of questions and needed lots of evidence that the bible is true, and that evolution is not. (I gave details in “How I Became Convinced the Bible is True”. I also recommend you use the search bar in Answers in Genesis.com if you have specific questions and need evidence.)

The result was that he taught my wife and I the gospel and led me to Christ. I was baptized by immersion after about a month, and my wife was also baptized a few weeks later. (She wanted to wait to see if I was really serious about this commitment.) 55 years later, I still am, and so is she.

see also “A Thorough Study of Baptism”

I’ll close with this video of Franklin Graham’s testimony that was posted to Twitter in 2022. He explains the gospel - the Good News about God’s love and forgiveness.