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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/john-fitzpatrick/testimony-john-fitzpatrick-2/
I guess it's all right for an older one to tell how they got saved also. Turn please to 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 15. It's the only verse I want to read. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you the reason of hope that is in you with meekness and in fear.
One of the brethren from the assembly said we've never heard how you were saved and of course I was never where there was a gospel meeting here to say how I was saved. So I thought well maybe I'll get up for one or two minutes, maybe three.
I grew up in the city of Yonkers, New York. That's one city above New York City. I lived near the Hudson River. My father came back from working on the ships during World War II and they first ended up in Yonkers in a two-family home and at the age of five they moved to a little bungalow.
It was a 50 by 100 lot with asbestos siding and uniquely one block away was a fellow by the name of Tom. Tom and I became exceedingly close friends, turned out to be my wife's cousin and my mother said don't come down to the house before seven in the morning, it's a little early.
We were both wired with 440 you might say. Tom's family was a different family. On Sunday you couldn't play, it was called the Lord's Day and Tom was always a faithful pest every Friday coming home. I want you to come to some special children's meetings and for years he pestered me, pestered me, pestered me and for years my answer was I'm not interested.
1959, I got out of the sixth grade and he invited me for two weeks of children's meetings with a craft. I thought that sounded pretty good because I like doing something and so the man that spoke had a shiny head.
He was probably rounder than I am today and told us if we'd learned 10 Bible verses we'd get a New Testament. Well I realized there was a problem, we didn't even have a Bible in the home. So Tom's mother typed them up on a manual typewriter and I learned 10 Bible verses and I received a little brown paperback New Testament and I heard words those 10 mornings that I never heard before in my life.
I was christened at three days of age they tell me. My father was of one major religion and my mother was of another and my lot in life was to walk with her Sunday morning for service meeting whatever it was.
The man was called the reverend. They had a choir with big robes and brass pipes and beams on the ceiling that you could daydream looking at and so I joined that church quote in the fifth grade by being baptized by water baptism and if you were to ask me at that time will you be in heaven?
Well I guess so because I've been baptized and I go to the church with mom of course I had to and I thought I was all right. So then I went to these 10 children's meetings and the man spoke about hell and he told us if we weren't saved we were going to be in hell and he told us we were sinners that we needed our sins forgiven.
So I would have learned Romans 3 23 for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. I would have wrote Romans 6 23 for the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life. I would have learned John 3 16 and another 700 verses working on it those 10 days to earn that new testament and those meetings came to close but something happened that never was in my life before.
When those meetings were over I knew I was headed to hell. My sins were not forgiven. I knew I wasn't saved and I knew I didn't have anything that he was talking about from the bible and I realized if I ride my bicycle wildly in the hills of Yonkers and I crash and die I'm going to be in hell.
I need to be saved and 1959 was the most miserable summer I ever spent in my life. Life has not always been easy but there was a little voice speaking to me John you need to be saved. I could keep the skies because mom and dad didn't know anything about it and I was much shyer in my youth than I am now so I didn't ask Tom's folks about it or anything but I was a very troubled young man in 1959 heading to the seventh grade and inside it seemed almost daily for a couple months there was a voice speaking inside you need to be saved you need your sins forgiven if you die you're going to be in hell.
Tom was as faithful as the clock chimes seventh grade had come and he said I want you to come Friday night to children's meetings. You know what I went and either the end of October or the beginning of November my wife will tell you I'm the worst one for dates you've probably ever met.
It took me about 50 years to get our anniversary down Pat. Came home from the meeting I realized I'm heading to hell my sins are my problem I'm laying on the bed tears coming out my eyes of course there's no other place they come out and laying on the bed I realized that the Lord Jesus on the cross paid for my sins and to put it in the language of Ephesians chapter one I trusted him.
I got saved then a couple weeks later my mother called up Tom's mother and she says I think there's something wrong with John. All he wants to do is read that little bible he has. I didn't realize it but she thought I had become a religious fanatic.
I can remember when I realized I needed to be baptized as a believer and she tried to tell me well you've been baptized once and so that's enough. I says well you don't understand mom I wasn't saved then.
I didn't know the Lord Jesus is my savior. Well I honored my parents and so they allowed me to be baptized. I never made a prayer meeting until I was out of home during the school years because they wanted me to study.
They allowed me to go Sunday morning and they allowed me to go to the gospel meeting Sunday nights where I was saved. Where I was saved was a hive off of the 73rd street gospel hall that had changed to a little different pattern when I was saved.
We were in Alaska in 1970 in the early days and we came home to Yonkers New York area because my mother was sick. I remember my father brought her to the hospital. I was working on steam pipes at a house and I called up one of the elders and I said Mr. Gordon my mom's in the hospital.
Do you think you could visit her? He said I have a house full of company tonight. This is a Saturday night. I says we'll come Monday. He said company can come any time. We will go tonight. He read to her John 14 and 6.
I am the way the truth and the life no man comes unto the father but by me. He prayed with her explained the gospel and Sunday morning as the emblems had just passed the phone rang and the note came your mother has just died and that was a tremendous lesson to me as a young lad in his 20s.
This is not something that can be put off till tomorrow. This is not something that can be put off till the next week and I was so so thankful that he put family and friends aside to tell the gospel one more time to my mother.
I can't say whether she was saved or not. 17 years later my father came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as his savior and so I would like to emphasize as an older one here tonight on the road since 1959 salvation's real.
Salvation lasts. There is nothing greater nothing grander nothing more wonderful something that words cannot express how valuable it is how wonderful it is to have a complete assurance it is well it is well with my soul not because of anything you or I have done all because of what he has done.
I'd had sickness through the years a couple times laying in a bed for a surgery COVID in February and you lay there and you go over the ground. What have I really got? I haven't got any more today than I got in 1959 that the Lord Jesus paid for my sins on the cross and I go free.
I commend it before you tonight. It's a wonderful thing to know the Lord Jesus as your savior more valuable than anything in the whole world. What does it profit a man? Gain the whole world and lose your own soul.
Your morals might keep you out of jail but only the precious blood of the Lord Jesus will ever keep you out of heaven. He loves you. He gave himself for you. Might you take him at his word.