Testimony of Clive Barber — Clive Barber

Reading the Parable of the Prodigal Son

The third book of the New Testament, please, Luke's record of the Gospel. Now, if you're not familiar with the layout of the Bible, it's broken into two parts, the Old Testament at the first half of the Bible and the New Testament, the latter part.

Matthew is the first book of the New Testament, then Mark's record of the Gospel, then Luke. We want Luke chapter 15. Luke chapter 15. Luke chapter 15, and we'll take our reading from verse 11. And he said, this is the Lord Jesus speaking, he said, a certain man had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.

And he divided unto them his living. Not many days after, the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. When he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in the land, and he began to be in want.

And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would feign, he wished to fill his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, and no man gave unto him.

When he came to himself, he said, how many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger. I will arise and go to my father, and I will say unto him, father, I've sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

Make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose and came to his father, but when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. The son said unto him, father, I've sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son, but the father said to his servants, bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it.

Let us eat and be merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found, and they began to be merry. Did the merriment ever stop in this chapter? Well you can read through it at your leisure, I don't think you'll find it stopping.

And I think that when a soul gets saved, I don't think this, I know this, God is well pleased because the Bible tells us that there's joy in heaven. And it will be a tremendous thing tonight as a result of the gospel preaching, if there was some person in this audience that would put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for the first time, begin a new pathway, the pathway of salvation, the pathway that leads to glory, through repentance, turning from their sin, like this younger son, trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ the Saviour, receiving the gift of God which is eternal life.

Salvation Through Christ Alone

I want to tell you, the Bible speaks of a man in the book of the Acts, and it says, he went on his way rejoicing, it never says he stopped rejoicing. And so I'm here tonight and I'm rejoicing, and you are rejoicing.

There are Christians here tonight and we rejoice with one another at the dealings of God in our life. I'm here just to relay something to you, of some of the dealings of God in my life that brought me to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, that's what God does in salvation. If you're ever going to be saved, saved from your sin, saved from the consequence of your sin, eternal death, if you're ever going to be rescued from that, my dear friend, you're going to have to come to one person, that person is God's Son.

You're going to have to, by faith, bow your knees to Him, in repentance, and put your trust in Him to be your Savior. I want to tell you, with the authority of the Word of God, He not only can save you, He will save you.

That's the miracle of the Gospel. He saves sinners. Christ is the Savior of sinners. And I can say, Christ is the Savior of me. Well, as the hymn writer said, I was long chained in sin's darkness. I was born in probably the best country in the world, that is, England.

And in the southeast part of the city of London, I began my days. 1976, I was born. I grew up in a home where my parents loved me, and they cared for me. There was food on the table, there was clothes to wear, I was sent to school and taught manners and disciplined, probably, well, I thought a little bit too often, but my parents may have disagreed.

But I came from a good home. My parents loved me, and I loved my parents. But I am, in my testimony tonight, I have to relay to you some of the circumstances and background, some of what I was born into and what I was raised in, and it will help you to understand just how my pathway in life was shaped.

Religious Rules and the Failure of Works

I was born into a home where I had very loving and caring parents who taught me the very best they could, but when it came to this book, my dear friend, when it came to the Bible and when it came to the things of God, there was much confusion.

I was born and raised in an environment which was a very, very religious environment, a very strict religious environment. Now, some of you good folk, you go to meetings on a Wednesday evening, and on a Sunday, a Lord's Day, we say as Christians.

We went to meetings Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday morning, and all day Sunday, and everyone did. My mother gathered up six children, and we went out to those meetings every night of the week.

That was the environment that I grew up in. It was a religious system where we had a leader, which really was someone who they claimed to be infallible, someone who they said is a hairspray from Christ, someone who they said the words coming out of his mouth are equivalent to this book, and I believed it.

My parents believed it, and they taught me diligently for what they knew. I didn't know about the Bible and what the Bible taught about being born again. My parents baptized me, put me under the water as a baby, and I was taught growing up that because I had been baptized and because I had been born into this environment, what they called the holy fellowship of God's Son, because I had been born into that and because I was being raised into that, as long as I kept all the rules and regulations that went along with this religious environment, then I would go to heaven at the end.

I came to realize that it was quite difficult to keep rules and regulations. When you're a boy, and you're told that you can't play football past the age of 12 if you want to get to heaven, and you can't ride a bike, and you can't have certain color shirts, and you can't listen to any pre-recorded music, not even spiritual music, and the many, many rules and regulations of the system environment that I grew up in, it's very difficult testing.

I suppose as I grew up, I rebelled against a number of these man-made rules. Things that are not found in this book, the Bible. Things that are prescribed by men, with a vain hope that if you keep these rules, you may get to heaven someday at last, having finally and fully pleased God in your life, and keeping to a set of man-made regulations.

If you keep within those guidelines, somehow God will be pleased with you in the end, and He'll receive you into His heaven. Oh my friend, I am thankful that we don't get to heaven in our own efforts.

I am thankful that we can preach the gospel tonight to tell you that Christ has done something for you, something that you need. He took the judgment at Calvary's cross, so that guilty sinners do not have to work their way to heaven.

A Childhood Rescue and a Deeper Need for Salvation

I didn't know that, of course, and being raised in that environment, I just believed what I was taught, and believed if I could keep these rules, I would get to heaven at the end. I struggled. I almost lost my life at age seven, almost drowned in the River Thames.

We were on a boat, and I was picking the lettuce out of my sandwiches and throwing it over to the ducks, as little boys do. I just got to the edge of the river, and I toppled in. I was going down for the third time when a man pulled me out.

In fact, he was a man who was deaf and mute. My father was business partners with his father, and so my father could do sign language, was fluent in sign language. I remember that day as a seven-year-old boy, saying to this man down in the boat, after he rescued me, my first lesson in sign language, I remember saying to him, thank you for saving me.

I didn't know that. Almost 20 years later, I would be saying to another man, thank you for saving me. But it wasn't a man who would save me in time. It was another man who would save me from drowning in my sin, that sin that would take me down to the lake of fire, and I still thank the Lord Jesus, even this moment, for ever saving my soul.

Excommunication and the Cost of Man-Made Religion

When I grew up and I became a teenager and found it exceedingly difficult to keep to the many rules and regulations of the religious system that we were involved in, it was soon apparent that I was rebellious.

There were a number of visits from people who call themselves priests. They came to visit me, and after a number of visits, they deemed that I was too rebellious for the system. Now, the consequences of that are very harsh.

Just prior to that, my father had been excommunicated through some misdemeanor 20 years previous, I understand. They wouldn't tell us what it is. I just came home from college on one occasion, said to mom, where's dad?

He's gone. They wouldn't tell us where he had gone or why he had gone. Such was the consequences of being excommunicated from this particular religious system. You would lose your family overnight. These particular men came into my father and mother's home.

It would seem extraordinary to some of you men here, and they told my father they were excommunicating him from the group, and he had to move out of his house, his own house. They told my mother she had to move into another bedroom, and they told us we were not allowed to have anything to do with my father, not allowed to speak to him, not allowed to address him in any way.

He had to remain absolutely separate, and it wasn't long before they came to give me the same news. They were dreadful days. I look back to the days of hearing my mother knock on my bedroom door and pass a meal around the door in silence.

She couldn't speak to me. I'd go to speak to my mother, and she wouldn't speak to me. I want to say publicly, I love my mother. I still love my mother, and I pray for my mother, and you can pray for her too.

She didn't do that because she didn't love me. She did that because of the rules and regulations of man. You just be careful who you follow. As Christians even, let us make sure we're following Christ.

If we just follow some set of human regulations, we'll go down the wrong pathway. If we put man on a pedestal, we'll end up in the same position. My friends, it's Christ who we preach and we proclaim.

It's Christ who saves us and Christ who we follow all the way home. Yea, we're even on his shoulders. He takes us home. So, they were dark days. Eventually, I got a knock on the door, and two of these men came to see me, these two so-called priests.

They came into my bedroom where I was sitting on my bed. I was 17 years old, and they came into my room, and they told me, Clive, we had a meeting about you last night, and we have deemed you too rebellious to continue, and we've excommunicated you from the group.

And one of the men said, the younger of the two, he said, Do you know what that means, Clive? I said, Yes, I do. This was a Wednesday evening, and they said, Well, you have till the weekend to be out of the house.

There was going to be no financial support. There was going to be no finding a place for me to live. No farewells. It was excommunication. And they literally treat you like your dad. From that point on, my mother couldn't speak to me, not a word.

I would go downstairs, and all the doors would shut, and I would go out of the house. On the Friday, I collected my belongings and left that house, and in my mind's eye, I can still see, even standing here on the platform, I can see my seven-year-old sister, who's now 30 years old.

No, yes, 30 years old. I can see her, waving goodbye. She just thought I was going out somewhere, I suppose. Well, I left the home on that Friday. That was 22 years ago, and I've never had any relationship with my biological family since then.

No uncle, no aunt, no grandparents, no brothers, no sisters, no father or mother, no living biological relative has ever had anything to do with me since that day. No relationship with me since that day.

Loneliness, Sin, and a Descent into Criminality

Well, as you can imagine, that was quite difficult. I went into a world where I knew nothing. I didn't know anyone. All my friends were in the environment that I grew up with. All my relatives. There was a boy that did a paper round outside our house, delivering newspapers, and I spoke to him and asked him, could I come and lodge on the floor of his bedroom.

He went and asked his mother, and his mother came back. She said yes, and he came back, and it was agreed. I would go and lodge on the floor of his bedroom. Then a little time there, I moved on to another friend's house, and lodged on the floor of another bedroom.

I would at times go back and just spy on my parents' house. There were times when I knew that my mother would be going out, and I would sit across the road, there was a brick wall across the road, and little gaps in the brick wall like that, and I remember sitting and looking through the gap in the brick wall, just to see my mother go down the pathway and up the road.

One time I knocked on the door, the door was opened, it was seen that it was me, and it was shut again in my face. I didn't know how to cook, clean, use a washing machine, iron clothes, do anything. My mother had done that all for me, because she loved me.

But, this was the circumstance to which I was thrust into. To say I was lonely was an understatement. I didn't know the Lord Jesus. I didn't know that God loved me. I didn't have a relationship with God.

I now didn't have any relationship with my biological family. I would wake at night with terrible nightmares. One time I found myself on the floor of this little bed sit where I rented. Eventually managed to get enough money together to rent a little bed sit, that's just one room in a communal house.

One night I awoke on the floor, I had urinated. Due to the stress, terrible nightmares began, a time of physical and mental trauma. I saw my father in the street. My father and mother had got back together in that time.

I saw him walking towards me, and he saw me, my dear father, and he ran. He couldn't be seen speaking to me. I remember getting to the corner of the street and my father was running away. He didn't want to go through what he had experienced again.

The fear of men brings a snare. My friend, you ought to fear God, not men. And so, that was life for me. I went on and after about two or three months I thought I can't stick this anymore. I'm going to go home.

I'm going to tuck my tail between my legs. I'm going to go home. The world's not all it was cracked up to be. And I arranged a meeting with a few of these men. And I went to this meeting and they interviewed me and they asked me what sins I had committed and what I had been doing and did I have anything else to confess to them.

And I told them these things. And then they said that they didn't deem me repentant enough. So, no, I wasn't going to be allowed back. I left that day. I had turned 18 by this time. I left that day and I remember going up the street and vowing to myself, even if I'm dead in the gutter, half dead in the gutter, I'm never going back.

And I meant it. It was at that time I became very, very bitter against people that called themselves Christians. Anyone that said they were a Christian, I didn't want to know them. I put them all in the same basket of religious people.

If this is what so-called Christians do, I don't want to know them or be near them. I went away and, of course, I got into a wrong crowd and very soon was engaged in practices I'd never been raised to commit.

Soon into drinking alcohol to excess and partaking of drugs and into criminal activity. I just wanted to fit in. I just wanted to be loved. I just wanted to be popular. I wanted an environment where I could be included.

But I found the wrong environment. And so that was life for the next two or three years. I found myself going in a wrong direction. Just like this young man in Luke 15. Away he went from the Father's house.

Further and further away from God. And that was my life, dear friend. Make no mistake about it tonight. The devil knows you. But it will take you further and further away from God. It will take you down to the pit.

That's where I was heading. Engaged in criminal activity and there we were, breaking and entering into schools and stealing computers and TVs and anything we could get our hands on to sell on the black market.

Then involved in drugs and one thing or another and eventually I was caught by the police. I was sent to court and given a sentence. But I was given a suspended sentence. The judge took pity on me and my story.

And I thought, I'm going to change. This is it. I was now 20 years old and I thought, I'm going to change and I'm going to be different from now on. I went back and I always had a job. And in that job I was working with another young man.

And he came home one day and he said, we talked about lots of things. We talked about going scuba diving here in Spain in the Lake District and going to Spain to work in hotels there. What should we do?

Searching for Meaning in Travel and Pleasure

My friend, without Christ we're empty. Absolutely empty. I was just an empty, empty, lonely young man. No pathway. No Lord Jesus. No relationship with the God of Heaven. Just trying to aimlessly, aimlessly wandering through life, trying to find some pathway that would suit me.

Maybe I'm speaking to someone tonight. And to this present moment, you've aimlessly wandered through life without knowing God. That can change tonight. It was going to change for me. I went traveling with this young man.

We went to Israel. He came home and he said one day, I found cheap tickets to Israel. We'll go to Israel for three weeks. Well we went. And I stayed 11 months. 11 months later I came back. During that time I worked three kilometers south of the Sea of Galilee in a little place called Afikim.

Started to learn Hebrew and fit into the culture there. And I enjoyed it. Very much so. Working with the Israelis of course and learning their language and living with them and working in a banana plantation.

I did that for the first seven months. Kept extending my visa and then went down to the capital city to try and obtain a green card and worked in the capital city for three months. But I was refused to get a visa.

Had to make my way back home to England. I got back to England and soon into a relationship. Decided to go traveling again. It was 1997 when I went to Israel. This was now 1999. And I decided with the girl who I was with at that time I decided we would go to Australia.

Let's go to Australia for a year working holiday. So went away. I was quite glad to get out of England and get away from that environment. Went away to Australia and traveled and worked around Australia for a year and then went to New Zealand for three months and back to Australia and back home to England and when we got back home to England the relationship broke down and I felt like I was back to square one.

I remember walking up the steps of the Earl's Court tube station in London. I had a backpack on my back which was the extent of my belongings. As I walked out into the sunlight I remember the tears just welling up in the eyes and thinking is this it?

Is this it? Is this all I've got to show for life? Here I am in my home city of London and I'm going down the road to stay in a backpacker's hostel. I went in and lay in the bed in the backpacker's hostel and still remember the name Ayers Rock Hostel.

Why they would name that in London I don't know. Stayed in that hostel and lay in that bed and just a lonely, lonely young man. Well I soon got back into the things that I had been engaged in before. Moved in with another man who was a drug dealer.

Soon was assisting him in these things as a courier through the streets of London. Then involved in drug use and excessive alcohol and just lived for the moment. I almost lost my life twice that year.

Sin Cannot Satisfy or Save

This was the year 2001. One time I was so intoxicated I was on my way home and I thought I would take a shortcut across some railway lines. I went across these railway lines and I tripped and fell. In England I don't know how it's like here but in England we have the live rails on the ground.

Thousands and thousands of volts running through a live rail. On the way home that night I tripped and fell and my hand brushed across the live rail and it literally threw me about a metre. I remember getting up and I was sobered up in an instant.

My hand was burnt down here from the live rail. I remember walking away and saying to myself I've got to change, I've got to change. I'm going to change. Waking up the next morning and going down to the caf where I had breakfast and trying to eat a bacon sandwich and trying to force it down the throat.

I've got to change. I just felt like I didn't know how to change. Then a little bit later almost overdosing on drugs. I felt I had nothing to live for anymore. Just the lonely existence of a young man in his sin.

My friend, that's what sin does. It separates people from God. Separated people from the lifeline. I was now seeking for life in dead places. Seeking for life in alcohol, in drugs, in the sports world, in the entertainment world, amongst friendships, maybe in a relationship I'll find the meaning to life.

And I came to a dead end every time. The sports didn't satisfy me. The travelling never worked. The relationships broke up. Everything seemed to come to a dead end. That's where sin will lead you my friend.

It will lead you down a pathway to hell. And you need Christ. And I needed Christ. But I didn't know it. I remember my favourite song in those days was by a band called the Rolling Stones. You know what that song was?

It was called this. You'll never make a saint of me. I remember putting it on my CD in the CD player and turning it up. And I remember singing that chorus. You'll never make a saint of me. And I meant it.

That year after I almost lost my life the second time I found myself wrapped around a toilet bowl. Woke up. I thought I've got to change. I went to a self-help course. They told me at this self-help course that it's the power of positive thinking.

What you have to do Clive is there's some good in you somewhere. You have to find that good that's within you and concentrate your mind upon that. Think about that in some way and that will build up and up and up.

And they told me what you have to do is you have to get a notepad and a piece of paper and a pen and you have to write down all the negative things of your past. Then what you do once you've written it all on a piece of paper is you screw that piece of paper up and put it in the bin or put it in the fire and dispose of that so you then only have the good.

You just dwell and concentrate on the good. So there I was busy now writing down negative things of my past and writing letters to people thinking that this would work if I if I just got rid of all this negativity in my life and dwelt on the things that I enjoy and the things I was good at and maybe there's some good within me somewhere and this would work and I came out of that course and I was buoyed.

It worked! For two weeks. And I was back to square one. I thought I'd got rid of the negativity. I thought I'd dispelled all the things of the past. But I soon came to realise I was just the same person.

Maybe that's what some of you have been doing. Maybe some of you even raised in Christian homes. Maybe you've been trying to believe so hard you think you can get it tonight and I'm just going to work on this until until I've conquered this myself and until I've believed enough and when I've mustered up enough belief then God will save me.

No, my friend. You need to bow and accept that you can bring nothing to God. It's not the amount of your faith. It's not faith in your faith. It's faith in Christ. It's laying down by faith at His feet and saying, I can do nothing.

You save me. He will save you. My friend, I went on and I thought, right, this is it. I'm getting out of England. I'm going to Australia to live. I applied for a visa and over a and again, it's just a miracle the way things happen.

Providence Leads Him to a Christian Witness

I had a friend who had another friend who worked at Australia House and The Strand and met this lady and she told me what was applicable on the forms and what was non-applicable and we filled out these forms and got to know her over the period of had to go through the medicals and the different things you had to accomplish to gain the visa and then she said to me, I had no qualifications.

I left school when I was 15. I didn't pass a single exam when I left school anyway. I had failed at college and my life had been disrupted and I had nothing. I'd been a window cleaner. Well, I used to tell people I was a vision technician.

That sounded a bit better than a window cleaner but I had no qualifications. Well, eventually this lady said to me, Clive, the person who sits on the desk next to me is the one that says yes or no to the visas.

You put these through and we'll see what happens. Well, I got my visa for Australia. God was good. I came to Australia and got a job doing furniture removals. I worked in the yard for three months for a mainstream company and was getting a bit bored of things there and one day a truck rolled in of a man who used a contract from this firm and I'd seen him once or twice and knew that the men in the yard mocked him and he stopped.

He opened the door and he said, Just wondering, would you like to come and work for me? He needed someone to work for him at that time so I agreed to work for this gentleman and I found out he was a Christian and that was my worst nightmare come true.

A job with a Christian. The very first day I worked for him he gave me a Bible. I used to go along in that truck. He would just talk about the Lord just as though it was a normal thing. Say different things about maybe creation things that maybe he had been enjoying.

I remember gripping onto the seat with my fingernails and thinking I just wish this man would shut up. Curling my toes up and thinking this religious business I finished with that a long time ago. Here I am and I'm subjected to this and just wished that he would just quieten on these things.

One day he said something. I couldn't tell you what I had for breakfast that day or what job or what the weather was like but I remember this. My friends just three words that should be an encouragement to every Christian that preaches the gospel.

Maybe you stand on a street corner and someone passes by and catches just a snippet of what you say. Never stop. Just three words he said. He was talking about another man at work and he said Clive you know that man Shaggy you know he's living in sin.

Because he was in a relationship. He wasn't married. And it was those three words that burned into my soul. Living in sin. I went home that night and went down to the public house and took out the beer living in sin as soon as I looked at it.

I took out the next cigarette living in sin. Everything I seemed to touch after that this phrase living in sin. I would wake up in the middle of the night living in sin would be the first thing upon my mind.

I couldn't shake it off me. I wished I could be rid of it. I wished I'd never heard it. God was bringing me to a conviction. Clive you are living in sin. I remember kind of analyzing my past and it all just seemed like a black stain.

Living in sin. In fact it became so desperate I would wake in the night and be troubled about these things. One day I thought I've got to pray. Got to pray. So I did. Can I say to you tonight if you're convicted about your sin you need to get to God.

He's the only one that can help you. I got down on my knees that night after work before I went to bed and I meant it and I said these three things. I said God if you're there and if you're real please show me these three things.

Please open my eyes and open my heart and open my ears. I don't know why I asked for those three things. I didn't know that those three things were in the scripture. I woke up the next morning and I asked him for exactly the same three things and I meant it.

My friend it's time you became serious with God. And I was serious that morning. I asked him for those three things. I went to work that day and my boss left me on the job and I had the responsibility to pack up the house of the people we were moving.

It was a lady who had a French accent. Well I had long hair at that time and I smoked and my language wasn't that of a Christian and she made me a cup of coffee at ten o 'clock and in the morning we were just the two of us just drinking a cup of coffee and she started talking to me and she looked at me and she said do you believe in Jesus Christ?

I said sure. I believe that Jesus died on a cross and I probably would have even told you that I believe he died for sinners. I believed he was the son of God. Sure I believe. And without any further ado without me saying anything more she just started to tell me how she became a Christian.

This is what she said. She said well I'm from the south of France and I moved over to Australia some time ago I could tell by her accent but she said when I was in France I grew up in a very strict religious home.

She said in that home there was lots of rules and regulations and I found it hard to keep them and I rebelled against them. She said when I was 21 I decided to leave home and as a consequence of that she said my whole family cut me off and excommunicated me.

Then she said I went on for a little while and I decided I've got to get out of this environment out of France and she said I set my heart on going to Australia and I moved to Australia but she said you know just a few years ago she pointed to the little boy running around she said just a few years ago she said I had a baby so premature it could fit into the palm of my hand she said and she said I was in the hospital with this baby and wondering if there was a God and wondering what was going on she said a Christian lady came to me in that hospital and told me of the Lord Jesus that died for me and told me I could be saved.

She was telling me this. She didn't know I had prayed the night before. She didn't know I had prayed that morning. She didn't know anything about me. But God knew. God knows you, my friend. He knows exactly where you are.

He is pursuing you. Earlier in the year, this year we came into touch with a 69 year old man who through incredible circumstances God was pursuing. I'd love to have the time to tell you about him. God was still pursuing him and tonight, whatever age you are whatever background you've had wherever you think you may be going God is pursuing you.

That is why you're here in this hall to hear the gospel of the love of God to you. Christ died for the ungodly. How that he died for our sins according to the scriptures. Our sins. The judgment for our sins.

Our wickedness was placed upon Christ nailed to a cross and he bore it willingly that you may never perish. I was coming to learn this. A few weeks later, my boss said to me Clive, there's a man over from England he's giving some Bible teaching meetings why don't you come and listen to him?

I said, no, no, I'm alright. No, I'll be alright, thanks. Oh, the tragedy of pride. It's taken so many to hell. Well, Monday night went past these meetings were on every night. Tuesday night went past and Wednesday night went past and Thursday I got home from work and I was sitting in my bedroom in turmoil.

I phoned my boss and I said Christian, his name was Christian Christian by name and Christian by nature. I said, are you going to that meeting thing tonight? Yes, he said. I said, do you mind if I come with you?