Keep sharing good news without ads.
Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/phil-coulson/salvation-testimony-of-phil-coulson/
Now, let's bow head and heart together, shall we, in the presence of God. Close eyes. Keep still. Remember, it's God we're speaking to. Let's pray. Gracious God, we come before Thee in the name of the Lord Jesus to commit this gospel meeting to Thee for Thy gracious help and blessing.
We know, our God, that we will receive the help of heaven when we seek to set forth the Lord Jesus as the only Savior of sinners. The help we need, our God, is great. We know that we are naturally opposed to being told that we are sinners on the way to a lost eternity.
We know that even in the youngest hearts, there can be pride and excuses raised as to why we will not bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, our God, that as we preach and as we listen, that all needed help will be given to give attention to the Word of God, to give attention to what may be possibly the last time we ever hear God's call of grace.
And we pray that even as one man speaks, that the Christians amongst us, those who know and love the Lord, those who are on the way to heaven, we pray that even as one man speaks, those same Christians will be upholding and watering the Word of God with their prayers.
May it be in that atmosphere of prayerful expectancy, our God, that the gospel goes forth and we look to Thee for Thy gracious blessing. In the name of the Lord Jesus, amen. I'm going to read with you a verse from 1 Timothy chapter 1, please.
You know it very well, but I'd like you to turn to it. First Timothy in chapter 1, verse 15 of the chapter says, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
Isn't that a lovely verse? Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Would you like to know where I learned that verse? Well, I'll tell you anyway. I live in Scotland, but I'm an Englishman, and I suppose that's the difference of saying to someone here in the U .S. and asking them if they're Canadian.
You know, it's that kind of idea. So being English and living in Scotland, I've kind of felt like a missionary most of my life. But I was born in the town or the city, born in the city of Plymouth, which is right down on the south coast of England, and it is, was then anyway, still is, one of our chief Navy cities, like you've got Newport, Virginia.
We have Plymouth down in Devon in England. And the reason I was born there in Plymouth was because my dad was in the Royal Navy. He was a sailor and stationed there. And so I was the second child born to my mom and dad there in Plymouth.
Now, it was not so long after the Second World War that I was born, and a lot of the people in our country were still serving in the military. They might have to join for a couple of years or something like that.
So when I was a small kid, after a while, my dad came ashore. That means he wasn't out on ships. When I was born, just to give you an idea, when I was born, I was about, I suppose I'd have been about eight months old when my dad went back to sea, and I didn't see him again until I was three.
So I was a little kid, and my mom got me all dressed up as though it was Sunday, but it wasn't Sunday. And I thought, this is strange, what's going on here? And we were taken to a house of some friends, some Christians.
And a little while later, it was clearly everyone was excited. The door opened, and this big guy with a big ginger beard came in, and he swept me off my feet, and I was terrified, and that was my dad, because I didn't know him.
And it had been the same for my older brother as well. So anyway, because he'd been away at sea a lot, and he was going to go back again, they said, well, you've got another two-year voyage coming up, so they said, this time you can take your family with you.
So that was great. We all moved out to Malta, the island of Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea. And then the problem blew up over the Suez Canal, and who was going to be running the Suez Canal? So I never saw my dad anyway.
So really, I didn't get to know him very much until I was maybe five, six years old. We were back in Plymouth, and he was ashore for a couple of years. So that meant he came home, and we got used to having a dad in the house.
Well, he wanted to make sure that all the other Christians who were coming into Plymouth and out of Plymouth on ships, sailors, Royal Marines, the Women's Royal Naval Service, WRNS, so they called them Wrens, and there was all these different young men, young women, all in different uniforms.
And when they came, their ships came into Devonport, the harbour at Plymouth, then dad would go aboard, find out who was Christians, see that they came to the meeting, see they came home for supper. So I got used to the house almost every week, big herds of people coming in.
And I thought this was great, you see. My oldest brother, he just liked his bed, so he stayed in bed at night. But if dad came home, and we could hear all the rumpus of these people that he'd brought home, I'd always want to sneak downstairs.
And so you'd see them all coming in, boys, young men, young women, different uniforms. They'd all pile into the front room of the house. And then what I would do, I would sneak down, and the door would be open.
So I'd go in, and around the back of the big four-seater settee that was there. And I'd just hide behind there, you see, and listen to what was going on. And I thought dad didn't notice, but years later, he said to me, he said, do you remember as a kid, you used to come down and hide behind the settee like that?
He said, you were weird. And I said, well, probably was, but the thing was, I wanted to hear what was going on. There was just all this buzz, you see. And one of the things that really struck me, they would come in, and there would be lots of sort of chatter and stuff, but very quickly, they would settle down.
And they would start to talk, and my dad would lead the conversation. And he would say to someone, tell us how you got saved. So I'd be sitting there, well, I wasn't sitting, I was lying behind the sofa, a little kid.
And I was listening, and I couldn't see the face of the person speaking, but he would say, do you remember one young man? He said, well, look, I'm just, I'm 22 years old. And he said, when God saved me, he said, I was trapped in a submarine.
We were sitting on the seabed. We got no compressed air left to surface the boat, and we were there, and the skipper just told us, boys, just settle down, make your peace with God, we're not going to get out of this.
And he said the air was getting more and more foul, and people were being sick, and others were starting to scream, and he said it was dreadful, and he said it was like, suddenly, he just imagined it was like hell had been described to him.
And he said he was pretty near unconscious. Most of them were, for lack of oxygen, and then they heard this kind of knocking on the hull of the boat, and this big clang, as somebody connected a big connector to the conning tower of the submarine, and a rescue vessel had found them.
The water was shallow enough, and suddenly, he said, there was a rush of fresh air came in. He said it was intoxicating. It was wonderful. But he said, a lot of the lads, they went out, and they were just glad to survive, he said, but while I was in that dreadful situation, I'd cry to God to save me.
And he said, my mom and dad were Christians, and just think, he said, if that rescue vessel hadn't have come, they'd have had a telegram from the admiralty, and it would just have said, we're very sorry to tell you that your son has died in a naval accident.
And they would have thought, that's our beloved son, died in his sins. Of course, he hadn't, and he wouldn't have died in, he got saved at the very last moment, but I was listening to this little kid.
He gave his testimony. Then dad said to one of the girls, he said, it's lovely to see you here. You haven't been in our home before. Are you saved? She said, yes. He said, tell us how you got saved. She said, I was under German bombing in Alexandria, in Egypt.
And in this horrible bombing, and seeing some of her friends wounded, and that sort of thing, she realized that her time on earth could be very, very short. And this was the kind of testimonies I was listening to as a little boy.
Just young people. A lot of them had been through the horrors of war, and in different ways, God had saved them. I found it exciting. I found it great to listen to, and I used to go back to my bed, and I would wonder about all these things.
And there was almost a kind of, well, of course, I knew nothing of the horrors of war, even after what they had said. I just found it very exciting, and I was thinking about all these things. Anyway, one night, Dad comes home.
Ten or twelve of these friends with him who he'd fished in from the dockyard, and all this sort of stuff. So they came in, so I did my usual thing. I was going to go downstairs. But on my way down, I thought, well, I'll go into the kitchen on the pretext, really, of asking for a glass of water.
So I went into the kitchen, and my mom was there, and I thought she was getting something out of the cupboard. She was on her knees, and I thought she was getting something out of the cupboard. So as I went in, she suddenly looked around, and she said, what do you want, son?
I said, I'd like some water, Mom, please. What are you doing? She said, well, son, your dad's just come home from the meeting, and he's got ten or twelve young sailors and wrens with him, and I have got nothing in the house to give them.
So she said, I'm just telling the Lord about it. Right, let's get you your water. So she got a glass out of the cupboard. She was pouring water on the back door. The kitchen had a door that went to the outside, you see, so she said, see who's at the door.
So I opened the door, and there's the lady next door. I knew her as Auntie Marge. So okay, here's Auntie Marge, and she's all in her tears, as we say, you know, and she says, oh, son, is your mother there, is your mother there?
I said, yeah, Mom, it's Auntie Marge, she wants you. So I see my mom now. Wiping her hands on her apron, she comes, she says, yes, Marge, what can we do for you, dear? Oh, she says, my sister up in Exeter, she's just sent a telegram.
Well, youngsters, this was before phones, let alone mobile phones. We didn't even have a phone in the house. So if you needed to get in touch with someone really quickly, well, you could dial into the post office, and they would use Morse code and all kinds of stuff.
A little guy would get on a little red motorbike, and he would come with this printed telegram he'd handed over, okay? That's how a lot of people knew their family had died, that sort of thing. Anyway, Auntie Marge had had the telegram from her sister, sick, got to go into Exeter Hospital, can you come and look after the kids?
So Mom said, well, okay, what's happening? Do you want a lift or what? She said, no, if I get, I've got a taxi coming, I can get to Plymouth Station, I can get the last train to Exeter, I'll be there tonight.
So Mom said, well, what can we do for you, Marge? She said, well, the thing is, tomorrow is our Billy's birthday. She says, I've spent the whole day making cakes, scones, all this kind of stuff. Can you use them?
And I was a little boy, I was probably six or seven, and I helped move from Auntie Marge's house across the wall into our kitchen, plates of lovely cakes and sponges that she had made, all the stuff that she'd made for Billy's birthday.
And that all came into our kitchen, and from our kitchen, it went into the front room, and it fed these young sailors and all these people, and they hadn't got a clue where it came from. I got one of them, and I went back to bed.
And I lay there in my bed, and for the first time in my young life, I knew God was real. I knew God was real. See, I thought the whole thing through. I thought, well, the first thing Mom knew about, it was when Dad came in with all these people, and she knew she got nothing in the cupboard.
But God had had our neighbor baking cakes because He knew that we would need them. But then at the same time, the only way we got them was because Auntie Marge's sister was not well, and my little head was spinning almost with the thought of a God who can do all of this all at the same time.
And at that age, I realized God is real, that these aren't Bible stories. God is real. Of course, it didn't leave me. And I began to listen more intently then when preachers started to speak to me in meetings like this about the fact that God has got something to say to me.
Now, if it's a wonderful thing that God, through our next-door neighbor, can provide cakes and sandwiches and all this kind of stuff, if God can do all that, if God then begins to speak to me through the gospel about the fact that He sent His Son to die to be my Savior, then I'd better listen, and so would you, so would you, because God is real.
It might surprise you to know that sometimes I was naughty, probably only 16 or 18 hours of the day because the rest I was sleeping. So I didn't need telling that I was a sinner. Now, people in the world, they like to say, well, you know, the guy who robs a bank, he's a sinner.
You know, people will say, well, the guy who steals a car, the guy who robs a bank, all this kind of thing, he's a sinner. The drug dealer's a sinner, isn't he? But me? I'm a little kid brought up in a Christian home.
Okay, so sometimes, hand goes in, you'd call it the cookie jar, we call it a biscuit barrel, you know, because biscuits are actually cookies, you understand that, and biscuits aren't what you get in Popeyes with chips and, no, fries, never mind.
So, sometimes I would take things that I shouldn't, something, and I would fight with my brothers and my sister and all this kind of stuff. So it was low grade as far as this world is concerned, but the big thing is a picture was forming in my mind that I am a sinner, there's things I do that I know are wrong, there's things that I've done and said that mom and dad don't know about, but God knows.
God knows. And I started to recognize and feel almost every day God's watching me. He knows all about me. He knows what I'm doing. Mom and dad don't always know what I'm doing, but God does. But then I would think, well, surely these things aren't a big deal to a God who looks after the whole of the world and the universe and all these kind of things.
Well, we began to learn verses in, well, we had already been learning verses in Sunday school, but this was a verse that I've always loved, this verse we've read tonight. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
And the preachers would come, occasionally they would speak about it and say, Christ Jesus, He's the person. Christ Jesus came into the world, that's the place. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, that was the purpose.
And you could almost say it with some of them. I just knew it as a gospel message. But you know, one night I was just about to go away with some other Christians, kids, we were going away to have a long weekend away, do some stuff, fishing and canoeing and things like this.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. So Christ Jesus came into the world to save me. Christ Jesus came into the world to save me. But He's the one who was crucified. Does it really mean that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was crucified for me?
For me? And these things began to really trouble me. You know, you don't have to be an adult to understand these things. And it's not because I was a smart kid, I wasn't. I was just a regular child. But do you see how if we think about these things, the gospel starts to dawn on our souls?
If I said to you, I'm not asking you to do it, young ones, but if I said to you, is any of you here not a sinner, one of you wouldn't put your hand up, would you? I mean, you know you're sinners, of course you do.
And it's your sins, it's the things that you have done wrong, and you know that you've done them wrong, not just against your parents, not just against teacher, but against God. And so even though you youngsters particularly, and older ones, even though you know that the things you have done are known only to you and to God, you have to understand this, you will have to answer for them.
They will have to be punished. They will have to be dealt with. So this lovely verse that we've read together was a verse that was going through my mind. I was delighted on the day that Mr. Little, my Sunday school teacher, gave us a sheet about this size, like that, with his text on to color in.
So that was great. I colored it, and I put it on my bedroom wall, but the trouble was I couldn't get away from it then. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And I'm a sinner, so that means Christ Jesus came into the world to save me.
But I knew enough by sitting in meetings like this that in order to save me, He had suffered horribly. He'd suffered at the hands of men. He'd suffered with an intensity I couldn't understand at the hands of God.
He died. A man had died for me. Well, these things were troubling my young heart and my mind, and we went away to have this time of recreation. And at the end of the day, we would get something to eat, and then one of the men would open the Scriptures, and he would read.
And then on August the 15th in 1963, after we'd eaten, and we sat, and these things are going through my mind, he said, right now, we're going to read, and we're going to read in Isaiah chapter 53, a lovely verse that so many have been saved through.
But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement, the punishment with a view to our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. And he simply said to us, now look, what I want you to do, and he called each of us by our names.
He said, I want you to quote that verse, and I want you to put your name in it. He was wounded for Phil Coulson's transgressions. He was bruised for Phil Coulson's iniquities. The punishment that would lead to peace for Phil Coulson was upon him, and with his stripes, Phil Coulson can be healed.
And the weight of it came in upon my soul that night. That was the night that the Spirit of God clearly illuminated my dark little soul to show me that I was a sinner, that I would have to face God's punishment, but that the Lord Jesus Christ had given Himself to bear my punishment and to see my soul saved.
And after he'd read that verse, and after the weight of that had come in on my heart, we sat together, and we simply sang, Wounded for Me, Wounded for Me. There on the cross, He was wounded for me. That was the moment I was saved.
That was the moment I trusted Christ as my Savior. The others sung to the end, and I said to the man, Mr. Cyril Jones, I said, can we sing it again? Sure, he said, Wounded for Me, Wounded for Me. There on the cross, He was wounded for me.
Gone my transgressions, I could now sing, and now I am free, all because Jesus was wounded for me. Now, that was, well, this year it will be 60 years that I've been in Christ. I've preached a few times since that.
I've never preached without I've told the people kind enough to sit and listen. It's a wonderful thing to be saved. It's wonderful to know your sins are forgiven. It's wonderful to know the matter is settled.
Boys and girls, younger people, it's not about how much you know. It's not about how much you believe. It's not about how much faith you've got. The sufficiency of things doesn't lie in us, it lies in Christ.
And your faith needs to be in the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of your soul. Sins forgiven. Peace with God. To know that heaven is now my home, you know what I did? I said to Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones, he said, I think I know what you want to tell me.
I said, I got saved tonight. He said, I don't know. God bless you, son. I said, but Mr. Jones, will you do something for me? He said, I'll do anything for you. What can I do? I said, will you write a little note to my parents to tell them I got saved?
No, he said, no, you tell them. I said, they won't believe me. You know, I've often been a naughty boy. He says, no, I'm not going to write no note for you. You go home and tell them. See, what he was showing me was, was that if you've got saved, then God will open your mouth to tell folk that you've got saved.
It was easy telling mom. She does what moms do, she cried. Then I had to go and tell my dad. He was shaving. So I just stood at the bathroom door and he looked, he said, yeah, dad just want to tell you I got saved.
He says, oh, no. He said, no, mom couldn't have told you she's downstairs. He says, no, I knew it from the moment you walked in yesterday. He says, I could just see something about you, boy. He says, I knew you'd got saved.
Well, 60 years ago. And I think back to the testimonies I heard. I think back to the gospel meetings where I knew that I needed to be saved and how I could get saved. But you know what really brought it home?
There was that experience of realizing that God was real. And then that time when I realized that the Lord Jesus Christ truly had loved me and given Himself for me. And when I realized that that lovely man, you see, it's not about loving the Lord.
You'll understand that. I mean, there was never a time I didn't love the Lord. Why would a child brought up in a Christian home not love the Lord? You hear about Him. You read about Him. You're told about Him.
He's a lovely man. Why wouldn't you love Him? Of course you love the Lord. But that's not enough. No. You must trust Him. You must trust Him as your Savior. Because Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
And you're a sinner. So He came into the world to save you. And the only way He can save you, He's done all the work on the cross that needs to be done. But now you must trust Him. You must confess your sins.
You must repent of them. You must trust Christ as your Savior. Who knows? If the Lord hasn't come, maybe in a few years' time, you'll be up here. And you'll be able to tell men and women, you menfolk, about the day the Lord saved you.
It's what your parents are praying for. It's what the Christians are praying for. You're covered in prayer. You're surrounded by prayer. You've got the opportunity today to be saved. Today. Because you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
I look at you. I don't know you youngsters. But I love you for the Lord's sake. And I want nothing more than to see you saved. Trust Him. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Now, we're not going to sing.
We haven't got the time. I've gone over time anyway. But quietly we're going to pray. We're going to pray. Moms and dads, older men and women, if you don't mind, please, go out quietly. Go out quietly.
For we don't know how God is dealing with these little ones. Don't snatch the seed away, will you? Let's quietly give thanks to God. We'll move out of the room. We trust the Spirit of God will do His own work.
God bless you. Let's pray. Our God, we come to You in the name of the Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus, we thank Thee for the opportunity we've had now to spend a little while thinking about Thy goodness to one young boy.
All the wonderful power of the Gospel there to save one young boy. And we thank Thee for everyone else in this room who can pay testimony to the saving power of God in their lives. We pray especially for these young ones in this hall tonight.
God bless them. If it please Thee, save them in early years. Save them from a wasted life. Save their souls for eternity. Answer the prayers of their parents and of their loved ones. Our God, would it please Thee, in Thy kindness and for Thy glory, to crown a conference weekend with the knowledge of a soul saved.
We leave the matter with Thee. We thank Thee for Thy mercies. And as we move through now to another room, we do pray, our God, that Thou would help us to move quietly, remembering that we've stood between the dead and the living, thanking Thee that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes.
We leave these matters with Thee, our God. We pray for Thy blessing, giving thanks in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.