Charles Spurgeon's Testimony — E.A. Johnston

Charles Spurgeon's Search for Salvation

I think it's important, friends, as we study men revival, to see how they came to faith. Charles Spurgeon's testimony is worth reading. As a teenager, Spurgeon went all over London, hearing the greatest orators of his day, but he couldn't get saved.

The Message from Isaiah 45:22

Finally, while making his way to church one Sunday, a snowstorm forced him to a country Methodist chapel, where the pastor had failed to come, so an uneducated deacon took the pulpit and preached a simple message from Isaiah 45 .22, which states, Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else.

The Simplicity of Looking to Christ

I'll let Spurgeon tell the story in his own words. He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text. The preacher began thus, My dear friends, this is a very simple text, indeed.

It says look. Now, look and don't take a deal of pains. It ain't lifting your foot or your finger. It just says look. Well, a man needn't go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look.

A man need not even be worth a thousand a year to be able to look. Anyone can look. Even a child can look. But then the text says, Look unto me, I, said he, in broad Essex. Many on ye are looking to yourselves, but it's no use looking there.

You never find any comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the Father. No, look to him by and by. Jesus Christ says, look unto me. Some on you say, we must wait for the spirits working. You have no business with that just now.

Christ's Death, Resurrection, and Ascension

Look to Christ, the text says. Look unto me. Then the good man followed up his text and this way. Look unto me, I'm sweating great drops of blood. Look unto me, I'm hanging on the cross. Look unto me, I am dead and buried.

Look unto me, I rise again. Look unto me, I ascend to the heaven. Look unto me, I am sitting at the Father's right hand. Oh, poor sinner. Look unto me, look unto me. When he had gone to about that length and managed to spend out ten minutes or so, he was at the end of his tether.

The Personal Call to Look and Live

Then he looked at me under the gallery and, I dare say, with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. Just fixing his eyes on me as if he knew all my heart, he said, young man, you look very miserable.

Well, I did. But I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home. He continued, and you will always be miserable, miserable in life, miserable in death, if you don't obey my text.

But if you obey now this moment, you will be saved. Then lifting up his hands, he shouted, only as a primitive Methodist could do. You man, look to Jesus Christ. Look, look, look. You have nothing to do but to look and live.

Spurgeon's Conversion Through Faith

I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said. I did not take much notice of it. I was so possessed with that one thought, like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed.

So it was with me. I had been waiting to do fifty things. But when I heard that word look, what a charming word it seemed to me. I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone.

The darkness had rolled away. At that moment I saw the sun, and I could have risen that instant and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the precious blood of Christ and simple faith, which looks alone to him.

That somebody had told me this before. Trust Christ and you shall be saved.