Ernest O'neill's Testimony — Ernest O'Neill

It's good for every one of us to give our testimony from time to time and look, you've suffered mine before, you just have to suffer it. Once a year, but it's longer than a year now. But I think that I should give you my testimony.

A Working-Class Upbringing and Early Faith

I was born in Italy. No, I was born in... That was just to waken up those of you who are elitist. I was born in Belfast about 46 years ago, which seems to me 24 years ago, as all of us feel who are over 30.

We feel we're 24 at the most. I was born in Belfast into a working class home, really. My dad worked in the shipyard in Belfast and we had enough money, but not much more than enough money. And I went to a Methodist church, the local Methodist church in Belfast, which was a fairly evangelical church and a fairly big church.

Belfast is a city of maybe about half a million. And as I came up, I began to go to Sunday school from I was about five or six years of age and always had a great belief in God and always prayed to God.

You know, the three prayers that you always do, the Our Father, the God bless Dad, Mum, and gentle Jesus make him mild. And I always did those prayers, especially during the war years, during 39 to 45.

The shipyard was a target for the old German bombers. And so my dad would go down there to see how things were. And of course, I was very conscious that only God could take care of him. So I certainly believed in God during those early years.

Hearing About Judgment and Receiving Christ

Then when I was 13, we had a Sunday school teacher who I would have thought then was just a wild old fundamentalist. But the beauty of it was he believed God's Word. And so one Sunday afternoon, he told us about the Lake of Fire, which was the first time I'd ever heard of it.

That at the end of this life, there was a hell or an outer darkness, a great lonely place where there was no life. And of course, he presented it, as it's presented in Revelation, as a lake of fire where you burn forever in your own selfishness and in what you have become.

And that really just, well, scared whatever they say it scares out of you, you know, but it certainly scared me. And he did the verses, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death.

But I don't know that I really felt I was a sinner, you know. I just felt it would be circumspect and prudent to be on the same side as the owner of the Lake of Fire. And so I stayed behind after that Sunday school class and prayed and received as best I could Jesus as my Savior, though I could never get the hang of what it meant, Savior.

And I really didn't like that term too much, to tell you the truth. I didn't like the idea that Jesus was my Savior. I liked the idea of him being my helper and my guide. And so from 13 to 17, when I went to university, that was kind of my situation.

I would say I was a believer. You remember the way Jesus says there are believers, but they really don't do what I tell them to do. They believe all the right things. I would say I was a believer. If you had said to me, do you believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world, I would have said yes.

If you had said, do you believe he's your Savior, I would have known that you wanted me to say yes, and so I would have said yes, but I didn't like the idea of having to be saved by anybody and didn't like the idea of him being my Savior.

Conviction of Sin and the Meaning of the Cross

Until at 17, and probably I was later than maybe you guys are in America, but certainly at 17, I began to come up against the agony of the old sex thing, a power that I couldn't control and a power that did make me feel dirty at times.

And through that, I think God began to show me other things in my life that were not obedient to him and that were in fact sin. And so I began to see the meaning of all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and the wages of sin is death.

And I had already begun by that time to think through the reasons for believing in God and believing in the Bible, so I did believe that those things were true. And I began to see that I was headed for eternal death because my life was filled with things that were dishonest.

Oh, I would be dishonest. I would tell a lie when it suited me. I would be unkind and cruel to my brother when it suited me. I would do whatever I wanted to do. So I saw that I was doing things that were disobedient to God day after day.

And then I began to think, now Jesus must fit into this somehow. And it was then that I came into contact with a guy who asked me that question. He said, Do you believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world?

And I said, Yeah, I do. And then he said, Do you believe he's your Savior? And I said, He died for me. And he said, Yes. And I said, Oh, yes. Yes, I do. But I didn't, really. And so I stopped my ordinary prayer times and I started, even though I was a miserable old Protestant, I started to do probably what you loved ones in the Catholic Church are taught to do from an early age, really the Stations of the Cross.

I don't know the Stations of the Cross, but I certainly in my own mind began to see, I must somehow see the reality of this death that took place on Calvary. I must somehow find out what the meaning of this is.

And so I began to spend my prayer times thinking about Jesus dying on the cross. And of course I had a skeptical kind of mind, so it was hard for me to think that this man actually died. And then I began to think, you mean that there is a place somewhere in this world, and probably in Palestine, where his cross actually made a hole in the ground.

And I would try to think my intellectual way through to that. This man actually died on a cross in Palestine. And so I began to just imagine Jesus' death on the cross. And that's what I did. For weeks and for months, I just thought of Jesus' death, and that it actually took place, and it actually happened.

And then of course as I began to go through the historical records, it was obvious to me that all the talk about him being a political criminal was stupid. I mean that wasn't why he was killed at all.

And then I began to come into those verses in Isaiah that says, he was despised and rejected of men, and he carried our sins. And then I began to see the words that he cried out on the cross, My God, my God, why hast thou of all people forsaken me of all people?

And then I began to see him speaking to the Roman soldiers, and saying, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. And then it's just a miracle, I suppose, of the Holy Spirit, you know. But I sensed that he was speaking right down the centuries, and looking at me, and saying, Father forgive him, for he knows not what he does.

And then somehow, I didn't know why he died, I didn't know what it had to do with my sins being forgiven, but I knew that he had died for me. And that if I had been the only person in the whole world, he would still have died for me.

And so I just had a great sense that he was my dear friend, and my dear Savior. And I would say, loved ones, that that was the new birth experience for me. My heart was changed inside, and I began to want to please him and to love him, and I began to read the Bible, and I began to pray, and I began to give my life to him more and more.

Calling to Ministry and Service in the Methodist Church

And so when he appeared to be saying that I should go into the ministry, I wanted to go into the ministry. But we didn't have a lot of money to send people to seminaries and that kind of thing in our home, so I reckoned the only way I could ever get to university was by getting a scholarship, a teaching scholarship.

So that's what I did. At 17, I got a teaching scholarship to Queen's University in Belfast, and I studied English literature, and then went to teacher training school after that, then went back to my old high school, and taught English there for two, three years.

But it was during my second year at university that it seemed to me that Jesus was saying, nevertheless, impossible though it is, you have to come and be a minister. And so I sensed that he was calling me into the ministry, and I said yes to him, and began to do examinations in connection with the Methodist Church at that time.

So at the same time as I graduated from university and from teacher training college, I candidated for the Methodist ministry. And then for the next five years, I spent the time in what we call probation in the Methodist Church in Ireland.

I spent the two years teaching and doing chaplaincy work in university in Belfast, and then the last three years, I went to seminary in Belfast and did the divinity degree. During all that time, loved ones, I became more and more conscious that though I knew my sins were forgiven, there was a great struggle inside me.

Struggle With Inward Sin and Religious Pretense

I was always aware of the reality of Romans 7 and 15. That is, the good that I would, I cannot do, and the evil I hate is what I do. I was always aware of that. From the early days in the ministry, and some of the pastors know that in the ministry, you have to smile.

That's the big thing. Smile all the time. We had smiling classes at seminary. No, we didn't. But if somebody criticizes you, you smile. That's it. You smile. If somebody is uncounty, you smile. You smile.

So I did that and kept on doing that even after I was ordained. I was ordained in Dublin in about 1960, and then I met my dear one through Jesus, really, just showing us that we were for each other, and that was a miraculous thing too.

And we married and served in Donegal for a year. Then at that time, I sensed that God wanted us to go to London so that I could do Old Testament studies at London University. So we went to London and spent a year, two years there.

I always wondered, how does God really work in people's hearts, and how does he move a church into life and into dynamic relationship with himself? And so when an opportunity came up to take a church in London, I again took a church and gave up the studies because I always felt, oh, it must be God that makes things happen rather than your own intellectual brilliance or shrewdness.

And so we served a church in London and came to the end of that year, and then the question was whether to go back to Ireland or not. And at that time, I began to ask God, Lord, where do you want us to go?

And I would say, loved ones, that even though I was in a half-hearted state in my relationship with God at that time, I would say God always answers you if you really, really want him to answer you with all your heart.

If you pray and you're willing to do whatever he tells you, it seems whatever state you're in, he somehow has pity on you. And I asked him what he wanted us to do, and after hours in prayer and nights and days, he said, go to America.

Moving to America and Discovering the Depth of the Problem

And I did not want to go to America because America had lots of money. And I felt, no, if you're following Jesus, you don't spend time in places with lots of money. You spend time where people are in poverty.

And so it is very hard to eventually say yes. And I did say yes and went to a neighboring pastor and asked him if he knew anybody in America. And he said he knew the Bishop of Minnesota who would be there in London the next week.

So we had dinner with the Bishop of Minnesota the next week, and then I came out to America in 1963, just around the time when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I think I was here for a month, and then the assassination took place.

And I served in a Methodist church in Minneapolis for about a year and a half, then was an associate in a downtown church for a year. And during that time, I became aware more and more that I was not what a Christian was supposed to be.

Especially after I arrived in America, I met a man with a shining face. That's the name of a book written by another man who had the same experience. I met a man who seemed to live in victory. That is, he seemed to live outside what he was inside, and I was not.

I could smile, but if you criticized my sermon, I would smile, but my knuckles would be white, gripping the chair to hold myself back from asking you how many lectures you had done in homiletics or in theology.

And it was the old pretense, you know, the old hypocritical life. I was free from outward sins, more or less. I don't think you're going to point a finger much at my outward life, but my problem was inward sin, anger that never showed itself outside because we were always taught at least you should have the control that Plato and Socrates had over their outward life.

And we were taught that self-discipline should enable you to be a gentleman to people on the outside. So I could control the stuff, but it's seethed within. Resentment when somebody criticized you. Rising resentment inside.

Unclean thoughts, outward a life of cleanliness, but inside a life of uncleanness and of thoughts that shouldn't be there. Not thoughts that just popped into your mind and pop out again, but thoughts that I entertained and welcomed.

I just sensed that there has to be something better than this. Indeed, I came to the point where I felt I'll go insane if this continues because I could be praying to Jesus and sinning in my own thought life at the same time.

And I thought, this is schizophrenia. This can't be. I'm going to go insane if I continue like this. And I felt there has to be some answer. And at a little meeting in North Minneapolis I once shared this and this man at the back explained afterwards that he was a missionary in Bolivia and had for years lived in the same hypocrisy and that there was an answer.

And then bit by bit he told me of his own experience and then gave me some books to read. Some books written by old Methodist bishops years ago in America. And these books explained clearly to me that the problem in my life was that there was something inside me that had never actually been changed or touched by God.

And of course at first I could not believe it because I felt I had given myself to Jesus and received Him into my heart. And these books said, ask the Holy Spirit to show you what is in there. And I was taught in seminary to believe in the Holy Spirit but I thought it was a force.

Really. I know I should have known better. I know he's called the third person of the trinity but I felt that the Holy Spirit was an it. That it was a force or an atmosphere that comes upon a meeting at certain times.

The Holy Spirit Reveals Inward Sin

And these books said, no, the Holy Spirit is a person. And they pointed out that Jesus said, I will send to you the Holy Spirit. It is to your advantage that I go away because if I don't go away the Comforter will not come to you.

But when I come, He will come and He will lead you into all truth. And then Jesus called him the Counselor. And these books said, you should ask the Counselor to show you what is inside you that has not been touched by God.

And that's what I did. I started to ask the Holy Spirit in my prayer times to show me what was inside that I had never yielded to God. And over weeks and months, loved ones, I saw things that I could not believe.

And the Holy Spirit was faithful. And He will be faithful to you if you are willing to look. And the Holy Spirit began to show me that it wasn't just the outward sins that were the problem, but there was in me inward sin, which was me.

And that I couldn't believe. I mean, I felt that a feeling of sin was a feeling of sin. Or a desire for sin was a desire for sin. Or a sinful act was a sinful act. Or a sinful word was a sinful word. But I couldn't believe that I was sin.

And then I began to see verses such as Isaiah uses, you know, where he says, I am a man of unclean lips. Not just I speak unclean words, but I am a man of unclean lips. And the Holy Spirit began to show me I would waken up in the mornings with pride on my lips, and I would know what it was.

Pride in my own insight into Christianity and my ability to explain it to others. I would just see this as hopeless. If I am that corrupt, I can never clean myself. If I am that proud, I can never overcome it.

Because it's self itself that is proud. I knew the lust. That was clear and easy. But I didn't know the depth of the selfishness, the selfish ambition. I don't know how you men are, but the ladies are supposed to be proud of the way they look.

We men are supposed to be proud of what we can achieve. And we always have this burden to achieve something, you know. And I had that selfish ambition to be successful and to be well known. And I saw that there was such dirt and rottenness in me that there was no way in which I could separate it from myself.

It was true what the Holy Spirit was saying that I myself was sin. And loved ones thought, really, what can you do? I became utterly convinced that it was me that was the problem. It was myself. That in spite of the fact that I appeared to live for God, I really lived for myself.

And I wasn't really living for God at all. I was living subtly to elevate myself and to gratify myself and to get others to exalt me and not to exalt Jesus. And bit by bit, the Holy Spirit convinced me that there was no way in which I could deliver myself from this.

Crucified With Christ in Romans 6

And then, loved ones, it was that a whole area of truth opened up to me that I had never seen before. I just never knew of it. Of course, that's why I share it with you. Because it was so absolutely new to me.

We were taught in Northern Ireland that Jesus died for you. I always reckoned so that I wouldn't have to die. And I was relieved at that. I had never heard, even though I'd read it in the Bible often, I had never heard in my heart that I died with Jesus.

Never. Now, you say, people must have told you that they must have. I must have read it somewhere in books. But it never came to me. Likewise, it'll never come to you until you're in desperate need for that experience.

But the Holy Spirit pointed me to a mysterious chapter that I'd never understood. And you know the one. You don't even need to look it up. I can repeat it to you. Lots of it. Romans 6. And I read there those of you who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death.

Well, I always read that as baptized into the benefits of His death. But then I began to see that the Greek word baptizo means to be immersed. And it meant you were immersed in His death. And then I read those incredible words in verse 6.

We know that our old self was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be destroyed and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. Well, I knew I was enslaved to sin. And then I saw that my old self was crucified with Christ.

And, loved ones, I could not believe it. Of course, it was double Dutch first to me. I mean, how could my old self that I was experiencing now be crucified with Christ? But then I saw it was the same with my sins.

My sins were born by Jesus, but they weren't taken away from me. They weren't forgiven until I believed it and was willing to let go of them. So I saw it's the same with myself. It was crucified with Christ, but I would have to bear it in my own being and my own personality until I was really willing to let it go.

And I saw that it had been crucified with Christ in eternity. And that the self that was proud and selfish and lustful was actually destroyed in Jesus. And that it didn't exist anymore except in the deception that I was under in allowing the ghost of it to remain and to retain an influence in my life.

And bit by bit, I began to see that it was true. That my old self had been crucified with Christ. And there was actually no problem in getting rid of it. God had already done that. And the Holy Spirit would take the things of Jesus and make them real to me if I wanted it.

Full Consecration and Dying to Self

And then that was the crux. If I wanted it. And so I began to wrestle with that. Were you really willing to live no longer for yourself but for God? And you know what? I don't know. Like you, I had often said that because that's the right thing to say.

I had always said, Oh, I want to live for God. But as the Holy Spirit began to point out the thousand little ways in which I drew attention to myself in conversation. The thousand little ways in which I was worried most by what people did to me rather than by what they did to God.

The thousand little ways in which I wanted people to think well of me. The thousand little ways in which I lost my temper not because God was being abused but because somebody was getting in my way. As the Holy Spirit showed me that it meant letting go of all those things.

Then I began to see a little of the cost. And I've shared often with you the whole business of anger, you know. You know when we get angry. We get angry because things aren't going our way. And we want to pull them back under our control.

And so we think we'll make them fearful because of our anger or our bad temper. And I began to see that that was my life. Always concerned with whether I was in control or things were going my way. And the Holy Spirit came more and more home to me.

Are you willing to die with Jesus to yourself and to your own satisfaction? And are you willing to live only for His glory? And loved ones, I don't know what it'll be like with you, you know. But I was 30, so I had masses of controlled surrenders that I had subtly arranged in my life.

I had a hard, packed soil of rejections and resistances to God's will that I had built up over the years. And the Holy Spirit had to go down through all that stuff. And there would come days, you know, when I felt, oh, yeah, I am willing.

I'm willing. I'm willing. And the next day, I'd be back in the old anger and the temper and the envy and the selfishness. And I knew I wasn't willing. And these books kept saying, when you get to the ground of your heart, the Holy Spirit will witness you're there.

And I would get to the place, you know, where I'd feel, oh, I am there. I am there. Well, God is so good. He doesn't let you be deceived, you know. The next day, I'd know I wasn't there. I was back in the old life.

And gradually, over a period of weeks and months, the Holy Spirit dug down underneath the layers, underneath all the mess of that inward self, until one morning in North Minneapolis in the Parsonage there, a Saturday morning, I think it was, the Holy Spirit put to me the question, would you be willing to be nothing for Jesus' glory?

And the self, of course, always pops up and says, what good would that do? Be nothing. And then, you know, by that time, I'd begun to listen to the Holy Spirit and begun to be able to hear Him over the noise of self.

And He said, that isn't the issue. Would you be willing to be nothing, to be a failure, not to be known at all, to be ignored, to be an absolute failure for the rest of your life, if it were for Jesus' glory?

And then, I at last whispered yes. And loved ones, I think that was just full consecration, was presenting my body a living sacrifice, which is our reasonable service. It was at last saying, Lord, I will live for you only, because this is the only purpose of our lives.

And there's no point in me building up a little temporal kingdom that will end after 70 years. I'm here for your use and for whatever you want. And loved ones, it was the lifting of the center of my life from self into God.

Cleansing, Freedom From Sin, and the Christian Life

And I just had acquired assurance that the Holy Spirit had come in and had cleansed my heart. And the next morning, you know, God is always so good. I got a letter from a colleague who I was way ahead of him academically when we were in Belfast, but he had concentrated in getting the old doctorate in psychology while I was flogging away trying to find out how God worked in churches.

And every time I received a letter from him, I felt, I should have done that. I should have done that. And the old envy always popped up. And I received the letter and opened it, and there was nothing.

That was good. So, it is real. The Holy Spirit can actually cleanse your heart. He can actually cleanse your heart and fill your heart. So, He can take away the selfishness and the hatred and the resentment and He can bring about in your heart love, joy, peace so that it comes from inside.

The issue is not, do you sin? I'm sure I sinned a hundred times. But before, I couldn't help sinning because of this mess that was rising inside. Now, if I sin, it's my own fault. Just my own fault. Because there's a desire to obey God rather than to disobey Him.

That's the change, loved ones. It's not the issue of whether you never sin. The issue is that you're freed from the power of sin. You're at last free not to sin if you so choose. It's natural to obey where before it was natural to sin.

Conflict With the Methodist Church and the Fullness of the Spirit

And of course, my life just changed from then. Never had trouble until then, of course. Never had problems. Never had difficulties with the congregation because I always preached so nicely that everybody, I persuaded everybody to agree with me.

Then I started to preach about sin and began to preach that that was the problem in our lives that we did not obey God and that we wanted to elevate self and play all kinds of spiritual games instead of obey God.

And then, of course, trouble came. But I never had such glory until then. Never had such outward trouble. Eventually left the Methodist Church, taught in Benilde High School, preached in the Presbyterian Church on the campus and fought most of my way.

The past six months is kind of typical, you know. But never such peace. Never such peace in my heart. Never such freedom from inward conflict. And oh, maybe a year and a half, two years later, I spoke in tongues in my own apartment.

But, yeah, that's nothing, you know. Don't get caught up with the spiritual games. They don't matter. Don't get caught up with demons and all that stuff. The Holy Spirit came to cleanse our hearts and to make us pure within.

And somehow, when you are cleansed and when your heart is pure, then you're ready to be used by God. And loved ones, until then, really God can't. He doesn't bother telling you what to do in your life.

Do you know that? God doesn't waste words, you know. God doesn't blast at you. Do this, do this, do this. When He knows fine, well, you can't hear Him. Or if you do hear Him, you won't obey Him anyway.

So really God is only able to tell you what to do with your life when you get through to whatever you want to call it. I frankly think the fullness of the Spirit is maybe one of the best words because, in a sense, the Spirit has come into you when you're born of God.

But it isn't filling you. He isn't filling you completely. But whether you call it the fullness of the Spirit or the baptism of the Spirit or a clean heart or full surrender or full consecration, it doesn't matter about the terminology.

The fact is, most of us have had the same kind of experience as Saul on Damascus Road. We met Jesus as Savior and then there was a gap before we met Him as our Lord. And only when we were ready to meet Him as the Lord of our life and to allow Him to take over our lives completely was He able to fill us with His Spirit.

And only then, of course, does power come into your life. Power for service. So, loved ones, I would just tell you God has given us a great vision, you know. And we are privileged people. It really doesn't matter whether you're just a little one starting off here in the body.

A Vision for Mission and the Need for Spiritual Empowerment

We have a very clear vision. And it's an exciting vision, you know. And it's not a vision that anybody actually needs to back off from. It's just the vision of getting 10 ,000 of us living abroad, doing our jobs, involved together in businesses or in schools together for Jesus.

And any of us can take part in that. But here's the point. You'd just be a hindrance if you're not filled with the Holy Spirit. You will. You'll just be a hindrance until your heart is clean. But when your heart is clean and when you've entered into that crucifixion with Christ, Jesus will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

And you will have power to do things that you cannot do at present. So until you're baptized with the Holy Spirit, you really will not only have a powerless life on the outside, but you'll have an impure, defeated life on the inside.

Hungering for Purity and the Promises of Scripture

Now, loved ones, there's no mystery to it. You know, you just start seeking. That's it. If you know that's your state, the first thing I did was I settled in my mind that the Bible promised this. The Bible said, Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

The Bible promised clean hearts. Acts 15 and 9, God gave the Holy Spirit to them as He did to us and cleansed their hearts by faith. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

First thing is to settle, does God want this in your life? The second thing is to go for it with all your heart. And not to pity self or cry over self or protest that you have a right to sin or rationalize your sin.

The thing is to go for it with all your heart. And God will answer. Of course, Jesus promised it. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. And then those of us who want to continue the old half-life where we want to be good Jews who have our sins forgiven but do not have victory over sin, the Bible doesn't give much reassurance for that life.

That's up to you if you choose that life. I don't know that it is actually an alternative. I think you either go all or nothing. So you have to decide. It doesn't matter how long it takes you. It doesn't matter if you're in it this moment.

But are you hungry for it? If you say to me, well, brother, if you're going to keep at this, I mean, I'll have to leave. Well, you can choose whether to leave or not. You don't have to leave. It seems to me what God wants is a body of brothers and sisters who love each other and are understanding and tender towards each other and give each other all the time in the world to get through to victory.

So I think what God wants is a group of people who are hungering after this with all their hearts. It's not whether you're in it or not, but are you hungering after it? Old John Wesley used to bring the preachers that were going to candidate before him and he would ask them, are you hungering with all your heart for a cleanness and purity within?

He didn't say, are you crucified with Christ? He said, are you hungering for this with all your heart? That's what I'd say to you, loved ones. Are you hungering for this with all your heart? If you are, then welcome, welcome to the family and let us go for purity and cleanness and for the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer for Cleansing, Consecration, and Victory

Dear Lord, thank you for the work that you are able to do in each one of our hearts, miraculous work. Thank you, Lord Jesus, that as we are forgiven by faith, so we are cleansed by faith. Thank you, Lord, that you do not bring us into your family and ask us to be like you by our own strength, but you cleanse us.

You empower us to obey you. Thank you, Lord, that as we became your friends by faith, so we become children who will live like you by faith. Thank you, Lord, for the miracle of dying with Jesus and being recreated, becoming a new creature filled with your Spirit.

Lord, I would pray for any brother or sister here who yearns for the same victory, and I trust you, dear Holy Spirit, to lead them as you led me and have led so many of us into victory within and without for your glory.