Alright, so I hope you've enjoyed the testimony so far that we've heard yesterday as well
as today.
I thought it would probably be a good idea for me to give you my testimony, right?
I'm the Bishop of the Church, so is this guy even saved?
Mine's not so exciting, but it's beautiful anyway because I had the privilege, like Callum
mentioned, I had the privilege of growing up in a Christian home.
All of my parents are saved.
When I was four years old, and I've always wondered, can a four-year-old get saved?
My mum would tell me, I don't even remember the occasion, the experience, but I've always
wondered, can a four-year-old really believe the Gospel and be saved?
But anyway, I do recall, what I do recall is speaking to my mum about the Gospel.
I don't remember what he was exactly, but it was from four years old and moving forward
that I always knew that my salvation was built upon Jesus Christ alone.
It was just by believing upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
I mean, a child can understand the Gospel, right?
It's the adults that mess it up.
We want to make it complicated.
We want to take credit for our own salvation.
And even, I do recall, I was attending a Baptist union church.
I've been pretty much a Baptist my whole life, even as a child attending a Baptist
union church.
I don't recommend the Baptist union churches today, but I had an old-school preacher.
I had an old-school, sound of the Gospel preacher.
I think even preached from the King James Bible from memory.
After I got saved, my mum spoke to the pastor and said, can you speak to my son and make
sure he understands the Gospel?
And he did, and I understood the Gospel.
My whole life, I've always known, I've had the Holy Ghost with me.
He's always enlightened my path.
I've never really been confused as a child about the Gospel.
Now my parents, you know, they're trying to do the right thing, trying to raise me
in a Christian environment.
They put me in a Christian school, right?
Again, it was a Baptist union Christian school.
They're now no longer part of the Baptist union.
They're a complete Pentecostal, charismatic kind of school now.
But when I attended that high school, so I went to a public school growing up, and then
high school, I went to this Christian school.
And that's like, let me just warn you guys of Christian schools.
You might think it's a good idea, but there is so much false doctrine in these schools.
It seemed to be a majority were Pentecostals, and especially the crazy types, the ones that
would speak in the tongues and fall on the floor and foam out of the mouth and all those
kind of things.
And I remember one teacher preaching that, you know, hell's not a place of fire.
It's just a place of darkness.
It separated God from forever.
But God's a loving God.
He's not going to cause someone to suffer in the flames of hell.
And so it's these kind of things you learn from teachers, the things you heard.
And at that age when I was a teenager, I thought all Baptists and Protestants, I thought they
were all saved because they all spoke of Jesus Christ as a priority, as a figure of salvation.
And so me just being naïve, I just always assumed when people said, oh, I gave my life
to Christ.
I repented of my sins.
I invited Him into my heart.
Or just different terminology that people use to talk about their salvation experience.
I just thought all these churches were the same, at least on this doctrine.
I thought they were all saved, except when it came to secondary doctrines, that's where
the divisions were and they differed.
But the problem was, so I pretty much accepted that everyone was saved.
The problem was when they'd have guests, so at the Christian school we'd have like a chapel
service.
It was maybe an hour long every Thursday.
And they'd often have a guest preacher come in.
And often, they were really like hardcore, you know, ex-bike, or maybe they were still
current bikies, you know, tattoos, the long hair, you know, they'd been in jail for drugs
and whatever.
Just hardcore coming to preach to the students.
And I remember they'd often have this testimony where they were doing drugs, they were committing
fornication, they were doing all sorts of crime, and then they met Jesus and now their
life's changed completely.
And I used to look at that and go, wow, I know they're saved, because look at how much
they've changed.
And then I'd look at my own life and go, am I even saved?
Because I was saved when I was four, I mean, did I turn from a life of drunkenness and
crime from the age of four, you know?
And so, you know, I rededicated, you know, you've probably heard those terms before,
rededicated my life to the Lord as a teenager over and over.
And it wasn't that I was unsaved.
I know I was saved at that age, but it's just the confusion.
You know, we even read in the New Testament of early churches getting confused on the
gospel, you know, to the point where Paul says, I have doubt, I stand in doubt of you.
And so that's what happened to me.
I was right in the gospel, and then I just got messed up, right?
And I appreciate Kalimzil for the false gospel, but maybe I have a little bit more benefit
of the doubt, because I do recognize that a true believer can get confused with a false
gospel.
And then after high school I met my wife, Christina.
I started dating her, and she was unsaved, she was a Roman Catholic, so I'm not endorsing
that whatsoever.
You know, as a believer you should not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever, but I
started dating Christina.
And to be honest with you, I started dating her because I saw wife material, you know.
But at the same time, you know, I wanted her to be saved, so I preached the gospel to her.
Every possible opportunity we'd preach the gospel, I'd preach the gospel.
I wanted to show her that the Jesus of the Roman Catholic Church was a different Jesus
to the Jesus of the Bible.
He was another Jesus.
And eventually one day she called me and said, Kevin, I believe, I'm saved.
I believe in Jesus.
And I remember thinking, oh, is she really saved?
Really?
But, you know, thank God she was saved.
She finally accepted, she got rid of her statues and turned her back against Roman Catholicism.
She got her mother saved afterwards and was influential in getting her brother saved.
And then it's like, so I married her, right?
That's what you do.
You want to marry a believer.
That's why I found it funny yesterday that three of the men had gotten their wives saved
as well.
And so I got Christina saved.
She's the first person I've ever seen come to the Lord through my influence.
So that was a blessing.
But it was around that same time when I was talking to Christina, I'd go to a lot of websites.
And there weren't many websites at the time because this was like the early 2000s.
And there's only very few websites that were kind of the independent Baptist.
And I started to learn about Roman Catholicism.
And at the same time, I'd learned about the King James Bible.
Now I grew up with a new King James Bible, and my school, my Christian school required
me to have an NIV Bible.
And I remember when I first read these articles and saying how corrupt my Bibles were, I was
greatly offended.
Not by the Bible, but by these guys telling me they were corrupted.
I was greatly offended.
I like the information about Roman Catholicism, but I was greatly offended.
And then I started to look and yep, there were missing verses, yep, this is corrupt
in the Gospel.
Yep, they're taking out the blood of Jesus Christ, yep, they're calling Jesus Lucifer.
And at that point, we'll talk about that later, not now, but at that point I got my
NIV, I just chucked it in the bin.
And I don't know what happened to my new King James Bible.
I got myself a King James, but I found it difficult to read, that old English, very
difficult to read.
So as I would read the Bible with Christina, we had a King James, we'd read from the King
James, and then if we struggled, I'd go, ah, let's look at the NIV.
What does the NIV say, maybe that'll clarify it.
And I always struggled reading the King James Bible doing that.
And I'll talk about just a little experience here, and obviously we don't base our faith
on personal experiences, but what the Word of God says, but I remember just making a
conscientious decision, I'm no longer going to read those Bibles, I'm just going to read
the King James Bible.
God, you have to help me, because I can't make it out.
You've got to help me.
And I remember when I made that decision, I threw out my corrupted Bibles, I opened
up the King James Bible, started reading it, and I could read it.
It was like blinders had been taken off my eyes, and I couldn't read, I couldn't understand
this.
And I go to another passage, and I couldn't read, I couldn't understand this.
And so it's almost like I was being held back by these easier-to-read Bibles to understand
the King James.
And yet when I put that away, actually I made a trip to Chile when this happened.
That's what happened, I went to Chile, and I said, I'm only going to take my King James
Bible.
I'm not going to take anything else.
That's what I'm taking.
And I remember when I first opened it, and I was in awe that I had God's Word in my hand.
And I thought about Moses and the Ten Commandments, how God etched those commandments himself
in those tablets.
And I thought, wow, I've got the Word of God in my hand.
Just as much as Moses did, I had that in my hand.
Even to the point where I almost felt like I was in the presence of the Lord.
I couldn't even lift my head up, because I was almost afraid that I would see God.
That's how powerful just going to the King James Bible was for me.
And I've never turned back.
From then on forward, I was King James only.
So it was around that time, yeah, we got to the King James, and then we were looking for
a good church.
I'd been taking Christina to a Presbyterian church.
We went to, I think, two different Presbyterian churches.
I knew I didn't want to go to a Baptist church, because I went to the Baptist Union church.
And I did have a good preacher as a child, but then the other preacher was just, it was
very lame.
It was just very watered down preaching.
It was so boring, I would just as a child just read my Bible instead.
Unfortunately it was the new King James, but I would do that.
And I knew, and plus, I heard preaching from that Baptist Union church that the Roman Catholics
were our brothers.
You know, they're getting better, they're coming closer to us, they're becoming more
like us.
And I knew, because I had Roman Catholic friends, I knew they didn't believe the gospel like
I believed, right?
And so I was like, I don't want to go to a Baptist church, because look how they are.
But it was funny, because a lot of these websites that I went to, later on I found out, were
the independent Baptists.
And thank God that I crossed their paths, and then the first church that I attended
was called Bethany Baptist Church in Seven Hills in Sydney.
It's now called Southland Baptist, and it was in that church that I learnt a lot of
good doctrine.
I learnt, I got baptised, my wife and I, we got baptised there.
And the pastor, and I didn't realise this at the time, but the pastor there was vehemently
against repenting your sins.
He even had a booklet.
If you go to our church website, churchincalandra.org, there's an article there called What About
Repentance?
And that article was written by the pastor there.
I made some edits and made some changes, just grammatical things that I fixed up.
But you'll read there, and this is in the early 2000s, he was vehemently against repenting
your sins.
And what frustrates me is, because I believe this, people say, oh, because you listen to
Stephen Anson, right?
Oh, yeah, what are you talking about?
This is the gospel.
The gospel is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and then I shall be saved.
And so I was baptised knowing that gospel, but because I was a little bit messed up with
the school that I went to, I remember hearing a sermon once about doubting your salvation.
And just the preacher at the time just saying, hey, you know, if you doubt your salvation,
then you're doubting that Jesus even saved you.
You know, all the work was done by Christ.
We rest upon Christ.
You know, God, Jesus Christ promises us eternal life.
If you think you can lose it, then you're doubting Jesus Christ.
And just, it was like a light bulb.
Of course!
I've known that my whole life.
You know, and that cleared away all the confusion I had growing up as a teenager, having to
rededicate my life and all of that.
So you know, it wasn't that I got saved at that point, it just took away all those cobwebs
that I had brought into my life, in my spiritual life.
So we had been there for two years at Bethany Baptist Church.
We then found a church that was closer to us, closer to where we were living, called
Victory Baptist Church.
That's in Mount Pritchard.
At Victory Baptist Church, we were there for nine years.
If I could sort of tell you the difference, Bethany Baptist Church, I learnt a lot of
foundational good doctrine, right?
And it also drove me to go soul-willing.
Even though I didn't do much soul-willing at that time, I knew that's what I needed
to do.
Okay?
Victory Baptist Church was a little different.
It was very family-centric.
It was very, you know, a lot of preaching about husbands and wives and rearing children.
And that was perfect timing for me, because my wife and I had got married, we were having
our children.
Very family-centric church.
So you know, I was there for nine years, and I served four years as a Sunday school teacher.
So I would preach week in, week out to the children.
And it was around that time as well that I started to preach every month at the church.
So pretty much for the last six years, I've been preaching on a monthly basis, starting
at Victory Baptist Church.
And then, obviously, the last two, two and a half years, I've been at the church in
Punchbowl.
Now, the reason I went to the church in Punchbowl was because I had a desire to start a church.
And I wanted to see, hey, this is a great opportunity.
This is a brand new church that's starting up.
I want to see what that's like.
I want to see what the challenges are.
What are the things that we do wrong?
What are the things that we do right?
And take that on board and try to, you know, because I had that desire, by then I had that
desire to be a bishop and to start a church.
So you know, what do I take out of the church in Punchbowl?
Let me just say this.
There is great faith in that church, all right?
Faith to see souls saved.
And you know, I don't want to talk bad of other churches, because they're serving
the Lord.
There are some churches, they do preach the gospel door-to-door, but they don't see
people saved.
And I went from one church to the church in Punchbowl, and I wasn't getting much…
I was getting people saved, but not much success, all right?
After going to the church in Punchbowl and seeing how many people were getting saved,
I was out there, I was knocking doors, seeing people saved.
Week in, week out.
I couldn't believe it.
And yet it's the same gospel message.
And I wonder, what was it?
And the only thing I can put it down to is having faith that God will, that we will reap
His harvest.
That's the only, because it's the same message.
It's not like we're more handsome at the church in Punchbowl, and people like us more
or something, right?
But that's what I took out of it.
A great faith, a great love for the Word of God, a great desire for the brethren to be
united and to speak the Bible.
And so, you know, there's something that I can take from each of those churches.
You know, at the end of the day, what is the church in Calamitya going to be like?
It's really going to be based upon my experiences in my previous churches, the good that I can
take from each of those churches.
I want to be a church that builds you, you know, strongly, strong foundations in the
Word of God like I got at Bethany Baptist Church.
I want to be a church that is family-centric, that loves children, that encourages families
like I did at Victory Baptist Church.
And I also want to be a church that has great faith in the Lord, that He will answer prayer,
and that we will see many souls saved like I saw at the church in Punchbowl.
So I'm going to grab a little bit of everything there.
So I hope that gives you an idea, you know, why, what my background is, how I got saved.
And the reason, hey, the other thing is, the other thing is, remember I said, can a four-year-old
really get saved?
Well, you know, I think Isabel was six, and look, I've never pushed the gospel on my children.
They came to me saying, Dad, I don't want to go to hell.
I want to make sure I'm going to heaven.
What do I have to do?
I think Isabel was about six.
I think Nicholas was about five.
I think the twins were about, Matthias and Christian, were about five as well.
And then obviously when brothers talk, the little ones listen.
And then Sebastian, well, he might have been three when he first asked, but I felt he just
wasn't grabbing it, grasping it.
Again, I didn't want to push anything.
And then when he was about four, Sebastian said, Dad, I want to know, I want to go to
heaven.
I want to make sure I'm going to heaven.
I was able to give him the gospel.
I'll never forget when I told him, you know, sin makes us deserving of hell.
And just seeing him cry and weep, thinking, oh, I had sinned and I'm going to hell, you
know, and just seeing his heart break.
But then to give him the good news, right, the good news of salvation, of what Jesus
Christ did for us and his sacrifice.
And at four years old, he understood that.
He knows it's believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I realize now, yeah, you know, children can be saved at an early age.
So parents, I really encourage you to tell your children the gospel.
Don't force them.
Like, don't get into just pray a prayer.
Obviously we don't believe that.
We want them to believe with a heart, right?
Believe with a heart.
And then when they're ready, obviously they can make that commitment and know, hey, it
was this day that I believed in the Lord and just to have that assurance of salvation.
So that's my testimony.