We're very delighted to have our brother McManus with us this evening, and he's going to testify and tell you what the Lord Jesus means to him, and how the Lord saved him, and how the Lord has kept his hand upon him. Brother, we welcome you in the Savior's name. God bless you as you testify to us. Well, good evening. It's a great privilege and pleasure for me to be here tonight and to tell you about what God has done for me and what he can do for you and anyone else. I'm not, I know there's a sermon after this, so I'm not going to go through a lot of the things that I might go through about the Roman Catholic Church and what we believed. But I do want to mention the Apostle Paul. I always like to mention the Apostle Paul when I'm talking about myself. It's not that I am anything like him or as good as him, but his past reminds me of my past, where I came from. And Paul was mentioned first in the book of Acts. Paul was a Pharisee, a very well-educated Jew, very religious man. He knew his religion inside out, and he was very protective of that religion. Then this man, Jesus Christ, came, started a new religion, or a sect as he probably seen it, and he seen it as a threat to the Jewish faith. So he reacted, he thought he was doing God's will as a religious person, and we read in Acts that he did some terrible things. And we see that in Acts 8, it says, And we all know the story. One day, he was going off to Damascus. He went to the high priest to get permission to round up more Christians. And he was yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples. So he was persecuting the Christians. And on that day, on the Damascus Road, he met with Jesus Christ in a very special way. He lifted his eyes after that, and he was blinded. He went into the town. A priest was asked to come and bless him by God. And that priest, Ananias, said, I can't do that. You know, God, what this man's like. He's persecuting the Christians. God said, I'm going to use him. So Ananias went and blessed him. And he received his sight as soon as he was blessed. But I believe he received a spiritual sight. After that, Paul went into the synagogues and the houses around and started preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think that's a tremendous miracle, a change in his life. And you had a young girl here, Crystal McLaughlin, last year. And many of you are moved by her story. But I can tell you, I knew that girl when she was unsaved. I knew her in Kilkeel. And I heard her in Moneymoor, given her testimony. I hadn't seen her before, after she got saved. The first time I heard her testimony was in Moneymoor. I didn't recognize her to see her. I didn't recognize her voice, even. But I did recognize this new spirit in our life, a complete change. And that's what Jesus can do. He can change a life, any life. I was born a Roman Catholic 58 years ago. I tell you that because For 46 years, I thought I was a Christian. I was a very religious person like Paul. I went to church every Sunday. We knelt in front of a sacred heart picture and said our prayers every night. We went to masses. We went to benedictions. We went to all sorts of Sunday night services. And during Lent, we went to special services. So I was a religious person. And I thought, well, I'm probably going to go to heaven. I'm not a bad person. I grew up, and the first thing we did was First Holy Communion. We were told this was the actual body and blood of Christ. And such reverence we had for that piece of bread, we thought it was the body of Christ. At confirmation, we believed that's when we received the Holy Spirit. All I can remember is getting money from my aunts and uncles for being confirmed. I didn't remember any change in my life. My parents were very good parents and I thank God for them. They were godly parents in their own way. And I think we would do well if we had parents like that today to keep us in the straight and narrow. I say we went through all sorts of rigmaroles and rituals. I look back at the Roman Catholic Church, and I see it today as a sort of an Old Testament church. They're involved in rituals, and they're involved in sacrifices and working your way to heaven. And I believe that As you did good things, you went up a ladder, and as you sinned, you came back down again. You never really knew where you were on your way to heaven. Of course, we had to go to priests to have our sins forgiven. We couldn't go to Jesus directly. And much was made of Mary, the mother of the earthly Jesus. And we could pray to her. In fact, we were encouraged to pray to her. And she would go to her son and ask on our behalf whatever we wanted. So that's the sort of religion we have, and it hasn't changed much. I remember you go to the priest and your sins were forgiven. Over the years, the Catholic Church has changed a little bit. It's eased. In fact, I think it's lost a lot of its goodness and godliness, in a way. It's got very lax. but still the old beliefs. We could pray at mass and go visit a graveyard, we were told, and gain a thing called a plenary indulgence. If we did this rigmarole, as we'll call it, we could get one soul released from heaven. There are all sorts of other rules, like when a baby died, if it hadn't been baptized, go to a place called Limbo. It would never get to heaven. And the number of people that suffered over the years, women that lost children at childbirth, never knew if their child was going to go to heaven or not. These things have been done away with now, so I don't know where we stand. But anyway, I was brought up in a fairly sheltered background. I left home, went to work in the hospital in Omagh, got money, enjoyed myself, did things like going to pubs, going to discos, going to dances and things like that. But never in the world's eyes, I suppose, really bad things. I met my wife, she was a doctor in the Troon County in Omagh. We got married, went to live in a skill and got a job there. And we lived a decent sort of a life, but we had a good life and enjoyed ourselves at the same time. We had a young child, Claire, she's 21 now. And that sort of settled us, but we still enjoyed life to the full. We enjoyed the worldly things. As I with all my career, I claim the career ladder. More and more pressure. I was doing on-call. I was working five days a week, working Saturdays, Sundays, maybe nighttimes. A lot of responsibility, and I began to feel it. And about that time, I began to see things in the health service, in the hospital, in a skill that I didn't like and didn't agree with, and I was being asked to do. And because I wouldn't do them, I started to be harassed and threatened. It all took its toll. We were living hard and enjoying life hard and working hard. And one morning I got up to have my shower, went down to the shower. I was in the shower and this feeling came over me. I didn't know what it was, a very, very strange feeling. It was a few minutes before I realized I wasn't breathing. I couldn't breathe. And I started to get scared. And I just felt my face getting redder and hotter and my head getting lighter. And I really got scared and ran out of the shower. I couldn't call up to my wife. I banged on doors and eventually came down and all I could do was point at my mouth. I couldn't speak. Time went on. I got lighter headed and hotter and hotter and fell to my knees on the floor in the kitchen. She didn't know what to do. And I looked down, I could see myself looking down at myself, and I thought, this is it. I'm dying. And it really hurt me that I couldn't tell her that I loved her. I wanted to tell her that I loved her and say goodbye. And just went down, lower and lower. And she started banging me back, hammering me. And eventually I got a short, short breath and eventually I started choking and all sorts of horrible things, but eventually I come around. And she said to me, you're not going to work today, you're going to your bed. I said, I'm not going to bed, I'm going to work, I'm afraid to be on my own. That's okay, went to work that day, next morning the same thing, started choking in the shower, banged on the back, came round again. I was convinced I was going to die. If I went to sleep, I would die. That night I couldn't go to bed, I sat up watching television, reading books, and I did that for four or five nights. On the fifth night, I fell asleep. My wife woke up, heard me banging furniture and glass and whatever around, she came down and said, this is it, you're going into hospital. I was taken into the hospital the next day. And the doctors looked at me. They put me on cycles and made me do exercise. I couldn't do them. I used to run half marathons and things. I couldn't turn the wheels on a bicycle. They kept me in for three or four nights. They just couldn't understand what was wrong. And I used to stay up at night in the hospital ward and see the sun rise in the Altagelvin Hospital in the morning. I thank God for seeing a new day. That's how scared I was. On the last night I was there, I fell asleep, started choking again, pulled drips and machines with me. But I got myself a glass of water and I found I could stop myself choking with this glass of water. They released me from hospital not knowing what was wrong with me. And I went home scared to go to bed at night. And I'm ashamed to say I took a glass of whisky or some strong spirit to bed with me and took a glass of that to get me to sleep. And it was a long time before I realized that I wasn't the bad person. I wasn't the perpetrator of what was going on at work. But I started, I took some time off work, I started taking long walks, and I began thinking about the world and how lovely it was when I was on these walks. And I think that I was starting to talk to God then and question things. I went up to a place in Donegal called Rosnoula, a monastery. And you'd go to priests there, and you could ask them things without being afraid. They were nice sort of people. And I thought, I'll go and get this sorted out. Am I going to die? And if I die, will I go to hell? Because I had missed mass on Sunday and that was a mortal sin. You go to hell for missing mass on a Sunday. And I went to the priest and I asked him a lot of questions and I came out really frustrated and exasperated. I got no answers. About that time, and God had his person standing by, a friend at work who I didn't know was a Christian, just knew her as a Protestant. She said, would you come to our church some Sunday night? She had come to my daughter's Holy Communion, so I thought I'd better go. I went that night, and I thought they had prepared the service just for me because I was welcomed at the door. Somebody shook my hands and welcomed me and handed me a hymn book. Went in, they started singing hymns, and it wasn't just a choir way at the back. It was everybody in the church was singing, and they were really joyful, and it was beautiful. The pastor then got up and prayed, but he wasn't praying. He was just making up words, and it was just as if he was talking to God. God was a person in the room with him, and he was just talking to him. And I thought, that can't be praying. And then he opened the Bible, and I think I might have recognized the passage that I wrote, but I read. And after he had read it, he explained it, and it made sense. It really made sense. It was relevant today, not to just 2,000 years ago, but it was relevant for today. And I thought, that's amazing. So they asked me to go back another night. I did go back another night. And he preached on an Old Testament passage. And it was goggly gook. It meant nothing to me. How could this be anything to do with today? And yet he brought a message out of it for me. So I was hedging my bets for a while. I went to mass in the morning and went to church in the evening. And I remember going to the church in the evening and thinking of those people going to the cinema or going out to the pictures. I could see them walking into the town and I felt sort of jealous. And now I look at people going out on a Sunday night and I feel sorry for them. But I went there for a long time, months and months. And I remember him preaching about Jesus on the cross and Jesus, his passion. And I remember certain hymns, and I used to start getting choked up, and I couldn't understand why, why are these feelings coming over me? And I realized that God was convicting me that I needed to be saved, I needed to do something, I needed to change my life. But I didn't know how really, I didn't know what to do. And then a pastor, Dr. Alec Passmore from England, came over and did a mission. And I listened to him, and I was so convicted every night that I had to get saved every night. But I just couldn't do it. And it came to the last night, and he appealed again. And I thought, I have to do this. I have to do something. And the very last minute I looked around and I put my hand up quick and put it down again in case anybody would see me. And I went in that night and I asked Jesus to save me. I then got my Bible, started reading the Bible and really enjoyed the services. And my daughter didn't go to church at all. My wife didn't go to church at all. They were Catholics, but they only went to Christmas and Easter. And I said to my wife, look, I want to take Claire to church if you're not going to take her to church. And she let me take her to church. Claire came for months and months. And I seen her fidgeting with her hands and looking around her, and I thought she wasn't taking it in. And yet, on the car on the way home, she'd asked me the most amazing questions. And one night, the pastor, he didn't make an appeal. He just talked about the need to be saved and asked people where they were, sitting in their seats, if they did ask Jesus into their hearts. We were going home in the car that night, and I said, what did you think of the service tonight? And she said, if I ask Jesus into my heart, just like that. I couldn't go into the house that night. I was just sat and wept in the car. It was just amazing childlike faith. Claire's now 21. She went over to university in Liverpool two years ago. That was an awful time for me, letting her go into the world. And yet, that was the first time I really, really prayed in my life. I said, Jesus, look after her when she's away. Next thing I heard, she was in the Christian Union. They were having a mission for young people. Just such an answer to prayer. God has been so good to me. I think somebody like myself coming in, a Roman Catholic or whatever religion, not knowing the Bible, not knowing anything about the Bible, and getting this Bible in your hand and reading it and having it explained to you and taking an interest, it's really amazing. And I find I was just having a great appetite for the Bible. And one night at a prayer meeting, somebody said, you know, they're looking for people to go out to Portugal to a place called Fatima. I think you'd be good for that. I thought that was a daft notion. Somebody else at a different location said they're looking for people to go out to Fatima on this mission called AgriGospel Mission. I think you'd be good for it. I thought, is this God speaking to me? I remember going up to Portadown, to the little Christian union workers hall, and wondered, what am I doing here? And the people praying beforehand. And I thought, I can't pray like that. And what am I doing here? And yet, God kept me there. And I went out to Fatima that first time. And with the team, an awful lot of free Presbyterian people on that team, people that I wouldn't have mixed with, and such fellowship and a real presence of God in that team, and seeing what was out there and the lengths I mean, I know Catholics go to Pope Patrick, they go to knock, but this was something else. People walking hundreds of miles, carrying things on their back, taking money, lighting candles, crawling on their bellies. And that changed my life. God encouraged me to go to Bible College and did a diploma with the Faith Mission in Edinburgh. He's led me now into the Accra Gospel Mission Committee and so many other things and opportunities like this. And tonight, friends, I have to stand here amazed. I am amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene and wonder how he could save me, how he could love me, a sinner condemned, unclean. I'm amazed at being able to stand here in front of a number of people in a big church like this and talk like this. I remember going up to communion in the chapel in front of a few people. Nobody really looking at me. I'd been so embarrassed. But to come up here and stand here, it's not me. I'm not brilliant. Jesus has changed my life. It's absolutely amazing. And I stand amazed tonight, too, Because just this morning, a pastor visiting us read this, according in Ephesians 1 verse 4, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy without blame before him in love, having predestinated us onto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ. When I think that Jesus waited 47 years, his patience and long-suffering, because he loved me. Before the foundation of the world, he chose me. He had my name. And I am now in this family of God. I do stand amazed what he has done and given me a completely new spirit to go out on these Consider Christ teams as well. And that's another blessing from the Free Presbyterian Church. Consider Christ, going down to the south of Ireland and reaching what I call my people. I understand them. I know where they're coming from. It's just such an amazing opportunity. I could speak on long and long and long tonight, friends, about the Catholic Church and what we believed and how I've changed. But I look back at Paul, persecutor, all right, I didn't persecute people. But I had no thought of God at all, not really. My prayers were just words on a book. The prayers in the church today and the chapel today are just words. They're not prayers. That pastor that got up on that first night and just talked to God, that's the way I pray now. I can't really pray publicly that well, but when I get alone with God, I just tell him what's on my heart. and I ask for his help. Such a change, and only God can do that. And that time I look back to that illness, I believe God had that planned. God seen me going on for 46 years. And all he could do was bring me on my knees and take all the way the props and the supports. And he literally brought me to my knees where I had nothing else to reach for except him. And thank God I reached for him. And he accepted me and changed me and brought me into his family. So I just thank Him tonight for doing that for me. And I just wonder tonight, do you know that Jesus is changing your life? Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ is your Savior? You know, there could be people in here tonight, you're not saved. Maybe you've been coming here for a long time. Why are you not saved? What's keeping you back? Maybe you think you're too bad. You know, God couldn't save you. God couldn't love you. tell you I took somebody like Paul, who was a persecutor of Christians, and saved him. There are people that were in prison for murder, and they're out preaching the gospel now. God can change lives, and he can change your lives. So don't think you're too bad. God can change you. Maybe you're here tonight, and you're thinking, I'd love to get saved, but I'm not good enough. I couldn't keep it up. And friends, if you were on your own, you couldn't keep it up. But Jesus, You can get through it. You can do it. Maybe you think you have to become a Protestant. Maybe you think you have to pay money. Maybe you have to light candles. You don't have to do anything. You can do it here tonight in your seat where you are. If you just recognize the fact that you're a sinner, you've offended God, ask him to forgive you. Ask him to save you and trust him for the rest of your life. I think back to that time, When I was 46 in that illness, I was afraid of death. I didn't know whether I was going to hell or heaven. I just didn't know. I was scared of death. Now, it doesn't worry me in the slightest. I know where I'm going. Do you know where you're going, friends? Friends, if you feel God tugging at your heartstrings tonight, Don't resist, don't put it off if you do, because you could go out onto that street tonight and meet with an accident or a heart attack or anything, tonight or tomorrow. You don't know what a day will bring. If you feel him pulling at your heartstrings, give in tonight. Trust him as your savior. He'll change your life. Thank you.