A wonderful part to be from. Most people say they move away then, don't they? But that's where we came from originally and the privilege of being brought up in what I would have called a very real Christian family environment. I didn't appreciate that at the time, I hasten to add, but looking back now, I'm just so grateful to the Lord for that privilege and indeed for that opportunity. So yes, I'm from the Emerald Isle. My Irish eyes are smiling. Thank you. We're getting used to Irishmen here. Yeah, you are. Yeah, you are. And I want to say they haven't all got beards. Just all the ones I know, apart from Willie. Willie doesn't have, yeah. But Sam, I'm interested. You said that you were brought up in a Christian home. Was it through a Christian family that you first really heard about the Lord? I was brought up in a Christian home, but let me hasten to point that did not make in any way me a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. We were dragged along to Sunday school, boys and girls meetings, church, all the usual kind of things that boys and girls do when they're brought up in a Christian environment. If the truth be told, I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in church. I had far less interest in knowing Jesus Christ intimately and personally. For me, as a teenager, he was only a swear word, a cuss word, someone to use as a full stop at the end of a sentence or as a comma when I was stuck for something to say. One Sunday evening, going to the youth group, our pastor back then, who's still very much alive in his late 80s now, his wife was a wonderful, wonderful cook. And so we all trekked down to the youth group on a Sunday evening in the months. I was almost 15 at the time, and it was well worth going to. We got well fed. And then one Sunday evening, the end of January in 1968, our pastor decided to walk me home. Now I knew my way home, not a problem, but he decided he wanted to walk me home. We were halfway home, up the hill and down the other side, when I felt a big hand come down on my shoulder and he said to me, Samuel, are you saved? Do you know Jesus Christ personally as your Lord and Savior? That's the first time anybody had ever come out and asked me that quite pointedly. I told him no, absolutely no. And to be quite honest with you, I have no intention of ever coming to faith in Jesus either. He didn't mean anything to me, I wanted nothing to do with him, and all the rest of it. Well you know folks, for two weeks, I wrestled with that. And the question, did I know Jesus, began to haunt me. I became more and more aware of my sin, and the fact that I was messing up so much in life. And two weeks later, the second Sunday in February 1968, 51 years ago now, young man, I went back again to the youth fellowship. The youth fellowship went on. After the meeting was over, I said to him, I said, Mr. Byers, could we have a wee chat? And we did. And right there in this little living room, an old city, we knelt down on the carpet and he pointed me to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that was on the 11th of February, 1968. And that was a memorable evening, but that was only the start of an adventure, a real journey of walking with God day after day. Looking back in half a century now, plus one, I have absolutely no regrets about making that decision to follow Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord, that's wonderful to hear. Sam, thank you for that. So can I ask you, because one of the things that you're known for, which we appreciate you for, is your love of God's Word, the Bible. Now, where did that come from? Did that come immediately with your Christian your conversion following putting your trust in Christ, or was that something that came as you went on in your walk later on? Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. I was a bit of a rebel at school, and, you know, I just wanted to do my own thing, basically. And I very quickly discovered that even in my mid-teens at that point, it was the year I was doing O-Levels, I very quickly discovered you can't make up five years' work in three months and expect to do well when it came round to O-Levels. And so even though I didn't do particularly well back then, God was giving me a real hunger, a real desire to I suppose, get to know him better. And I had a real urge to get into the message of the Bible, just to hear God speaking to me. I'd spend hours and hours just literally reading the Bible. I didn't understand it. I still don't understand a lot of it. And I used to pester a pastor with all kinds of what he probably thought were daft questions, but they were big issues for me. And so, yes, it happened pretty much Soon after, I came to know the Lord. I just had a real passion, a real desire to get into the Word of God and to get to know God that wee bit better. And the more I get into the Bible, the more I began to realize, hey, this is phenomenal. This is a real story about a real person. This is God speaking to me day after day after day. And I just got so excited about it. And that has stayed with me the best part of half a century. And I'm just thankful to God for that. Yeah. Well, you've answered my next question in a way already. I was going to ask you, what difference has the Bible made in your life? The Bible has made a colossal difference. I mean, I love books, and you guys know I love books. The funny thing was that before I came to the Lord, I would never have read a book. I'd have read the comics after doing the rounds back then. I'd have read the sports pages and the Belfast Telegraph, the Belfast Newsletter. That was it. Nothing more, nothing else. And when I came to know Jesus Christ, He just gave me that insatiable desire to read the Word. And I just began to read other books associated with the Bible. It's like everything, if you're hungry, you've got to satisfy the appetite, don't you? And I'm just so grateful to the Lord that that has stayed with me down through quite a number of years now. That's brilliant. Sam, was it through your love of the Bible that you ended up in Christian ministry? Tell us how that call came about. Yeah, I mean, it's very interesting. Actually, times have changed now back in our hometown. But back then, and Bangor counted down, and some of you will realize this, they always had, in one of the big churches in the town, they had what they called a Worldwide Missions Convention. lasting for a full week, a Saturday through to the following Sunday. And they would have had some big-name preachers come along and take part in that. Then they would have often made an appeal towards the end of the week for people to come forward and dedicate their lives publicly to serving the Lord Jesus Christ. And I remember going along to that. I was just turned 15 and going along, sitting way up in the gallery. There were a couple of thousand people there. And the guest preacher on the final evening, the Saturday evening, was a man from Back to the Bible. He was a missions pastor, Dr. J. Christian Weiss, and he preached us heart out. And he made an impassioned appeal for people to stand up and come to the front who wanted to commit their lives to serving Jesus. I had no idea what I was doing, but God prompted me by His Spirit to get up on the seat and walk away down and go to the front. There were a few of us who did that same thing. And little did I realize That that happened in 1968, but little did I realise that not that many years later I would have the privilege of being involved in a radio ministry. But it all started with hearing him opening the word and challenging me to dedicate my life to serving him. But the reality is that, okay, I do it full time. as a job, as it were, but no matter who we are this evening, no matter where we are, each of us ought to be serving Jesus in that very same capacity. That's interesting. You said about Back to the Bible there because you actually were the director of Back to the Bible for a short while and other radio ministries as well. Could you tell us about that and also about your pastoral work you've done? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. My fiancée, which wasn't even my fiancée, my girlfriend back then, she and I went out to New Transmission Bible College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. The first time I'd ever been away from home. First time on a plane. Never mind anything else apart from BB Camps. And went out there and came back home, was married in June 71. And I was married as a teenager, I hasten to add. I can see your minds just talking up the years there. I was a teenager. She was 15 months older. That's the way it is. That's the way it was. And yeah, it was through, after we'd come home and I got married, went to Bible college for three years in Belfast, studied there, and then went into pastoral ministry. And spent a number of years pastoring in Northern Ireland, in Limavady and in Ballymena. I went across to Scotland and served there in a church in Ayrshire. And then God came ever so clear to me one more time to move out of the pastoral ministry, go into a radio ministry. I did a little bit with Back to the Bible as it was known as then, but then spent 11 or 12 years full-time with Transfer Radio. Some of you will be very familiar with that. I did a 30-minute Bible teaching program every day on the air. It was aired across the world where English was a first or a second language. And my friends thought it was a wonderful thing for me to be doing. I had a lovely face for radio. That's what my friends told me. But I absolutely loved that. That was a thrill. And then... After that we spent almost nine years as director for a mission among Jewish people, Messianic Testimony. And I can take you to the tree in the forest in Bangor, County Down, where first God gave me a burden to reach Jewish people and tell them about Jesus. I could take you to that very spot. It's marked in my Bible that I have in the back of the car. The date, the time, everything. But little did I realize again that God was taking me full circle, as it were, to do really ministry, to be involved in ministry among Jewish people. And in the last four or five years, doing the ministry of truth for today. So that's just a kind of a quickie. You travel a lot with your ministry. You're going to, where are you going next week? You told me you were going to Africa. Yeah, I'm going up to Scotland next weekend. I'm leaving England. And heading up to Scotland, foreign country, you know. You still need to get a passport to get across that border. I got an Irish passport, I'm okay, Jack. You guys have got the problem. But you're heading up to Scotland, preaching next Sunday morning in Glasgow, and then Sunday evening in Carrubber Centre in the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. And then on Tuesday, next Tuesday, not this one, but the following one, head across to Kenya for the nth time to serve the Lord over there for seven or eight reasons. But do keep on praying for us. We need your prayers and depend upon people like you just to uphold us before the throne of grace. It reminds me of the old hymn, we go in faith, our own great weakness failing and needing more each day by grace to know. Maybe this is a good point, Sam, for us to ask you where people can find out about your ministry because there may be people who want to learn more about the Bible from your teaching which is available online but may also be burdened after hearing you say about this to pray for you and to support you as you travel around. So where can they find this information? Yeah, I mean, one of the obvious places to go onto our website www.truthfortoday.co.uk, truthfortoday.co.uk, and you'll find that the schedule of meetings is up there, some ideas to who we are, what we're involved in, but also there are literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of free Downloadable resources on there, a lot of PowerPoints available, a lot of ministry, Bible commentaries, a lot, a lot of stuff on there and it's all free. And so yeah, log on truthfortoday.co.uk. Great, thank you. Just before we come to an end, Sam, one of the things you were sharing with us this morning about your books you've written, and this is another area of your ministry alongside preaching, What would you say to, could you just tell us a little bit, because you've written not a few books, have you? Is it 19, 20 books? 20, yeah. 20 books. Tell us about the array of books, and you don't have to tell us all of them individually. I can't remember them all. I can remember the last one or two and that's about it. Yeah, I mean, there are a couple down there, Available as Saving and Revelation, All Hail the Lamb, which has sold thousands literally around the world. Another one just came out the back end of last year, which Kwesi has featured on on page 245. Fame at last for my dear brother Kwesi. And talking about one Thessalonians, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, five marks of a gospel church. The one before that was on the little book of Jude, which in many ways is a curtain raiser to the book of the Revelation. And he called that something about cuckoos. Something with the cuckoo's nest? Yeah, yeah, something with the cuckoo's nest. I can't remember the exact title of it. I'd say something, I'm getting old in years. My memory's not as good. Something about the cuckoo's nest, whatever it is. And so yeah, over the years, that has been a blessing. Coming out this time next year will be one in Daniel. So we'll be looking at the book of Daniel, about this time next year it'll be launched. And just over the years, they've been mainly Bible commentaries, hopefully easy read Bible commentaries. They simply enrich us people to the word hopefully explain the word to them. A little book that we did bring out 30 years ago now with someone, a son, Timothy, that was killed. We'd like to come up with in a year or two after he was tragically killed. It's called It's Hurting Lord. Now, I don't have any of those, but they tell me, and I know Emma's got some actually, you can buy them for a few pennies on Amazon. That right? Still on Amazon? Yeah. Oh, they're going up in price now? All right, okay, okay, okay. You check with them afterwards. She's got the contact and she knows where you can get them, but that is a very true story. When her son Timothy was killed, he was almost 15, doing a paper round and tragically killed by what seemed to be a drunk driver. And within a matter of months of that, we were invited to share our story. We did it on the one condition that the publisher would not make a mint out of it, that was not gonna happen, but that it would be the truth that would be told. And another criteria we let down for him was that we would tell it to someone, and they would draw it out of us, and then I would rewrite it. And so we told the story, because I remember what happened shortly afterwards, reading many books, similar kind of books, and actually throwing them in the bin, because I read them and I thought, that's not true. That isn't real. Because people expect things to be hunky-dory even though you've lost your son. It ain't like that, dear friends. It's tough, it's hard, it's difficult. You're wrestling with all kinds of issues. And so in the little book, it's hurting Lord, we simply tell it like it is. And there's still days when we have questions we don't have answers to. But I can tell you, talk about the power of God's word. If we didn't have God's word as an anchor, we've got nothing to build our lives on. And it's the fact that we know that one day in Thessalonians that we shall meet again. That's a great hope that we have in our hearts that it will be worth it all one day when we see the Lord Jesus Christ. That little book is available on Amazon for whatever Emma pays for it now. She can maybe buy you a few of them, get them at a discounted price or something. But I don't have any. You might find one or two in some of the Christian second-hand bookshops. But that has sold literally tens of thousands, that little book. And so the wonderful thing about books and CDs and stuff like that, they get to parts that I will never get to. And when I'm in the glory, they will live on. and people will be listening, people will be reading. A friend just contacted me just a few weeks ago now, and he was preaching in a church in Florida, and he said to me, he says, this guy was preaching something on Revelation, and he actually was quoting from this guy called Sam Gordon. And I don't know who the guy is, but the friend went up to him, said to him, do you know Sam? No, no, never met him. He's a very dear friend of mine. And I told him how he got me to get a hold of the book and all the rest of it. So these things live on, and it's about you and I leaving a legacy for those who are following behind us. And we just leave the results with him. It's his work, and I'm just a... My favourite verse is 2 Corinthians 4 verse 7. We have this treasure in jars of clay. Cracked pots, jars of clay. That's all I am. But God has been pleased to use those one or two little things to grow his church and to extend His kingdom, and I think with Timothy and glory itself, you see life from a slightly different perspective, don't you? There's no point getting bogged down with things that are minor and significant. There's real issues out there, there's eternal issues out there. We've just got to be ready to meet the Lord Jesus, don't we? And I can give a personal testimony to Sam's books because I use his commentaries when I'm preparing. And I can tell you honestly, there's a few commentators who come to the top of the pile. And I'm not saying this just because Sam's here. I've said this to others, my friends, they are the good books and they really are me. They're helpful. but they're readable as well. We were talking in the vestry earlier on about one of our mutual favourite speakers and writers, Warren Wearsby, and Sam's very much in that same mould, and we thank God for those books, Sam. And I know others in the church, I won't look at any faces right now, but others in this congregation here today have told me they've read your books and said, that was a good book, that really helped me. So may you be encouraged.