fully seen of your righteousness. I'm going to ask Judy Lynn now if she will come and share with us. Thank you, Judy. Well, thank you very much for inviting me to stand here. It's an honor and a privilege. And my testimony would have to be about this wonderful book, God's Word, the Bible. Because without this book, I would have lost my sanity and I would have lost my soul. But through this book, God has found my soul and I have salvation. And sanity, as sane as those that you know me, I can be. And today, I can testify that when I read the scriptures and the Lord shows me the meaning, my heart burns within me, like the men on the road to Emmaus. Do you remember the lovely story when they'd lost Jesus? They thought they didn't understand, and he came beside them, walked beside them, and opened the scriptures to them, and their hearts burned within them. my heart still burns within me all these years since I first read these scriptures. And my confession is that my first Bible I obtained was by very cunning and calculated planning. It wasn't because I wanted a Bible. There was no Bible in our house. I didn't go to church and I was in my first year of O levels and part of my course was commerce. I disliked the teacher immensely, I have to say, and that's an awful thing to say. He was a known homosexual, and he spent most of his time cuddling the boys, which wouldn't be allowed today. I'm not judging homosexuals, but his behavior was totally unacceptable in a school. And I just could not cope with his attitude. I couldn't cope with commerce. I couldn't cope with shorthand or typing. And after almost a year, He lost his temper with me and he threw my books and me, literally, in a very dramatic way, out of the classroom. banned me from ever stepping through the door again to any of his lessons. And I thought, I'm in trouble. And I thought, oh dear, I'm going to get the cane again. Because in my day, you had the cane if you were naughty. And I was naughty quite a lot, I think. And I thought, oh no, I'm going to get the cane. I need to get to the headmaster and explain that I'm not coping with commerce. before the teacher got there. So I went to see the headmaster and I explained to him that I was not coping with the teacher because he was known. It wasn't just me. He was known throughout the school. He was banned from the boys' gym. So it wasn't just me. I said, I can't cope with him. I can't cope. And he said, well, you've got eight lessons to fill. You're not going to sit around doing nothing. You must find somewhere to go. You must find another O level to take. But I was a year wrong. I only had another year to do. So I thought very craftily that the RE teacher would probably be a Christian. And Christians were supposed to be nice people. And the RE teacher would probably take me in and let me do RE O level. So I went to her, and she was really sweet. And I said, you know, I need to be taking another O level. And she said, well, you've missed a whole year. I said, yes. And she said, well, that's four lessons. I said, well, maybe I could find another classroom I could sit in. And for those four lessons, I could catch up on last year's work. I thought this was a really good plan. And I found the music teacher. People that play music are lovely people, aren't they? Anybody that loves music. are lovely. And he was very nice. And I said, can I come and sit in your class? And I said, I would be really well behaved. And he said, well, I gather you haven't been very well behaved. I said, well, if I promise, I promise I will sit at the back and I will do the year RE. And then it was Bible. It wasn't faith. It was Bible. Stories in the Bible. So we agreed this was a really good plan. And so I started in the September. The only other activity I had out of school was going to a Methodist church youth club. We didn't have to go to church, but lots of my friends, we all went to this Methodist youth club. And you could actually take your Duke of Edinburgh medals there. I didn't, but my brother did, and lots of my friends did. And in the October, my brother achieved, plus my friends, they achieved their gold medal in their Duke of Edinburgh. So we all decided to hire a minibus and go to Gloucester to receive the medals. My dad was going, my brother and myself, not my mum. When I came home from school, my boyfriend came around and said, oh, will you come to the pictures with me instead? And I said, well, I promised to go to Gloucester with my brother and my friends. And he said, oh, please come to this film. It's about BAC where I work, and John Mills is in it. So he coaxed me. And as I was madly in love with him, it was quite simple to decide to go with him. And I asked my friend if she would like to go on the minibus. And she said, yes, she would love to go. When I came home, there had been a newsflash on the television to say there had been a crash. A minibus and a lorry had crashed on the A38 in the fog. And mum said to me, I think it's them. And I said, oh no, the police would have been here. She said, no. Nobody's been here, but I think it's them. And I said, no, don't be silly, and went to bed. At midnight, she got me up. And we walked to the police station. And from there, we traveled up to Gloucester. And when we reached Gloucester, I asked who was, you know, who was injured. And 11 friends and family and my dad had been killed. My brother was one of three survivors, but I was told he would probably die. But if he didn't die, then if he came to, he'd be a vegetable. Those were the terms they used in those days. So that was the situation. The minister from the Methodist Church was there, and so I sat with him and asked him numerous questions. He couldn't answer. He had no answers. He had nothing to say whatsoever, which is okay, I suppose. But he had nothing to say whatsoever. And in the following weeks, months, he had nothing to say. He wouldn't come to the house, although I begged. Nobody from the church would come to see us. It was my mum and I. And I'm just going to do a Mary here and say, can I be cheeky? and say that if we know our Lord, Jesus Christ, our Savior, if we know that God is sovereign, and if we know that all things work together for good for those that love the Lord, then we needn't be silent. There is no reason why we should have no answer to any questions. Sorry about this, there's a bit of preaching here, but I feel so strongly We should always have an answer, always, because we have the Lord within us. That's my bit of preaching done. And in 1 Peter 3, verse 15, it says, we should always have an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. And that's true. My daily routine then would be to go to school in the morning. In the afternoon, mum and I would go to Gloucester to see my brother and the other two survivors. And he was in a coma for quite a long time. But in the evening, I would open up my Bible and do my scripture O-level. And I found that as I was reading the scriptures, it came alive to me. And it was relevant. In the Old Testament, I was learning about the story of David, and in particular, the love between David and Jonathan. And I could relate to that, and the sadness that David had when Jonathan died. And I felt myself thinking, I know just how you feel, David. I've loved and lost my friends. And I could relate to that love and that loss. And all the time I was thinking, I'd seen on a wayside pulpit somewhere that God is love. And although the lady here spoke about your dad, although we lose people, love never dies. I kept thinking love never dies. I've lost my friends and my dad, but the love It's there, it's always there, it's eternal. And it made me think that God must be, God is love, so he must be eternal. And it was there all the time. Where was the answer? I couldn't grasp the scriptures. Then in the New Testament, I was reading Matthew, and it came to the seven woes. And it was Jesus, this meek and mild man that I assumed was this meek, gentle man, suddenly, He was calling the religious leaders, hypocrites, vipers, snakes. He was really quite nasty about them. And I thought, I know, I know how you feel. I feel like that. I feel that the church has completely deserted us. They're all hypocrites. I know. And I could relate to what Jesus was saying about these religious leaders. And, um, I thought, gosh, you know, this Jesus, you know, knows how I feel. Plus all this, we were poor. We were, we were poor and we had no money coming in because there had to be an inquest. So we were, mum was, you know, we had no money coming in. It was really hard. Um, and because my dad worked at BAC, the welfare officer came regularly. He was lovely. He came every week for months. And he would bring a little brown envelope and give to my mom's up soon. This was some money from the men that my dad worked with. And so he would give us some money, but we were, I knew we were struggling. I knew my mom was struggling. It was hard. And at the same time there was set up, um, a disaster fund and it was called the eight 38 disaster fund and thousands and thousands of pounds were given. And all this money was given to the church. And I thought, well, there you go. So much for the church, so much for Christians. My brother recovered. They said as soon as he, if he woke up, they would knew if he was okay, if he had brain damage because of what he said. And when he woke up, he said, who's dead, which sounds terrible, but was good news because he knew what happened. And eventually he came home to recover. I carried on studying. I gave up all my other subjects. I didn't do any other studying. I thought it was totally irrelevant. And I just kept reading and reading my Bible notes. And I took my O-level and I got something like 92%. I didn't get anything else. I didn't pass. I didn't do anything else. I just ignored my exam papers. I just pushed them aside. And I passed 1.0 level, my RE, and my mum was devastated. She said, you know, we need money. You need to get a job. Who's going to give you a job? Well, of course, the welfare officer gave me a job at BAC, gave me a good job, and I really loved it. But then I found I had no Bible notes. I had my Bible, and I was reading my Bible, and I thought, well, I don't understand this. Didn't have John Eykin on the end of the line. And I had no intention of going to church. I thought, I'm not having nothing to do with church. There are a load of hypocrites. They've got all that money. We've been struggling. And then two nice ladies knocked on the door, very nice ladies, and said, would I like to understand what everything was? I said, oh, yes, I would, really. Yeah, so they started to give me the Watchtower magazine, and can we come and study with you? And I was visiting the old lady that I live next door to, elderly lady, and I suddenly said to her, oh, I've got to go, because the Jehovah Witnesses are coming around to study with me. And she said to me, she was so shocked and so upset. She said to me, you're not having anything to do. And I said, well, yeah, they're really nice. They're really friendly and I'm not going to church. So that's really nice that they're coming. And she said to me, she just said to me, Julie, do you love me? And I said, well, you know, I love you. She said, if you love me, if you really love me, You will have nothing to do with the Jehovah Witnesses. You must promise me, promise me now, promise me you will have nothing to do with them. You will turn them away from your door." And she was so distressed, I said, of course I will, of course I will. And I did. When they came again, I said, I'm sorry, you must go. Then these two good-looking men knocked on the door, and I thought, there is a God in heaven after all. Come on in. Come on in. These were the Mormons. Of course, you guessed that. These were the Mormons. So I started studying with the Mormons. This time goes on. And I thought, I'm not happy with this, because they would give me this other book. And I thought, why do I need another book? I've got a book here. I've got a really good book here. This Bible is really good. And this was on my mind the whole time. And then after about six months, it was really, you know, this is obviously the spirit. I didn't know it was God's spirit in me. And then I flicked my Bible to close my Bible. And here it is. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share of the tree of life. and in the holy city, which are described in this book. And when the two men came the next time, I opened up the scripture and I said, have you read this? I said, I'm sorry, you know, don't come back. And they didn't come back. But of course then I had a problem then because I still needed answers. And so I thought, Oh, blue, I'm going to have to go to one of those churches somewhere. So, So I went to an Anglican church, and it was all responsive readings, and I didn't know where I was. I was totally confused. Everybody was chanting, and I felt very uncomfortable, and I thought, well, I don't feel happy with this. Not that I was going to speak to anybody anyway. So the next one I went to was a Roman Catholic church, and that was in Latin, so that was me out the door. I didn't understand that either. The next one was a Pentecostal church. I love the Pentecostals. But this particular church, when I walked in and had no idea about the gift of tongues, they were all talking in this foreign, I thought, gibberish. And they were all, you know, really happy and lovely. And the noise was amazing. And I just thought they were all mad because nobody was speaking English. And so I couldn't hack that. So I thought, well, I can't go there. And then I went to a spiritualist church. And within 20 minutes, I didn't know what evil was, but I sensed this real evil around me. And I thought, I must get out of here. And it was just so powerful. I was really frightened. And so I got up and I left. because I sensed evil, and even now, I can sense that presence, and oh, if you sense it, run. So I came out of there, so that was absolutely frightening, so Jehovah, so that was spiritualist church. And then I ended up at Horfield Baptist Church, which was good. I got there late. so I wouldn't have to speak to anybody. And I left during the last hymn, because I really didn't want to speak to anybody, because they were all a bunch of hypocrites. And I did that for a long time, went to Horfield Baptist Church. By this time, I'm married. So the time has gone on. I got married when I was 22. So this was from the age of 16 to 22, and I'm still wandering around. But I'm still reading my Bible. I just love my Bible. But I just want somebody to explain certain things. And then we moved to Bristol, and I went to a chapel, a church, another Baptist church. And I wanted the children to go to Sunday school. And I thought, well, I'm going to have to speak to somebody, really, if I'm going to take the children to Sunday school. So I went to this church. And the minister, there was a new minister, a young man, had been converted, wonderfully converted. And he came to see me. And he said to me, Judy, I think you need fellowship. And I didn't know what he was talking about. I thought it was some kind of breakfast cereal. I thought, what the heck is fellowship? And I didn't like to say what is fellowship because I thought I might sound a bit ignorant. But anyway, he gradually showed me that I needed to repent, that actually it was me that was all wrong. Not all you lot. It was me. God revealed to me that I was a sinner. I needed to repent. And I did need to have fellowship, definitely. So I understood that and I felt very bad. I said, I realized then I was so bad a sinner. It really troubled me. I just cried. And he explained to, and I said, how am I going to deal with all this sin? And he explained to me that sin was, he said, I was thinking of sin like chicken pox and that I was trying to deal with each spot. But actually, Jesus Christ deals with the whole. He takes all the sin away. And you're clean. Anyway, and he baptized me. So, here I am. If there's anybody here that doesn't have a Bible, I have brought one with me. Because please, don't leave here without a Bible. You need a Bible. You need Bible notes. If you need to ask any questions, he's really good. Sat there, he's really good. Hard questions, he's really good at. Ask John. So, and if there's more than one of you here that doesn't have a Bible, Union Chapel will supply you with one. I know that. So, um, that's my testimony. Thank you for listening. And God is love. Amen.