Gospel Hall Audio

Sam Patterson has served the Lord in the gospel in Ireland for nearly 60 years, labouring with the late Gilbert Stewart for much of that time. At the Easter Conference in Belfast this year, having come through major cancer surgery, he gave a moving and challenging message on Psalm 50:15 “Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.” No one who was present will easily forget the occasion. (Recorded on 7th April 2026, and used with Mr Patterson’s kind permission)

The post Call Upon Me In The Day of Trouble | Sam Patterson first appeared on Gospel Hall Audio.

Phil Coulson preaches on the call to holiness in 1 Peter 1:13-16. God has severed believers from the world and given them new appetites, new affections and new activities. (Recorded at the Vancouver Thanksgiving Conference, 2014)

The post The Challenge of Holiness | Phil Coulson first appeared on Gospel Hall Audio.

Sandy Higgins expounds the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, and how His participation by conception in our humanity was necessary for Him to be our Redeemer, our representative High Priest, and the King who will reign over a restored creation in the Millennium. Readings from Luke 2 and Hebrews 2. (Recorded in Barrington Gospel Hall, NJ, USA, on 21st Dec 2025)

Available in 20 languages on YouTube

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A.M.S. Gooding (1915-1999 ) preaches on the 2nd Church on the book of Revelation, the Church at Smyrna. He draws lessons from their severe suffering for Christ. (Recorded in England) (Photo: Izmir, Turkey, once known as Smyrna)

The post The Suffering Church of Smyrna | A.M.S. Gooding first appeared on Gospel Hall Audio.

Michael Penfold preaches on 4 things the Lord shares with us: His life, His love, His position and His possessions, making an application of the words of the Father to the older son in Luke 15, “All that I have is thine”. (Recorded at the Roseisle Conference, 4th Oct 2025)

The post All That I Have Is Thine | Michael Penfold first appeared on Gospel Hall Audio.

Robert McPheat (1933-1996) preaches on some of the remarkable burials of Scripture, from the burial of Sarah in Genesis to some of the burials of the Kings of Israel and Judah. (Recorded in England in the 1980’s)

The post Remarkable Burials in the Bible | Robert McPheat first appeared on Gospel Hall Audio.

Tom Bentley (1924-2011) relates his call to missionary service. After receiving the call, the Lord kept him waiting for 11 years before he finally travelled to Malaysia, but he ended up looking back and being glad. Reading: Isa 44:8. (Recorded in Ballymena on 21st Dec 1996) (Photo: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

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David Gilliland teaches what the Bible says about the future antichrist who will be Satan’s man in the tribulation. His number is 666 and his short rule will end with him being cast alive into the lake of fire. Readings: 2 Thess 2:1-12, 1 John 2:18-22, Rev 13:1-9, 16.18. (Recorded in Northern Ireland)

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Hendrik, Kelsey, Hendrik and Leanne grew up in Canada in churches that are Calvinist and Reformed. In this very moving interview, they discuss with Michael Penfold how they struggled to believe that God really loved them. Watch their fascinating stories and learn where the assurance of salvation comes from.

Recorded in Manitoba, Canada, 24th Feb 2026

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Further resources:

Eternal security | Mervyn Hall

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Full video transcript:

So it’s almost too dangerous to preach John 3.16. Absolutely, in their viewpoint. And just like that, assurance. Absolutely. There was a cry, and he was not answering, and then I thought, I was not elect. And oh boy, did my heart sink. Like, I would never dream again and say through that verse, And I remember thinking, if it took this to feel God, it was worth it.

To the Fiensters and the Barons, welcome to Gospel Hall Audio Podcast. This is the fourth episode today, so we’re doing a marathon. And we’ve been doing different backgrounds of religious groups in the Manitoba area, so we’ve had some Mennonites on, we’ve had a couple of groups of Hutterites, and we wanted to finish the day looking at some folks that come from a Reform background. So I know you’ve both come from very different Reform churches, which we’ll get into in a minute, but maybe you could just introduce yourself. This is Hendrik and Kelsey. My name is Hendrik Feenstra. My wife and I are from down south of Sleinbach, Manitoba. We have a little acreage and four children.

And I have one on the way. I have my Class 1 heavy driver’s commercial vehicle driver’s license and drive a concrete mixing truck, the big turning drum for those of you that don’t know of them and we’re happy to be here. We were discussing earlier on how they do concrete mixing in minus 20 or minus 30, so apparently it’s doable. It is definitely doable.

And where are you guys from? We come from Haywood, Manitoba, but I was born in Netherlands and I came here when I was 11 years old. Oh right, okay, born in Netherlands, wow. Yeah, and I dairy farm here, and I married this beautiful woman here, and we have four kids. We’ve been married for 15 years. And you’re from here, Leanne? Yeah, I grew up in Carmen. Oh, very close. Just around here, yeah. Wonderful. Excellent. Well, now we’ve got the intros over.

Let’s get into this whole topic of the Reformed churches in this area. From what I understand, you come from, Hendrik and Kelsey, come from, I don’t know what you’d call it, maybe a strict Reformed or hyper-Calvinist Reformed background, whereas you’re more mainline Canadian Reformed, is that right? Yeah, also Calvinist, but it’s a lot different than where he came from. Okay. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the whole concept. What does Dutch Reformed mean? Is that simply because it came originally from Holland? The Dutch Reformed is originally from the Netherlands. That’s where the name comes from.

Much of it is, for us, is the Thai to the ministers, et cetera, where there is, it’s an entire denomination. There’s sister denominations, if you would call it that, and the, there is a lot of traveling minister relations, since there is so few ministers in my particular Dutch Reformed church.

And I believe it is in the neighborhood of 35 some odd churches. In the whole of Canada or in Manitoba? No, this is globally. Oh, right. So it’s 35, only 35 Dutch Reformed churches in the whole world. 35 or 40 of this particular branch, group. And in Canada, they are known as Reformed Congregation in North America. They have R-C-N-A, is it? Yes. Okay.

They have a exact carbon copy in the Netherlands, which has a higher number of churches. I believe there’s only four or five in Canada, North America, that bear the R-C-N-A label. But then in the Netherlands, and that’s where the roots are, there’s. in the neighborhood of 30, maybe a few more. I don’t know the exact number.

I have never bothered to count up the exact churches, but over- See, in the country where I come from, which is Northern Ireland, the big thing is Presbyterian churches. And in the town where I live, we have a Presbyterian church, but then we have a covenant Presbyterian church. And then down the road, there’s a free Presbyterian church.

So I guess it’s the same. They’re also all Calvinist. which is a kind of theology that could be taken on by any church, right? Absolutely. Calvinism is a certain belief system, but you could be a Methodist and a Calvinist. So, I mean, the Reformed churches that I’m aware of would include thousands and thousands and thousands of churches all the way from Presbyterians to Reformed Baptists, so I’m presuming that because you’ve got only this handful of churches, you take a very, very extreme, strict view and there’s not many people who agree with it, is that why it’s a small group? Yes, it very much is because of that. There is, like I said, a very limited number of ministers. I’m not sure of the exact number now. It was only like eight or nine a few years ago. Wow.

And the load then is on these eight or nine ministers and they travel from church to church to church. They have their main congregation, however they travel, they will spend a week at this church and then spend a week at that church. It’s gonna spread thin basically. It spreads so incredibly thin and the ministers are the only ones that are allowed to preach. It’s very very limited. So then sometimes on a Sunday a church will have no minister. Very often. Many of them don’t have a minister come more than once or twice a year. So what do they do? The lay people have to run it?

Then the consistory, the elders and the deacons, will read a sermon from a minister that has long since passed away. And what tends to happen because of that is that the elders and the deacons will select a sermon based on their mood or based on whatever format that they’re following, let’s say for the Advent or for Easter, they follow a pre-arranged gathering of sermons that are from their selection, but this selection is not just all the ministers that they could grab from, it’s a selection of ministers that align with the elder in question, his viewpoint. And this does tend to very much turn the viewpoint over a period of years that if hell and damnation is not preached enough or If free will is even hinted at, they will leave those sermons to the side. And now out of an entire bookshelf, you might get only a small number of sermons.

And then these sermons shape the next possible minister. So are these sermons from years ago by people like Augustus Toplady and John Gill and whoever? Yes. Okay. But they’re even within those, they’re making sure that’s filtered. It’s very filtered. And it is so sad because, for example, Augustus Toplady or Philpott, they have such beautiful sermons where the gospel is clearly presented. Yeah. And yet, The sermons can, those sermons are very often left to the wayside.

I’ve never heard a sermon on John 3.16 or John 3.36. In your church growing up. In my church growing up. Verses like that were never spoken of. They were acknowledged as being part of the Bible, but verses like that where there’s a chance of human free will to be involved in it, where…

So it’s almost too dangerous to preach John 3.16.

Absolutely, in their viewpoint. So it would probably depend on your congregation, how the elders want to control the theology. Yes. Because they do have selection. So in our congregation, in our churches, the elders are more free. Okay. And we have heard a gospel, like a clear gospel. Yeah. And then, Kelsey, you grew up for the first few years of your life in this same small group? The sister denomination to Hendricks, so slightly less strict, maybe, they would be the opinion. I still don’t know the difference, but there apparently is a difference.

And would you have heard John 3.16 in that?

I know you were young when you left that church, but… I don’t think so. Wow, see this is like totally new to me, the thought, I mean, I know a lot of lovely reformed Christians, and I live in Northern Ireland, which is full of Presbyterians who are reformed, and the free Presbyterians and so on, and the thought of deliberately not even preaching on John 3, 16, I mean, I can understand, that churches that don’t want to preach easy believism, you know, we would all subscribe to that without repentance and without all of that stuff. But to actually not preach the gospel in case, you know, it just seems very extreme. But then you went to a different church. You moved to a Reformed Baptist, did you say? Yes, particularly called the strict and particular Baptist. Oh wow, we have them in the UK too. Okay, so you’re familiar with that.

Okay. So I grew up thinking strict meant strict as in like a strict dad or a strict mom, you know, but strict in particular is all to do with election, is it? So the strict part is restricted communion. Right, okay. And the particular part is particular redemption. That is, Jesus only died for the elect. Right. So a strict and particular Baptist, no one can just walk in and take communion because that’s, they have a… You have to be baptized and a member of that. Okay. So that’s a closed table fellowship. Yes. And then the particular is they’re going to be preaching Christ died for the elect. Yes.

So then would you have Even in that church, would you never have heard John 3.16 kind of thing? I can’t remember exactly, but they did preach the gospel. Okay. But again, free will is not an option. Okay. However, they did expect God to be working within the congregation. I guess salvation was not like prohibited, I guess.

See, I remember one of the famous reformed theologians of recent years was R.C. Sproul, or R.C. Sproul, I’m not sure how to pronounce it over here. And I remember him saying once, the doctrine that sets the reformed people apart from everybody is their belief that you need to be born again before you can believe. And I thought that was interesting because I thought I’d never realized, I knew that was a Calvinist belief, but I’d never realized it was the one thing that nobody else believes except reformed Christians. It’s all a work of God, even believing.

Yeah, so moving away from this particular strict group, coming to the more general, so the Canadian formed church is presumably huge, is it? It’s much bigger than that. I did not look up numbers before we came here, but there’s numerous community reform groups. So it’s like a major reform denomination within Canada? I don’t even know if you’d call it major. It’s pretty big. There’s enough choice in Canada. So they would preach the gospel? We’ve heard it once. I’ve heard it once clearly. Before we moved out. But yeah, the same idea in election, right?

So in the Reformed Church, there’s not a clear call to salvation. There’s not a clear call to conversion for those who are born in the covenant. So you’re born to believing parents. And then when you’re baptized as an infant, then that’s the sign and seal of God’s promises to you. That the Father will be your God, and Jesus will wash you in His blood, and then the Holy Spirit will regenerate you. Those are the promises given. So they’re not saying it happens when you’re baptized, but they’re saying it will happen because you’re now…

Baptism is not salvation, but it’s, yeah, like salvation is kind of what we would call sanctification. Okay. It’s more of like a growing into it in a process, right? Yeah, yeah. And the form, when I look at, when I study the form later on, It reads like it happens at baptism, but it’s kind of depending on who’s preaching from that, and it’s not really talking about it.

So I’ve heard that they more or less kind of take like an Old Testament, so in the Old Testament, the Jewish nation, they had circumcision when the baby is eight days old, and then there’s a verse in Colossians. Yeah, chapter two. Chapter two, which took, yeah. About 11, yeah. depending on how you read that of course, but they take it to mean that baptism has replaced circumcision in some sort of a way, and this might not be technically reformed language, but so therefore the sign of the covenant with Abraham was circumcision.

So you get circumcised, now you’re in this covenant nation. So now as a baby you get baptised because that’s the equivalent. So therefore when it’s eight days old when you’re getting circumcised, it’s as a baby when you’re getting baptised. And that brings you into this covenant family.

And that’s a general reform view, right? It would be accurate, yeah. And that’s not guaranteeing your salvation, is it? But it puts you in the fold. It puts you in the covenant community, and now you tend to just stay in that covenant as long as you obey. So there’s a teaching that if you fall away or if you stop going to church, that you become a covenant breaker. So now it’s up to you if you want to leave.

But if you stay in the church, do the right things, you are in the covenant. So I would have always imagined a Calvinist believing that you can never be lost, right? One of the T-U-L-I-P, the P is the perseverance of the saints. If you’re truly saved, you will persevere.

But you’re saying you can fall out of that? Yes, if you stop going to church or you stop believing, you are a coven breaker. So that proves you were never really in the covenant or whatever. Yeah, then you can tell that they weren’t elect. Okay, right.

And that is where there’s a marked difference between us because our church, our denomination, baptism was the signed that you were now part of the group, and you were part of the covenant, but being saved, salvation, is entirely separate to that. It was very, very highly on the doctrine of election, and very much taught that election was an unsure thing. You didn’t know whether you were elect or not. You had no clue whether you were elect.

Okay. And there was no way of knowing unless you had, for example, a Damascus Road experience or from the tavern to the church pew with obvious follow-up that your life had actually changed. And we would, I got baptized as a child. And then when I was 18, I did a confession of faith, not confession of saving faith, but a confession of faith or trust in the ordinances of the church that I believed, and I truly did believe at that time, that what was being taught What I heard from the pulpit, what I learned in catechetical instruction was true, was biblically accurate. However, this did not mean that I believed myself to be saved.

I knew very much the damnation of sin and the judgment to come, but election was taught to only be that you only know for sure when you open your eyes in heaven that you’re in heaven, you’re saved or you open your eyes in hell and you missed a boat and unless you had a very definite personal relationship with God, it was… So that must be very heavy. Terribly, terribly. Where you’re brought up and the sermons are quite heavy on hell, damnation, sinners in the hands of an angry God and all that, which is all, you know, the Bible teaches all that. Absolutely.

But if that’s all you hear and your only way out is to sort of have a miraculous discovery that you’re one of the elect, You end up dying not knowing… So salvation depends on whether you are… In your mind, it depends on something that you can’t determine in any way. You can’t seek salvation and find it. You sort of sit there helplessly, wondering if you’ve got a leg stamped on your back. Very much. And we were told to read your Bible. however many texts there are that point to, out of this you can find… Believe and be saved. The truth.

However, don’t go and intensely study it because you might delude yourself. That’s something that I get accused of, is that… You’ve deluded yourself. You’ve deluded yourself. You have just… taken something and you can’t. That’s not something you can take.

So before we get on to just how each of you got saved, I was talking to you a few weeks ago, I think, certainly a few days ago, and you were saying that you held communion once a year, and even if you had a congregation of 200 people, only half a dozen would take the bread and the cup because they were the only six out of 200 that felt they were elect. I mean, that seems just so bizarre to me. Often less. And that’s because of the fear of possibly deluding yourself. That’s because of not being taught the gospel, that it is a free gift.

If we turn to Romans 5. Sure, help yourself. If we turn to Romans 5, very, very clear and very, very, very crisp in verse 16. And not as it was by one that sinned, that was Adam, so is the gift. For the judgment was by one to condemnation, Adam, but the free gift is of many offenses unto justification. It’s a free gift. The gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, that is, Jesus Christ. And verse 18, the righteousness of one, the free gift, came upon all men unto justification of life. Over and over. Over and over.

It’s a free gift. And if I come to you and I say, I have a gift for you, a gift of the Bible, and you say, oh no, I can’t accept that, I get offended because You don’t accept my gift. And you can’t pay me for a gift, because… So we’re stuck. It’s a gift.

It’s free. And that’s the miracle of how the Bible was translated, that they could clearly see it is a free gift. So which one of you got saved first? I did. Okay. By a week. Okay, well, let’s move over this side. So, Henrik, you were saved before Leanne. Right. Yeah. So you’d been baptized as a baby? Yes. And do you have like confirmation or catechism later on? Yeah.

So I’ll just start the story from the beginning. So at a young age, I got enslaved to sin. I was eight or nine. I was addicted to being attracted to girls. And it happened on a single day. I can know exactly the moment. And from then on, my brain started thinking only about that, like literally. All through my waking day, I would think while I’m talking, while I’m… It would never leave. I went to my mother and my father once, because I tried to sleep. My thoughts would not stop. And I told them this problem. I was shy and very scared. And they said, oh, that’s OK. It’s normal. Go back to sleep. So that went on. And then they moved to Canada.

And then at age 14 or 15, we started taking Catechism classes. And that’s when I heard the words of Jesus through this elder explaining the Seventh Commandment. saying that, quoting Jesus, if you look on a woman with lust in your heart, you’ve committed adultery. And that’s when I realized I’m a sinner. Before that, I was like, something’s not right, but it’s the way it is. And it developed, of course, into, as I learned more about images and what sex is, that started to become all I was thinking about, and I could not stop it. But when I heard those words, I tried to stop. So I believe the Bible. I believe that God existed. That’s what we got taught, that it’s the Word of God. And I took that at its face value. So that became my struggle, and then for 10 years, as I was trying to figure out, trying to stop.

While you’re being taught that you’re part of the covenant, that you got baptized, just don’t worry about it. And yet, I read in the scriptures that those who are of faith walk by faith, and you choose to walk by the Spirit, not by the flesh. And if you walk by the flesh, the end result is death. And I’m not seeing any fruit in my life.

And that became a burden. So I would come and pray to God very often to try and get rid of this sin, help me out, or whatever. And my early 20s, yeah, so I did go to university. I started thinking about evolution and… So this is in Manitoba? This is all in Manitoba, yeah. Were you convinced of evolution? It became a struggle more.

It seems to contradict the Word of God. So is the Bible real? If evolution is true, then this Bible is not real. And yet, at the same time, believe in God. But it became a test of faith, and I had to go through that. He was answering my prayer, right? I wanted to be delivered. Romans 7 and 8 is probably my main passage I would describe as my process. I identify with chapter 7, where Paul was saying he’s under the law, he’s condemned, he’s a slave, he tries to do good, but he couldn’t.

It’s sin in you, it’s not you who sin, okay, I can go with that. But then he goes to chapter 8 just before that, but thanks be to Christ. For those who are in Christ are under no condemnation. And then those who are, those who have, Those who have His Spirit will walk by the Spirit and not according to the flesh. And I couldn’t. How am I walking in the Spirit? I’m walking, I can’t, I’m a slave. I could not identify with chapter eight. So I knew something was wrong. And I knew I wasn’t saved.

So the question is, is God real? Jesus says, if you ask a father for a fish, what kind of father would give you a snake? And those verses came to my mind, I’m like, God. I’m asking for something and you’re giving me this. I’m enslaved. So I questioned his existence. I thought Satan was maybe God. He wrote the Bible to torture people on earth. All those things. And eventually, even not believing in God at all. Evolution is true.

Random accident. You were very confused and your life was in your early 20s? It was my early 20s. And you were still going to church? Yes, yes. I was also joining the reserves military, so I wouldn’t go to church as often because training and so on. But the sermons were not answering any of these questions you had? Really? Well, I went to Catholicism class. I did not do confession of faith at the normal time. So I did a post-confession class where I went to the minister’s house. And he actually introduced me to Creation magazine.

Oh yes, uh-huh. And I devoured those. Sure. So that sort of allowed me to, okay, there are answers. Yeah. But it did not prove anything, right? No, sure. But I knew that God was real because the chance actually just didn’t make sense. Yeah. It was obvious through just looking around. Yeah. So you’re sort of starting to come back now actually there are answers, creation is true, there really is a God, but I still have this besetting sin, besides all the other sins. I was not aware of any other sins. I was a pretty good person. It was only later, afterwards, that I started realizing that there was worse than that. This was my identity, I was enslaved. I was enslaved.

So then you came across Romans 7 and 8? No, I would not say that that was my defining moment. It was just that I came across passages such as that. And same with those who believe in Jesus have crossed from death to life. That kind of idea that I kept seeing, I could not identify with that. It didn’t fit in my experience, even though I was taught that I was fine because I was baptized, I was in the covenant, just stay faithful, even though, yeah. So I struggled a lot with that, and I started to be angry with God, like many times, crying out to God. It was a cry, and He was not answering, and then I thought, I was not elect. And oh boy, did my heart sink. Oh boy. God’s not answering, He doesn’t care. That’s a danger, isn’t it? That’s terrible. Yeah, it was terrible. But you know what?

So there are people who think that and then say, well, then I’m going to live my life the way I want to live. Sure. If I’m elected, I’m elected. If I’m not elected, I’m not elected. I can do nothing about it. Yeah. But that obviously didn’t plague you forever because you then eventually got saved, right? So my thought was, well, If I’m going to hell and God doesn’t reward or punish according to what you do, I better do as good as I can. At least my time in hell won’t be as bad as some other people. That was my thought process. But yeah, there were times where I just wanted to end my life. Yeah, I didn’t want to live, because life sucked. I had no hope. I was a slave.

So you could see no way out of your sin, and the church wasn’t offering you any hope because you’re not elect. I did not look at that as the church was failing me. I kept going because I believed the Word of God. It’s just that what they were preaching was not always consistent with what I was seeing.

But that didn’t matter. That wasn’t a click in my mind. It was, okay, the Word of God is saying this. I’m trying to apply it to my life. Because I took it as real. So then what was the kind of aha moment that moved you from this place of condemnation to seeing Christ as the answer? So there was other things going on in my life that play a role, but basically one night I made a I deal with God, kind of.

I was at the end, I was like, Lord, if I sin for the next three months, I was already seeing her, not seeing her, but thinking about asking her to go out with me. But I had this problem, I’m like, this is going to affect my marriage. Marriage is not going to solve this problem. So I said, Lord, if I sin one more time in the next three months, I want you to kill me. And I won’t ask her until three months are over.

And I think I fasted for a day, maybe that day or before. But I was in tears. I was crying. That was probably my last cry. I don’t know. I don’t know what would happen if he didn’t respond. But anyways, I went to sleep sad and defeated. But I woke up the next morning and…

You just knew, eh? Yeah, I don’t know how to describe it, but God, he was there. He basically put his head, it’s not physical, it was no voice, but I knew that he said, you’re done. And I knew it was Jesus. And I knew that I was not gonna struggle with this anymore. I knew. Amen. Yeah. Ever since then, I have peace with God. Amen.

So, that’s when you asked Leanne out. Three months after that. Three months. I made a covenant, or a promise to God. Sure. And he sent me the first day, and I had to wait three months. And I thought she was going to leave the BC and be gone forever. It was threatening him. Now, so were you saved at that stage? No. Oh, okay. But I didn’t know it. Oh, wow.

Yeah, so I grew up in the church, and I believed the Bible. I believed that Jesus died for sinners, and I was a sinner, so Jesus died for me. Sure. Right? I didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it, though, growing up. So you kind of gave mental assent to all the… Yeah, yeah. I believed what I was taught. So you were theologically orthodox and everything. I was sound. Yeah. Soundly lost. That’s right. And had no idea. And I wasn’t really convicted about sin or anything. I knew I was a sinner, but Jesus covered that, right? So it’s stupid. Yeah. Yeah. So you were like fully involved in the youth and the church or whatever. Yeah.

And would most of your friends have been in the same position as you, do you think? So hard to say. It’s so hard to say, like even talking to my family members after I’ve been saved. You know, I think that maybe I was the only one that didn’t get it. So what does that say? I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not comfortable making that assessment. But I mean, we went to the private Christian school and judging by the fruit of what was going on during high school, these were not saved kids. So you were both at the same private Christian school? Yes. And this is run by your church? Yes.

Yeah, well that can be the thing sometimes, you just put all the Christians together and it’s a Christian environment and everybody’s a Christian, but put them out into the real world and you suddenly find out whether or not they really are Christian. Right, yeah. You can shelter people and it sort of can hide the truth sometimes. But it doesn’t change the heart. Exactly.

So I’m really thankful for the home that I grew up in. The word of God was taken seriously. We read the Bible together at least twice a day, my entire growing up years, and took it seriously. A holy life was important, and honoring the Lord, and all that, right? That’s great. In today’s world, that’s precious. Very thankful for my upbringing.

Yeah, so then we got married, and It wasn’t until after we started having kids that I actually had a conviction of sin. Wow. Because I was tired and I had little kids, and I was not being a very nice mom. I mean, I wasn’t even living up to my own standard of what a mom should be, never mind God’s. And what convicted me was that It’s a little bit embarrassing. For the first time in my life, I actually tried to be good. Okay. Because I always kind of had it in my head that if I try, I will be able to. Sure. But I wasn’t too worried about, you know, selfishness or critical thoughts or like that kind of thing, right? So I never actually tried to quit. Yeah.

So then I tried really hard to do what was right, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it, and I was so convicted, and I really felt like God didn’t like me. God still loved the world, so I mean, obviously He loved me because I’m part of the world, but He did not like me, and He was certainly not pleased with me. because you were losing your temper with your kids or whatever? That’s right, because I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough, and I definitely couldn’t feel that. So you felt condemned? Yeah. And were you angry at God for that? No, I felt like it was right, but also I was really hurting. Yeah, because what can I do?

I actually often thought of John, right? John was the special friend of Jesus. I just felt like I was the opposite. I was probably the last person he wanted to hang out with. And so were you sharing this with Hendrick, or this was all inside? I was aware she was struggling. It was coming out, yeah. And I was concerned that she might leave the faith. I remember, I didn’t know she was unsaved. We didn’t talk in those terms. We don’t talk like that. In our church, we never talked about being born again, or salvation, or getting saved. But you assumed she was a Christian, right? Right, yeah.

So she was doubting, and I would hear that, and we’d talk a lot of things. Oh yeah, and Hendrik had this complete assurance that he belonged to God, and I was very jealous of that, because I didn’t think that was fair. If that’s possible to have, then why couldn’t I have that? So those were the first stirrings of actual thought. So did you ask him, how could I have the same peace that you have? Um, I kind of asked like, how come, you know, for sure, or how can you be so sure? Right.

But again, like we, even you weren’t thinking of terms of being born again. Like you didn’t even think at that time of your experience of deliverance as being born again, as being saved. You didn’t know that. No. Until I started looking into baptism.

That’s when those terms starts clicking together and you’re like, that’s what happened. Yeah. Yeah. See, and that’s what started going on is that you started, I mean, we started researching so many biblical things and you started seeing a lot of things, but eventually it brought us to baptism. What is baptism? Is infant baptism right? What does the covenant mean and all that stuff? So we’re talking about theology all the time at the same time that I’m feeling this stuff. Yeah, good.

And there’s also a time when you had miscarriage and that helped Yeah, I also had quite a number of miscarriages and, um, on our first, on our first miscarriage, then I ended up going into the hospital and I was there alone because it wasn’t what I expected to happen.

And then, um, yeah, I, I phoned you kind of in a, in a panic. And so after like everything had been confirmed, I was in my room by myself and I phoned you, I was like, I need you to come now. Like, this is, yeah, kind of panicky. And then, uh. And then I prayed, I hung up, sorry, because I got the voice message, so I left him a voice message. And then I prayed and I said, God, I just need you to hold me.

And he did. He did. It was physical. It was the most amazing experience of my life. And I remember thinking, if it took this to feel God, it was worth it. So, then I knew He was real and that He loved me. Like, His love for me was so overwhelming. And I think that’s the first glimpse that God of His reality and His care.

But that was not salvation. No, no. So, yeah, that definitely gave me the desire. But that was a powerful experience. Yeah. in such sadness and despair and loneliness, to know that God is there. He was there, and He wasn’t enjoying it either. You know, when it says that He has our tears in a bottle? Believe that. He weeps with us. He doesn’t enjoy the brokenness of the world either.

Anyway, then I phoned you back and I said, I’m OK. Come when you can. Just that peace. I was like, it’s OK. Yeah, but then we kept talking about baptism and all these things, and then we became quite convinced that believers’ baptism was biblical baptism. So then COVID hit. Oh, right, so this is quite recent. Yes, it is, yeah.

And then we were sort of looking around-ish, starting to think, okay, well, if we’re not Canadian Reformed, then what are we gonna do? And starting to think about being baptized, which is funny, because I’m not saved yet. Oh, because, because, yeah, okay, so because you are now convinced that believers’ baptism is the way the Canadian Reformed Church was like, maybe not the place we should be going. Well, I first thought I was just gonna baptize and continue on. But I started actually talking to ministers, and this is what I’m seeing. and I start realizing that we’re not compatible.

Not from my point, but from their point. And our church was shut down because of COVID. So you can watch online, but that’s, so we started. In some ways, COVID gave us the opportunity to check something else out because then our church wouldn’t know we weren’t showing up or going somewhere else.

The providence of the Lord. Yeah, exactly. So where did you end up going and getting saved or how did it happen? Yeah, so we knew, we had friends in the hall here. But we ended up looking it up online and thinking, okay, this is worth checking out, let’s see. So this is the Gospel Hall in Rose Isle? This is in Rose Isle, yeah. It’s 20 minutes from our home.

We always had discussions in the way back from church, and she had logical problems with some of the teachings. I wasn’t thinking about leaving the church, because Paul says that fellow makers, you don’t hang out with other people. And one of the things was 1 Corinthians 14, about believers, they all partake, and one or two stands up. And I was seeing a minister preaching, and we had him for 16 years. And it was getting, you know, you get old after a while. And I was looking around the church and I see some brothers here. I bet they could have a message too. But if they got up, they would get taken down.

And I said that to Leanne. And she turned to me and said, there’s no church like that. And I’m like, yeah, you’re right. So I just put that away. And then she checked out the Gospel Hall website and it actually talked about that. And she turns to Hendrick. what you’re seeing is right here. And this is very special to me because she was reformed to the core, and I couldn’t convince her mind, and I was really praying to God too to show her the truth of helping her. Not for salvation, but yeah, I knew something was wrong with her. Yeah, so anyway, that’s why we ended up checking him out, because I said to Hendrik, like, this is what you’ve been talking about for three years. And we live in the middle of nowhere. That’s amazing.

So you had seen in 1 Corinthians 14 that church in the New Testament had an open element to it where someone could bring a psalm, someone could bring a hymn, someone could bring a prayer, someone could bring a message. Then you’re thinking, we’ve been listening to the one man for 16 years, that doesn’t match up. And then you found this church in Rose Isle. where the believers meet together to break bread, and there’s people, there’s congregational participation in the worship, and you’re thinking, this is what I’m reading in the Bible. So you visited them for doctrinal reasons.

Yes. Not even because I want to be saved, it’s just because this is a scriptural church. 100%. Okay. But it’s funny because we ended up going to a gospel meeting because we didn’t know there was any, like in our church, there’s the morning service, the afternoon service, and they’re pretty much the same. So it worked for us to go to the one that started at that time at seven, right? Yeah, so I went the week before just to check it out before to send the family with. Well done. Okay, yeah. That’s good. So then my first time going was a gospel meeting, but we didn’t know that. We just showed up to church. So their evening service, as it would normally call, was specifically for preaching the gospel, which was wonderful. That’s what you needed. You say on the first day.

Wow! Yeah! The preacher said that if you can take God at His word when He says that sinners are condemned, then you can take Him at His word when He says Jesus died for you. Amen! And it clicked. It’s the same with everybody. It just … Yeah. Yeah. And I felt the peace of God that night, and as we drove home that night I said to Andrew, I wonder if this will last. And it has! I was rejoicing in it because I knew … She has peace. This is it. Yeah.

So actually it took me quite a while to admit what happened because even then we weren’t thinking of terms of born again. I didn’t think that I was unsaved. No. Right. And I was also a little bit annoyed maybe that It happened there, and it couldn’t have happened growing up all those years. Because it’s not like we don’t teach that Christ died for sinners. And we were not even thinking about leaving Reformed Church. But it was a possibility, and you did not like the idea. Wow, it was very hard with my family.

Yeah, sure, absolutely. It’s what you’ve always known. So then, of course, baptism started making a lot more sense. Yeah. I can totally resonate with that because I understood Christ didn’t die for his own sins, he died for mine one evening in my teenage years, but I’d had sort of several goes at being saved before. Okay. And so, you know, if you’d have asked me that night, have you been saved? I would have just thought I understood the death of Christ better than I understood it before, but then as time went by, I thought, no, that’s when you’re going to say, because that’s Christ, before it’s me praying.

100%. Yeah, it became personal, right? I saw him. And then the verse that became so special to me was, this is my beloved son. With him, I’m well pleased. And I realized that It wasn’t my job to please God. Jesus did that. Amen. And just the rest in that was incredible. That’s well, very well put. The Lord helped you put that well. Yeah. So we have about 15 minutes left, which is probably not very long for you guys, but I did, at some point you told me you got to say like a week apart. And you were first? Yes. So you’ve told us the kind of church you’re brought up in and the sort of extreme view on election and nobody isn’t really sure. So what on earth happened for you to sort of come out of that into being the happy, saved Christian that you are today?

Well, it’s a rather long story, so I’ll try to still it down a little bit. We had friends that were at the RCNA, the Dutch reform that I was part of and their family, they had family move to a few miles away from us. Okay. And they, When they moved, me being a helpful neighbor, it’s just how I like to do things, neighbor moves, you go and help him. Neighbor moves in, family of a friend, you go and help him. Well, that started a very good friendship, and they would do Bible study with us, but we still struggled with election. because… And they’re in your same church? That family, they were of the same church, but they left the RCNA and joined the gospel hall in Mitchell.

In Manitoba. In Manitoba. Because just changing churches or they got saved and changed churches? They got saved in Ontario. Okay. And they didn’t really have a financial future in Ontario. They had a large family, a very large family, and they didn’t have a financial future in Ontario. So they said, you know what, we have her sister living in Manitoba. It’s nice to live close to family. So they moved to Manitoba. They got baptized and and joined the Gospel Hall in Manitoba. And they invited us over a fair number of times for Bible study. They started going through, I believe it was the Book of John. Gospel of John. The Gospel of John, yes. And they had invited us over for hymn sings. I absolutely love singing.

But nothing really clicked. And we’d met a fair number of times, and they invited us along to meetings here in Rose Isle, and I didn’t know that it was going to be a sermon. But when I realized that, I went up along because I thought it was going to be somebody telling his life story of a radical change. And I was interested in that because a life story is always interesting. Biographies or autobiographies are interesting. But when I realized it was a sermon, I had the checklist, the mental checklist that our church drummed in of this and that and that all need to be part of the sermon.

To determine the soundness of the preacher. So you’re not talking about the structure, you’re talking about the content. The content. The content had to be rigid inside this boundary. If it’s outside of this, it’s… Free willism. Free willism. Potential for delusion.

So I looked at that and by God’s grace This entire checklist got completely checked off. Oh, okay and Kelsey and I went there after again, we got invited back to Rose Isle for Supper and come out for meeting again, but And this was one of the first times that I’d ever truly heard the gospel, the truth of the love of God. And it sat, I kind of mull it over, but I wasn’t happy in the Dutch Reformed because there was a lot of things that I was questioning and a lot of things I was fighting with. But then a few months later, that was in March, I believe that was, a few months later in September, the Mitchell assembly had, the Mitchell church had gospel meetings a few miles from our house, halfway in between our friends and our place. And We were, we said, you know what, we’ll support our friends because the entire rest of the community isn’t going to come out. Okay. There were a few here and there, but. There’s not very many total people. No. There’s very few people that, out that way. So we were like, you know what, we’ll support them. We’ll, we’ll go there. And.

I very much knew about sin. I knew that I was damned unless by chance I was an elect. But this was the first time that the gospel was on repeat. It wasn’t just one message here and think about it. No, it was a message. And then the next night, and again, and again, the next night from a different angle, but the same from both evangelists, it was the same message from different points. And oh, I love the singing, but singing doesn’t matter. It matters what’s in the heart.

So it was starting to get through to you this… It wasn’t truly getting through, but it was starting to percolate in. And it was a Saturday in the Gospel meetings that I was… The Saturday, the end of the first week. The end of the first week, that’s right. I was heading home and yes, it was night, but all was blackness. Like, it speaks in the 10 plagues of Egypt of the utter blackness that the Egyptians were under.

I had this in my mind. I could not comprehend the gospel messages. I could not comprehend the good news. And I knew I was damned. I knew there was zero hope for me, for myself. And I pulled over and I parked and I prayed, God, I know nothing. I cannot understand nothing. I cannot go on.

I don’t understand, but I know your word is true and Lord help my unbelief. And it wasn’t instant. It wasn’t immediate. I struggled. And I couldn’t, I could not grasp it. It was utter blackness in my mind. I went to two more gospel meetings. I thought, there might be a little bit of something for me, but I still, I dared not grasp it. I could not accept it, even though it was a free gift. And they had… Why did you feel like you couldn’t accept it? Because I did not believe that I could accept the words of the Bible, even though I knew the Bible was true, I did not believe that I could just take.

Because of your theological background. Because of my theological background. So you’re struggling with your sin, and then you’re hindered by this, am I elect or not, and here’s salvation sitting ready for the taking, but you daren’t put your hand out.

Absolutely. And I was struggling with it, and I said to friends, I think there might be a chance that this might be for me, but I still did not dare. And it didn’t matter how many times friends that came there would would go through the passages and say, just believe. I could not believe. I had a block.

But then driving home on the third evening after the gospel meeting, I had just left the hall and a sentence from one of the Psalters that Was very familiar with I’d been singing them my whole life One sentence Lord thou has greatly blessed our land and Like I was greatly blessed our land. It comes. Okay. Yeah, it comes out of Psalm 85 and I Knew the entire tune right the entire musical tune. Did you only sing Psalms in your church? Yes. Yeah, okay. I knew the entire tune but That was the only sentence I had.

And I was like, well, feelings don’t matter. Feelings are not something you can stake eternity on. But I couldn’t figure out anything more than just that sentence. Then when I got home, my wife and daughters were already asleep at home. And I tried to find it, but I couldn’t find it.

But Psalm 45 came to my mind. When I was searching, my heart doth overflow. A goodly theme is mine. My eager tongue with joyful song doth praise the King Divine. And this was, it was another layer of feeling, but I couldn’t trust that. And then I found the one I couldn’t find before, and it continued, Thou hast brought back our captive band.

Thy pardoning grace has made us free and covered our iniquity. Now truth agrees with mercy mild, now law and peace are reconciled. Behold, the truth from earth arrives with justice shining from the skies. The Lord will send his blessing down and harvest, all our land shall crown. Before him righteousness abides, and in his steps our feet he guides. And this was beginning to to resonate in my soul, resonate that there was a chance, a very real chance, but I still wasn’t sure. And we always turned music on so that some people have white noise playing so that their children go to sleep.

We did hymns and music, psalms, and I stepped through the door to the last half of the last verse of the Dutch version of the Psalms, Psalm 73, which corresponds to verse 28 of Psalm 73. And the first half of this verse speaks of who is He who is far from God or seeks his his his fortune far from God is Is going to be lost Verse 27 of Psalm 73 goes for lo they that are far from thee shall perish thou has destroyed all them that go whoring from thee and this this was in Dutch and it was slightly rephrased and Give us the Dutch. You want it in Dutch? Yeah, I love it. That was the first half. It spoke of destruction to those that turned their back to God. And I didn’t walk in on that. The Lord be praised that I did not walk in.

Oh yes, this is playing in the hymn. Yes, yes. It’s playing More damnation. More damnation. But by the grace of God, I walked in on verse 28, the last half of the psalm, of the verse of the psalm, where it continues in English, but it is good for me to draw near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord God that I may declare all thy works. in Dutch, maar het is mijn goed, mijn zalig slot, my destiny, nabij te wezen bij mijn god, ik vertrouw op hem, geheel en al, den heer wiens werk ik roemen zal, whose work I will glory.

And I heard this and I knew the verse very, very well. But it clicked. All of a sudden, heavenly joy, heavenly glory, all the entire darkness, and I still had darkness till I walked in on that, but it was all banished. And what in particular from that was the moment, like I would never dream again and say through that verse?

It was, it was the drawing near, but it is my good, my blessed destiny. That’s the translation of it. It is my good, it is my blessed destiny to be close to my God. To be close. And to trust. And to trust. I didn’t realize that it was the trust, but It was the drawing near.

And then the last sentence, I trust completely in him, totally, utterly. As it says in English, I have put my trust in the Lord God. And this is the word of God saying, this is your destiny. That was my destiny. In other words, God is saying, you don’t need to worry. This is supposed to be for you.

And I knew. The joy I had. It continued. Amazing. I knew that feelings don’t do it. Oh, no, no, but they come. But also, they come. But after that, I also spoke with another gentleman. And you know, 1 John chapter 5. There is knowledge. Verse 13, These things have I written unto you, that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. This is a certain knowledge. And I knew, eternally secure. Praise the Lord. Amen.

Now, our faithful camera team has been here since eight o’clock this morning, and we’re now at suppertime, but we wanna hear what happened to you, Kelsey, because you got saved the next week. So, did you see this dramatic thing happen to Hendrick? I did, but at the time, I wasn’t sure if I could believe it, if I could trust it, or if he was just…

Because you had the same theological background. Yes, pretty much. And were you also thinking, What if I’m not elect? Yes, I would say when I was 14, then I realized it’s not about which church you’re attending. You have to be born again. And where did you learn that? Um, through the, the preaching in the strict Baptist chapel, as well as, um, being taught by my parents, I guess my mother, particularly, she was homeschooling us and we did. And your mother was saved?

Um, yes, but struggled with assurance. Um, and then when I was 17 is when I realized I was a sinner, me personally, and I knew that Jesus came to save sinners, but he came to save the elect, right? So I didn’t know that he came for me. So, and I guess I would really struggle with knowing whether God loved me or not. Because part of our upbringing is, God only loves the elect, right? He hates the others. So all the verses of telling of God’s love, including John 3, 16, are for the elect. For those who love the word of the elect. Yes, so basically from the time I was 17 till 29, I was wondering whether God loved me or not. Wow.

And I guess at that point, There’s the outward call of the gospel that we were taught, and the effectual call, so waiting for this effectual call. You don’t know it. Yeah, for those people that don’t know, the outward call is the kind of general invitation, but only the elect get this effectual call, and if you don’t get that, you can’t know you’re elect. Yeah, you can’t be saved. You’re familiar with that? Not put that way, no. Okay, well, I hope that’s the correct interpretation. Yes, yes. So you spent 12 pretty worrying years. Yes, yeah.

And especially like after I became a mother, right? I have these precious little souls to guide. Are they all right? Well, no, I wasn’t quite worrying about that, but I was like, how can I teach them about God when I don’t know about God? So, Yes, that was a heavier burden to bear. And… Oh, so this time, so by this time you’re married to Henry, you’ve got kids, but neither of you are saved? Correct. Okay, and then he goes and gets saved. Yes, and we had, so we had a three-year-old, a two-year-old, and a six-month-old at this point during the gospel meetings close to our house. And this is in 2021? 2022. And then, yeah, so he went and got saved. And I was, at that point, I was more than ready to be saved. I just didn’t know how to get saved. So I was, yes, I was just struggling, trying to get saved, and I didn’t know how.

So were you telling Kelsey, this is all you have to do, you just have to believe in Christ? No, because you couldn’t really put it into words yourself, right? I definitely couldn’t put it into words. I still struggle putting it into words. Because the teaching, the indoctrination, still makes it very, very difficult to talk about salvation. But I know in whom I have believed. Amen.

So you were, in a sense, on your own, because he was so new to it. So were you going to these gospel meetings in the community at all? Not every night, but as often as I could make it out with the three little ones, of course. Sure. Yeah. And then, yeah, so after he got saved, then I really felt hopeless, I guess, because I was left behind, right? You know, one is taken and one is left. Yeah. And then… You’re doing well, by the way. You’re doing really, really well. So, just take a deep breath, and the Lord will help you get it out. If you want one of these, you’re welcome.

I’ll need one at some point, yeah. Yes, it was a Sunday night, and I’d been to another gospel meeting, and I just couldn’t figure out how to get saved. That night when I went to bed and I would just finally, a final prayer, Lord, I give up. I can’t. And I will be done. And then I fell asleep. And in the morning when I woke up, then of course, the first thought, you know, my poor soul. And then I heard with, you know, still small voice in my soul, Jeremiah 31 verse 3, I have loved thee with an everlasting love, and therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.

And just like that, assurance, absolutely. Wow. Amazing. And what was even more amazing for me, because this was Monday morning, and Kelsey didn’t tell me, We had gone Saturday night as a family of three small children and Sunday night as a family. And you’ve had children yourself. You know how it is with young children that late night they get crabby.

And I was working in a butcher shop at that time and I came home just in time. I could wolf down supper and quickly jump through the shower and rush off, because now I wanted to be at the gospel meeting, because it was wonderful. I loved it. And I plop down, I start wolfing down supper, and Kelsey rushes out because she needs to be back in the house to take care of the children. I had chores to do outside, yeah. Okay.

When I’m gone, and she’s back in a flash, chores are done, And she plops down on the kitchen chair beside me and says, we’re going to gospel. And I’m like, hold, of what? Who? How? This is impossible. Because three small children, they’re crabby, and we’re not going.

And all day, I’d already had another psalm going through my head. I was glad when unto me they said, let us go up to the house of God and praise. And it didn’t make sense. But Kelsey plopped down on the kitchen chair as I was finishing last bites of supper, and we’re going to gospel tonight. And I’m like, do you have something to tell me? And that’s when she told me that she had found salvation too.

What a blessed thing. Amen. Two saved in 24 hours, eh? Husband and wife. It was a week to the day. Oh, a week later. Okay. Well, that’s even amazing. My wife’s sister and brother got saved in 24 hours when they were in their 40s. Yeah. But isn’t the Word of God amazing?

The earlier episodes today, we had a lot of Ephesians 2.8, we had a lot of John 19.30, you know, and here we are in Psalm 73. Jeremiah 31. Yeah, Jeremiah, I have loved thee. But you see, You didn’t think God loved you.

Exactly. For all those years. And God only loves the elect. And Jesus only died for these select people. Now you’re like, I don’t know anything about that, but I do know the Bible says, I’ve loved you with everlasting love. And that is salvation, isn’t it? When you see Christ’s love took him to the cross.

Wonderful. Wow, your lives must have been so turned upside down. Yeah. Yeah, amazing. Well, we are out of time. I’d love to go on to the next. We could talk all night, couldn’t we, about all the other things, but thank you so much, Henrik, Leanne, Kelsey, Henrik, two Henriks with two red beards. It’s been great having you on and I just hope a lot of people listen to this and able to cut through and see what real salvation is and the real love of Christ and that salvation is for the whosoever will, and there’s no limits on that in anybody.

And it’s always Christ. He has to be the center. Exactly. And don’t give up. Jesus holds, his words are true. He says, all those who seek will find. It took me a while. It was a journey, but Jesus says, in regards to prayer, to be like that woman who’s looking for justice, to persist. And when the light dawns, you’re not looking back at those 12 years, oh, I lost all those years, and it’s terrible. You’re like, well, it was worth the wait. Now I have the real thing. Now the real. I hope more people don’t have to go through 12 years of wondering. No, no. And that’s where it is, too, with the whosoever.

Romans 5.18, I believe I mentioned that before.

Even so, by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men. What a blessed thing that it came for me, that it came for my wife, that if it could come for me and for Hendrik, it can come for anyone. And you don’t need to wait to hear if you’re one of this group or specially selected.

The Bible says Christ died for our sins. He gave himself a ransom for all. The Lord desires all men to be saved. And it’s only the perverse mind of man that says, well, that’s just all the elect or that’s just all this group. No, it’s all. It’s whosoever. Well, thank you very much. We’ve had a call of the day. Thank you for coming on. God bless you all.

The post Raised Calvinist and Reformed, But We Struggled to Believe God Loved Us | Hendrik, Kelsey, Hendrik and Leanne first appeared on Gospel Hall Audio.

Silas, Adrian, Cody & Marissa Waldner grew up on Hutterite Colonies in Manitoba, Canada, and were very devout in their faith but, in this interview, they discuss with Michael Penfold how they had no peace or joy in their souls. Why didn’t confession to the Colony preacher relieve the burden? Why didn’t baptism and communion fill them with joy? Why did they have so many struggles? Watch their fascinating stories and learn where the assurance of salvation comes from.

Recorded in Manitoba, Canada, 24th Feb 2026

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Further resources:

Eternal security | Mervyn Hall

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Full video transcript:

f you try your absolute best until you’re in the grave, God just might accept you on Judgment Day. And that’s the mindset I had. I was actually still drinking quite heavily. And I was pleading with God multiple times a day, multiple times too, because I felt so chained. And I got saved right there. So where were you at that point? To be honest, I was actually behind a building and we were smoking a cigarette, to be honest. Oh, so wonderful. I remember sitting there crying tears of joy. I’m like, I finally, I found him. Yeah, he found you. Or he found me. Yes, that’s right. Silas, Adrian, Cody, Marissa, welcome to the Gospel Hall Audio Podcast. Hello. Thank you.

This is our second Hutterite episode today. And in the first one, we already did the whole history, the Reformation, Russia. We did the whole story and we learned what it’s like on a colony. We’ve done that whole thing. So if anybody wants to view or listen, I’m going to put that in the description below. They can watch the history. So what we’re going to do today is just add on four more stories of people who came to Christ from that background. And I know you guys were all on the same colony. Is that right? Yes. Yeah. So we’re filming here in south of Manitoba.

So you’re all raised on a Hutterite colony not far from here. So let’s just get right into the right into the meat of it. So you you two were saved before Adrian and Silas. So so Let’s just get straight into it. You were raised in this religious Hutterite community.

Why were you not just happy to stay there forever? What started you searching for more? Well, initially for me, I guess, just to clarify for the audience, it is my wife. Yeah, yeah. So before we got married, I was quite a religious Hutterite and I always tried my best to do what the religious system required of me, but I was never at peace with my sin. What I had been taught all my life, what would bring me forgiveness, it just never sat right with me. I guess. I never felt forgiven. I never felt peace.

So in the Hathorite community, they teach you that you’re a sinner? Yes, they would. Absolutely, yes. Which is obviously biblical, and that’s what you believe. But they’re not giving you a solution to that? Is that what you’re saying? They don’t give the biblical solution, I guess, from where I was from.

The solution that we would generally get is, basically, you do good. And basically the good should outweigh the bad. And if you do sin, you have to go to the priest or the preacher to confess. And they would teach that without confession, there is no forgiveness.

Okay. And this is like once a year we heard, was it? Is that right? It’s once a year for those that are sprinkled or baptized. But for me, even before I was like sprinkled, we would confess before baptism for sprinkling. And I remember going through that and I was very thorough with my confession. I remember very well.

And I remember a couple days later, I did not feel any different. I was like, I did not, I felt burdened by my sin. And I remember thinking there must be more, there must be something I am missing, like personally I thought I must be doing something wrong, I’m missing something. So this was just like a feeling you had? That was just, yeah. An intuition? I think it was my conscience, it was my conscience.

I was convicted of my sin, greatly convicted. And anyway, That was, yeah, going through the Hutterite baptism, and then, I remember not feeling, not sitting right with me, and then going through that, got married to my wife, and very religious, yeah, still thinking I was just missing something, but never thinking that the Hutterite system might be not teaching me what the Bible teaches. So you had total trust in the Hutterite system. I had 100% trust, yes. But you didn’t have peace from your sins, but you didn’t blame the system, you blamed yourself.

Yes, that’s correct, yes. And anyway, we got married and my wife wasn’t as religious as I was, so I would religiously read my Bible like every morning, rarely missed. German Bible. German Bible, that’s right, yeah. we were taught that we should shy away from any other language in the German. So that’s what I did. I was, this is good, all right. And I stuck to the German and read and really not fully, clearly understanding what I was reading, but still trying.

So what did you think of him reading his Bible every day? I knew that before we got married, that he was reading it every day. And at the time, I wasn’t saved yet, but I knew there was something I was missing and I would find it in Christ. I knew that. And after we got married, when I saw him reading his German Bible every day, We did have to debate that for him to see that you could find the truth in the English language.

Oh, so you tried to encourage him to read the English Bible? Yes. Because I was reading… Oh no, I absolutely despised the idea of it, yes. You can only read the Bible in German. Yeah, I was just, well, that’s the way I’ve been taught and it must be right. That was my mindset. I was fully committed to what I had been taught.

But we don’t use the German language, we don’t speak it at all, so we didn’t understand it very well. Just to clarify, the Holorite dialect is a mixture of Low German and English, and what we read was the Luther’s translation of German, so the High German, so you really Which is a good translation, but you couldn’t really understand it very well. Not the way that I could understand the English, because just going back from how we were raised, we would spend, I don’t know, we would spend six or seven hours a day in English school and maybe two hours a day in German school. So I obviously understood English better, but I still never read it because I was taught not to. So when you were reading the German Bible, you never really got to the truth? Oh, no, no. And then did you switch to the English Bible?

Well, when we were having these debates, me and my wife, after we got married, it was shortly after we got married, maybe a month after we got married. We also had debates about religious things, of what the system teaches. I was convinced that you must go confess to the preacher to be forgiven. And my wife was like, I don’t think that is biblical. And she told me, if you find it in the scriptures, well, you let me know and you show me. And stubborn as I was, I was like, I’ll find it and I’ll show it to you. went on looking, searching in the German, and I’m like, hey, I’m really not understanding what I’m reading. I think I should take my wife’s advice and maybe read some English.

So I started reading English and I was looking for this that I have to confess to a priest and whatever, and I found the opposite. I found that that there is only one mediator between God and man, and man Christ Jesus. And I’m like, inside of me, never telling her yet, I was like, I think my wife’s right here.

Let’s just say for the benefit of viewers, that’s in 1 Timothy 2, verse 5. Yes. The Bible says there’s one mediator, because it was mentioned in a previous episode today. That’s obviously a key verse. Absolutely. It was. Yes, it was. For me, it was the… It convinced me.

So that’s in the German Bible, it’s in the English Bible, it’s in the Catholic Bible, Protestant Bible, 1 Timothy 2 verse 5. Yeah, I remember reading in the English, I’m like, man, I’ve never seen this before, and I’ve religiously read my Bible since I can read almost. I remember switching back to my German reading, I’m like, man, they take my dictionary, looking up the words, and it says the exact same thing.

So that was like the first hole in the system. It was for me, yes. It was the first time in my life that I thought, what they teach me is not the truth. That was the first time. And that just led me to, then I just started reading my English entirely, basically put the German aside because I was like, okay, I understand what I’m reading now. And I just, one thing after another, just made more sense.

Yeah. So as you were reading the English Bible, obviously a lot of it is just like narratives and stories and whatever, but in the New Testament you’re going to be coming across whole passages about the forgiveness of sins, how to be right with God. So when you came across those, how did that Well, I’ll never forget when I came across Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.

Wow. I’m like, man, this is so clear. I can’t, I remember sitting there, like, I don’t believe I’ve never seen this before. Like, it is so clear that, that… Go ahead. That we’re, the scripture says it, we are, we are saved. Because on one of the previous episodes, somebody quoted that verse as well.

I can’t remember who it was. So this is obviously a very powerful verse for people from these pagans too. For by grace you say through faith, not of yourselves, it’s a gift to God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So that really, not you for six. When it said there, not of works, lest any man should boast, that was like, that was for me, it was. So what did you interpret not of works to mean? But that was after we had, at the time, we had watched this documentary. And that had a very clear gospel, and both of us had never heard the gospel before. So what was the documentary called?

The American Gospel. Okay, so if anybody wants to watch it, it’s a good documentary. It has the gospel. Her point of the documentary is, that whoever created it, they were exposing the American gospel. Oh, okay, right, yeah. The health and wealth gospel. Yes, exactly. But in it, they clearly teach the true gospel. They take it apart.

And I remember watching it, and I’m like, this is so clear. It is, as the scriptures say, we are saved through faith, And it is not of ourselves. It’s like, man, I’ve been working at this all my life, trying to work my way to heaven, and yet the scriptures teach the opposite. And I remember in the meantime coming across Romans 3. That was so clear to me. That was basically the two, I’d say the two main ones at the time. It was Romans 3 and 23.

For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Verse 24, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. I remember, I’ll never forget reading it and clearly seeing it because I had never fully understood it in the German. I remember at that time seeing that my sin has fully separated me from God and there is nothing in myself that I can do to fix that gap or that relationship problem.

Not by works. Not by works. It clearly says not by works. I remember panicking. I’m like, what do I do? It clearly says being justified freely by His grace. Freely. Yes. I didn’t understand it still with these works. mindset burned into my mind. I took it as a work. I’m like, I must be like, I kind of turn it into a work. And it didn’t work out well.

So why do you think we do that as human beings? Why do you think even as religious human beings, why do we always default to, there’s something I must do? It doesn’t matter whether it’s, I’ve been saying, the Hutterites, Mennonites, it’s actually no different to the Orthodox or to the Catholics or to the Protestants. It’s like there’s this universal desire to do something.

Now I grew up hearing the opposite. I grew up hearing the gospel, And it always fascinates me to hear someone like you reading this verse that I knew from this high, but to you it’s like, bang! It’s like, this is the opposite of what I’ve been taught.

Yeah, it basically shattered everything that I had believed in. I was fully persuaded all my life. It shattered it within, I don’t know, there was a couple of weeks there. It just shattered everything. So religion shattered by the Bible. How ironic is that? You’re brought up in a religious community, but the Bible just shatters what you’ve always believed.

So you then thought, right, salvation is going to be by believing. So you started trying to believe, is that right? Yes, that’s right. I remember countless times praying, getting on my knees and pleading, like, I believe that Jesus died for me on the cross, I believe that I’ve been forgiven through what he has done, but it just…

I was trying to… I turned it into a work and I was not… I thought this… me pleading was what was going to save me, and it didn’t. So you’re trying to impress God that you believe up to the 100% level, and he then rewards you with salvation. Yes, that was basically my mindset.

I remember going back a couple of times and re-watching that document. I’m like, I must be, I’m still missing something. I’m re-watching. I don’t know how many- You’re missing someone. Yeah, someone. I remember watching it countless times and it just, I’m like, I’m not getting it.

I knew it was the truth. I was fully convinced. I’m like, this is the way. This is the only way that I will be forgiven. This is the only way that I will ever be made right with God was with what Christ has done for me. So what did you think of him while he was going through this? At that time I was in such a state myself of trying to get saved, I wasn’t even aware.

Well let’s have a little bit of that before we get to the crunch point. So did his interest spark your interest? I will say before we got married, I was already searching, but from a little background on me, I grew up in a different colony. It was not quite as traditional as his, but still in all the core principles it was. And from a very young age, I didn’t turn religious like he did.

I instead became very rebellious, and I started drinking at the age of 14, and that ended up being the biggest thing that I couldn’t quit until I got saved. So you drank for several years? Yes. Big, heavy drinking? every day. And so, and I did try stopping multiple times. I never could. And when I started again, it was worse than before.

And So on the colony, when you get close to the age where you’ll marry or you have someone to marry, you usually get sprinkled, baptized. And at that time, I thought, okay, I’m going to give this my all and clean up my life, and then I’ll be good. And I did. I stopped drinking, I stopped partying, I stopped all that, like I was consuming a lot of secular movies and stuff that’s strongly forbidden on the colony. And I quit all of it, all the things I was doing. But as the weeks- So you turned religious.

Very, yes. And as the weeks passed, it’s a six-week process. I just got more and more like where I was reading my Bible and praying and This is the six weeks process leading up to baptism. During that time I got more and more, like all day I was praying multiple times a day and trying to love others and do good to as many people as I could. And then I got baptized, I confessed all my sins, all of them and made a clean slate. To the preacher. Yes. And I thought that this would, I will now have a clean slate and going forward it’ll be, I’ll be right with God, I’ll have peace.

And very gradually afterward, I fell back into every single sin. That was the same with me. Much stronger. Which must be so disillusioning. It is. It’s so hard because you think you have this figured out, you think you’re right with God, but then shortly after you’re like, Nothing has changed. Not a thing has changed. I’m still the same. Except you’re all over confirmed that you cannot be. You’re a sinner. You are a sinner.

And then we got married maybe a year and a bit later. And after I got married, I desired to become a mom and be a good wife, but I was actually still drinking quite heavily. And this did not fit into me what a godly mother or wife should, and it became my biggest thing that I wanted out of my life, but I couldn’t stop. Every day I would drink again. it, and I was pleading with God multiple times a day, multiple times too, because I felt so chained. And so, like with my husband, we watched a documentary.

Yeah. It took her some time to convince me to sit down and watch because I was so religious. I’m like, I don’t need this. All I need is my German Bible. It’s all in here. Whatever. Yeah, it did spark some arguments quite a bit. He tried to make me remove this thing from the house. It was just an old tablet and we were watching on them and we’re not allowed to have them. That was my problem with it. To remove the iPad? Yeah, because the religious system would say, well, keep this out, you’re not supposed to have it.

I was trying to enforce this, but later I was so desperate for truth, I’m like, maybe this will give me something, let’s sit down and watch it. That took some time. And that documentary gave us both hope. The first glimmer of light for me, for sure. Because at that time we were both very hopeless. We were both wanting peace desperately, desperately, but we didn’t know where to find it. And I think watching this, we heard the gospel for the first time ever. That was the first time for me ever. Which is great. So you heard it clearly for the first time, but you didn’t get saved straight away?

No, I didn’t. No. Because then you try to work up, they told you to believe, all you need to do is believe, so you turn that into a whole process. I did, yes. A couple of weeks went by there, maybe, I don’t know, maybe two or three weeks. Yeah, it was about three weeks.

One evening, sitting in our living room, I was completely at the end of myself. I’m like, I remember telling myself, pleading with God, I guess I’m just going to have to go to hell because I’m not getting this. It’s just not coming to me of disbelieving. I can’t believe. enough or something, what was I thinking anyway?

And I remember I had basically given up, and I think that’s where the Lord wanted me at that point. And I remember sitting there just, at the end of myself, picking up that same tablet where we had watched that documentary, and there was a couple of other messages and whatever on and I remember just randomly scrolling through them and yeah I just watched this maybe this left so this is like a youtube thing it’s uh it was actually just some videos a friend had given me oh okay yeah right so she was I believe a christian at that time and she passed them on to me okay anyway and I started watching this it was a sermon on the Good Samaritan of all things. I remember turning it on and I’m like, man, I’ve heard this too many times interpreted the religious way, like that I am supposed to be this Good Samaritan, I have to do this, this, that, and I’m like, man, I can’t take it. I remember watching it, I’m like, I remember pretty much breaking down, I’m like, Lord, I cannot be this good Samaritan. I can’t do this. It was still these works, it was still, it was just burned into my whole system.

Anyway, I remember the preacher going on, he on purpose would interpret it religiously, and then he flipped. He’s like, this is what religious would interpret it as, but now let’s flip and let’s interpret it the way the Bible wants it to be interpreted. And he, it’s Luke 10. I just flipped through it. It’s a well-known story, I mean. Yeah, it’s a well-known story, but all I’ve ever heard it interpreted was as that I have to be this good Samaritan, this is something that I have to do.

Anyway, as he goes on with his interpreting this, he went on and said that actually you, it was like he was speaking straight to my soul, you are this man lying beside the road, you are on the verge, you’re on the edge of eternity because of your sin. As it says, it says, verse 30 of chapter 10. And Jesus answering said, a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment and wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead. I saw that it was just like the Holy Spirit, like just.

So you were a good Samaritan. You were the half dead man on the road. Yes, I was no longer a good Samaritan. And I saw myself, this is what my sin has done for me. I am lying there. wounded, half dead because of my sin, not in any way can I do anything to get myself out of this situation. And then the Levite comes along in verse 32, just passes by. I saw that this is religion. It can do nothing for me. I remember, I’m like, it actually can’t. It can do nothing to save me. Because I had come to that conclusion already.

And then the, It’s the Levite and the priest, and then the Good Samaritan comes along, and he sees me, he has compassion on me, and I saw that instantly, this is what the Lord did for me. He saw me in my deepest need, and he had compassion on me, and it says, as it says, and went to him, to me, I saw it, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, the wounds as my sin, I saw it clearly, pouring in oil and wine, I saw that this is what he did for me on the cross. He paid for my sins on the cross, I saw it, it was just like, It was as clear as day, right there, in a second.

I’m like, He did everything. That’s what the Holy Spirit does, right? He just opens your eyes. Yeah, it was like, I came to the realization there is nothing in myself that I can do. I’m dead in trespasses and sins. So you were saved right then? Right there, I was saved, yes.

I understood. Through the tablet? Yeah. Yes. I understood what Romans 3 meant with For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I saw it clearly. I understood Ephesians 2, man, 2 and 8 and 9, that I’ve been saved by grace through faith. I remember sitting there crying tears of joy. I’m like, I finally, I found him. I was like thinking, I already found me.

Yes, that’s right. Wasn’t there a thing about, in that, where it says about, I will take care of him? Oh, yes, yes. That was another, it was right there. As he went on, the preacher interpreting this, Where is it here? I think it’s verse 35. And on the morrow, when he departed, he took out… Oh no, sorry, it’s verse 34.

And went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast and brought him to the inn and took care of him. And on the morrow, when he departed, he took out two pens and gave them to the host and said unto him, take care of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.

At the time, right there, I saw that as He did it all. There is nothing I can do after I’m saved. He still, he did it all. There’s nothing that I can add. My sins have been taken care of past, present, and future. I just, the Lord just- Whatever he needs, I’ll take care of it.

Yes, that’s what I saw it as, and I- So were you in the living room at this time? No. No. Oh, right. So when did you find out what had happened? Two days. It did. Two days later. You didn’t tell her straight away. No, I didn’t. I got saved the next morning. Wow. So you didn’t even know he got saved and you got saved the next morning. No, we were both very much on our own. I knew he wasn’t wanting it as much as I was because we would discuss it together, we would watch things together and read, but we both didn’t know what it exactly was we were searching for. And then, so at the time, I was also at the end of myself very much. But I was trying to get it by pleading to God, and multiple times a day I would be pleading and going into my room by myself and praying.

And just wanting to be released from these chains. And I watched this American Gospel documentary also a few times, and the top, and one of the things that stuck out to me was the most, was how complete Christ’s sacrifice was. Oh yes, oh yes. I did fall in while I was a sinner, that there was no hope for me, but this really stood out for me.

And then one, I remember this one morning, I went into my room once again to plead with God and nothing came, like no pleading came, I was just done, and like I had nothing, I had nothing left. And just like, it just came into my mind how Christ on the cross, he said, it is finished. And that he finished it completely, there was nothing I could, I can’t do. And my understanding was very simple at the time, but I left that room feeling 50 pounds lighter. Like all the weight of the… That was changed. So when you read It Is Finished, you were thinking that what’s needed to get me to heaven, the sacrifice of Jesus has totally taken care of it. He’s done everything.

There’s nothing left for me to do except to receive it. And I received it right there. And I knew whatever would follow, it’ll be okay. Because I knew that he had died for me personally. And so that, so after that, whenever I read my Bible, it was alive. It was alive to me. I couldn’t get enough.

And we learned more and more about how secure we were in him. Oh yes, because in the utter right system you never know for sure. You can never know. So how did you know for sure then? I, shortly after we were very blessed to meet with believers from my side of the family, and they shared, when we were sharing with them how we got saved, and then we all just had, we talked of Christ a lot, and they shared certain scriptures that really helped us understand how secure we were in Him.

No condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus. Yes, that’s right. So how did you, before we get on to Adrian and Silas, how did you find out that you both got saved? That must have been very interesting. I remember, I just remember the next morning, I’ll never forget walking out of the house. I felt like, I felt like a brand new man. You were. Truly, I was. I felt so, I felt, the peace I felt is indescribable. peace that passes understanding. But how did you even know to tell each other you were saved?

Yeah, to be honest with you, for me, my wife had this little bit of knowledge about that it’s all about Christ, but she didn’t fully. So I was like, after I got saved, I’m like, I’m not sure if she has. I remember thinking that. She’s checking her out. But then all of a sudden, the next following days, she doesn’t say the same stuff she used to say. I think she understands it now. I think we just came to the conclusion, as we were studying the Bible together, we were talking about how incredible what Christ has done for us in real life. I think we both have it. I actually never went to my wife and said, you know, I got saved last night. No, but you see, that’s the beauty of it. Yeah.

When you have Christ, that’s what you’re taken up with, and what He has done. And you’re just appreciating not something that you’ve done or how much you believed. Now you’re just appreciating, we have this Saviour, and He’s done everything for us. And it’s just like, wow. I remember every morning, every noon, evening, we just sat and marveled at what Christ had done. Every time we were together afterwards, our Bible was in our hands. Yeah, we devoured the scriptures after that point. It was good times.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. For sure. So then eventually, I guess you left the colony and… Well, we shared it. Cody shared it with… With friends and family. Oh, okay. Well, let’s shift over to the left here then. So you saw this happen? You saw the change? He did, but I didn’t. I was in a different world. So you’re brothers? Yeah. Okay. So is your stories interlinked or is it totally separate?

He did share the gospel with me, even though he wasn’t saved yet. But he showed me scripture from the word of God to show it’s true, that we’ve been teached wrong all our lives. Were you also searching in a way, or was it like, oh, these guys have gone crazy? My cousin or my friend here, he’s got born-again religion. Where were you at that same point?

From a very young age, we were very close friends and we did everything together, like played together or whatever, oftentimes even had the same job a couple of times and worked together. So we did have lots of things in common and shared our feelings with each other all the time, the things that we struggled with.

And I was very much like Cody, like a very, very religious Hutterite, like I was. I was always like burdened to please everybody like as much as possible for some reason it’s you know that was always with me and like follow all the rules as best as possible I could like so that obviously I’ll be on God’s good side then and that’s what was being taught to me, and if you try your absolute best until you’re in the grave, God just might accept you on Judgment Day. And that’s the mindset I had, like, get up every morning, do what I have to, and do it the best I can. And you were just deadly sincere in all of that. A hundred percent, yeah.

I guess as you grow older and around the age of, it varies a bit, but around the age of 20, 20 to 25, you should other or younger people or even other people should be able to look at you and say, he’s a good, he’s a good Holorite. And in a time of, we baptized together too, we’re sprinkled. Oh, right.

We went to that together. At the same time and Even at that time, I was just extra burdened because I knew how serious it was at the time. I remember us sharing our feelings together on that one. We were so burdened by our sin. We were like, man, it was stressful. It was a very pivotal point in my life at that time. And you were looking to this baptism as the cure-all for your problems?

Yes, and it would… Heart of Rites would teach you that it is the born-again experience because you confess all your sin, turn over a new leaf, and try even harder than before. And yeah, even to confess our sins to a preacher, whatever I could remember from the youngest age I was, as young as I could remember, whatever sin or transgression I ever committed, brought it all to the preacher. It reminds me of Martin Luther.

Oh yeah. He used to confess all the time because he was so burned. I went back three times. I was so burned I went back three times. You confessed three times? Yeah, well I’m like, I forgot this and I think I should go back because I wanted to be right.

I took it very seriously. Yeah, well, I guess if you believe that salvation is through confession, then if you’ve missed one, you need to go and clear it up. They really say that. That’s what Martin Luther taught. If you miss one, you could be guilty of the lot of… Oh, must be dreadful to have that burden all the time.

Yeah, and that’s what, yeah, I guess, and after we did get sprinkled, I was, I thought I thought I had peace with God for maybe a day or so because after, I guess, confessing everything, it was just a stress I had, I guess. A sense of relief. Yes, a sense of relief. So you’ve gone through this catharsis, you’ve done it, it’s like, phew. Yes. So you feel like the burden’s gone, but then 24 hours is back.

Yeah, and before my baptism and after, I still, I knew back in my mind, bottom of my heart, I knew I was not on good terms with God. I knew that, very clearly, I knew, I didn’t need much convincing that I was a sinner. Like, I knew it. I just saw an imperfection in myself on a daily basis. and that’s so we go ahead about a year or so and then yeah it’s just things I guess went worse and just always looking and searching for something and can’t quite exactly put my finger on what it was just and I still remember you coming to the garage one day and we’re discussing all of this. I was newly, I was just saved a couple of days at that point.

So you’re an electrician, is that right? I was, yeah. And you were working in the same… Kind of under the same roof. What were you doing at the time? Like, I guess… Grandfarm. Grandfarm, yeah. Okay. But you would see each other multiple times a day? Oh yes, we still work together like during some of like harvests, eating, we still work together. So… Okay.

And I still remember he asked me a bunch of questions and looking back, he obviously just wanted to feel me out and see my reaction, what I would say and I poured my heart out. I just right away said there, there has to be, there is something wrong. There is something wrong because I just, I struggle on a daily basis and I know there’s something between me and God that’s keeping me from coming to Him. And we, yeah, I’m not sure.

I think you must have brought it up. Maybe we should look. to see what the Word of God says, to look into the Bible, what the Bible says. And you were already saved. Yes, I was freshly saved. Maybe we should look at the Bible. I wasn’t sure how to go about it, so I was very cautious. Maybe we should get the big guns out. And I agreed right away. I said, let’s go.

And just a few days before this, actually, one of my other friends asked me in a bin bottom, we cleaned a bin bottom out. Yes. And he asked me, Adrian, if you were going to be in heaven one day, what will the reason be? He said, no, it was someone else. Oh, somebody else. Okay. And I just fired away one thing after another. Basically, whatever I will accomplish, that is, that’s the reason going to be.

And he was quiet for a bit. And then he said, Adrian, the only reason you’re ever going to be in heaven is because of the righteousness of Christ. And I didn’t know what to say. Did you know what that meant? No, I didn’t. And that’s where everything was left. He didn’t say another word. I didn’t say another word. And it made me to think and it kept me thinking. And then that was a day or two later we had this discussion.

And yeah, at that point, I remember after that meeting we had, I invited you over, I don’t know, maybe once a week to just have Bible studies and talk about the scriptures because we were, I was newly saved and I could tell Aaron was really interested and burdened and we ended up having Bible studies once a week. If not more at the start. Yeah, it was probably twice a week, two sometimes. Just the three of you? It was one more. There was another friend every time.

And so we started having the Bible study, and I still remember the first one. Cody, he shared to me, he showed me, even though I didn’t much convince him, but he still showed me in Isaiah 64, six, the verse. And you had no problem reading the English Bible? Oh no, he was fine. Yeah, I was totally fine with it for some reason, yeah.

And Isaiah 64, 6, and it reads like this. But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. And we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. the bestest things and bestest deeds that we could ever do are as filthy rags before a holy, righteous, and just God. So, you know, I believed it right away. I still remember we went to Romans as well.

So you weren’t offended by that? Not at all. Because that would offend most people, right? Oh, yes. It would have offended me a year prior, you know, maybe a little bit, but not as much. Not saying the sins that you’ve done are bad. Yes. That’s as it’s taken. But to actually say the best things you can do don’t count. Yes, that would have been offensive, yes. But that’s what the Bible teaches, so. It does.

Go ahead, sorry, Romans. Yeah, we also went to Romans and there’s a few verses here that that by our good deeds or by trying to earn God’s good favor or be on God’s good side, trying to follow rules, the law, there is no way it’s possible. What’s the verse? Read the verse. Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight. So that’s Romans 3 verse 20.

For by the law is the knowledge of sin. If you look to the law, oh wow, I am guilty before God. there’s a problem and for the law you mean the ten commandments yes so it’s not a ladder to heaven it’s a mirror to show you your sin yes yes this is what you discovered yeah yeah what a shock and so like i said i i didn’t have to convince him much there i believed it right away and then all this i saw i saw my state before god or my standing and then he showed me that christ died for me This is Cody. Yes. In the Bible.

He has to show me that Christ died for me because Christ died for my sins. But did you not know that already? I knew that Christ died for sins, but not personally. I didn’t know it on a personal level. Like it was. You didn’t really know you were a sinner before, I guess. Yeah, I didn’t know I was a sinner, but the word of God assured me. There was not even a shadow of a doubt after I saw it. I think both of us, we didn’t know the extent of our sin.

We didn’t know that our sin fully separated us from a holy and righteous and just God, that we could not We thought that we could clean it up a bit and then it would be… And then we’d be back in a good relationship and we could start working our way to heaven again. That was kind of the mindset. Yeah, I think most people are like that.

They think sin is just a few bad things that you do. But when you really find out what the Bible says, you actually find out you have a nature of sin inside you. So the little things that you remember, that’s just the fruit on the tree, and the tree is this corrupt tree, and even the very best that it produces is no good to actually advance you towards God. So he then explained to you that Christ died for you, so did you get saved immediately you heard that? No, I didn’t. Actually, I believed it right away and believed it. And it’s the only way to be saved. It’s through Jesus Christ. And I saw that salvation is a free gift. What did you want to say? I was just wanting to say, but you didn’t seem to be taking it personally. Yeah, I didn’t. I didn’t. I was, yeah, that’s right.

It says being justified freely. Salvation is a free gift. Ephesians 2.8 and 9 too. For by grace are you saved through faith and not of yourself. It is the gift of God. It’s a free gift.

And I did struggle for like half a year after. It was a battle. I continuously struggled with, am I trusting enough? Am I having enough faith? Am I repenting enough? I was struggling a lot. I was overcomplicating it. So did you see this going on? I knew that he wasn’t saved and that he wanted to be saved, but I, yeah, so that’s what I saw. He wasn’t sharing all this with you. No, but also… Aidan was my role model all my life, like since I’ve been a little boy he was my role model because he was this really good hollerite. He’s older than you too? Yeah, he’s very, like… Oldest brother of the four of you? Eight or nine years older. Okay. So you thought he was very good, very religious, you want to be like him? Oh, I thought he was like, he was my idol basically. Everything he did I wanted to do.

So, and I saw him starting to be burdened and struggling when prior to his sprinkling. I saw it happening to him and I wondered to myself, when am I going to get my older brother back? Because that’s how much he changed. Like he was always, almost looked completely drained, like energy and like, I just saw it as a young, 14-year-old. He was far too serious for you. Yeah, well, too serious. And I also noticed that he doesn’t have as much life as he used to because he was really burdened with sprinkling and with bettering his life and trying to make himself right before God.

So this six months went by and it’s a continuous struggle the whole time. He must have been exhausted. Yeah. I still remember. Cody sitting me down a few times and asking me, well, Aaron, are you saved already? I said, I’m not sure. I don’t know. And he went to the Bible. He read a few verses and said, do you believe this? Whatever verses he read, do you believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for you at Calvary? I said, yes. And then there was still, I’m not sure, still something. I believe it, but I can’t say I’m saved. Yes, right. Yeah. So then how did that all come to a head?

So I still remember him coming to where I was working a couple times, and he wished that Jesus Christ would come already, like come back. The rapture, waiting for the rapture, yeah. And after he would leave the shop again, I would always say to our other friend, well, I’m not ready. I am not ready. I know that, and I hope he’s not coming back yet. And I still remember the one time he came in and did the same. I take it he did it on purpose. I did, yeah.

And then after he left again, I said, well, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I said, I’m not ready. I know I’m not. And then my other friend would say, said to me, Adrian, if you desire to be saved, if you want to be saved, Jesus Christ won’t come till you’re saved.

And then I was like, okay. And then I still remember I went for a walk. just for a short little walk. And on my way back, I just literally, it clicked. I realized simply trusting, just resting in the fact that Christ died for me. The work is done. It is finished. He cried on the cross. Just belief, trusting Him. And right there, quickened, made alive. Amen. It is finished, keeps coming up, eh? John chapter 19 verse 30. Because you can never finish it if you’re working at it. But when you see Christ has already finished it, it’s like the scales fall off your eyes. So we have about 10 to 15 minutes left.

So let’s go finally to Silas. So will you say before, Adrian, or after? Yes, before. Before. So tell us about that. Well, I… I have a much different story than this. I never went through the sprinkling baptism thing. But you didn’t miss anything. Nope.

And so when I was a younger guy, like 12, 13, 14, I was a good little holler. I worked hard wherever the colony asked me to do. I was a pretty diligent worker and I had pride in my work ethic and what I did. And But we had a fairly new German school teacher and he was really good at preaching condemnation on us. He was always trying to kind of fear us into submission, like really preach.

Into salvation or into living a good life? Submission, like submission to him and the rules. Oh, submission. Submission. Sorry, sorry. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like he would preach how ugly and evil the devil is. what he’ll do when we go, when we’ll die and go to hell. But I always got this message of condemnation, but never any hope or salvation.

And it took a toll on me. Like, I started getting really troubled a lot of times because I knew, even as a 14-year-old, I’m a sinner, you know? And it started really burdening me. And it did to the point where people around me who knew me quite well asked me, what’s wrong with me? Like, you’re not as enthusiastic as you used to be. You’re not as smiley. You’re not as happy. And I knew what was going on, but I always pretended. I don’t know, I didn’t really know at the time that it was me not being saved or anything because I never heard a gospel. I just knew it that I’m a sinner and I’m not in a good place before God.

And when I turned 15, I started hanging out with, you become a Hutterite adult at 15, and I started hanging out with I guess older guys than me, and they didn’t have a good influence in my life. And I started doing the things they were doing. Like I was without strength. I, whatever, I just went along with the flow kind of thing. And I got into drinking at age 15 and I did it. I was, and I also, I’m not sure when that was, but I also started smoking marijuana. And I got really addicted to it. And the reason, looking back, I addicted myself to it was so much because I was looking for some.

And every time I was sober, There was condemnation and I wasn’t happy with my life and I had no strength to do anything about it. Marijuana was like an escape. Yes, absolutely. And it just got worse and worse to doing it like after supper in the evening, when I was around no one, where no one would see my intoxication. I just started slowly doing it earlier and earlier, you know, in the day. And all of that was just to to take me away from reality, you know, because nothing helped. And I’m not sure if I can explain this really well, but there was absolutely no hope for me.

I had never even heard that Jesus Christ died for me, that He died for my sins. I remember at Easter, my mom used to tell me the crucifixion story. But it was kind of this sad story where the Son of God died on a cross. Evil man nailed Him to a cross and He died. But He did rise again on the third day.

That’s all I knew. And I didn’t know He provided anything for me. And that went on until I was 18, like just got worse and worse. And right about when the gospel, when I heard the gospel the first couple times was like literally the darkest time of my life. It went from just being intoxicated in the evening, I already, I could not live with myself sober. And I hated my life. I hated it. When I was sober, I was usually pretty depressed. And it was not only in the evenings, it was like from morning to night most of the times I would be intoxicated.

So why were you not thinking So you haven’t been catechised and baptised at this stage, why did you not think the answer is just around the corner, I can get baptised and catechised and that will solve the problem? Well, that’s a good question and the reason I didn’t think that way because I was so hopeless, I knew it, I don’t have the strength in myself to clean up my life. I looked at myself as the sinners of sinners and like, I was living the ugliest life and there’s no way I can come back from this. And the fact that I couldn’t live to the standard of the whole right, like whatever, trying your best, being at breakfast every day, being on work on time, doing all that will earn your, you will get right with God. I couldn’t do any of that. I didn’t have the strength. I was too far gone, what I told myself. So there’s no point going for this catechism and all that. It’s just like, I’m not fit for it. Yeah, exactly.

And me and my, I had a very close friend, his name was Troy, and I used to discuss it with him. I sometimes asked him, where do you think you’ll go when you die? And he told me, I think the state I am right now, I’m going to go to hell. And I told him, well, I know I’m going to hell too. And I don’t know what to do about it, what I told him. And that’s the life we lived, like hopeless. We didn’t have any hope.

Their part of the story, when Kurt got saved, he had those discussions with Adrian. Like I said, it was literally the darkest time of my life, and I often think back how incredible the timing of God is. Adrian came home to the house. Sometimes him and my other brother, Clinton, he’s older than me, they had these discussions in their room, kind of with hushed voices, about being born again. And I listened. And I wasn’t in there with them, but I listened.

And they also had said things like, what we have been taught all our lives is wrong. What they preach at churches, it’s not biblical. It does not provide salvation. It does not provide hope for anybody. And at least I was like, what are they saying? Are they crazy? Like they’re questioning the preachers, you know. It’s like blasphemy in the Hutterite colony.

And then it came to the point where Adrian asked him to come into his room. And he started sharing the gospel with me. He told me that we cannot be saved by works, it’s impossible. And then he took me to John chapter 10. And those words stuck in me, well, to this day, but all the way to when I got saved. And if I can find a scripture. Which verse, was it my sheep or my father? It was here, in verse 15.

Oh, okay. It said, as the father knoweth me, even so know I the father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. Oh, yes. And he, like, Christ laid down the life for you, his life for you, and he did it for you. And I already knew I’m a sinner. I didn’t have to get told I’m a sinner. And it goes on. Oh, where’s the verse about? Oh, here then, in verse 28.

And I gave unto them eternal life, it said. And he said, if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, he gives us eternal life. You can have eternal life now. And that was unbelievable to me. I can have eternal life? Like, that’s incredible. And they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” He kept on reading. And then it says, and once we have received that eternal life, we have the security and we’re in the hand of Christ. My father which gave them to me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my father’s hand. And he showed me that, and I was like, okay. I can have eternal life now. And once I have it, I have this security where I’m in Christ and the God of Father’s hand. Like, that’s incredible.

And every word I heard, I shared with my friend, who I was, I guess, we were in the exact same state, knowing that we’re going to hell. And we also, we did everything together. And I shared every word with him at the start. He was really, annoyed why I’m talking about the Bible with him, like it was foreign. But I was incredibly excited.

And another time, my brother Clinton, I was sitting in his room and we were talking about the gospel. We were talking about it’s only about believing. It’s only believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s done it. There’s nothing left for us to do. He’s done everything. He would emphasize.

We were saved by grace and he took me to Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 and very clearly expounded on it. that we’re saved by grace. For by grace are you saved through faith. It’s not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not by works, lest any man could boast. And he said to me, I remember that, let’s say we could earn ourselves to heaven and God would accept us. We could brag up there. We’re here because we did this, because it says, lest any man should boast. But now we can’t do it. There’s not going to be any bragging in heaven. We’re going to boast in Christ alone.

And I was like, and it made sense to me. I knew that Christ died for my sins. He’s going to give me eternal life when I believe on His name. And I was like, you mean I can literally skip the cleaning up my life part where I don’t have to clean up my life and I couldn’t do it in the first place. He cleans up your life. Amen.

While we were yet without strength, Christ died for us. That’s Romans 5, verse 6. That’s always a part of my coming to Christ. And I shared everything that I heard from my brothers with my friend. There was just one time we were having a discussion. So I knew, like I said, I knew Christ died for my sins. I knew that I’m going to receive eternal life when I believe on His name, and He’s going to hold me secure in His hands.

But I was like, I don’t know how to believe. How do we believe? I thought to myself. And I often thought, I prayed to God, I would love to be born again. I would like to receive that incredible gift, but I don’t know how. I don’t know what to do, is what I prayed. And then there was just one time when we were talking about the gospel with my friend, who was also unsaved at that time, and I was like, but I don’t know how it works. I know it’s true because it’s from the Bible, but I don’t know how it works.

And then it, right there, it clicked. I was like, it’s true Jesus Christ. All answers are found in Him. We find everything in Him. It’s in Christ. We can be saved. It’s true Christ. We can be saved. And I got saved right there. So where were you at that point? In the house? No, to be honest, I was actually behind a building and we were smoking a cigarette, to be honest, in all honesty. We were, I was, I was incredibly excited about the gospel, but that’s where we were. Oh, so wonderful. It’s incredible how willing He is to save sinners. It’s incredible how He, just at a point of where He saves us, where He cut off those addictions.

Like for me, I actually drank a lot as well. And the moment I got saved, I never desired it after that. It was gone and I couldn’t explain it. The only way I could explain it was that I’ve been saved and I am actually born again. Yeah, you’re a new creature. I’m a new creature in Christ. Another pivotal verse. Okay, we’ve probably got like two or three minutes, so that’s fine, you go ahead.

What played a big role in my life too was If we could earn ourselves to heaven, Galatians 2.21, I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness comes by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. Very good, that was a good one. Can you imagine that?

If we could earn, then Christ died in vain. Yeah, why did he come? Even if we would say, He did this, but we have to do this. He died in vain. It contradicts grace. I mean, if it’s Christ plus something else. I remember, before I got saved, I remember a preacher expounding on that verse, and he was saying that this would be the biggest blunder in the history of the world if Christ would have come and you could save yourself. God clearly saw that you couldn’t save yourself. And so that’s why Christ came.

And that was clear to me as well at one point. Just to add something, I did struggle with doubt for a couple of days. The last time I probably read my Bible, well, he read it to me and my brother, but me personally reading the Bible, probably when I was 12 or so. Or at German school on Sunday, we would read the German Bible. So I started reading the Bible after.

I knew something happened to me. I got a relationship with sin. I started hating my sin. Sometimes I got so convicted of my sin, like corrupt communication, foul language. I started crying on the spot. I was like, What is happening to me? I got this conviction of sin and I had never felt so bad for sinning, like for sure, for swearing, like, how can this be? What’s happening to me?

And then there was one evening I was reading the Word of God. I was reading through the Book of Romans and those specific verses. like hit me for when we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for ungodly. And I knew what I was ungodly and I knew what I was without strength. And that’s how I, then I got assured right there, like Christ died for me. while we become a new creature, we don’t clean ourselves, then come to Christ.

He saves us in our sin while we’re yet without strength. So it’s not saying you make yourself better, then God saves you because you’ve made yourself better. Now you’ve improved. And he does the final bit. He’s saying when we were unable to do anything, when we were yet without strength, that’s when Christ died for us, and that’s why we needed Christ to die for us. Because we’re not only hopeless, we’re helpless. And it’s the same afterwards. We can’t keep our salvation by works. He keeps us. And if we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, and so on and so forth.

So it just takes that whole, you can’t do works to be saved, you can’t do works to stay saved. It’s not of works, it’s all of Christ. Oh, wonderful, wonderful. We need to wrap up, I’m afraid. But it’s been really, really great having you with us. It’s been good, yeah. We’ve been trying to plan this for a long, long, long time.

And to have Silas, Adrian, Cody, Marissa, and you’re kind of related too, eh, now? Or is it you? One of you married a sister of… I married his sister. You married his sister there. So you’re Waldners. And you’re Hoafers? No, we’re all Waldeners. You’re all Waldeners? I used to be a Hoafer. Oh, you used to be a Hoafer. Well, thank you again for coming. God bless each one of you. Pleasure. Thank you very much.

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