Helen Allen's Conversion to Christ

A few weeks after I was saved, I was baptized again and was soon received back into the assembly at the Collingwood Gospel Hall (this time as a genuine believer!) We continued to gather there with a few of the Lord’s people until March of 1989. It was then that we felt the Lord was leading us to Norwich (about 3 hours to the south west) to help another brother, Steve Kember, who was preaching the Gospel there and seeking to establish a new assembly of believers in that area. But here, let me share a bit of Helen’s story…

Helen Ferguson married Steve Allen and their daughters, Stephanie and Cassandra were born before we left Collingwood. When we left, Helen remembers that I asked her to be sure to call me as soon as she got saved! She agreed to do so. (But I was to wait over 8 years before that call came!)

Helen had been about 14 years of age when the others in her family had been saved. She professed to be saved as well. The Christians were so thrilled that it seemed no one seriously questioned Helen about her own experience of salvation but accepted her simple testimony at face value. But it was not long before Helen realized she did not have peace with God. She often heard folks talking about her and saying, “Helen is such a good girl!” But in reality, these comments only made it harder for her to really come to grips with where she actually stood with God. But finally at the age of 19, Helen realized she could not let herself or others continue under such an illusion. She knew she must acknowledge openly that she did not have peace with God, that she was not a child of God and that she did not belong in an assembly of believers. So she withdrew from the assembly. She had no idea how the Lord would use her decision to speak so loudly to me about my own standing with God!

Like many who have often heard the Gospel preached, Helen struggled with what it was to “believe”. Intellectually, she accepted the truth of the Gospel message and could honestly say she had never disbelieved it! But knowing facts about Christ and resting in confidence upon His finished work for her own salvation were two different matters!

She longed to be saved and attended Gospel meetings regularly . In 1996 two preachers – Tim Walker and Jim Beattie came to Collingwood for a series of Gospel meetings. She wished they would come for a visit with her at home but was too timid to ask them! But one night after a meeting they asked her if they could come to see her. She gladly agreed!

In conversation with her, it did not take them long to realize that Helen was struggling with what it meant to “ believe” the Gospel. So Tim Walker asked her, “Helen, if your husband, Steve, wrote you a letter –would you believe what he wrote to you?” She responded, “Of course I would!” She understood clearly, the illustration: Not only had God given His Son, the Lord Jesus, but He had also written a letter (the scriptures) to tell her what Christ had accomplished for her.

Then Jim Beattie turned to Titus 1:2 and read the words of the apostle Paul concerning the truth of the Gospel , “..in hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began; but hath in due times manifested His word through preaching…”

Helen then realized, that if she could not only trust the facts of what her husband might write, but also rest in full confidence that he wrote the truth, how much more could she rest in full confidence for her eternal salvation upon the faithfulness of a God who could not lie! And so it was that Helen Allen, at the age of 35, came to personally rest in faith upon the faithfulness of God revealed in Christ. It was then that, in the words of John 5:24, she “passed from death unto life”!

So you can imagine how thrilled I was, over 8 years after we had moved from Collingwood, to receive a phone call from Helen telling me that she had at last trusted Christ as her own Saviour and had the peace of God knowing her sins were forgiven!

(In my next post I’ll return to the spring of 1989, about a month after we had moved to Norwich. At a Conference of Christians in the city of Toronto, during a Bible reading on John 14, a radical idea would be suggested by an older preacher from Ireland. That idea would eventually upset my former understanding of the coming of the Lord and the order of events of end times prophecy!)

Coming out of darkness into the light!

The next morning (November 20th, 1981), the statement that had rung in my mind the night before continued to reverberate in my thoughts. As I worked on the assembly line in the factory that morning, I knew I must face the truth…
-While I’d spoken with fellow workers about having been a missionary in the West Indies, and of my confidence in the Bible etc, I had never had the courage to simply bow my head and give thanks for my food before the others in the cafeteria!
-While I’d faithfully read the Bible with my family and studied it for hours to prepare to preach or teach it to others, I didn’t know what it was to simply sit down with the Word of God to enjoy it as the food for my own soul!
-While I’d given thanks for our food at our table for years, lead in prayer during family devotions and often prayed in assembly meetings, I knew nothing of private and personal communion with God in prayer!
I began to see clearly that the Lord Jesus’ description of the scribes and Pharisees was an
accurate description of myself, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.” Matthew 23:27

Now, since I had no “position” above or over anyone else in the assembly, the fear of man and my own pride could no longer hold me in bondage. So I purposed to go home that night and tell
my wife, Judy, the truth about myself. So after supper , I sat Judy down at the kitchen table and told her that I had come to the conclusion that while I’d learned to go through all the religious motions, I’d never truly been saved!
At first, Judy was incredulous – How could she have married an unsaved man??! But as the seriousness of the matter dawned on her, she plead with me, “Bruce, you know the truth of the Gospel, you’ve preached it to others, why not just believe it for yourself, right now?” But to me, it no longer seemed quite that simple!

I find it hard to explain, but that night I experienced such a calm that I’d not known for a long time and instead of lying awake in fear and under deep conviction of sin (as I thought might have happened), I slept peacefully with a deep sense of relief!!! It was not a false sense of security thinking that I was accepted with God, for I knew that I wasn’t! It was rather just a deep sense of relief stemming from finally facing the truth about myself. I was no longer uncertain, but for the first time in my life I knew exactly where I stood before God. There was no doubt in my mind any longer. I knew that the matter of salvation must now be my #1 priority! That sense of relief was very short lived and the next day the seriousness of my condition was clearly before me. That night was our midweek Bible study night in Collingwood and I knew I needed to go and talk to someone. Judy had been crying all day and was in no frame of mind to go to a meeting so I went alone. I had never before gotten into the habit of wearing a seat belt, but that night I buckled up securely! I knew I was unsaved, under the wrath of God and with no guarantee that the Lord would even spare me from death till I got to Collingwood that night!

After the meeting, David Gray, a man whom I’d called from work that afternoon to tell him my problem, came to me and asked “Bruce are you sure you’re not saved? As a young man, I often struggled with doubts, but I could always go back in my mind to the might I got saved and I knew the matter was settled.” I said, “David, that is something I’ve never been able to do!” So he invited me over to his home that night to talk, and I was glad to go!

Sitting in the living room of David and Elizabeth’s home, he and I read many scriptures and talked of many things relative to God’s salvation. I kept thinking, “As long as we’re looking at the scriptures, I’m sure I’ll get saved!” I’d heard so many people tell how the Lord had used a verse of scripture to open their eyes and draw them to Christ. So that night I was looking for “my” verse of scripture! But the more we read, the darker my mind seemed to get and I began to wonder if I would ever be saved!

But eventually we came to John 5:39 & 40 where the Lord Jesus said to the Pharisees of His day, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.”

I heard no audible voice but the thought that came to the mind of this Pharisee in that moment was clearer than an audible voice, “Bruce, what a fool you have been! Here you are looking for a verse of scripture, but salvation is not in some verse of scripture – it is in the One of whom the scriptures speak!”

Immediately Isaiah 53:5, a verse I’d learned many years before in Sunday School, came to mind in a very personal way, “But He (the Lord Jesus) was wounded for my transgressions, He was bruised for my iniquities: the chastisement of my peace was upon him; and with his stripes I am healed.”

In that moment I turned to David Gray and said, “David, I know it’s settled. He died for me!”

I knew then what my problem had been all along: Being raised in the Woodford home, where Dad and Mom wouldn’t let us do many of the things the neighbour kids could , I had foolishly thought, “We Woodford kids are just a bit better than the kids down the block! But nothing could have been further from the truth! “For there is no difference, for all have sinned!” Romans 3:22,23
So the night when I was 11 and professed to be saved, I’d been afraid of hell but had not been willing to acknowledge my sinfulness!
Since the 21st of November,1981, (my spiritual birthday) I’ve often said that I didn’t learn (intellectually) any truth that night that I didn’t know before. But I did come to know in my spirit at least two things:
(1) I learned what it was to finally have peace with God resting on what the Lord Jesus did for me, and
(2) I learned what a vast difference there is between having religion and knowing Christ!

After all those years that I had tried to deal with my doubts by thinking… “ I couldn’t have done all the things I’ve done and not be saved”… I now realized that I had been resting for assurance in my doing rather than in what the Lord Jesus had already done for me!

I am so very thankful to God for giving His own Son to die in my place and I have often thanked the Lord for Helen Ferguson (now Helen Allen) whose courage and honesty was used by the Lord to awaken me to acknowledge my own need of the Saviour!

(I’ve been in touch recently with Helen and her husband , Steve, and look forward to soon being able to share with you Helen’s own story of how she came to Christ some years after I did.)