I am sure that some who lived in the days of our Lord’s visitation to earth, and many who heard the gospel from the apostles and the faithful preachers who followed them, could tell you the exact day they met the risen Redeemer and bowed to His sovereign rule. I have never felt that it was important for a person to be able to tell when he was saved, but rather that he be able now to state he has experienced repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, that now he is looking to Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King and is now resting in His righteousness and effectual sin-offering.

Too often men and women like to establish a time of conversion and an experience, in order to have something to look back upon for comfort and assurance. This is dangerous! We are not to look to anything nor to anyone but Christ for our hope, our assurance, and our comfort. Paul said something about “forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before,” and, “looking unto the Lord Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.”

Most of us came through the confusion, errors, and false professions of modern fundamentalism and had so much to unlearn, so many false foundations which had to be destroyed, that it is difficult to set an exact hour when our eyes were turned totally from our idols of religion to our living Lord—when our hearts were weaned from the pride of our religious works and professions and brought to rest in Him alone! This is the unaided work of the Spirit of God and the Word of God; and this is a living union which shall never be dissolved. This is accomplished when sinners hear the gospel of God’s grace and glory, for the Gospel is God’s power unto salvation and it pleased God to use the preaching of that Gospel to save.

Henry Mahan