My Testimony

What is written here is the same as it is in Book I except for some modifications that over two decades later seem worthy of adding.

How can I tell you how Jesus first came into my life? In retrospect, I realize that He was with me always, guiding me, protecting me and waiting hopefully for me to acknowledge Him, and to hear His gentle knock at the door of my heart. He’s been with me since the day I was born. However it was only in the December of my life that I realized this.

From a human perspective, you could say, that after 68 years of this one-sided patient and loving relationship, God decided it was time to really get my attention. On November 19, 1994 I was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer. The biopsy report said that it was the most aggressive and rapidly growing type.

The chief oncologist at Dana Faber as well as those at Mass General and Tufts Medical Center, all in Boston, MA told me and my family that it was too far advanced and too late for any kind of treatment. They estimated that I had six months, maybe twelve at the most to live.

Rather than just wait to die I chose to investigate alternatives and to self-treat through diet, nutrition, minerals, supplements, and every other possible modality that conventional medicine called quackery, but which I now know can cure, rather than simply treat symptoms of degenerative diseases. While I didn’t know it at the time, it was Godly motivated and directed.

For most of the next 18 months, the cancer continued to grow and spread to other areas causing considerable inconveniences, bleeding, pain, and much sleep deprivation. However, a very strange thing was also happening. Because of these efforts, I was actually able to go to work feeling stronger and healthier most days. Again of course I didn’t know it then, but this was Jesus setting up the stage for the main event. However, toward the end of the ordeal, when the cancer had nearly filled my bladder causing kidney failure, I went back to the oncologist who originally discovered the cancer, and he removed enough of it to be able to insert a stint into one of my kidneys.

To make a long story short….. three months later, when he went back for the periodic stint replacement, he found, to his utter astonishment, that there was not a trace of cancer anywhere, and except for some scar tissue, all areas where the cancer had been, were normal in size and appearance. It was as if the cancer had never occurred. I am still cancer free in 2016. I can now say “Praise God,” but I was unable to at the time.

You might ask what does this gory cancer story have to do with my testimony. The importance is two-fold. First, it provides a peek into how our Lord might choose to work in any of us, and second, it established the foundation for the ministry to which He led me.

During this entire ordeal, it never entered my mind to pray or to beg God for mercy, or even think about where I was going when my life was over. I always knew that there was a Creator God. But I didn’t believe that He got involved in any of my problems, that it was only my own initiative, my own strength and my own effort that could achieve anything. Self-reliance was my real god and had been all my life. Surely, in my mind, it was this self effort that had caused my healing.

For the next 2 to 3 months, I strutted around as a peacock proud of my achievement, because and how I had done better than the best minds in medicine! I felt completely full of myself, because I alone had delayed death and became younger, stronger and healthier than I had been 10 years earlier. I was ready to re-conquer the earth!

I don’t know how it happened. It was not a thunderous, or in any way memorable event. As I look back, it can probably be best expressed as a feeling of sorts that someone was tapping me on my shoulder, beckoning me to turn around.
Again to shorten the story, it was Jesus who turned me around, and straightened me out. I finally got it into my head that it was not me, but He who guided me through that painful maze, and that it was He, who, at the end of it, and with one masterful stroke, had removed the cancer and restored my health.

Pride was soon replaced by humility, gratitude and faith as my Savior finally penetrated my heart. That’s when I knew that my life was His, that He had extended it for a purpose, and that He was to be in charge of it from then on, forever.
Somehow He led me to the Bible and to the teachings of several great Bible scholars. Between these, and the result of His love, directed through me, I developed an insatiable hunger for His Word, and a compelling need to share its great wonders with others through my own writings. He also made certain that I not waste the blessing of the cancer ordeal, but instead that I should continue to study healing methods so that I could help every hurting person He would send to me.

This study period went on for about three years, for He had put it into my heart, that if I was to be an effective servant, I must really know my Lord, know His word and know how to deal with what He expected of me.

During this whole period, I never even thought to venture out into the Christian world. I don’t believe that I had ever met a real Christian.

I know that Jesus wanted me to first become well-grounded in faith, and to have a firm foundation in His Word before I ought to be exposed to all of the false and deceptive teaching, and apostasy which dominates much of what today is called Christianity. Then about three years later He removed me from my cocoon, and eventually led me to a Christian body.

I see now how my dear Jesus purchased me with His love and with His blood. He purchased me twice. First, my body, then, my soul. Now my service to Him, as He has ordained it, is also two-fold. It is to help others physically as well as spiritually. God calls each of us, as He has called me, for specific purposes. It took a while, but I finally realized that the cancer had been a blessing, because of all that necessarily flowed from the ordeal. Were I to suffer the very worst portion of that ordeal continually for the rest of my life, I would consider it of little consequence as compared with what Jesus did for me after He removed the cancer.

I must tell you, I am still among the most blessed persons to have ever live. Not only has He, my Lord, extended my life, saved my soul, and given me a purpose, but he has also allowed me to continue working in my life long profession as an engineer, and to continue sharing this extended life with my loving family and with some very dear brothers and sisters in the faith. He has also given me the blessed opportunity to teach His word and to compose these essays which follow. How many more blessings could possibly be packed into such a low and unworthy soul?
In essence: My life is His, and He is my life.

Much, much more could be said about what my blessed Lord has done in my life. Some small portion can be found in what this volume is all about, and also on a website called www.christianmusings.com. On this website can also be found several papers related to my physical journey, along with some of my opinions on how healing and health can be achieved.

May God bless you, the reader, as much as He has blessed me!