I was born in Montreal, the largest city in Canada at that time, the population being mostly French speaking Roman Catholics.
When I was in high school my history teacher said “an amazing thing has happened, the Jews have their own homeland after two thousand years of being scattered throughout the world”. I did not understand the great significance of this at the time, but since my teacher was so excited about it, I put it in the back of my mind.
Several years later, when in my late teens I was turning the dial on the radio, not looking for anything in particular, I came across a Baptist preacher who said “Jesus is coming back to the earth again” and the proof he gave was that Israel had become a nation in 1948 (Ezekiel 37:21,22). Immediately my mind went back to my history teacher. Never in my life had I heard that Jesus was to return to this earth to establish the Kingdom of God from Jerusalem, because I had been taught that I was going to heaven when I died.
I remembered the next week to tune into the same radio station and learned that the preacher was from a Baptist church in downtown Montreal. I was determined to go and find out more, although I had to travel the long trip by streetcar. The leader of the young people was enthusiastic. He urged me to join their young people’s group which I did, and began discussions with them about the Bible.
One day I was thumbing through the small local newspaper which came to our house. By God’s grace I came across an advertisement offering a free magazine on prophecy which was inserted by “The Christadelphians.” I couldn’t get enough of the Bible and this subject fascinated me. I asked the Baptist preacher if he thought it would be all right for me to read the magazine. Although he had never heard of Christadelphians, he said he thought it would be all right. So I received the magazine, which was called the “Dawn”, and it had various articles with some on prophecy. On the back of the magazine it advertised a publication called “Anastasis” by John Thomas, MD, but I had to send away to London, England for that. A terrible feeling came over me as I thought that the only Christadelphians may be over there in England and perhaps there were very few in Canada or elsewhere. No member of my family had ever heard of them, yet my Mother said that my Grandmother must have taken her to every church in Ottawa, Ontario.
A friend John Morrison of that Baptist Church asked me to visit a Seventh Day Adventist he knew, who was familiar with Bible prophecy. I met him and his wife but I was disappointed when he said that Israel was not fulfilling Bible prophecy today. He tried to evade the many scriptures that I quoted and like the Jehovah Witnesses today, applied them to his own church! (This is an impossible interpretation, but many so called Christian denominations try such hoodwinking)
Sometime later, while playing tennis, I got into a discussion with my Baptist friends concerning the state of the dead. I realized the Bible did not teach heaven going, but they brought up arguments that I was unable to answer. I prayed to God asking for help. A day or two later I received another issue of the “Dawn” magazine and a pamphlet on the mortality of man by Robert Roberts. It gave me the Bible answers. I noticed a return address and decided to look the name up in the telephone book. I called the number and asked Mr. Harry Baines if the Christadelphians had a church and was told they were just a small group meeting in the Montreal YWCA. I attended and found there were about a dozen of mostly older members. What could I think or do? These people, the Christadelphians, taught exactly what I was already reading in my Bible.
Thanks be our Heavenly Father, within four months I was baptized into Christ, to put on Christ (Galatians 3:27) for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16).
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One