Religious but not Regenerated, William Lawson

Born to parents from different denominations in a small, modest community in Gary, Indiana, I grew up in a typical middle-class neighborhood, exposed to both a fundamental and formal Christian religion. At age eight I received my first Bible for memorizing the names of all sixty-six books. As a boy I participated regularly in strict worship services. I considered myself a good Christian young man.

In the late 1950s, at the age of sixteen, I was approached one day by my Sunday School teacher who took a liking to me. With keen perception concerning the status of my soul, he realized that I lacked a personal and saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. A simple prayer a few moments later inviting the Lord into my heart brought tears of joy and an overwhelming flood of God's love into me. I was saved and I knew it well.

The fire of God's love and the desire to see all my high school friends and classmates experience the same thing became my one compelling purpose. Relentlessly, I shared my faith in Christ, but with a hellfire and brimstone attitude that brought nothing to me but rejection, embarrassment, and shunning. A diligent National Honor Society student, I graduated from high school in the top ten percent of my class, went on to college in Missouri with a music scholarship, and began to pursue a career in languages, all but turning my back on anything that smacked of the Christian religion.

At the age of 25, I found myself with tens of thousands of other disillusioned youths in “the promised land” of California in 1968. Having finished a four-year stint in the US Air Force, I transferred to UCLA. My younger brother had just been discharged from the Air Force too. After dabbling in rock concerts, the Hollywood Bowl, drag racing, and a host of other amusements, together we launched out into the sea of southern California religious smorgasbord. We followed leads, solicited advice, and delved into a host of Christian activities. We tried nearly everything to satisfy the longing deep within for the rich enjoyment of Christ. We attended the denomination we were raised in hoping to relive the past but to no avail. We dabbled in another denomination until the pastor gave a sermon one Sunday on Adam and Eve, leaving it up to the congregation to decide whether it was a myth, a mere story, a fictitious account, or symbolic. We never went back. I attended a small Christian church in Sierra Madre for a few weeks until the preacher publicly humiliated a young Christian couple during a Christian group therapy session. I watched the offended couple walk out in disgust. We visited rallies with Christian folk-singing and the like. It was good but the God who came into me eight years earlier was not at peace within me.

We listened to Kathryn Kuhlman on stage at a faith-healing meeting in downtown Los Angeles, watched people be “slain in the Spirit” by her, and saw throngs of wheelchairs at each side of the stage filled with those hoping to be healed. We attended a Billy Graham crusade in Anaheim in 1969. It was truly inspiring, but I knew deep inside that I was already saved. I did not want another altar call, another time of repentance, a slip back into the world, and then another altar call. I was fed up and ready to abandon forever the search for a meaningful Christian walk.

In late 1969, at a point in my life when I was at the brink of giving up on finding reality in my Christian life, by chance I happened upon a simple meeting of Christians in downtown Los Angeles on a Sunday morning. As I walked to the entrance, ahead of me was a full-suited gentleman followed by a shabbily-dressed hippie. Could these two different people possibly attend the same church? The meeting was glorious. It was filled with the most joyous and living Christians that I had ever met. The Bible was opened up in a way that I could never dream. The believers took me next door for lunch and I knew that I was home at last and forever.

A few weeks later a small Chinese man rose up one Sunday and delivered a message from the Bible in broken English. I was an immature twenty-five year old back-slidden believer, a prodigal son wasting my resources in a hodge-podge of Christian confusion, dead doctrines, sectarianism, unscriptural practices, and backbiting. That message changed the course of my Christian life. I learned in one short hour that God's complete salvation for man is to regenerate his human spirit, transform his soul, and transfigure his body (John 3:6; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Romans 8:30). God was speaking through this man to bring me back to my first love, Christ. I saw in this speaker no self, no boasting, and no pride--simply a man with a treasure, the Christ of glory, in an earthen vessel. What a freedom from the shackles of religion! For twenty-five years I had only known of a salvation from hell and altar calls for rededication. Now a new realm of Christian life experience and enjoyment of Christ was made available to me through the ministry of Witness Lee.

I entered into a church life that was seven days a week, not the Sunday morning religion of my past. There was fellowship, incredible singing, testifying, gospel outreaches, unforgettable meetings, and the genuine love for all the brothers and sisters in Christ regardless of their background and religious convictions. We loved Christ, drank Christ, ate Christ, breathed Christ, and lived Christ (1 John 4:19; John 7:37, 6:57, 20:22; Colossians 3:4). No ministry that I had been involved in had ever brought me to love Christ, to appreciate Christ, to treasure His Word, as this ministry. No Christian teacher ever told me to pray for guidance like this man. No one told me before that I have to seek the leading of the Head, Christ, and His Body in fellowship (Ephesians 4:15-16). Meeting after meeting, as light and truth poured forth from an opened Bible, I was released from the bondage of denominationalism, deadness, legalism, and lifeless doctrine.

Through this rich ministry and in the practical church life, I have been enjoying and experiencing the unsearchable riches of Christ for thirty years. My Christian life and family life have been greatly blessed. My wife and I have fully enjoyed the glorious church life in the local churches. Our three grown children all love the Lord and are pursuing the Lord in the same ministry. God's eternal plan and purpose have been opened up to us. I no longer desire a sweet bye and bye in heaven some day. Day by day I am living an ordinary life in the divine dispensing of the divine Trinity and being built up with other believers in Christ into the organic Body of Christ consummating in the New Jerusalem.