CONVERSION, EXAMPLE OF

Luis Palau tells of a woman in Peru whose life was radically transformed by the power of Christ. Rosario was her name. She was a terrorist, a brute of a woman who was an expert in several martial arts. In her terrorist activities she had killed twelve policemen. When Luis conducted a crusade in Lima, she learned of it and, being incensed at the message of the gospel, made her way to the stadium to kill Luis. Inside the stadium, as she contemplated how to get to him, she began to listen to the message he preached on hell. She fell under conviction for her sins and embraced Christ as her Savior. Ten years later, Luis met this convert for the first time. She had by then assisted in the planting of five churches; was a vibrant, active witness and worker in the church; and had founded an orphanage that houses over one thousand children.252

The discovery of Christ and the company of Christ is the key to happiness. There was a Japanese criminal called Tockichi Ishii. He was utterly and bestially pitiless. He had brutally and callously murdered men, women, and children in his career of crime. He was captured and imprisoned. Two Canadian ladies visited the prison. He could not be induced even to speak; he only glowered at them with the face of a wild beast. When they left, they left with him a copy of the Bible in the faint hope that he might read it. He read it, and the story of the crucifixion made him a changed man. Later, when the jailer came to lead the doomed man to the scaffold, he found not the surly, hardened brute he expected, but a smiling, radiant man, for Ishii, the murderer, had been born again. The mark of his rebirth was a smiling radiance. The life that is lived in Christ cannot be lived other than in joy. (From William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark, [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975].)253

Augustine was in Milan when God touched his heart and changed his life. He then left his former life of license (he even had an illegitimate son). When he returned home, his former girl friend called to him: “Augustine, Augustine, it is I.” He turned and said: “Yes, but it is not I.”254