A Personal Testimony Regarding
The Founding of This Church
The pastor’s testimony of the events leading to the founding of this church is as follows:
I became a Christian in 1975 (please read my testimony in “My Greatest Discovery“). My wife Terri and I met at a notable Christian university in 1982. I had been saved for only a few years at that time, and Terri had supposedly come to the school already saved, but having been what she thought was “backslidden” for a number of years. After she arrived, she went forward in a typical evangelistic service where an invitation was given for those who wanted to “get right with God.” For the next few years, she attended school to prepare for some sort of “Christian service.”
When I met her, she was everything that, in my mind, appeared to be “on fire,” talking about the Lord all the time, reading her Bible every day, and writing home telling her family what the Lord had done for her. I was looking for a Christian girl who loved the Lord, and so we were married and, shortly after, moved to another state where we both taught in a Bible college for four years, then moved to New Hampshire where I was interested in helping someone start a church in New England.
After a short time, around 1991, Terri began teaching in the public school, where she remained for the next several years while we were going through those “difficult years” of young children with both of us busy trying to “make ends meet,” as is so often the case. During those years, both of us were active in our large “Bible-preaching” church, singing in the choir, teaching Sunday School, Junior church, nursery duty, cleaning the church, being involved in “revival meetings,” “men’s fellowships,” “ladies fellowships,” missions conferences, etc., while I taught part-time in the Christian School. I had always been taught that this was what “serving the Lord” meant, but all the while, our life was so busy that I failed to notice how cool Terri’s spiritual life had become, though she continued to teach biblical concepts to our children and talk a spiritual talk to some extent.
Everything seemed to be going fine until one day I received a call from the counseling pastor of the church telling me that Terri had come in for counseling and that, to make a long story short, I suddenly discovered that my wife was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I was shocked and broken hearted, and over the next year and a half tried to work with Terri and the counselor to try to make everything right again. During that time, the Lord brought me through the fire but did a great work in my heart.
The counselor during that time tried every idea he knew or could get advice on, quoted every relevant passage of Scripture to her, pleaded with her and spent over a hundred hours with her, but every gain seemed to be only temporary (although she continued to go to counseling willingly, sometimes even desperately).
After about a year and a half, one day this counsellor said to her that she did not respond to his counelling like a “normal Christian.” She was very troubled by that comment. Until that time, in view of everything we had been taught about salvation, she had never seriously doubted it, nor had I, nor had the counselor. But by God’s grace, she realized at that point that she had been deceived, and had not been a true Christian, for all of those years. The next day, sitting alone in her chair and pondering the book of First John, she was gloriously saved in an instant. (Please read her testimony, “I Was Deceived.”) She has been a completely new creation ever since.
But after this experience, the one question that kept haunting us was, “If Terri sat in church lost all those years, how many others must there be?” We believed then, and even more so now, that the answer is, “Many.” And I must point out that during the entire period leading up to Terri’s salvation, not one of our many pastors, pastor’s wives, Christian friends, or family, all of whom knew of Terri’s problems, ever thought to make the suggestion that perhaps she wasn’t saved. This is not an indictment of any particular people or church. It is a commentary on the doctrine that almost all “Bible” churches today are teaching.
As we observed and pondered these things, I did voluminous reading on the topic of salvation. We read John MacArthur’s books on that topic (The Gospel According to Jesus, Saved Without a Doubt, Hard to Believe, etc.), and found them to be in complete agreement with the position we were coming to. I then came upon Studies on Saving Faith by A.W. Pink, and though I struggled with a few statements in it, I found it to be a more profound discussion on the topic of salvation than anything I had seen up until that time.
As I read further back in church history, I came to realize that most of our most revered preachers of the past, until at least the late 19th century, took the position we were coming to as a matter of fact – they assumed Christians loved God and His Word, were separated from the world, and lived in a general pattern of obedience to His commandments and victory over sin, and if they weren’t, they probably were not in the faith. We have also found that most of these men had a firm belief in the sovereigny of God, and consequently, of the power of the salvation that only HE can accomplish. We are not followers of men, but reading a broad spectrum of historical writings has helped us to stand back from our present age and put things in perspective.
Since that time, I have found that we are not alone in these beliefs, but we believe these important doctrines are much neglected today and need to be revived. Such is the mission of Faith Bible Church. In a day when the mirth and frivolity of the world has infected many, perhaps most, of our local churches, the true work of the church remains serious, for God does not make light of sin, and He is not in the entertaining business. Jesus did not charm the masses under the guise of “a merry heart doeth good like a medicine”; He simply told them the truth about the need of their souls, and offered Himself as their only source of salvation. If we are to be the salt of the earth in a sinful world, we must do the same. This is the goal and purpose of Faith Bible Church. (For further reading on the duties and functions of the Biblical, New Testament church, please read the article on this site entitled, “What is the Church in the Bible?“
-Keith Comparetto, pastor