The God of All Grace

Born in Ardnamurchan, Argyll, in 1933, Douglas MacMillan was brought up in a Christian family of crofters. At school he rejected Christianity under the influence of communism and worldliness. However, he was destined to become a powerful preacher and professor of church history at the Free Church College. Here is something of his conversion story which he wrote just before his death in 1991.

Something happened one night in the early springtime of the final year of my mother's life. My brother and I had been out at a ceilidh and dance, singing and playing accordions in a village about 35 miles away. We got home in the wee small hours of the morning - just as a new day was beginning to break. I opened the back door of our house and immediately heard a strange, but beautiful sound. It was my mother's voice. She had had some training in voice production when young and here she was now, just months before her death and at a time when her days were often filled with great pain, awake in the middle of the night with the stress of her illness, and my father sitting with her, softly singing a glorious testimony of faith in the verses of one of her favourite Psalms:

I shall not die, but live, and shall
The works of God discover;
The Lord hath me chastised sore,
But not to death giv'n over.

O set ye open unto me
The gates of righteousness;
Then will I enter into them,
And I the Lord will bless.

She was singing the second verse just as my hand was on the handle of the back door. I was so overcome I could not go in. I went away up into the hills to cry. Here I was, full of youthfulness and with everything opening out before me, and there she was, so weak and in such pain, yet singing with triumph about what was opening out before her. There was something about that, and about her whole life, that touched even my hard heart.

Reading the Bible

Three months later, one hot day in July, I was in my mother's room and she asked me to read a few verses for her from the Bible.
'Where would you like me to read?'
'In John chapter 14.'
I took up the Bible and began to read: 'Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.'
'That's enough.'
'But, Mam, would you not like me to read a bit more? I could read the whole chapter.' (I was actually feeling quite proud that I could do this for mother.)
But she said: 'No, Douglas, that's enough. That's everything.' Then she turned to me and said: 'Douglas, there is something I want to say to you. I may never talk to you again. In a short time I am going to be with Jesus. But I want to ask you: 'Will you meet me there?''
Four days later, she died. So seven days after that last conversation, I was standing beside my mother's grave. It was as if I could hear her voice ringing in my ears: 'Will I meet you in heaven?'. I knew that, if there was a heaven, I was not walking on the road that led to it. I felt I had to harden my heart against my mother's appeal, and I did.

Were you in church?

However, there were many things which began to get to me and leave me very uneasy with my life and outlook. For example, in my work as a shepherd, I was closely in touch with nature. Especially in lambing time I had to get up when it was dark and climb the hills as day was dawning. From the height of the mountains behind our house, the beauty of nature was staggering. I could not get the question out of my head: 'Where did all this come from?'.
To cut a long story short, six or seven years of atheism came to an end as I found it actually easier to accept the existence of God than to go on believing that all this beauty and order came from nothing.
But now a new struggle started. What if the God who made the world was the same God as my parents believed in? What if the Bible was true? What if there was a heaven and a hell? I remember that, as I was out drinking one evening, I was suddenly overcome by the seriousness of a question from which I could not escape. What if all I had been taught about the Bible was One night, when I was in a local pub, a man asked me: 'Douglas, were you in church last Sunday?'
I said: 'No - not me! These fellows just put me to sleep.'
A week later, I was playing my accordion at a dance. I got up to dance with a girl and, as we moved round the floor together, she suddenly asked me: 'Douglas, were you in church last Sun-day?'. I was beginning to feel persecuted! But she went on: 'There's a wonderful young preacher. You must go and hear him.' I'll not repeat what I said to her.

The mask removed

My older brother used to drive my father to the midweek service in the church six or seven miles away. But one Wednesday around that time, my brother was away at a cattle sale and I got the job of driving my father to the church. I intended, while he was in the church, going to the pub for a drink and then going to visit a girl. However, as we came near to the church I had an idea. I asked my father: 'Who will be preaching tonight? Is it that young preacher?'
'Yes.'
I thought: 'This is my chance to find out what they are all talking about.' I went in with my father, but as soon as I sat down in the church amongst these old people I began to wonder if I was going mad.
Then the door behind the pulpit opened and I got quite a shock. I thought that all preachers were old men, ready to crumble and fall into the grave. But this young man was just a little older than I was myself. He looked as if he had a broken nose.
At first I was disappointed when he began to speak. His voice was low, as if he was afraid of all the old ladies in black. His text was Revelation 3.17-18. He described what he found in the text - the spectacle of a soul worshipping itself. What took my breath away was that he gave an exact description of me, and of my life. I was living for myself, for pleasure and for what I could accomplish. I drank, I enjoyed the company of the lassies, but there were also hard ambitions which had taken over my life. I lived for money; I used to do the round of the Highland Games, and often featured in the prize lists for the 'Heavy Events'.
But, as I listened to the preacher in that quiet country church, all these things lost their dazzle. What was the point in giving over my life to these things? The mask was being removed from my life.
I began to wonder: 'Did my old man tell this preacher about me? But no; I did not even know myself I would be listening to this until I stopped at the door.'

Will I stop?

I was not converted that night, though I promised the preacher that I would come to the church again. It was three weeks before I saw him. I was driving along beside the sea in the old lorry we used at the farm when I spotted him walking beside the road, carrying a Calor gas cylinder. He had about a mile to go yet. I said to myself: 'Will I stop, or will I go roaring past him? If I give him a lift, he'll ask me why I haven't been back in church.' In the end, I stopped and said quite roughly to him: 'Want a lift, Jock?'. He wanted a lift all right. He threw the cylinder in the back and climbed up beside me. Just as I thought, the first thing he said to me was: 'You never came back to church.'
'No - I've been busy.'
'You are a liar.'
'That's terrible for a preacher to say.'
'But you are a liar, it wasn't because you were busy - am I right?'
'I suppose you are.'
He shouted, above the sound of the old engine: 'You know what I think? I think you are running scared. I think you are scared that you will get converted.'
'No, I am not scared. Actually, I would like to be converted, but I don't think I can be.'
'What do you mean?'
'Well, since that night, I have asked God two or three times to convert me and nothing has happened.'
By this time we had reached where he was staying. He said: 'Why don't you come in?'.

It can't be that simple!

I went in with him, and he talked to me as no-one had ever talked before. Then he said to me: 'If you are really serious about this, what about going down on your knees and we will ask God to change you.' I wasn't very keen. I was embarrassed, but then I said to myself: 'I want this if I can get it,' so I went down on my knees. At first he wanted me to pray, but there was no way I was going to do that with him there. I said: 'You are the one who is paid to do the praying. You pray!'
He began to talk to God as if he really knew him and as he continued he quoted John 3.16: 'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.' I had known these words all my life, but as he quoted them it was as if someone drew aside curtains so that light came into a dark room. I saw that Christ had finished all that was necessary for my salvation. I didn't have to do anything to save my soul. I got a hold of the preacher's arm and said: 'Say that again.'
He stared at me. 'Say what again?'
'That bit about God loving the world: say that again.'
He repeated the text.
I said: 'Does that mean that, if I really believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that he died on the Cross at Calvary to save us from our sins, and trust him because of that, I will be saved?'
He said: 'Yes - that's just what it means.'
I said: 'It can't be as simple as that!'
But, although I was arguing like that, I felt I was understanding the way of salvation for the first time in my life. What I had known in one way for so long now seemed so new! And as I believed it for the first time, a great peace began to flood into my heart, and a stillness came over me.

Counting the cost

Then I thought: 'That's all right, but you know how a Christian is supposed to live.' I began thinking of all the things I would have to stop. He saw my face changing and asked: 'What's wrong now?'
I said: 'I don't think I could live like a Christian. I'd have to give up too much.'
'Listen, Douglas,' he said. 'You think through everything you feel you would have to give up. Think about it very carefully.' Then he said: 'In this hand (holding out his right hand), I'll give you everything you are afraid of losing; and in this hand (holding out his left hand), I'll give you Christ.'
He didn't make it easy for me. I'm sure I must have sat there for ten minutes (he said afterwards it felt like an eternity) thinking deeply about all that was involved. Then at last I absolutely knew which one I had to take. I said: 'If I can really have Christ as my Saviour, I'll take him.' As soon as I had said that, my heart was filled with joy and love.
Then I suddenly remembered my father. I had dropped him off in the village at two o'clock. He was going to collect his pension and visit a friend, and I was to have picked him up at four o'clock. By this time it was twenty past seven. I said to the preacher: 'Man, I've forgotten my old man. He has been waiting on me for three and a half hours.'
I jumped into the old lorry and went roaring off back to the little bungalow where my father had said he would be. The lady came to the door and let me in. I hurried ahead of her into the living room. My father was sitting opposite the door. As soon as I came in, he got up, crossed the room, took me in his arms and said: 'Douglas, thank God.'
'Why?'
'You've been converted.'
'How do you know?'
'I could see in your face as soon as you came in the door that my prayers had been answered.'