When I was a child, I had rheumatic fever five times. The fifth time it was accompanied by heart failure. I had a heart murmur and was out of school for five years.

My mother used to go down to the public library and bring me a stack of books to read. There was nothing else to do for sixteen hours a day. When I had finished those books, she would go back and get another stack. During this time my grandmother gave me a King James Bible without notes. It occurred to me, “You read all these books; why don’t you read the Bible?” I had no answer to that. So I started to read the Bible, beginning in Genesis. I soon got bogged down in the “begats” and gave up. The thought came to me, “You read other books from cover to cover; you started this one, but you didn’t finish. Why?” I had no answer to that either. So I started a daily program of reading the Bible and stuck with it.

There was much that I did not understand, but I did see a Person, a great Deliverer, Who was prophesied again and again. (In the Gospels, I saw that Matthew portrayed the Lord Jesus as doing many things “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets.” I knew that was true; I had just read those prophecies. In Acts, I saw the apostles proclaiming Christ as the Savior from sin, the Redeemer of His people.

When I got to Romans, the Holy Spirit really convicted my heart. I saw that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). I knew that meant me. I saw that “the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Rom. 7:19). I knew that described my condition. Paul cried out the question that I had: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24).

In the next verse he gave the answer: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7:25). I knew I needed Him. So I climbed out of bed, kneeled down, and begged God to save me “through Jesus Christ.”

It was all done in a moment on January 9, 1946. He changed my heart, my thoughts, my life. From that day to the present I have searched the Scriptures with a consuming passion. I know that the Bible is a supernatural Book. It is God’s holy Word. No other book can touch the heart with such convicting power. May you turn to the Lord through His Word.

—Pastor Custer