From the Gutter to Christ Pastor Willie Mullan’s Testimony

The Gospel of John, chapter 9, tells of the man who had been blind from birth. After the Lord Jesus opened his eyes, the people who had known him asked a wonderful question:

“How were thine eyes opened?”

And he gave them a wonderful answer:

“A man that is called Jesus.”

You see, the answer to the whole thing was not a party. It wasn’t a place, and it most certainly wasn’t a pilgrimage. This wonderful thing was done by a Person—a Man called Jesus!

That’s who did it.

But the man went further. He said:

“A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes.”

He didn’t only talk about the Person; he talked about the work that the Person had done for him.

Then he went further still:

“A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight.”

He spoke about the Person, the Person’s work for him, and the Person’s words to him.

That is what I want to tell you about: the Person who has done so much for me, the work that He accomplished at Calvary whereby I am free, and His Word that makes me absolutely sure about what I am talking about.

In giving what has so often been termed “my life story,” I want to make two things perfectly clear.

First, if everything surrounding my coming to know the Saviour does not tally exactly with everything surrounding your coming to know the Saviour, don’t let that upset you.

There are many ways that lead a person to Christ, but only Christ leads to God.

Think of Noah’s Ark. There was one door into the Ark—one door and only one. The animals came from different directions. The lion might leave the darkness of the jungle and find its pathway to the door. The eagle might leave its perch in the heavens and come another way.

They came by different ways, but salvation was found only through the door.

So, there may be many different circumstances that bring sinners to Christ, but only Christ leads us to God.

Second, the whole desire of my heart in telling this story is to glorify my Saviour.

I shall use every faculty I have, every ounce of strength, and every bit of ability that God has given me to one end:

That I shall speak well of my Master.

The Youngest of Seventeen

I’m sure I’ll shock some of you when I say that I was the youngest of a family of seventeen.

There were sixteen boys and one girl!

It was a wonderful thing belonging to a family of seventeen. I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen seventeen knives all dabbing at once at one quarter-pound of butter!

And there’s one thing you learn when you get sixteen big fellows around a table: you never grumble about your dinner, because if you take time to grumble, the dinner will be over!

My father was a Sergeant Major in the old Ulster Volunteers. With many another Ulsterman, he lost his life at the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916.

That left my mother with a tremendous burden: seventeen children, a war raging, and very little to live on.

But I want to say something about my mother.

She was a little woman, only about four feet six inches tall, but she was a godly woman.

No matter where we were, we had to be home by ten o’clock at night. When the last one came through the door, she would kneel on the tiles by the fire, and we would all kneel with her.

She prayed for us one by one.

She never missed any.

And because I was the youngest, she prayed for me last.

I can still remember her wavering old voice:

“Lord, bless Willie. Someday save him and make him a man of God.”

My First Drink

Although I had a godly mother and was reared in that atmosphere, I became the black sheep of the family.

When I was 15 years old, two men much older than I was took me into a pub for my first drink.

I can still remember standing there, just a lad of 15, drinking that alcohol.

And I wanted to go back.

Before I was 16, I was a confirmed drinker.

Every halfpenny I found—or stole—I spent on drink. Many times I would come home drunk and fall through the door. My brothers, who did not live that way, would fight with me, while my dear mother tried to defend me.

Yet it was her heart that I was breaking most.

When I was just 16 years and one month old, my mother suffered a seizure while I was in the house.

I caught her and laid her down on the couch.

I knew she was dying.

I can remember her last breaths as she looked upward and spoke to her Saviour. I can see her white face even now as she praised Him and went to be with Him.

I was a foolish boy, but I knew one thing:

I had lost one of the greatest friends I would ever have.

Nobody cared for me like my mother.

I stood looking at her and wept. Then I put my hand upon her brow and said:

“Mother, I make this promise just now: I will never be drunk again.”

I meant it.

I was sincere.

And two hours later, I was stupidly drunk.

I Could Not Set Myself Free

Many times I made up my mind that I would get rid of this cursed thing.

But it defeated me.

It had gripped me.

It mastered me.

I was a defeated man.

Don’t be too quick to scold a poor fellow in that condition. You have never stood in his shoes. You have never seen things through his eyes.

You can curse him, batter him, scold him, and scorn him, but that won’t help him.

He is gripped.

He is mastered.

He is defeated.

But if you start to pray for him, you might get somewhere.

After my mother’s funeral, my brothers discussed what they were going to do with me. They had families of their own and understandably did not want to bring a drunken, rebellious 16-year-old boy into their homes.

At 16, however, I thought I was a big fellow.

I picked up my coat, put it over my arm, and walked through the door.

That was the last time I saw the inside of a home for the next three and a half years.

I became a tramp.

I begged in the streets.

At times I had no shoes on my feet. I was only sixteen and a half, walking barefoot and begging for pennies.

And when I got them, I drank them away.

Every day took me deeper.

Deeper.

And deeper.

Three and a half years of darkness, mud, misery, and sin became my awful portion.

A Den of Iniquity

When I was nearly 20, I returned to the town where I had been reared.

I walked beneath the railway arch with a beard on my face, an old torn shirt on my back, and shoes with practically no soles beneath them.

Boys I had gone to school with hardly recognized me.

I was ashamed even to walk down the main street, so I turned into an alley.

There I found an empty, tumbledown house. A little woman named Mrs. Orr owned it, and I asked if I could live there.

She gave me the key.

The place consisted of a kitchen, a room, and an upstairs that was almost falling down. Rain came through the roof, and you could count the stars through the slates.

With about my last fourpence, I bought a gas mantle.

That was all the furniture I had!

But that tumbledown shack soon became a den of iniquity.

Men came there to gamble all day and drink all night.

I would wake in the morning with one drunken man beneath the stairs, another in the hall, another in the kitchen, and others lying around the house.

That was my life.

A Little Gospel Notice

Then one evening, while we were sitting around the card table, I heard a little noise at the door.

Underneath the door came a small white notice.

I picked it up.

It announced a Gospel Mission at the Baptist Church in Newtownards. Dr. Tocher of Templemore Hall was to preach.

I screwed the notice up and threw it down.

“It doesn’t really matter,” I told the other fellows. “It’s only a Gospel Mission. It doesn’t concern us.”

And we continued drinking and gambling.

Early the next morning, I awoke from a drunken sleep and went outside.

As I turned the corner, I almost bumped into a young man on his way to work. I knew him. He often stood alone in the streets with his Bible and preached.

I thought he was a fool.

But remembering the Gospel notice, I said, “I see you’re going to have a Mission at the Baptist Church.”

“Yes,” he said.

“You know,” I replied, though I had no intention of doing it, “I was thinking about coming along some night.”

His eyes nearly popped out of his head!

Then he said:

“Well, if you’re thinking of coming, I’ll come up for you. I’ll go down with you, and I’ll sit with you.”

Now it was my turn to nearly faint!

But the way he said it challenged me.

So I promised to go.

And I kept my promise.

The Sermon I Thought Was Foolish

I sat in the back seat of the Baptist church.

The preacher read from Revelation about the kings of the earth, the great men, the mighty men, the bondmen, and the free men crying for the mountains and rocks to fall upon them and hide them from the face of Him who sat upon the throne and from “the wrath of the Lamb.”

He preached about the coming judgment of God.

I listened carefully.

And when I left, I thought he was one of the greatest fools I had ever heard!

But that preacher had done something that night.

He had carefully and prayerfully buried a portion of the Word of God in a poor sinner’s heart.

Years afterward, shortly before that preacher died, he spoke to me about that mission.

He said that during three weeks of preaching at Newtownards, he had not seen a soul saved.

“But you were the outcome of that meeting,” he told me. “Willie, looking back, that was the best mission I ever had.”

Don’t get too occupied with counting numbers and names.

We need a work from God.

“What About This Day of Wrath?”

I never went back to the mission.

But about three weeks later, some of the men in our house began planning how to obtain money dishonestly.

They sent me out to study a particular place and work out how we could get in—and how we could escape if the police came.

I jumped into a field to look around.

Then suddenly a thought came:

“What about this day of wrath?”

The seed that preacher had planted was beginning to germinate.

I fought it.

“There’s no day of wrath,” I told myself. “Maybe there’s no God, no Heaven, no Hell—nothing!”

Then the thought came again:

“What if there should be a day of wrath? What if you should meet God in the next step or two?”

I stopped.

I looked at the hills.

I looked into the valleys.

I looked across the miles of earth around me.

I knew there were millions of miles of earth I had never seen, and beyond that were the heavens.

God had made them.

There was a God.

And I was going to meet Him.

I remember saying:

“Oh God, You’re there, and I’m a rebel sinner. You’re going to damn me in Hell. Well, it’s all right. I deserve it.”

I thought God had come to condemn me.

Then, like a flash, came another thought:

“What are you trembling about? God loves you.”

I couldn’t understand it.

I thought God loved church-going people.

I thought God loved people who said prayers and carried Bibles.

But could God love a down-and-out, rebellious sinner like me?

Then the words I had heard the street preachers proclaim came flooding back:

“For God so loved the world…”

The world!

I was part of that world.

God loved a world of lost sinners, and I was one of them.

Then the rest came:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son…”

Christ Died for a Sinner Like Me

I began to understand.

God’s lovely Son had come down and gone to dark, rugged, bloodstained Calvary.

On the Cross, Christ had died for the ungodly.

It came into my soul:

Christ died for an ungodly sinner just like me.

He had finished the atoning work.

He had risen from the dead.

There was a living Saviour for me.

And if I would personally trust Him, I would not perish but have everlasting life.

I could see the light of the Gospel.

But then came the struggle.

What about my friends?

What about the alcohol?

What about the gambling?

What about everything I was involved in?

What about my sin?

I stood there between the two.

On one side were my sin, my friends, my drink, and my old life.

On the other side stood the Cross and the Saviour who had died and risen again.

I knew I had to decide.

I took off my cap and twisted it tightly in my hands.

Then, standing there alone in that field, I turned deliberately to Christ.

“Lord Jesus, on this spot just now, I will give You my whole life, and I will trust You now as my own and personal Saviour.”

And I was saved.

“I Met the Saviour in That Field!”

There was no preacher there.

There was no card to sign.

There was nobody there to explain what had happened.

I was alone.

But I had met the Saviour.

I crawled through the hedge and onto the road.

A man was coming toward me.

I stopped him.

“Do you see that field in there?” I said. “I met the Saviour there two minutes ago!”

He ran to the other side of the road!

He must have thought I was a lunatic.

I went a little farther and met another man.

“See that field?” I told him. “I met the Saviour there five minutes ago.”

This man didn’t run.

He was a Christian.

“Did you meet the Saviour, son?”

“I have met the Saviour,” I said. “I have accepted Him, and I’m saved!”

Tears rolled down the big man’s face.

He placed both hands upon my shoulders and told me not to fear the unknown future, because the One who had saved me would keep me.

The Razor Had to Go

Then reality began to set in.

There were about twelve men waiting for me at the house.

These were dangerous men.

I knew that telling them I was finished with the old life could cost me dearly.

I wasn’t any better than they were. I carried an open razor in a specially made pouch around my waist. I had even practised drawing it quickly.

As I stood at the crossroads thinking about what I had to face, my old nature immediately showed itself.

“Lord,” I thought, “I’m saved, and I’m not going back to those things. I’ll tell them—and the first man who says a word about You…”

Before I knew it, the razor was in my hand!

What a beginning to the Christian life!

I was a raw recruit.

But God began teaching me immediately.

An aeroplane passed overhead. In those days, young pilots were being trained in aircraft with dual controls. The student had controls in front, while the experienced pilot behind him could take control when necessary.

The lesson suddenly came home to me:

Willie, you had better switch off your controls and give Christ control.

I learned something that day.

Jesus had not only died and shed His blood to be my Saviour.

He had risen again to be my Lord.

I walked to a little bridge.

And I dropped my razor into the river.

Then, in trembling faith, I said:

“Lord, You’ll have to look after me. You’ll have to help me and fight for me. I have only You.”

Little did I know then:

I didn’t need anyone else.

“This Fellow Has Become Religious”

I went back toward the old house.

Before I reached it, I met the most feared man in our crowd.

He was a huge fellow, and I expected trouble.

I looked him straight in the eyes.

“Paddy, I’ve got something to say to you. I have got saved. I’ve met the Lord Jesus, and I can’t go with you fellows anymore.”

I waited.

I expected him to attack me.

Instead, his head dropped.

Tears came into his eyes.

He put out his hand and said:

“Son, you know you’re all right now. I wish to God I was saved.”

I could hardly believe it.

Then he walked back to the house with me.

He threw open the door. There were guns, money, and cards on the table.

He ordered the men to pick them up and leave.

Then he said:

“This fellow has become religious. You’ve got to leave him alone.”

Nobody argued.

One by one they filed out.

When they had all gone, Paddy turned to me and said:

“God bless you, son.”

Then I was left alone with the Lord.

From Drunkenness to Deliverance

I shut the door.

I was trembling.

Then I fell down upon the floor and wept.

I wept from about half past six that evening until five o’clock the next morning.

Again and again I cried:

“Lord, You’ve saved me! Lord, You’ve saved me! You’ve delivered me! You’ve been with me!”

It was God who saved me.

That was the turning day of my life.

Everything I have, everything I am, and everything I ever hope to be, I owe to Jesus Christ, God’s Son.

It was the Lord who delivered me.

I had promised my dying mother that I would never drink again.

Two hours later, I was drunk.

My determination could not save me.

My promises could not save me.

My willpower could not save me.

But years before, my little mother had knelt by the fire and prayed:

“Lord, bless Willie. Someday save him and make him a man of God.”

And God answered her prayer.

The drunken boy became a preacher.

The tramp became a testimony to grace.

The man who could not deliver himself met the One who could.

“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” — John 8:36

—Pastor Willie Mullan