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I lived on a farm in Suffolk

My Bible: reasons to believe in the power of the Bible

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'I lived on a farm in Suffolk. When I was 13, in 1944, I went to Dartmouth. We expected the war to go on for many, many more years. My parents thought I would be better as a naval officer than a squaddie in the Army.

When I was 20, I came home for a tennis tournament. There was another young man playing. He said to me, “Why are you not following Christ?” and he gave me the verse 2 Corinthians 5.17. It says, “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new”. That verse changed my life.

I knew that I wasn’t living for Christ. I knew there was a God, but nobody had said to me that Jesus Christ is someone you can follow. I knew that the Bible was about God, but that was all. But it became the foundation of my life.

I felt that I had a responsibility, that I was an ambassador for Christ. That meant that, everywhere I went, I started an Officers’ Christian Fellowship or later a Naval Christian Fellowship. I’m 87 now and I’m still in touch with more than 600 people who joined those groups all round the world. So that verse has affected hundreds of other people too.'

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