My dear brothers in Christ,

May the Lord bless your lives and your families’.

I want to tell you about Johnny, a young man who recently visited here in Lima.
He died a few days ago but I need to tell how his last days were. On Friday night he called the Church and Martín Z. talked to him. He was so depressed and he wanted someone to visit him in his house. Martin asked me to go and I went to his home. When I got there I found a bone-thin man. He was not sick but in terrible need, depressed and confused because he was attending a lot of religious groups (Pentecostals, charismatics, G12 and others), trying to find an answer to his problem, but without any result. A few days before our meeting, he met a young girl named Irma who attends the Church of the Savior in Barranco and she gave him some tracts and explained to him the Gospel and his condition before the Lord. He saw a phone number on the tract and made a phone call and that is why we knew about him.

Johnny explained to me how confused he was because of all the different doctrines he was hearing and especially because this young sister in Christ told him the group he was attending was not true and biblical. He became discouraged and wanted me to explain why this group was not biblical, but instead of complaining and arguing why this was not true we began to talk about the gospel and going throughout the Bible we saw his condition as a sinner and unbeliever, separated from the kingdom and from the grace and glory of the Lord. We began to read various Bible verses and I explained what the Bible says about God, His Holiness, His justice and His Love and mercy. We went through the doctrine of repentance and faith and after 35 or 40 minutes I started praying for the Holy Spirit to bring conviction upon his heart and to give him wisdom and knowledge of God’s will and purpose. After praying 45 seconds I heard a loud noise and when I opened my eyes Johnny was laid low on his face asking the Lord to forgive him and grant him repentance and faith. He spent maybe 30 minutes confessing his sins and asking the Lord to cleanse him and restore him to a right position of righteousness and peace with Him. After confessing he stood up and the peace of the Lord filled him with assurance and reliance on the Lord.

He was repentant, but we needed to wait on the Lord because the work is not ours but His. He called me 7 or 8 times a day to ask me about some things he wanted to do. He began to eat because he was not doing this and all food made him sick. He was so repentant for rejecting food and for not giving thanks in everything to the Lord. He began to phone people he had offended and apologize for having been so rude and to show such malice in his moods.

He was in poor health so he was more and more ill and his family took him to the hospital where he died. I visited him on Friday and he died on Tuesday. I felt sorry when I heard about him, but at the same time my heart was comforted and filled with hope and assurance, not for His soul, but giving Glory to God for not having been negligent in going to preach to him the Gospel. I glorified God for Johnny’s life and my hope and assurance are not in his profession, but in Christ. He knew him more than I did and He is Almighty to save his soul and preserve him for His kingdom in Glory. Our assurance is not in human wisdom and physical evidences but in the work accomplished by Christ and the certainty of the things to come. Praise be God.

Freddy is a good friend of Johnny who was taking care of him in his last days and after Johnny’s funeral he phoned me to talk about it. He told me about the different person Johnny was and the tremendous change which had taken place in him. He was a completely new and different person, almost unrecognizable. He thought he was a believer for many years but in seeing Johnny’s life he understood his lack of faith and fruits for the Glory of God. He is coming every Monday to study with us the book of Genesis, but he needs to know more about the Gospel and God, to know Him and rely on Christ work for his life.  


I praise God because he is mighty to save. I glorify God because he delights in saving people and doing all things for the Glory of Him ALONE, not sharing his glory with anyone. May the Lord continue bringing salvation to Johnny’s house!

In Jesus Christ, your brother and friend,

Walter I.