Plymouth, England, 16th August, 1954.
Dear Miss Symes:—
Now I had better explain just who I am and my reasons for writing to you at the very start of this letter or else you are going to be in a bit of a fog. My name is Michael Browne and I am a Royal Marine Commando more properly I was a Commando, but now I am in another branch of the Marines, and I was brought to Christ through the instrumentality of a tract that you gave me when I was staying at the Sandes' Home in Singapore just before Christmas 1950. Why I have not written until now I just do not know....
You perhaps do not remember me at all after all this time, but let me try and draw the picture of the events as they happened. My friend and I were stationed at Ipoh in the state of Perak, (Malaya), and our unit was 42 Commando, Royal Marines. We both had just finished a course of training and were due for 14 days leave, the only vacancy for us in Singapore was at the Sandes' Soldiers' Home, and so in due course we arrived at the Home, were shown to our room, and the rules were kindly explained. I remember that we were not very much impressed by the rule that fixed the time of our coming in at night to 11 p.m., I think it was, but thought that we could manage to break that little rule fairly easily if the occasion arose. Well the occasion never arose as on the first day of our leave the Maria Hertog riots broke out and all leave was canceled.... That left us cooped up in a place that seemed to me to be ankle deep in religious tracts, and so we made up our minds that we were not going to have anything to do with religion, and would keep strictly to ourselves, which we did.
We enjoyed the swimming pool, and the meals I remember quite well, and I was a little touched at the way you used to speak to us. You see we had been away from England for two years at that time, and no European, outside of service personnel, had ever taken any interest in us; then coming into your Home and hearing the way you spoke to the men rather moved me, although I would never show it, or for that matter admit it to anyone. We were very hard, I am afraid, but not too hard for a motherly spirit to get in under the outside veneer of toughness. I heard you once talking to a young soldier at the counter about some tract or other, and I would like to have known more about it then, but of course I would never have asked, religion was too soft for us chaps. But even so God was working in my heart even through those small incidents, although I did not know that it was God then.
Both my friend and I were great sinners. We had been away from the restraints of home for a long time, and drinking, gambling, swearing, and many other evils were almost our daily lot; there was certainly no fear of God before our eyes. So you see coming into a Christian atmosphere was a terrific contrast to our way of life, and I believe that I was condemned in my own heart as to my way of living even then.
On the morning that we left the Home, you had just brought us some coffee, and had phoned for a taxi, and before the taxi arrived you sat down at the table and started to talk to us. You asked us if we ever read our New Testaments; the answer was, "No", and then you offered my friend a little booklet to read, "written by a New Zealand business man", I remember you told us. He said that he wanted nothing to do with it, and then you offered it to me. What made me accept it, I do not know, or rather I didn't know then, but now I know that it was the mercy of God leading me to the Cross of Christ. Well, I took the booklet called "The Reason Why", and put it in my case and forgot all about it. We left the Home and started our journey back to Ipoh. You had packed us off with sandwiches, and when we came to unwrap them we found that you had placed tracts in each package. Mine read, "What God says about Drunkenness, etc.", and I was most annoyed at being forced to read this whilst eating my sandwiches.
Six months later I read that little book "The Reason Why". It was most remarkable how I came to read it. I had just been to see the film "Samson and Delilah" and I was impressed by the scene that showed Samson pushing down the pillars of the temple of Dagon, the Philistines' god. I reasoned in my head that no man, no matter how strong he might be, could push over a huge temple, and that he would have to have some mighty power outside of himself to help him. Well, the picture said that it was God who helped him, and the story came from the Bible. Deep down inside me I somehow knew that the Bible was true, and if the Bible was true then what it said about God was true, and so there must be a God if the Bible said so. Suddenly I had the awful feeling that it was true that there was a God, and if there was a God then there must be a place called hell where God was going to punish the wicked, and so I would go to hell. All this happened inside my mind as I was being driven back to the Camp in a rickshaw. Then I remember looking up into the sky and seeing millions of glittering stars, and I reasoned that all those stars didn't just happen by chance, they must have been created by some Divine Being, and that power I felt in my heart was the God of the Bible. Then I remembered that a. woman down in the Sandes' Home in Singapore had given me a little booklet all about God; I must read that book, I thought, and so when I got back to Camp I hunted through my case and came across "The Reason Why.”
For about half an hour I read the booklet from cover to cover, and for the first time in my life (and I was then 20 years of age) I heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I was honestly ignorant up to that moment of time as to why Jesus Christ died on the Cross, and what it meant to the guilty sinner. What a revolution of thought went on in my mind as I read that wonderful Gospel story. I read that God hated sin but He loved the sinner, and that He loved him so much that He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to the cruel death of the Cross in order to die for the sin of the world, that whilst Jesus was on the Cross, God was laying upon Him all the filthiness and sin of the whole world, that He was laying upon Him the iniquity of us all, and all because of His great love to me. This touched my heart as nothing else has ever done. This was not religion at all, this was different to chanting hymns and hearing musty old sermons, this was a heart rending story of divine love and grace that reached out to guilty sinners, and offered eternal life and joy simply through believing in a Person. My sin sick soul grasped at that story of life, and hung on as a dying man grasps at the faintest hope of life. Here was a way in which I could have all my sins washed away and blotted out forever,-all I had to do was believe, simply believe. Well, I was afraid it was so simple that I thought it couldn't be true. My sins were many, and to think that they could all be forgiven and blotted out of God's mind forever, simply through believing in Jesus Christ was beyond my comprehension; I thought that it was too simple, and that God must expect me to do something as well. I did not realize that "salvation is not of works lest any many should boast", and so I started to try and rid myself of the terrible burden of my sin.
I was under great conviction of sin, and night after night, I would go to the end of our "tent lines", walking up and down an old football pitch we had made, I would cry out to God to forgive me my sins, and take this awful burden from my soul. With tears streaming down my face I would pray and pray to God to save my soul, hour after hour in the greatest agony of soul I wandered up and down that pitch crying out to God to help me., If only there had been a Christian in my Camp who could have pointed me to the simple way of salvation through faith in Christ and His finished work on Calvary's Cross, I would have been saved all that terror of soul. Anyone who knew the Gospel could have led me to Christ during those months of my conviction. There is only one thing to do, I thought, I must start being good!! So I stopped smoking, drinking, swearing, and other things as well, but this did not help me one bit, the burden of sin still remained heavy upon my heart, and I did not have peace with God. I bought a Bible and secretly read it at night under my mosquito net when I thought no one was watching. I read John's Gospel through and through, and longed to possess the "eternal life" that it spoke of, but still I had not seen the simple way of faith.
One day whilst going through Ipoh in a jeep, I saw a little Mission station called "Elim" and the sign told me that there was a missionary to the Chinese called Brewerton resident there. This is the man to help me, I thought, and resolved the following Sunday evening to go along to the little Mission Church and explain my problem to him. Sunday arrived and I went to the Mission Church. As I was walking up the path to the doors of the Mission, the people inside started to sing a hymn, and such was the condemnation of my sin that I thought I was far too great a sinner to go in and sit with all those righteous men and women singing hymns inside that Church. So with tears streaming down my face, I turned away and walked back to Camp. But I had no rest all that week, and so at last I thought that even if I was too great a sinner to go and sit down with all those people, I could at least try to see if they would speak to me. Sunday arrived once more, and again I went to the Mission. This time they were all coming out when 1 arrived there, and somehow I found the missionary and was soon telling him all about my great load of sin and my need of salvation. He seemed to understand everything, and it was a great comfort to me to find out that he knew personally the man who wrote "The Reason Why", Mr. Laidlaw. I knew then that he must be the right man to unburden myself to as he would know the same Savior as the writer did. Well, he prayed with me, and explained that I would have to accept Jesus Christ through a simple act of trust, and then I would have to confess Him before my comrades in the Camp. I was afraid that he might say that. I was afraid that if I took Christ as Savior I would have to live an open Christian life, and then everyone would laugh at me and think I was weak and foolish. I was not saved that night, although I finally understood what I must do; I must simply trust that Jesus bore all my sins and receive Him into my heart as my own personal Savior; that is, believe that He died for me just as though there was no other person in all the world, and then stand up and confess Him to my mates. Well, I wanted to be saved but I was afraid of confessing Him, that cross I was expected to bear was looking too heavy for a chap like me. Before I left him that night, Mr. Brewerton pointed me to Rom. 10.9, "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." That verse rang in my mind all that night and right on through the following day.
At last it came to the evening meal of Monday, 15th October, 1951. I was sitting opposite my best friend and nearly every other word he said was a word of blasphemy against Jesus Christ. I thought in my mind that if anyone bandied about my mother's name like that, there would be trouble, I wouldn't stand for it; and yet here I was listening to a man blaspheme the name of the Son of God, the One who had loved me so much that He submitted to the death of the Cross for me, and I was so weak and such a coward that I was afraid to say a word in His defense. I was ashamed to own the name of Jesus. In utter disgust with myself I went out of the dining room and back to my tent, and cried out to God that He would give me the strength to confess Jesus before my friend when he came back into the tent. I knew that if I confessed Him with my mouth and believed in my heart that He was my Savior, I would be saved. Then several chaps came into the tent, and by the grace of God He gave me the courage to stand up and confess Jesus Christ. I was trembling and stammering and very much afraid, but Jesus died for me and it was a small thing really to confess Him. "Look here, Ginger", I said to my mate, "I believe in God, and I believe in Jesus Christ, and I don't want to hear you take His name in vain any more". As I said it I believed it in my heart, and, praise God, right then and there the great transaction took place. He was true to His word, and as I spoke those words the burden of my sin simply rolled away, and the light of God's salvation streamed in upon my soul, a great peace and joy filled my heart, I WAS SAVED AND I KNEW IT. Right then and there I passed from sin's darkness into the marvelous liberty and light of Jesus Christ; from death to life, from misery to joy, and what was really wonderful; I wasn't afraid any more. I went outside and thanked God for saving me, then I went back into my tent and told them all over again that Christ was MY Savior and I didn't care who knew it. I rushed off then to the Mission House to tell the glad tidings to the Brewertons, and then we all gathered together down at their house and sang, "O happy day that fixed my choice on Thee my Savior and my God"! How well I remember the chorus of that hymn:
Happy day, happy day,
When Jesus washed my sins away,
and then we sang:
Happy night, happy night,
When Jesus washed my black heart white.
Shortly after my conversion I went back to England determined to witness for my Savior. Since I trusted Him He has been to me a Friend that never fails; He cheers me and strengthens me, and sometimes quite literally leads me along by the hand.... It is worth more than all the riches of the world to be able to pillow my head every night with the calm assurance that Jesus Christ belongs to me, and that my soul is safe for evermore in His keeping. He has set my feet upon the Rock, and established my goings, and above all else, Jesus is now the dearest and most precious Name I know, and I am not ashamed of Him or His Cross, "God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." (Gal. 6.14).
Yours in the service of Jesus Christ, Michael Browne.