By Ralph E. Underwood.
I WAS born of Christian parents. My mother died when I was only seven years old, and it was necessary to send me to an orphanage. Though recommended to my father as being a Christian home, it was anything but Christian. Five years of incarceration in that home was more than enough to turn me against religion. I got started wrong and I became a God-hater instead of a God-lover. I embraced atheism in its entirety. I was convinced that God was a myth and that Christ was not necessary. I regarded the Bible as a Jewish “scrap-book” filled with absurd legends. To this day I believe my bitter experiences as a boy turned me toward atheism.
Determined to acquire an education, I devoted many hours to studying and reading in public libraries. I was particularly interested in anti-religious addresses, and I read all the standard free-thought literature—Paine, Ingersoll, Voltaire, and others. Joining hands with other infidels, I soon became an active worker for the cause. While yet in my early teens I started delivering lectures against religion. This I did in a most blasphemous fashion. I referred to my general activities as “pulling Jehovah’s whiskers,” and I used other terrible blasphemous expressions which I now shudder to even think of, and hesitate to repeat. My tongue was tipped with acid when I spoke; my friends called me the “champion blasphemer.”
I traveled over the country, lectured and debated in many of the large cities, distributed thousands of copies of infidel books and pamphlets, and waged a tireless warfare against Christianity. In Chicago I met a man — Martin S. Charles — who was to become my colleague and inseparable partner in atheism. A more zealous, blasphemous, hard-working team of atheists than Charles and Underwood could not be found anywhere. In many parts of America there still exist infidel and free-thought societies that were founded by Charles and Underwood. In 1931 we founded the Godless Age Publishing Company, with headquarters in San Francisco. We printed and distributed thousands of copies of booklets and folders, as well as the official organ of the American branch of the International League of the Militant Godless, a monthly magazine known as The Godless World. Martin S. Charles was the owner and editor of this magazine, while I was the associate editor and director of publication.
One day a great tragedy entered into the life of my friend Charles. The loss of his wife left him heart-broken and disconsolate. He soon lost all interest in our work and became subject to extreme melancholy. He started to wander aimlessly about the country in a vain attempt to find relief. He eventually reached the place where he thought of suicide as the only way out of his troubles. On three different occasions I intervened in the nick of time to prevent him from taking his own life; twice I found poison in his possession, and another time I found him unconscious from poison fumes in the garage. He had closed the garage doors and left the engine running, while he sat in the car awaiting certain death.
I decided to leave the city for a visit with my family in Oregon. I remained only a few days, fearing that I would find my friend Charles dead when I returned, And he had expected to be dead; so much so, in fact, that he had left instructions for me to dispose of his remains with a typical atheist funeral. He had instructed me to personally conduct his funeral and to permit no minister of the gospel, under any circumstances, to say anything over his body, or, he wrote, “I will get right up and call him a liar.” But when I returned Charles was far from dead. In fact, he was very much alive! Wonder of wonders, he had actually found God!
The evening of my return to the city I had conducted a street-corner meeting at the intersection of 10th and Broadway. Before a crowd of several hundred persons I had launched into a blasphemous attack on religion, much to the delight of my godless listeners. But one of my listeners was not delighted. That was my friend Martin S. Charles, who had spent most of the day searching for me after learning that I had returned to the city that morning. At the close of my address I went over to where Charles stood with his back to a store window, and I asked him how he liked my talk — expecting the usual reply. I was surprised when he informed me that he didn’t like it. He seemed to be steeling himself to say something very important and serious. And very shortly he let it out. I’ll never forget the feeling of utter surprise and shock that came over me when my friend told me that we were both wrong in our beliefs, that there was a God after all!
“Ralph,” he said, “I know you won’t be able to understand, but I have found God all over again; found Him just as I knew Him in my boyhood days! “No, I didn’t understand. How could I understand? I had been steeped in unbelief from boyhood, and had never known the heavenly Father. Mine wasn’t a case of being a backslider; I had never had any knowledge of God in the first place. To say that I was thunderstruck at Charles’ statement is putting it mildly! I was left speechless; such a thing was unthinkable. So I decided to humor him (much as I am told inmates of mental hospitals are humored). If he insisted on being “saved,” then I would let him be saved. I patted him on the shoulder and said, “Of course you’re saved”; but he knew that I didn’t meant it and told me as much.
The days passed. I heard from the lips of my friend the old but ever new story of Jesus the Christ. I had never heard it in just that way before. It wasn’t as though I were hearing a prepared sermon dealing with what God can do, but I was hearing a man testify to what God had done! How wonderful it is to proclaim the glad tidings of salvation through individual witnessing! Charles exhorted me day and night. I often remark that he preached the longest sermon I ever heard. It lasted day and night for about ten days. I can thank God at this hour for his persistence. One day he succeeded in talking me into kneeling with him in prayer. While he prayed for my soul I gazed at the wallpaper, bored to distraction.
A few days later Charles invited me to go to church. Of course, I didn’t want to go, but I finally consented after much coaxing. I felt rather out of place in that house of God, and especially so when I saw a young man there who was the leader of a group of gospel workers who conducted street meetings on the same corner where I conducted my atheistic meetings. On several occasions I had so incited the fury of the street mob against him and his co-workers that they were driven from the street. But he always returned, sooner or later, wearing the same smile and displaying the same courage that I so secretly admired. He was an 18 carat Christian, and had no desire to seek revenge; he was seeking souls for Christ.
As I stood there in that church hoping that this young man would not see me, he suddenly looked straight at me, and his eyes grew wide with surprise. Rushing down the aisle, he came toward me. Fearing for my safety, I looked around for some way out of the building. He grabbed me by the hand and told me how happy he was to see me. Several shook hands with me, some rather timidly. But not a person was the least bit offensive. For the first time in my life I was looking at people who lived up to the “love thine enemies” creed. At least it was my first contact with them, so far as I knew. I can’t recall the sermon that night; but I was beginning to suffer from an old-fashioned case of conviction of sin. And when conviction seizes upon the heart of the unsaved there is no peace or rest for that person until he seeks the face of God. I didn’t sleep well. I was beginning to doubt my unbeliefs. It seemed that the very foundations of my atheism slowly crumbled and fell at my feet. A feeling of remorse was clutching at my heart. I could hear my old father reprimanding me for my infidelity.
My desire to know the truth eventually triumphed. One evening I went to church with Charles, and when the invitation was given, I went forward to the altar, dropped to my knees and tried to pray, but it seemed that unseen hands clutched at my throat. I could literally feel the pressure on my throat. The words that I tried to form were cut off before they passed my lips. At a late hour, almost midnight, I had still uttered not a word and I decided to go home, fearing that I was keeping others there who wanted to leave. So I went. It seems that God spoke to two of the men who had been kneeling with me at the altar. They walked out with me, and together with Brother Charles, we went to our rooms. At their suggestion we four kneeled on the floor and for nearly two hours those three men prayed earnestly for my soul, asking God to reveal Himself to my heart.
As the hour approached two a.m. I had a terrifying vision of myself standing before the judgment throne of God. Some will argue that my vision was purely imaginary; but to me it was real. I realized then the awfulness of my position and my immediate need for “outside” help. I could see myself standing there before God, my friends pleading my case for me, but myself uttering not a word in my own behalf. I suddenly had a great desire to speak for myself, and it was then that I commenced to pray, for the first time in my life. I needed no suggestive prayer to repeat after. From the depths of my being I talked to God that night, and my prayers did not go unheeded! The first prayer I had ever uttered brought about the most wonderful experience I had ever had. That night I was gloriously saved! My doubts and fears fled like the wind, and from that hour to the present I have never wondered for one instant about my salvation.
My conversion took place in the headquarters of the godless movement. I was literally a “brand plucked from the burning.” The experience of Mr. Charles and myself was the most astounding thing that ever happened in the atheistic movement of the Pacific coast. Today, almost six years after my experience with God, I am combating atheism in every way possible, and trying by all means to win the lost to the Saviour.
The Christian Victory Magazine.