Hello, my name is Kevin Marley. I was born near the village of Castlebellingham about 7 miles South of Dundalk Ireland. I was raised as a Roman Catholic and for the first 11 years of my life I was the youngest of three boys. That’s when my little sister was born.
I suppose it would be fair to say that I had a typical Roman Catholic upbringing. My parents gave a great sense of morality and the difference between right and wrong. My primary school then gave me a good grounding in the knowledge of God, Jesus Christ and the Roman Catholic Religion.
Two things come to mind when I think of my early religious experience. I remember on a few occasions during our religion classes during primary and then later on in secondary school that we were encouraged to make up our own prayers. I used to love this because it allowed me to express myself to God in my own words rather than through set prayers.
The second thing I remember is my love of the scriptures. I remember when I was about 8 and it was my brother’s confirmation day and my Aunt Patrice who was a nun gave him a present of a Children’s bible. This was the entire bible told in 365 stories, and I can still remember sitting there oblivious to everything else around me as my aunt read the account of the passion to me from that book. For many years after that my favourite day in the religious calendar was “Palm” or “Passion Sunday” because the entire passion was always read on that day.
As a teenager I would have been a lot more religious than most of my peers and up until the age of sixteen I would have made it my business to be at mass on a Sunday even making my own way there at times. However the bible says religion is not enough and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself described the religious people of His day described in this way :
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Mat 23:27
In fact I was in the worst position possible because I thought I was ok, I thought that all I had to do was to continue to follow my religion blindly and that that would keep me right with God, after all I wasn’t going out and murdering people or stealing from people, there were always people who were worst than I was, “it’s not like I’m killing thousands of people like Hitler or Poll Pot now is it?” This would be how I would have justified my sin and any wrong that I did to myself and others. In essence I was like every other religious person on the planet, making my own way to God and hoping against hope that whatever I did wrong would be overlooked.
Then a very significant thing happened, when I was fourteen my eldest brother Gearoid, went off to Maynooth to join the Roman Catholic Priesthood. He joined the Society of African Missions (SMAs). I always looked up to my brother and I was immensely proud of him for demonstrating such religious zeal, but after two years he left the priesthood and went to live in Dublin. This confused me greatly and probably caused me to question my faith for the first time.
Gearoid then decided to study nursing and he applied for a course in London starting the following January. After he went to England he came home for a holiday in October and told the family that he was saved and had become a Christian. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, but I wanted to find out more.
Those who know me well would probably say that I’m inquisitive at the best of times and this was no exception. I began to bombard Gearoid with questions and to his credit he never tried to answer them himself but would all the time refer me to a relevant passage in the scriptures. As well as questions on his newfound faith, I would constantly ask him questions about the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. I was curious to know what the difference was, how could a zealous catholic change their religion? After all I was a Christian too, I was born into a Christian home and grew up in a Christian country? Who was right and who was wrong?
One day he challenged me and said “Why not check it for yourself?” so he handed me a copy of the transcript of Vatican II, this was lauded as the new direction for the Catholic church in the 20th Century it was going to introduce sweeping changes and modernise the whole church. As I read it and compared what it said with what the scriptures were saying, I began to see inconsistencies in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. I didn’t have to read more than a few pages but two things stuck in my mind.
The first was the whole idea of the “Hail Mary” and where that comes from, the Roman Catholic Church justifies the use of that prayer by quoting from many different passages in the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke it is more or less a number of different scripture references cobbled together to venerate Mary.
The other thing which struck me as very odd was the fact that the traditions of men took precedence over the scriptures, in the Roman Catholic teaching; church tradition and the scriptures are given equal status in terms of authority which effectively means that the scripture is relegated to a lesser position. This means that the teaching of scripture must be interpreted in light of the church’s teachings. This is the reason why most Roman Catholics have never read the scriptures because they are told that it is too difficult for them to understand and so they need a priest to explain it to them. Through this research my faith in the Roman Catholic Church began to wane and my desire for a more biblically centred faith began to grow.
I faced a grave dilemma, I had to ask myself the question “do I continue to put my trust in the teachings of the religion which I have grown up with or do I put my trust in the word of God as the final authority in my life?” The Roman Catholic Church says that it is based on the scriptures therefore I decided to put my trust in the bible. As I looked at what the bible said I began to cast aside many of the teachings of the Roman catholic church, so that I would still go to mass but I would leave before the communion service because I could see that transubstantiation is not biblical and I would only pray the “Our Father” because that was the only scriptural prayer that I could see in the whole of the mass. I was not yet a believer but as I look back now I can see how the Holy Spirit was working in my life and drawing me to Christ.
No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day John 6:44
Around Easter of 1999 my brother came home and said that he didn’t want to go to mass but that he wanted to go to a Christian meeting. He invited me along, so I went and had my first real experience of Christian people.
There were two things I noticed about these people from the outset. Firstly they based their faith totally on the bible and secondly there was no obvious hypocrisy, they practised what they preached. I began attending these meetings with Gearoid and we would come home and discuss for hours the implications of what we had just heard.
During one particular meeting the preacher asked if there was anyone in the congregation who wanted to receive Jesus into their heart. I thought yes that sounds good to me, these people seem to be happy and contented if that’s all I have to do to be like them then I’ll do it, so I listened carefully to what the preacher said and prayed along with him in silence.
Then all they had to do was silently pray along with him and that was it you would be saved. Later someone asked me had I prayed that prayer and I said I had but that nothing had changed but the person said to me “you’re saved now don’t question it” that made me feel very uneasy, it seemed too much like religion for my liking. It soon became obvious to me that I was not saved because nothing had changed; I was still doing the same things, thinking the same way, there was no difference whatsoever, in fact I was in a sense I was in even more grave danger than ever because I had assurance from someone who ought to know better that I was saved. The bible says that we are to examine ourselves
Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified. 2 Cor 13:5
Even though I couldn’t have expressed it that way at the time, I knew that if such a profound change had taken place in my life then there should be some evidence. Maybe not apparent to others but it should at least be apparent to me.
As I have said Gearoid and I would discuss for hours what we had heard and I used to take notes of all the scriptures that were cited in the sermon and we would look at the context of each one and decide whether we agreed with the preacher or not. After one particular mid-week meeting, we were in full-flow when I came across a passage in the scriptures. It is John 17: 20-28.
As I read through this passage and in particular the words in verse 20 “I pray not for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word”. I realised that this was Jesus Christ praying for me in the Garden of Gethsemane over 2,000 years ago. I was cut to the heart because I knew that I was a sinner, the bible says
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Rom 3:23
As a Roman catholic I believed that Christ was the Saviour of the world, that He is the Son of God and that He came to earth to die on the cross but it was completely impersonal, there was no personal responsibility for your sin, no understanding of the absolute holiness of God.
because it is written, “BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.” 1Pe 1:16
As a religious person I knew that I had broken God’s rules, I had done things which were wrong but I didn’t realise that all my sins were offensive to God. I knew that the wrong things I did hurt other people but I didn’t realise that it was possible for me to offend God. Furthermore I would never have thought that my self-righteous religious attitude far from being acceptable in God’s sight was completely offensive to Him.
But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away. Isaiah 64:6
As I have said I knew that I was a sinner and as I read that passage I saw that there was no hope for me apart from Christ, far from this being an impersonal religion it was the most important thing in my life. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself said
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6
As the truth began to dawn on me I realised the awfulness of the situation I was in because the bible also says
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom 6:23
I knew that my sin was enough to condemn me to hell for all eternity and that because I had offended God that He had every right to cast me out of His presence forever, but what I wanted was eternal life, I just didn’t know how to obtain it.
Almost immediately I bowed my head in prayer much to Gearoid’s amazement and I prayed acknowledging that I was a sinner in need of a saviour and that Jesus was the only saviour. I asked for God’s forgiveness and handed my life over to him, for him to rule over and. I asked Him by His Holy Spirit to come into my life and make the person that He wanted me to be. At that moment I knew that I was forgiven and that my prayer had been answered.
Before my conversion, I had knowledge but now I have a personal relationship with God. It is simply not enough to know the facts, but it is only through putting your trust solely in the Lord Jesus Christ and his death on the cross of Calvary as the only means by which God can allow you to enter Heaven.
Having found peace with God, almost immediately he can began to take control of my life. One of the first things I noticed was that I stopped using foul language, I loved to read the bible, I could pray meaningfully and I delighted in that, instead of engaging in empty religious rituals I wanted to worship and serve God as my Lord and my King. I gradually began to see my own sinfulness and made efforts to try and change my most obvious sinful habits. I wish I could say that I hate sin with perfect hatred but the fact is I don’t, though I am loathe to sin against God because of what He has done for me in sending the Lord Jesus Christ into the world and I hate the devil and all his works. I love spending time with God’s people and I make it my business to be there whenever the Lord’s people meet. I also have an earnest desire to see others brought into the same relationship with God, and I long to see God do His perfect work of conviction in the hearts and minds of others just as He has done for me.
Through the Holy Spirit leading and guiding me he began to show me that some of the teachings of the particular group that I was involved with were contrary to what the bible teaches. I needed to find a more scripturally-based church.
I had been attending a course in Environmental Science in Dundalk I.T at the time and I began a bible-study with Stanley Millen who is the Presbyterian minister in Dundalk and one of the chaplains in the college, we spent a number of weeks going through the Gospel of John together. It was only natural then that I should start attending his church when I was again looking for more biblical teaching and although Stanley is an excellent preacher I found that I did not agree with some of his doctrines either.
Once again Gearoid was instrumental in one of the major turning points in my Christian walk. He came home at Christmas of the millennium and “dragged” me along to a service with the Dundalk Baptist Church in Ardee Terrace. Immediately after the service I knew that that was the place the Lord wanted me to be. I began attending regularly and in August 2000 I was baptised and became a member of the church.
You might be wondering how somebody who has studied science could talk so much about faith and religion. Before I became a Christian I believed in the whole theory of evolution not necessarily as fact but as the best explanation of the origins of the universe. Most people believe that science and faith are totally incompatible. However, there are no scientific facts in the bible that have been disproved by scientific investigation based on logic and observation.
What is incompatible is the atheistic dogma of the theory of evolution especially since it is portrayed as fact. You might be surprised to know that there are many eminent scientists that do not believe the theory of evolution either. Therefore, I find it easy to reconcile these two areas of my life. Not least by the fact that since I have been saved I have graduated from Carlow I.T with a degree in Environmental Science and have completed my Masters in Environmental Science at Trinity College Dublin. A passion of mine is to see the Word of God upheld from the first to the last verse and not to cast aside the first 11 chapters as myth or allegory because to do that is to undermine the foundations of every doctrine of scripture not least the doctrine of salvation.
After finishing my studies in Carlow IT I spent a little under two years working in a laboratory in Dublin. While I was there I began attending Blanchardstown Baptist Church and I was involved in a lot of their evangelism and outreach particularly the door-to-door work they were involved in. The pastor Derry O’Sullivan said to me one day “what are you going to do with your life?” and I said I was considering going back to do my PhD and he said “so you’re going to spend four years in secular study and nothing else?” and then he said “what about Sunday School teaching?” I had never considered that before and when I told my pastor in Dundalk about it, he said that the need for a new Sunday School teacher had arisen and would I consider teaching the teenage Sunday School. I spent a few years teaching Sunday school and then I heard about some meetings that pastor Norman Barr was holding in Mullingar in Co. Westmeath so I went along to a couple of those and Norman then said to me have you ever considered training for the ministry and I said no and he said that he had helped several men to train for the ministry and he could do the same for me if I was interested. I thought and prayed about and knew I wanted to get a better grounding in scripture and theology and so I began studying with Norman falteringly at first but in 2007 I began my training in earnest. Since then I have been preaching occasionally in my home church and in Orangefield Baptist Church in Belfast (Norman’s church) and I find it very fulfilling to be allowed to plumb the depths of the scripture and take what I have learned myself and pass it on to others.
Having said that, I am still nothing but a sinner saved by grace, it is not because of anything that I have done but because of what God has done for me and you too can experience the same forgiveness if you only turn to God in repentance and faith. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself said
“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Joh 3:3
The bible also says
For He says: “IN AN ACCEPTABLE TIME I HAVE HEARD YOU, AND IN THE DAY OF SALVATION I HAVE HELPED YOU.” Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. 2 Cor 6:2
You have read my story, what about you? Are you prepared to put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and saviour? You need to do so before it is too late, because you might not get another opportunity.