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Saturday 1st January 1966

1966

The diary that I started to keep in 1966 is a small week-to-an-opening volume, with four spaces to each page.

On the left page is usually found:

“Sunday”, “Monday”, “Tuesday”, and “Wednesday”;

and on the right:

“Thursday”, “Friday”, “Saturday”, and “Notes”.

The diary proper opens on page 23, and because 1966 started with a Saturday, there is a blank space above the entry “Saturday” in the book. In this space I wrote:

See Pastor about:
Body of Christ
1 Corinthians 12:13 —H Spirit
Rom 6:3 —Water
((Saw Les Sunday night))
((Ans. Baptism “with” Spirit when saved→body of Christ))

Two things in my Bible reading relating to “baptism” confused me:

1 Corinthians 12:13 (“For by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body…”); and:
Romans 6:3 (“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into his death?”).

The former was troublesome because it seemed to suggest that if one had not received “the Baptism of the Holy Spirit” one was not part of the body of Christ. The latter was troublesome because “baptised into Christ” seemed to suggest that baptism in water was the means by which one became a part of Christ.

I made a note to see Pastor about this, but had a word with Les Smith instead: see Sunday 2nd January 1966.

Watch-night service.
Wrote Doyle & Jones on Salvation.
Went tracking with Aud, but witnessed to lads.
Evening with Aud & Chris.

The watch-night service, which I went to at the Full Gospel Church, took place between about 11 p.m. on Friday 31st December 1965 and a little after midnight on 1st January 1966.

Presumably, it was some time during the next morning that I wrote to my fellow pupils David Doyle and David Jones on the subject of salvation. I had already witnessed to them individually at school before the Christmas holidays and tried to get them to accept Christ as their Saviour. Perhaps Doyle had responded favourably and my letter to him urged some positive sign of this, and Jones had not and my letter to him urged him to come to a decision.[more]

Later, presumably in the afternoon, I went out tracting (or as the young people at Fleetwood called it, “tracking”) with Audrey. Giving out gospel tracts was a regular feature of our activities at that time. But instead of just giving a tract to everyone we encountered we stopped and witnessed to some lads.

At the bottom right of each page-opening of the diary is a section marked “Notes”.

No meeting on Saturday.
Get notes on d. heresies.

Normally on a Saturday evening, there would have been the Testimony Meeting at church, but in the NOTES section is written: No meeting on Saturday. So I spent the evening with Audrey and Chris.

I wanted to get hold of some notes on “destructive heresies”, which, I think, had been the subject of a series of Tuesday-evening Bible studies given by Pastor Smith. Peter Gooding seems a likely note-taker whom I intended to approach, but since I don’t possess a copy of any such notes, I assume that I didn’t carry out my plan.

posted by John Edward Cooper # 1/03/2009 12:11:00 pm

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