George Seeley

I am glad I have the old-time religion. For years I had only a profession of religion. My mother did everything she could to make a Christian out of me.  As a child I said my prayers at her knee. The Bible was an open book in our home and I was brought up in the church. At the age of eleven, in an old Methodist prayer meeting, I gave my heart to God, and He was real to me for a few years. When I was going to school, at the noon hour or recess, I would run out in the woods and get down and weep and pray and try to live the best I could.  But I never heard testimonies like you hear in this Gospel about men and women living above sin in this world; consequently I drifted into sin.

That was the way I grew up. I became the preacher’s right-hand man; I was the Sunday school superintendent and president of the Epworth League. I struggled on, saying my prayers and making a mourner’s bench out of my bedside every night, asking God to forgive me for the sins I had committed that day. That was the way Christians lived, I thought, but I got tired of that life and I am sure God was tired of it too. I worked faithfully in the church and thought it was the best I could do, but my heart was aching, dissatisfied, and longing for something real. When I asked my minister what was wrong with me he said, “You are all right; you don’t need to be converted. You were born and raised a Christian in a Christian home. Therefore, you will make it through all right.” I braced up, struggled on, and worked a little harder in the church. I was faithful at Thursday night prayer meetings, the other meetings, the socials, and all the rest of it, but it left only an aching void in my heart.

To get out of sin was what I wanted. Many a time I would wet my pillow with tears because of the sin that was down in my heart. I worked in the revivals and prayed and testified, but there was sin in my life. I searched for the old-time religion, going for miles to find a preacher or an evangelist that could tell me about the old-time religion.

There came a time when I didn’t know which way to turn. I was twenty-one. In that hour God was faithful to my heart and brought me into contact with Christian people from the Apostolic Faith. They told me the way out of sin. I saw their shining faces and heard their testimonies. They had me beat a million miles. My mind went back to the old home fireside, and the times my Mother told me about the old-time religion. My father would read the books of devoted Christian workers and weep and wonder where the old-time religion had gone. I wondered, too.

God took off that mask of hypocrisy and let me see myself as He saw me, and I knew I was bound for a devil’s Hell.

Thank God, I came under the sound of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. People told what great things God had done in their lives and how He had taken out the habits of a lifetime. I said, “If God can do that for them, He can do it for me.”

I heard a sermon on sanctification, and believing I was saved, I thought if I could get sanctified, I could live without sin. When I got down to the altar, though, and prayed for God to sanctify me, my outlook didn’t get lighter, it got darker and darker. My past life came before me like a panorama. God showed me I was a miserable wretched sinner—worse than a drunkard or a gambler that was in the ditch. I saw where I had lied and where I had stolen. Every sin I had committed since my childhood came up before my eyes. God took off that mask of hypocrisy and let me see myself as He saw me, and I knew I was bound for a devil’s Hell. The preacher knelt in front of me, and I put my arm around his neck weighing him down and said, “Pray for me before I drop into Hell!” That is the kind of conviction that settled down on my soul.    

I prayed day and night while working in an old sawmill, but I got to the place where I said, “God, I will forsake my sins for time and for eternity and give You my life if only You will save me.” The moment I became honest with God, He came into my heart and saved my soul and gave me the old-time religion—the same kind of salvation my dear old mother had. I was only too glad to give up the lodge and my profession and every worldly thing.

The Lord did a good job when He saved me. I was a new creature in Christ Jesus. All those old habits and sins that had me bound for years were gone from my life. He sanctified me and He showed me that the Apostolic Faith people were His people. I began to seek for the mighty Baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire. Thank God, He baptized even me—and it is still burning in my soul.

All during my life, I had chronic stomach trouble and was headed to the grave. I heard that Jesus could heal, and looking in my Bible, I saw that He was the same yesterday, today, and forever. One morning as I went to work at an old sawmill I said, “God, if You will heal me, I will give You my life as I never have. I will tell the story.” Right there in that sawmill, God healed my body. I came back a well man and have been well for many years.

For over fifty-six years I have known what it is to be kept by the power of God.