by Robert A Dolman
I was born in Regina, Sask.,Canada. I was raised in a non-Christian home and at about 6years of age, was "sent off",to Sunday school at a nearby Salvation Army Gospel Hall. There I received an award Bible for the highest marks in the Primary Sunday School class.
As I got older, probably 10, I lost interest and did not attend church much again until many years later.
As a youth, I was often into trouble and used alcohol extensively. By the age of 13 I could drink an entire 26 ounce bottle of whiskey in an evening and 'proudly still negotiate, or so I thought.
I also became involved in a street gang and hung around a local Chinese restaurant.
One of the past times of this gang was counting how many times the China man called the police on us in a one week period. Our record was 27 times. Occasionally the China man would chase us from the store with a rather large meat cleaver.
In High school I became interested in sports and my involvement with Canadian football got me off the streets and onto a football field.
After high school I worked for several years and then ironically, applied and was accepted into the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
After my graduation from the RCMP training center I was stationed in the Roger's Pass Section of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
In my first year there I dealt with many gruesome accidents and had occasions when I had people die in my arms and even assisted the local doctor with autopsies.
I began to age very quickly and in my next number of years would experience several life threatening incidents.
I was almost killed by a snow slide, miraculously saved from a rock slide, held hostage at knife point and preserved during a gun battle in which I shot a man who tried to kill me.
Each of those and a dozen more incidents are each "another story", but suffice to say, that as I look back now I can see how the hand of God preserved me and kept me alive until His salvation could be made clear to me.
The bottom line is that notwithstanding all the traumatic events that happened to me, I was not saved. These miraculous preservations of my life did not bring me to the Saviour.
It was not until many years later, still member of the Mounted Police, now working in the Forensic Laboratory, that at 33 yrs of age (1977)and in deep emotional stress and a potentially suicidal state, I opened that Bible, given to me so many years before (1954) and began to read it. Inside the cover someone had handwritten these words;
"Behold the book whose leaves display, Jesus the truth, the light and the way. Read it with diligence and prayer, Search it and thou shalt find Him there." I took that book in hand at three o'clock in the morning and I said; "I'm going to read this book from cover to cover and God if you are real, you had better show me, or this is just an old history book and life is not worth living."
It took me one year to read that book. What I did not understand, I passed by, but what I did understand began to affect me. Within one year I was saved, baptized and attending a Christian Brethren Assembly where I have been in fellowship ever since.
Since I have been saved I have seen, my mother was saved (60 yrs old) my father (70 yrs old), my father-in-law (age 84) my sister, her husband and family saved, my wife and children, and several others friends and relatives. He is faithful who promised.
Someday, God will also reveal to me, the name of the person who wrote that little note inside a Sunday School Bible, so that I might say thank you to them also. I suspect it might have been that same Salvation Army lady who gave me her lunch at the church picnic, when ants got into mine.
Robert A Dolman