As a young fellow I was fascinated with the Bible and had a very strong desire to know as much about the word of God as I could. My parents purchased a children's Bible for me and it quickly became my most prized possession.
I would read all of the Old Testament stories and be fascinated with it all, Bible reading became a regular event with most mornings before school and most nights just before bed being the main reading times.
As I grew older I realized that the children's Bible didn't have everything in it so I would try to progress to what I called the big Bible. My grand parents realized I was really keen to read the scriptures so they gave me this really grand old Bible that was really huge. It was one of those flashy ones that you could keep a record of all of your family tree, baptisms, deaths and so on.
But that wasn't why I called it the big Bible. It was big to me because I couldn't understand it. There were some really big words in it I didn't know and apart from that I really just couldn't get with it at all. I would ask my parents questions and I just figured it must be something you comprehend as an adult.
Of course later in life I found out that is not the case and that my parents didn't understand either. At the age of about 15 I just gave up trying to understand what they big Bible had to say. I still believed God and still loved the stories I could understand, but I moved away from it completely.
It wasn't long before I had succumbed to peer pressure and starting drinking, smoking cigarettes and gambling. To cut a long story short I became what is commonly referred to as a compulsive gambler.
Fast forward about 8 years later and a friend of mine started to tell me this new church he had joined. It took a while for him to wear me down but I eventually went to check out his church meeting.
>From all of my previous Bible readings there was one main point I was absolutely convinced about and that was that I needed to be baptized by full immersion. That was the only thing that I was absolutely 100% convinced about and when I went to the new church that is what they also preached.
After sitting through a church service and trying to find reasons and excuses to walk away the reality was I was convinced that this was the truth and decided to get baptized that very day.
As I got changed into shorts and walked up the back to where these guys had the baptismal tank the plug apparently hadn't been put in correctly and the tank was empty. The guys decided to fill it using a new clean plastic garbage bin. I would go with them as they filled the bin with warm water and carry it up and tip into the tank. I don't know how many trips it took or how long it was but it seemed like forever.
I was so nervous. To use a Biblical term my knees were smoting together.
Finally the tank was full and I was baptized by full immersion. It was an extremely humbling experience for me but it was the first step in an extraordinary set of events that completely changed my life.
You see later on that very same night I had to go to work. During a break at about 1 am in the morning on my own walking outside looking up at the stars I was wonderfully filled with the Holy Ghost and spoke in tongues.
My life started to change almost immediately with the desire to gamble completely gone. Over the next few weeks I stopped swearing, drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes.
But the most amazing thing of all is that big Bible I was telling you about earlier that I couldn't understand now made sense. I could read it and understand it with amazing excitement. For about 3 weeks straight I would read it for about 3 hours every night starting from Matthew and ending before Revelations and I would just go wow look at that, and wow look at this, it was truly amazing.
Don't get me wrong I didn't stop reading the Bible after that first 3 weeks but I did calm down a bit. So do I believe water baptism is necessary - you betcha!