"Then God gave me the answer for my salvation, His Son Jesus Christ Who died for me on Calvary’s cross. I repented from my sins and confessed them to God, I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour, and the Lord gave me by His grace what I did not deserve, salvation in Jesus Christ, my Saviour…"

The Bible says in the Acts of the Apostles chapter 17, verses 22-23:

"Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’s hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you."

My name is Angel Alvarez and I am from Spain. I am 23 years old. Perhaps you know a little bit about Spain, and its history. If it is so, maybe you will know that Spain in a very Roman Catholic country. It is in my country and under all the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, where I was brought up until I was 16 years old. I was born in 1977, but Spain did not become a democratic country until 1978. Previous to this year, Spain had a dictatorship as government. This meant that there was not freedom of religion. If I had to describe in few words the atmosphere of Spain in those days, and what people felt towards any other type of religion, I would describe it as fear, ignorance and superstition.

This fear, ignorance and superstition was due to the teaching and influence of the Roman Catholic Church, which taught and imposed over the people their own teachings and traditions. They were told what they had to believe instead of giving freedom to the people so that they would come to the Bible and see what it says there. They were taught that Christians were only Roman Catholics, and if you were not a Roman Catholic then you belonged to a cult and were not Christian. You could be as wicked as you would, and still be a Roman Catholic person, that is a "Christian". But if you belonged to a different religion, then that was different, because you were a heretic.

Nowadays, although the government of Spain has changed, the mind of the Spanish people has not, because they still have this fear, ignorance and superstition. They are in the situation as those who lived in Athens in the time of the apostle Paul. Spanish people are religious in general, some of them very much indeed, but they ignorantly worship to the unknown God, because they do not know God as He is revealed in His Word.

I feel this atmosphere of fear, ignorance and superstition among my family. My mother is a Roman Catholic woman, my father is atheist, and my sister and brother have a mixture of my parents. And I was brought up with the same characteristics as my sister and brother. Before I was saved, there was a total confusion, we did not know anything at all about the teaching of the Bible, and some of us even did not believe in God at all, yet we were called Christians. We all at that time could be described by the words of the passage written above.

It was in 1993 when I met a new friend. We became very good friends, and he and I used to do things as normal people do. But in the course of time, I went to look for him to his house on a Sunday, but there was nobody there. Some time later I found out that he had gone to church. I knew very few people who used to go to church among my friends, and no young person who did. That specially struck me when I heard that he attended a Protestant church. I did not know anything about Protestantism because of the ignorance produced by the influence of the Roman Catholic Church.

He invited me to attended one of their services, and I accepted with many doubts after thinking about it very much. After the evening service I went to my house to collect something before going back to church. Nobody was at home except my father. He asked me where I was going, and I answered that I was going to church. He thought it was the Roman Catholic Church, and he asked with surprise that he did not know that I had become so religious that I was going to church. Then I told him that it was not a Roman Catholic Church, but a Protestant one. When my father heard those words, the tone of his voice changed, and his conversation became a discussion. At the end of that discussion, he told me, "Now, you go to this place for this one time, but this is the last time that you go to that place. I do not want even to hear about you going to that church." My mother heard about this too, and she got very concerned about the matter as well.

Although my mother was Catholic, she gave me some liberty to keep attending the services. At that time I did not know why (I would find it out later on), but I felt that I had to go to church and listen to that message which was being preached every Sunday, because it was something that I had never heard before. However, my mother and I had to keep that in secret from my father. If he found that out, I would be in a very big problem.

I do not have enough space to tell about how the Lord undertook everything in His Providence, but I can tell you that "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28). In few time the situation in my family changed and I was allowed to go to church and hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and salvation in Him to all that believes.

One day, the Lord spoke to my heart, and convinced me that I was a sinner. With my religious activities I would never be saved, because I was a sinner. Then God gave me the answer for my salvation, His Son Jesus Christ Who died for me on Calvary’s cross. I repented from my sins and confessed them to God, I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour, and the Lord gave me by His grace what I did not deserve, salvation in Jesus Christ, my Saviour.

Later the Lord called to prepare myself for the ministry. I feel that my people in Spain are in the same situation as those in Athens, and myself some years ago. And the Lord has called to preach them the message that we find in Acts 17:29-30, and the same message that is for you if you are not saved yet. "Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the time of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent."

ANGEL ALVAREZ