In the 1800s, the Devil planted a crop of false adventist religions in the ripe soil of the modernising West. One of the smaller plants to grow up was the Christadelphian faith. Nestled amongst its better-known brothers — the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons, and the Millerites — it distinguished itself by a disbelief in the existence of the Devil, and congregations run entirely by unpaid laymen.

My Background

In 2001, more than 150 years after the movement began, I was blessed to be born into a Christadelphian family. I use the term ‘blessed’ because, by comparison to the average unbelieving household, mine was truly remarkable. Without fail, my mother ensured that our family read the Scriptures daily, following the standard Christadelphian Bible reading plan of five or six chapters per day. My father, an active elder and teacher, would regularly fill his after-work evenings with scriptural studies and absorption in Christadelphian writings.

In this environment, my siblings and I grew up with a sense of divinely-imposed duty, a conviction of biblical morality, and heads fairly spilling over with Bible knowledge. We were the kids who felt no embarrassment when asked to find elusive books like Obadiah; and who loved to prank others by asking them to turn up Hezekiah 3:15 or Matthew 29:2.

Christadelphians such as these, in my opinion, are ‘not far from the kingdom of God’. I, for one, was but a stone’s throw away.

As the years rolled on, I recall the disappointment of having reached an age of accountability — around fifteen — when I would have to shoulder the responsibility of making my own profession of faith and choosing to be baptised. This may seem a strange statement until I point out that I never expected to reach age ten, let alone fifteen, before the Second Coming of Christ. To a Christadelphian, Christ’s return is overwhelmingly imminent, and has been for 180 years. The chance of my reaching adulthood before the Second Coming was frankly laughable. Throwaway lines like “if we’re still here” punctuated any plans in advance of about two years.

Being an aging teenager, and believing myself to be individually responsible to God, I was running the risk of being unbaptised at the return of Christ. I needed to secure my salvation. As every Christadelphian knows, the steps to obtaining salvation are: first, understand the Bible; second, believe the gospel; third, get baptised; fourth, be obedient for the rest of your life. (And all God’s people said: yikes.) On the 18th January 2019, therefore, I was immersed in water and ticked off number three with a relieved sigh.

There I was: a seventeen-year-old who had checked all the boxes.

Unwanted Discoveries

Judging by what happened next, God thought very little of my work. He sent his Son into the world to win a bride away from her sin, and that included winning me from the sins of legalism and doctrinal pride.

As 2019 turned into 2020, I graduated high school and transitioned to university life. During this time, God gave me the time and inclination to bury myself in Bible study. I enjoyed unearthing the consistency, harmony, and ‘golden nuggets’ that are uniquely characteristic of a divinely inspired text. I became acutely attuned to the subtleties of the Holy Spirit’s writing style – in which, at the microscopic level, He never wastes a word, and, at the macroscopic, always tells a consistent story.

I began to discern that, whilst Christadelphians are often singularly adept at identifying gems in the minutiae of the text, their faulty doctrinal frameworks prevent them from piecing together a coherent narrative. Their eschatological system, for example, is clunky and lopsided in a way that would make an amateur plot writer blush, let alone the Holy Spirit Himself.

Wishing to fill this gap in the Christadelphian arsenal of scriptural expertise, I began to think more contextually about biblical themes, and committed to studying entire books – like Isaiah and Ezekiel – chapter by chapter, rather than exclusively verse by verse. The effect was enormous. Having been voted by my ecclesia onto the lecturing roster, I would frequently give talks in which I would piece together biblical sub-narratives into coherent stories – without ever straying from the text. I was frequently praised for the freshness of my approach, and invited to give talks more often.

It was only by mid-2022 that I noticed a problem. Amidst my ongoing attempts to construct a coherent biblical narrative, I looked around at the puzzle pieces scattered across the workbench of my mind, and observed that several of the eschatological components fit together in a way that was distinctly un-Christadelphian. Exhilarated by curiosity, I began busily assembling the pieces – just to see what it would look like, if it were true. I felt like a man test driving a car he could never afford to buy.

“For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?” (Luke 14:28)

I had not counted the cost. Believing that the Christadelphian positions were correct, I assumed that any amount of macroscopic study would only provide further proof in their favour. When this did not turn out to be the case, I feared the consequences of binding my conscience to a full discovery of the truth. I loved my life as a Christadelphian, and wasn’t prepared to lose it – not even for the truth. So, I put my Bible study on hold, choosing to focus on other, more secular, life pursuits.

The above paragraph is included to dispel any notion that my own study and ingenuity was what brought about my conversion. The old adage about the horse brought to water applies here. Men who are in sinful rebellion against God – as I was – do not want the truth. The truth asks too much. It requires one to turn from slavery to worldly loves – or, to call them what they are: idols – to the difficult freedom of submission to the true and living God. This was a problem of the heart, not just the head.

The Doctrines of Grace

As I have already indicated, the Christadelphian faith holds to a false gospel. Its official doctrines teach that salvation is something that can be merited by human effort. Consider the following clause from the Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith:

“That the way to obtain this salvation is to believe the gospel they preached, and to take on the name and service of Christ, by being thereupon immersed in water, and continuing patiently in the observance of all things he has commanded, none being recognised as his friends except those who do what he has commanded.—Acts 13:48; 16:31; Mark 16:16; Romans 1:16; Acts 2:38,41; 10:47; 8:12; Galatians 3:27-29; Romans 6:3-5; 2:7; Matthew 28:20; John 15:14” (BASF, Clause XVI).

Needless to say, this statement contains several impossibly heavy “ands”.

As long as I clung to the stony-hearted conviction that my standing before God depended on me, I was as lost as Adam while he was still chewing. But whatever my convictions, in truth it was not up to me, and that is the only reason you are reading this now. I could not pinpoint the exact moment of my salvation – just as one may miss the exact moment of a sunrise. By the time I accepted the doctrines of grace, however, I knew that the sun was up, and the lights were on. Something had fundamentally changed.

One seminal moment occurred as I was listening to a podcast in which a preacher justified the provocative partiality of Calvinism by drawing an analogy to courtship. Two rhetorical questions stood out:

1. Does God have the right to choose who his bride will be?
2. Having chosen her, will he successfully win her – away from her sin?

Unwilling to cast God in the light of ‘unsuccessful suitor’, my heart was softened to what I could now see clearly in the text of scripture – Romans 8-11, Ephesians 1, John 6 – but had been unable to accept.

With a new heart, and the Holy Spirit on my side, I was finally ready to put together the pieces of the biblical narrative that still lay messily around my prefrontal cortex. I also began counting the cost.

Putting It All Together

Eschatology was the first area in which I came to a settled conclusion. Rejecting the somewhat dispensational Christadelphian views, I came to understand that the Bible teaches postmillennialism. In short, Christ will remain in heaven until his enemies are made his footstool (Psa 110:1, 1 Cor 15:23-28), during which time his kingdom will tangibly grow to fill the earth (Dan 2:35,44, Matt 13:31-33). This will be achieved through the spiritual conquest of the gospel (Isa 42:1-13; Matt 28:18-20).

Such views are, in my opinion, a suitable antidote to the chronic individualism of Western culture. Jesus is not just my Saviour; he is everyone’s Lord. The story he is telling goes far beyond my personal experience or the fact that I will spend eternity with him. His death and resurrection do not constitute a faucet of salvation to any individual willing to ‘turn it on’; it is a wellspring of irresistible grace that flows out into the world, that will, in the end, save that world. This is Calvinism applied to history. It coheres. It is a narrative arc worthy of the Holy Spirit.

It was not until late 2023 that I could have articulated the above two paragraphs. At that point, however, I would still have labelled myself a ‘unitarian’. There were three hurdles that, to my mind, disqualified the Trinity from consideration:

1. Its absence in the Old Testament.
2. Its assault on rational thought.
3. Its seemingly contrived formulation.

Overcoming these hurdles was not something I wanted, nor expected. As a (dare I say it) ‘Reformed Unitarian’, I believed my duty from God was to expose the Trinity as false in a push for further reformation of the church. By mid-2024, however, God liberated me from this conceit also. I saw Jesus in the Old Testament in the person of the “Angel of Yahweh”, eliminating point one; I learned to submit to Scripture – particularly the New Testament’s identification of Jesus as Yahweh – even when I did not understand it, eliminating point two; and I discovered the Jewish doctrine of ‘Two Powers in Heaven’, which, along with other realisations, eliminated point three.

The depth of the Trinity, however, was borne out in how gloriously it undergirded, suffused, and consummated the biblical narrative I had come to appreciate. The Father authors the story in sovereign love; the Son steps into it, redeeming its darkest chapters; and the Spirit animates it, unfolding its glory to the ends of the earth. A Trinitarian-Calvinist-postmillennial theology does not just cohere; it glows with beauty.

Expensive Obedience

I am not proud to say that, for the second half of 2024, I was a highly active Christadelphian who would have signed off on less than twenty percent of Christadelphian doctrine. In a miraculous answer to prayer, I was never put in the position of having to preach or teach doctrine with which I disagreed – despite regularly giving talks and leading the youth group. Indeed, apart from several difficult conversations with my parents, I had kept my conversion entirely private. This had to change, and I knew it.

Through a series of providential events, I came into regular contact with the pastor of Kurri Kurri Gospel Church, Shem Swadling. With so much in common, both doctrinally and culturally, I made the radical decision to leave Perth, where I had lived for all twenty-three years of my life, and join Gospel Church in New South Wales.

On January 6, 2025, therefore, armed with little more than a swag, a suitcase, and my trusty blue hatchback, I set out on a six-day journey across the Nullabor – quite literally leaving my old life behind.

From Abraham onwards, obedience has been expensive.

Conclusion

Written with such structure, this testimony might fail to portray accurately the months of turmoil and fence-sitting which characterised my conversion. It certainly did not unfold under neat headings. Even so, as I reflect on God’s goodness to me over the past five years, and the wonderful community of believers in which he has now planted me, it is difficult to express the joy and gratitude that fills me. I am reminded of Christ’s words in the book of Mark:

“Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, except one who will receive one hundred times as much now in the present age–houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions–and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30).

–  Micah Hunter