I was brought up in an ungodly home, where violence and drink dominated the household, although I know my mother loved me greatly. For the first seventeen years of my life, and to my shame, I have to acknowledge that I had never read so much as one verse of the Word of God. I had never heard a sermon, nor been inside a place of worship. I was a stranger to both grace and to God. Sadly, I was following my father and elder brother into the ways of violence and drink.

On December 17th 1965, late that night and in the pouring rain, I lay in a drunken stupor, too drunk to help myself. In that condition, a fiery evangelical girl who attended the same school as myself, came to me and spoke to me of my sin. She warned me of hell and warned me to flee from the wrath to come.
She then told me of a Saviour who was mighty to save. One who hung, and bled, and died to redeem such hell-deserving sinners as I was. She then gave me a Bible and challenged me to read it if I dare!

From the next morning I began to read that Bible. For the next two and a half years I devoured the Word of God. At the same time I began to attend an evangelical Methodist Church, and sought to reform my life. My former drinking companions wanted nothing more to do with me, nor I with them. On April 18th 1968 at 9.35 in the evening, I was turned from darkness to light, from hell to heaven, by the power of God's Word.

'Not the labours of my hands,
Can fulfil Thy law's demands,
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears for ever flow,
Al/for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and Thou alone'.

In 1971, I married the girl who had first spoken to me of Christ, and after three brief years of marriage the Lord took her home to glory at the tender age of twenty-five. The words of the Saviour in John 17 were a tower of strength to me during that time of sad bereavement. "Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me."

My Christian life has been a continuous battle, but the Lord has both sustained and strengthened me through each conflict. I had hoped to enter the Methodist Ministry, and qualified as a Local Preacher in 1971, only to be forced out because I continued to preach upon the cross and the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ.
I was told by preachers and ministers alike, to get away from the cross! Well, some thirty years on, blessed be God, I am still at the cross, for it was at the cross where I first saw the Lord.

The Lord has been gracious to me. I remarried and now have three grown up children. He has given me many an opportunity to preach the Gospel, and in words of the hymn writer:

"E'er since by faith, Isaw the stream, Thy flowing wounds supply, Redeeming love has been my theme, And shall he till I die."

Dr Allen is now the U.K. Deputation Speaker for the Trinitarian Bible Society, having left the teaching profession in response to the call by God to this work, which he is passionate about and to which he is dedicated, to the glory of his Lord and Saviour.