Dr. Ed Myers, missionary to Seoul, South Korea, directs Unchanging Rock Ministries. Dr. Myers's goal is to preach and teach the Word of God so that sinners put their trust in the "Rock of Ages" and believers are built up as "living stones" in God's "spiritual house." Dr. Myers especially focuses on training a new generation of Korean leaders at Bob Jones Memorial Institute in Seoul.
Dr. Myers put His faith in Jesus Christ as the "rock of salvation" when he was twenty years old. The following is his testimony: "When I was twenty years old I believed on the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. I first came under conviction that I was a sinner when I was 18. A girl asked me if I was born again. As a United Methodist, I was not highly familiar with that terminology, but I knew enough to say, "I believe Jesus died for my sins." She said, "That can be in your head and not in your heart." Her accurate assessment of my condition left a lasting impression. For the next two years, I went on a spiritual search.
At Franklin College in Indiana I started attending InterVarsity Christian Fellowship meetings and hanging out with evangelical Christians. I also began attending Franklin Community Church, a John MacArthur-style ministry. As a result, I slowly began to come to a conviction that I had never possessed while growing up—that the Bible was completely true. As well, the message that I had to become born again in order to go to heaven began to take root in my soul. I eventually became convinced that apart from Jesus Christ, I could never get to heaven. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I realized that even though I had been hanging around Christians, I still did not know for sure that I had believed on Jesus Christ with my heart. Though my head had become firmly convinced that Jesus was the only way to heaven and that His work on the cross was intended to be the payment for my sins, I simply did not know if Jesus had applied His work on Calvary to me personally. I began praying the sinner’s prayer and crying out to Jesus Christ to save me.
Despite my praying for salvation, I still felt like I had to do something to obtain salvation or to become accepted by God. One night I told a Christian friend, Kiley Wood, that I did not know if I was saved. Kiley told me to put my sins under the blood of Jesus Christ. I prayed and asked God to show me His grace. A couple of nights later, I was walking around my dormitory (where I was a hall leader) and went to the downstairs hallway to check on the women students (the co-ed dorm had separate wings for girls and guys). I saw a young lady crying in her dorm room. She missed her baby daughter, a daughter that had been born out of wedlock and that had been left at home so that the freshman girl could attend college. I thought to myself, “If Jesus Christ is in me, I can comfort her like Jesus would.” I tried but failed. I began walking down the hallway thinking to myself, "She really feels guilty for what she has done." Then, it dawned on me, "Ed, you really feel guilty for all the wrong things that you have done." At that point, I began claiming the promise of forgiveness through Jesus Christ. I started repeating to myself, “I am forgiven, I am forgiven, I am forgiven.” By the time I reached my dorm room, my whole soul had come to rest completely in Christ as my Savior. The Spirit of God then bore witness with my spirit that Christ’s blood was indeed poured out for me and that I was forgiven. I immediately thanked the Lord and marveled in the fact that salvation had been obtained so easily—by simple faith and not by praying in just the right way, not by going through a religious ritual, and not by my doing any righteous deed.
For the first time, I had come to fully understand that salvation was by God’s grace alone and that I did not have to do anything good in order to earn God’s favor. I realized that I had obtained salvation through resting in Jesus Christ. Two days after my conversion experience, I told my pastor at Franklin Community Church, “Pastor Dave, for the first time, I understand that there’s nothing I have ever done or ever will do that gives me peace with God.” I praise God that Jesus opened my eyes to the truth of Romans 5:1—“Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” and to the work described in Galatians 2:20—“[Christ] loved me and gave himself for me,” and to the promise of Romans 8:1 – “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” I was baptized by immersion five months after I received Jesus Christ as my Savior.
My life took a definite turn in direction after I received Christ as my Savior. I found myself bothered by movies, music, and language that formerly had not troubled me. I lost a large degree of interest in sports and TV. Also, I gained a heartfelt love and affection for the born-again Christians in InterVarsity and Franklin Community Church. Most importantly, I began having fellowship with my uncle, Gene Merkle, a business teacher at Bob Jones University. As I began reading my Bible and witnessing to people, I lost most of my interest in my college major (public relations and advertising) and began sensing a strong desire to go into the pastoral ministry. Thus, I switched to an English major because I thought a degree in English would be more useful for writing sermons. When I told my uncle about my desire to go to seminary and study for the ministry, he encouraged me to pray about attending BJU. It was at that point that my own will started to entrench itself against God’s will.
Because of my United Methodist background and the unbelief I had grown up in, I had always had a very negative impression of BJU. I considered the school legalistic and extremist. However, I knew my uncle to be a gentle, genuine Christian, so I decided to give BJU a chance in my thinking. After four visits to the campus, much resistance from my stubborn will, and a thorough chastening from the Lord in trying to run from BJU, I ended up on campus as a full-time graduate student in the fall of 1994. One year later, I was accepted as an English G.A. After four years of serving as an English G.A., I received my Master of Divinity. Then, I worked for one year at the BJU Press as an editor. In 2000 I arrived in South Korea to teach Bible, English, Algebra I, Algebra II, and Earth Science at Seoul Christian School. I returned to BJU from 2003 to 2007 to complete my Ph.D. in Theology. Today, I serve serve as a traveling Bible teacher and preacher in South Korean Bible institutes and churches."
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