Gospel Guidebook: Getting and Keeping It Right 
About
My name is Robert P. Terry. I became a disciple (not a believer) of Jesus Christ while in college during the fall of 2000. After graduating from college in 2003, I moved to Japan and tried to live as a devout disciple of Jesus.
While in Japan, I was, for a time, involved in a street ministry like 3 to 4 days a week. One day on my way home, I was taking a bus and three Filipino women started talking to me. They were giggling and acting childish. I didn’t want to talk with them. I felt tired and just wanted to get home. But I figured it was a good opportunity to tell a few more people about Jesus, so I immediately shared my faith with them. When I did this, one of the women responded, “Oh, I love John 3:16. It is my favorite verse.” I said, “Oh, that’s good,” but in my heart, I hated her. I said to myself, “Do you really think being a Christian is that easy?” In my eyes, she was an immature child. I didn’t like the way she dressed. I didn’t like the way she talked. And I didn’t like the way she and her friends engaged conversation with me. It wasn’t until about 3 years later that I had realized that this woman who had professed a child-like faith in John 3:16 was a genuinely saved Christian, whereas I was lost. If I had known that beforehand, I think I might have been instantly struck with a heart attack. I was grateful that God didn’t reveal it to me at the time. I was religious. I said and did the right things, but I had not yet believed in Jesus for everlasting life. I didn’t understand that God’s salvation was a gift. So, it took another 3 years and lots of personal hardship before I finally saw the light. I was at the end of my rope. I had quit my job because of mental health issues and was living in a cheap hotel on what was left of my savings. The only things I owned were in two duffle bags. I had zero friends or family who could help me. However, it was in the midst of those dire straights that I remembered John 6:47: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.” For the first time in my life, I believed it, and I received the gift of eternal life, and I knew it for certain. That was in the fall of 2008. (Now, I don’t mention this story to suggest that anyone needs to go down the hard road that I took. Absolutely not! Rather, I mention this story so that people do not go down that hard road. Anybody can believe in Jesus for everlasting life anytime anywhere. He died for your sins and rose again so that you can live for ever with Him in heaven. You don’t need to have a deep sense of sin or anything. Just believe His simple promise and you also can receive everlasting life right now.)
After about two more months of being a believer in Jesus Christ, I was working full time again. And about a year after that, I had met the woman I was about to marry. In 2011, I wrote a short book called Jesus Christ the Savior of the World and also had it translated into Japanese and Korean. Without knowing it, I had written a Free Grace book without even knowing that there were other Free Grace believers in the world. (Obviously, I was really out of touch with the world. Lol.) We moved to South Korea in 2013. It was shortly after this that I became a believer in Universal Reconciliation (i.e., the salvation of all). In 2014, I started to intensively study New Testament Greek because I wanted to create a New Testament translation in Japanese that reflected what I thought was a better translation of the Greek word aionios, which is typically translated “eternal” and “everlasting.” I ended up working on this project everyday for about three and a half years and finally finished in 2017. (However, I ended up abandoning this project and taking down the website later because I wasn’t happy with the translation. When I have time I may update it based on the Textus Receptus instead of the Critical Text. I also have changed my mind about the translation of aionios and need to revise the translation to reflect the traditional translations of “eternal” and “everlasting.” This is all a long story, and I may write about it in a future article.)
In 2019, while meditating on the Word, I had somewhat of an epiphany regarding the freeness of the gift of God. Even though I had known before that the salvation of God was free and whoever believed in Jesus for everlasting life was eternally secure, I felt like I had come into a deeper understanding of its freeness. This motivated me to write the Gospel Guidebook at the end of 2019. I spent the next two years reading and researching various topics. Recently, I have started updating my website with some new writings.
Please contact me anytime if you would like to know about the Savior, or if you have any questions or comments.