I’d love to hear it, Dan.
FIRST INSTALLMENT
Allan bought a Bible in the ‘50s and began reading it, and by 1985 or so he decided it was all true. He gave his heart to Jesus and was saved.
Now, he realized he needed to become churched. At the time he was teaching and researching at CalTech in Pasadena and living nearby with his wife. Being a scientist, he approached finding a church as a research project (I have this story directly—more than once—from Dr. Hugh Ross, the famous Christian astrophysicist and apologist; Hugh got it directly from Allan).
Allan used the phone book to list every church within twenty miles. Over a period of several weeks, he visited every single one—but did not enter any of them. Instead, he parked outside each one just as their Sunday morning worship service was letting out. Then, he evaluated them using two criteria: were the people carrying Bibles, and were they happy? In this way Allan narrowed his search to six churches.
Now, Allan visited the six churches and sat through their worship services. He filled out every visitor's card he could get his hands on, asking to be contacted. He had one more criterion, and he needed to talk to the pastor. Allan knew that the universe was somewhere between 10 and 17 billion years old (in 1985 that was the best precision available, but more on that later). He wanted to discover what each church's pastor considered to be the age of the universe, because Allan absolutely was not going to sit under a young-earther.
At the time, Hugh Ross had left CalTech, where he was a researcher in astronomy, in order to answer the Lord's call to enter full-time ministry at Sierra Madre Congregational Church. (Now there's a career-change you don't see every day.) Normally, a church growing rapidly first hires a second pastor to oversee Christian education--but not SMCC. Its first hire was Hugh, as its Evangelism Minister. Forty-five years later, Hugh remains as "Minister of Apologetics Emeritus".
As Evangelism Minister, Hugh looked through all the Visitor Cards each week. Suddenly, he was holding Allan Sandage's. Hugh knew Allan from CalTech--could this possibly be the same man?
And so Allan's final criterion was immediately satisfied by Hugh's presence on-staff. Allan's church-search was over. But now, Hugh Ross told Allan Sandage he needed to be discipled.
Of course, the elders and pastors at SMCC made sure there was a competent New Believers class, teaching the basics: Assurance of Salvation, Bible, Prayer, etc. It was a twelve-week course, and I was teaching the first third of it before turning over the new believers to the next teacher.
I can report to you that Allan was as sweet and nice a man as I have ever met. The irony was not lost on either of us that the man who had literally looked further than anyone into the physical universe now depended on my help learning about the spiritual realm.
About a year later, an incisive book debuted with Allan as its protagonist: Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos. Its ostensible purpose was to present the struggle to determine the age of the universe. It did that by introducing the major proponents of the various views, with Sandage on the long side of the argument at 15-17 billion years. It would take a few more years to settle in on 13.8.
But knowing Allan as I did, I was intrigued by how the author tried to explain Allan's spiritual journey. Apparently, Christianity was not that author's primary language, so his readers got only hints of Allan's new life.
But Allan knew, and so did Hugh and I.