DAVID HARPER IS BEST KNOWN AS A BBC TV ANTIQUES PRESENTER ON SHOWS LIKE ‘BARGAIN HUNT’ AND ‘ANTIQUES ROAD TRIP’.
He also runs an award-winning YouTube channel and has his own antiques business.
Despite his success and a very happy marriage, David spent years on a spiritual search, trying to connect to the universe in various esoteric ways. It wasn’t until his beloved daughter became a born-again Christian that he saw how someone could be radiantly transformed. “After seeing what Christianity did for my daughter, I realised that nothing else gets into a person’s heart or soul in the same way.” In 2025 David, too, became a born-again Christian, after deciding to investigate what had happened with his daughter. He ended up writing a book about his search. “Writing a book about God and not antiques was as much a shock to me as it has been to everyone else!” he says. (Photo – David Harper)
The antique dealer got more than he’d bargained for; writing the book transformed him, too.
Prior to becoming a Christian, David says he was a confused agnostic who had looked at many belief systems over the decades: “None of them had worked, whether getting in touch with nature through the old Celtic ways to the teachings of the Far East – I was once taught in a Scottish temple how to meditate by a Buddhist nun.” In his attempts to ‘connect’ to the universe, David had read self-help books and in recent years had found “great solace” in studying Stoic philosophy. He used to argue with one Christian friend about it, believing that this was just as life-enhancing as Christianity.
During these years, his daughter had been struggling with long periods of “deep unhappiness”, which had left David and his wife feeling helpless. Then Hetti (Henrietta) astonished them by radiating a new light and joy. She had become a Christian and her father was delighted to see the change: “For several years all sorts of doctors and therapists tried to help. But no one was able to help her, including me and her mother. The Christian transformation seemed miraculous … and many people described it as such.” (Photo – David Harper with daughter Hetti – her conversion opened the way to David’s new life)
Hetti, a London based singer-songwriter, then turned to writing and producing heavy Christian rock music under the name Tiffany Twisted (‘Grungecore for Christ’). To many Christians, heavy rock is something they left behind entirely or never approached, but David claims his daughter has deleted all of her pre-Christian music. David ‘monitored’ Hetti for over a year: “I worried that it might be nothing but a phase.” It wasn’t, and so in December 2024, elated that she had found happiness, he decided to start his own research into what had really changed his daughter. “I wanted to know why, in all my own searching, I’d never discovered anything like it myself!”
So, David began to investigate Christianity for the first time ever: “It was nothing academic, just an ordinary, inquisitive layman looking for answers.” He says that he thought it might take a few hours of internet browsing to find the answers, but he found himself diving into cavernous rabbit holes of information no one had ever told him about. “I immediately became obsessed, and 11 months later, after working on it full-time and at the expense of all other work (and income!), I emerged from my Christianity research project a changed person. I felt a joy and a purpose I’d assumed didn’t exist in this life.”
From the outset, to help him get an understanding of what he was learning, he’d write up notes as he went and then read through them later, adding information and building up a dossier of little-known facts. The word count kept growing, and after a couple of months, he realised that he was writing a whole book. “I started right at the beginning, where the Christians say it all started: the Creation of the universe.” He covered “dozens” of areas, from the Big Bang to the theory of evolution (“and whether or not we’re really descended from fish”), evidence for the soul and life-after-death testimonies. Looking at the life of Jesus, he investigated the Resurrection and how the Holy Spirit changes people who become ‘saved’.
For the first time, David also began reading the Bible: “I discovered that none of what I was reading was anything like I expected (or had been told). The incredible wisdom and advice for life I found seemed to fit with the modern world, and its philosophy was far more helpful and stimulating than any Stoic philosophy I’d ever come across.” He started with the New Testament and began to get to know the person of Jesus. “I found myself thinking about Jesus every waking moment. He was the last thing on his mind before going to sleep; I dreamt about him, and he was my first thought when I woke.”
Early on in the project he started praying – an incredible discovery which he writes about. He says it took a few months fighting off his old bias and the spiritual and mental blockages that had developed over a lifetime. But through his research, he slowly came to the conclusion that God really does exist, that Jesus is who he says he is and that Christianity, therefore, is really true. He came to these conclusions after finding verifiable historical and scientific evidence, which he details in his book.
However, he says that this belief was something only going on in his brain; there were no soul-moving moments. “ It just felt like a decision that something is true.”
Then, a month or so later, he began to experience spiritual shifts, some of which were highly emotional, which came from nowhere. “I’d have a feeling of joy, a sense that I’d remembered something important but didn’t know what it was, or that I’d come up with a great idea but suddenly forgot what it was! These feelings were wonderful, but also distressing, because my emotional state would suddenly change – both in public or in private!” He tried to hold onto the sensations in an attempt to understand what they were, but they’d melt away. This went on for a while, accompanied by a series of dramatic spiritual changes and revelations.
“It was all utterly exhausting! Sometimes I wished I could stop thinking about God and go back to my old life. Maybe read a little Stoic philosophy, buy a new car and throw myself back into my former comfortable, materialistic world and forget about the biggest questions in life.” However, the thought of going back to where he once was filled him with dread. He knew something was changing in him.
Then a few weeks later, a memory hit him like a steam train; he’d amassed a huge amount of evidence for Christianity and, in fact, evidence that most Christians he spoke to had never even heard of. He suddenly recalled that Dr John Lennox, the Oxford professor and Christian apologist, had said in a video interview that the real evidence for Christianity was what you saw in other people’s transformed lives.
“The real proof that Christianity was true was shining in the face of my daughter.” David experienced what he calls ‘the 18-inch drop’ (the moment when a fact in the brain falls the 18 inches into the heart and becomes something known and felt in the soul). He says,“I fell on my knees and fell in love with God.” David was now what he may have previously jokingly referred to as a person he’d want to run to the hills to avoid: “I’d become a born-again Christian!”
That was early in 2025 and for several months he has been studying the Bible, one to one, with “a very solid 80 year old Christian” and in two other larger Christian fellowship groups. David is convinced that his life has changed indescribably for the better: “It’s not just a change of thinking, a change of lifestyle and a spiritual awakening, but a change in my work life, too. Going back to where I was could never be an option!”
He plans to continue with his TV filming, but is also “very excited” about giving talks around the UK and sharing the joy of God.
‘The God Conundrum – an easy guide to life, the universe and everything’ by David Harper is available online and from bookshops. To book David Harper to speak at your church, see the email in the printed paper.