Part  One "Shug"

 

The evangelist had been pleading with the audience for ten minutes already.  He was groping for a fresh approach.  I flipped the pages of the hymnal and modulated into E flat.  "Just As I Am," a la Hammond organ, trembled through the Women's Club Building.   

"Oh, yes, friends, just as you are!"  The preacher responded to the music.  "Just as you are, though tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt.  Come just as you are!"   

Four more minutes and I modulated again.  "I Surrender All" gave him new ammunition.

"Surrender your all to God.  Determine now to follow Him all the way, no matter what it may cost.  Decide tonight to join with his last, His remnant people, and be a part of His only true church, which keep the ten commandments, including the seventh-day Sabbath."

The going always gets rough when the "Sabbath issue" comes around.  

Few are anxious to cast their lot with a small, often ridiculed sect.   Attendance drops drastically after this subject is presented.

Why was I, at age twenty-one, playing organ for such an organization rather than singing on a "worldly" stage?

* * * * *

Ultrasound was unheard of in 1931, but Daddy had known the baby was a girl from the minute he discovered Mother was pregnant with me.  The Christmas day that I was born, he came into the hospital room with a new bottle of "Evening in Paris" perfume (remember the pretty blue glass tube with the tassel?), pulled a chair up to the bassinet and picked up his new baby girl.  Placing her in the cradle he made by crossing his right ankle over his left knee, he performed his own brand of infant baptism right then and there, draining the dainty blue bottle of every last drop of its "holy water"!  I was his little princess.

* * * * *  

When I was still an infant we moved to Norphlet, about 500 feet from the refinery which Daddy was helping to build.  My parents had found a solid little house in need of some fixing up.  Daddy could envision what the finished product would be, so he started working on it as he found time.  It wasn't long until even the yard was looking like a little garden of Eden with evergreen shrubs, flowering bushes, and on the side next to the street, a lovely petrified wood and cactus display curving around a tiny, elegant goldfish pond.  He kept me close beside him during all my waking hours.  He sometimes worked "graveyard" shift, but when he worked days he would have Mother drive him to work just so I would be with him every possible minute.    

Life was pretty good.  Our little family was financially sound because Daddy had a secure job as head chemist of McMillan Oil Refinery.  Mother saw to it that we went to church regularly.  She was Missionary Baptist and he had been raised Methodist, from a long line of Methodists which included a circuit-riding preacher grandfather.  However, he had thought of baptism by immersion for a long time, so now that he was married to a Baptist, he was immersed and accompanied her to church, uniting the family.   

Daddy was always singing or whistling.  Mother didn't agree with the words to "Funiculi, funicula!" that he used to sing a lot: "Some think this world was made for fun and frolic, and so do I!"  He enjoyed ballroom dancing, and Mother went with him for awhile, but reluctantly, as she was afraid Jesus would come while she was there and she would be lost.  As with many Fundamentalist religions, most things that were fun were wrong.   

Answer me this:  If it's right and moral for a man and his wife to disrobe and make love together, how could it be wrong for the two of them, fully clothed, to dance together?

* * * * *

One day Mama Miles drove over from Smackover with news for Mother.

"There's a tent meeting right near our house," she announced.   "The man is preaching straight from the Bible.  I think you'll like it."  That did it for Mother.  She had been teaching Sunday School classes since her early teens, and worshipped the Lord with great fear and trembling.  Joy was not part of the religious experience in any of the churches of my childhood and youth.  Works were important.  One studied to discover something else to do, which he may have missed before.   

So off to Smackover, night after night, we went.  Daddy went when he wasn't working.   

A big sign, BIBLE CHAUTAUQUA, hung over the entrance, and wood shavings covered the ground under the tent.  I well remember sitting and playing in that sawdust during the lectures.  I hated the way it felt on my backside and when it got in my shoes.  I still do.  The huge monsters from the books of Daniel and Revelation were frightening to a four-year-old.  And not me only.  I heard a little black lady say, "Ooo, me! That's a WHOMPUSCAT!" when she saw the chart of the nondescript beast.   

And that was to be the end of life as I had known it.

* * * * *  

"We believe the writings of Ellen G. White to be inspired," the evangelist said near the end of the meetings.  That didn't mean much to Mother, as many great writers and poets were labeled "inspired".  However, in this case, inspiration comes from direct visions given by God, or is brought personally by His angel!  As is common practice, the Seventh-day Adventists had not identified themselves with their BIBLE CHAUTAUQUA.  They nearly always go incognito.    

"You have to use guile, Sister," the evangelist later explained with a twinkle.   

The "inspired" writings of Ellen White were the foundational doctrines of the church.  By the close of the Chautauqua, Mother had discovered that Saturday is the true Sabbath, the "keeping" of which is the distinguishing sign of God's true church.6  The last great conflict on earth is to be a confrontation between the Roman Catholics who, according to Seventh-day Adventist beliefs, changed the Sabbath to Sunday, and God's little "remnant" of Sabbath-keepers.7  The Catholic Church, she learned, is the woman of Revelation 17, clothed in purple and scarlet, glittering with gold; the "great whore", the "Mother of harlots" who had committed fornication with the kings of the earth."  The Protestant churches who still "keep" Sunday are her daughters, the prostitutes.8   The Sabbath "truth" was simple, or, should I say, simplistic: God made the world in six days and rested the seventh, making it holy; the commandment to rest on the seventh day was given to the Israelites in the wilderness; those who didn't revere the day were to be put to death, and Isaiah said one should not only refrain from work on that day, but should not do one's own pleasure or speak one's own words.  Revelation 12:17 in the King James Version indicates to the Seventh-day Adventist that the remnant, the last small church of time, would keep the commandments -- which to them is mainly the fourth commandment -- and that they would have a special gift of prophecy, someone especially anointed to predict the future.  So important to the church is the keeping of the fourth commandment that their prophetess had a "vision" of the stones on which God wrote the ten commandments in Heaven where she saw a special light shining around the fourth.9  Her interpretation of various prophecies set the stage for a unique paranoia in the church.  A national, then international Sunday law will be promulgated by a combination of Church and State, and God's little group of Sabbath keepers will be persecuted by the entire Christian Church, and with government support, yet.  They are taught to prepare for possible martyrdom as a result of following "The Truth", as they call their dogma.   

"Soul sleep," the doctrine that there is no soul separate from the body, and that all there is of you after death is in that hole in the ground, is a "truth" of tremendous magnitude to the church.  Most members will become extremely agitated, or even angry, when discussing the topic.  They do, however, believe in a bodily resurrection, which, again, is the entire being, as body and soul are one entity.  They go the Bible one better on resurrection, though.  Where the Good Book tells of a first and a second resurrection, the Adventists have a third, "special resurrection,"10 it is termed.  Ellen White said, as usual, " I saw," which is supposed to indicate a "vision" directly from Heaven, "The graves were opened, and those who had died in faith under the third angel's message, keeping the Sabbath, came forth from their dusty beds, glorified, to hear the covenant of peace that God was to make with those who had kept his law."

Somehow Mother found it reasonable to follow a church founded and nurtured by a woman -- an ill woman at that -- and she convinced Daddy that they should be baptized, notwithstanding they had been baptized before.  Mama Miles came in on profession of faith.  With Mother it was "whole hog or none," so they went back into the water, giving up their God-given freedom on Independence Day, July 4, 1941.  Daddy was somewhat reluctant.  Mother always said he would not have joined had she not pushed him.   

Trouble ensued immediately.  When Daddy wouldn't take his turn at the weekend shift, he was fired from the job he had worked for nearly eight years.  He was blackballed at the other refineries.   They thought he'd lost his mind!    

The Church of Christ minister tried to straighten my folks out.  They invited us all over to dinner so they could show us that Jesus had fulfilled the law.  Mother was just discovering Ellen White's writings and had found that "the drinking of tea and coffee are a sin,"11 so when the preacher's little son said, "You didn't drink you tea," I had to say, "No, thank you."    

"Why not?"   

"I c-c-can't," I stammered, embarrassed.   

"Why can't you?" he demanded.   

"It's a sin," I said softly.  "The Lord says so."  Sister White's words are equivalent to the Lord's.  Adventist periodicals are full of:

                  Heaven sent a message;

                  the servant of the Lord said;

                  we have been told by our prophet;

                  from the pen of inspiration; and

                  the Lord says through His servant.   

Well, my little friend didn't think his family would be into sinning, so he picked up my glass of tea and poured it down the front of my dress, lemon slice and all!  Neither of us, of course, really knew what it was all about.  Just following our parents.

The Church of Christ folks didn't give up easily.  Finally, after several months, two of the men left our house for the last time, shaking the dust from their feet at the front gate as they went out.  I thought they were funny.

* * * * *

Daddy's job loss was devastating to us.  "Sister White" (the church's pope-ess?), had told her "little flock" that they should prepare for the end-of-time troubles soon to hit the world by moving out of the cities and begin survival preparation such as raising their own food.12  So my parents sold the pretty house in the "city" of several hundred population and moved to a little ten acre farm a mile out.  As it turned out, it was probably a good idea, not from end-times standpoint, but because Daddy was without work, and the little farm would make it possible for him to work out a living.  It was a lot of hard physical work, but Daddy had never been afraid of work.  A few chickens and several cows gave him milk, eggs and butter to sell, and he got a mule named Frieda.  She was something!  She could open any gate, so rounding her up for work was sometimes a chore.  But she could pull a plow straight in Daddy's little truck garden.  It was always a threesome -- Frieda in front, Daddy behind the plow, and I brought up the rear, walking barefoot in the cool, rich, freshly turned soil.  It felt so good!

Daddy wasn't too proud to sell fresh vegetables or a load of manure along with the dairy products.  He was the first in the area to produce and sell cultured buttermilk instead of churned.  He delivered some to a colored lady raising a family of boys.  As he went on down the street a little barefoot fellow came running after him.

"Mr. Pine! Mr. Pine! Mamma say dis here milk's spoilt!"

Daddy was a hard worker, always remembering his own counsel to me:  "Can't never could do nothin'!" he quoted from an old fable.

Some have said he was a workaholic, but from knowing his daughter intimately, I would say he just plain enjoyed working -- creating, building, achieving.  However, at that time in his life, he was fighting a battle.  He really thought he was following truth.  After watching other husbands down through the years follow "truth" and join the church upon retirement when their jobs were no longer threatened by Sabbath-keeping, I have two thoughts: admiration for my dad, and a tremendous lack of rejoicing over those other men's "salvation"!

* * * * *

Daddy ran Heathcliff Huxtable a close second, if not a tie, for best father!  He tried to keep difficult times light by singing silly songs and making jokes.  Mother, on the other hand, felt we should follow Sister White who warns over a hundred times in her writings against joking, jesting, laughing.13  Most games were considered to be a form of idolatry.14  When Mrs. White's own sixteen-year-old son lay dying of pneumonia, he welcomed death -- the standards were so high he feared he could never make it in such a wicked world.15  In death he could escape -- a sixteen-year-old boy!  Give me songs and laughter in tough times!

* * * * *

Mother was humiliated when the church gave her clothes and supplies for my baby brother, Barclay, who came along about that time.  I was having my own problems.  My life had centered around my calisthenic and dance classes.  I had excellent rhythm, and a talent for music was inherited from both sides of the family, so dancing came easy for me.  A big recital, my first, was planned at the Rialto theater just three weeks after Mother decided they would become Adventists.  She had already bought the silky, apricot-colored fabric and yards of gold fringe with which to make my costume.  To this day, no one has considered the trauma of a little five-year-old girl who lost her greatest joy because in this new church, members were disfellowshipped for dancing.16  A five-year-old?  For tap dancing?  Give me a break!    

When Mother and Daddy would be out in the yard or garden, I would turn on the radio and dance, dance, dance!  But one day I got caught!  Out went the radio!  I could sometimes get by with dancing at Mama Miles' house while my Aunt Billie tickled the ivories -- she sounded exactly like Frankie Carle, maybe better -- and you had to be dead to sit still while she made music!

One day I got behind the door and was doing my version of the rhumba when Mother, whom I thought was safely involved in the kitchen, walked in.  I was caught in the act and thoroughly thrashed.  The Aunties were furious with Mother.    

Daddy decided that if I could take piano lessons it would fill the musical void in my life, so even though he was still being black-balled by the oil refineries in the area, he scraped up $20.00 and bought an old upright piano with most of the ivories missing.  Mother found an excellent teacher, Miss Anna Smead, who had studied under the masters at the Paris Conservatoire in France.  The training I received from her through the years was invaluable.  Forty years later she was still considered to be the finest teacher in the State.  Piano lessons filled the time, all right.  I learned to play well, and made my parents proud by playing for the church services by my twelfth birthday.  Those piano lessons paid off in a career which let me support my four children years later.  But the void was never filled.  Later, when I had my own home, I would grab up a baby and dance around and around to Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Dvorak.  My toddlers would come running, arms up, lisping, "Dance, Mommie!  Dance!"  But I didn't dare to dance any more in my parents' home.

Mother did her best to raise me by "the little red books" -- the multitudinous writings of Ellen White, most of which were in red bindings.  Girls were to learn to cook and bake; domestic duties were the richest blessings to girls.  There should be no idleness, and useful labor was the best employment of their time.  Their limbs needed exercise, but that could be obtained without jumping and playing ball or croquet; they should know how to use a saw and hammer, harness and drive a horse, use a rake and hoe, wash dishes, iron, stand over a washtub, as well as cut out clothes economically.  These things were more important than painting, music, science, fancy needlework or cube root.17  So through the years I learned to do it all.  Later when we moved to the big farm, I dutifully learn to harness a team of horses, and I baked the bread and cooked the meals for the summer haying helpers.  Mother did digress by letting me stay with the piano lessons.  It was less an evil than dancing, and besides, I could "serve" the church and maybe marry a preacher, or better yet, a missionary!   

So my training was exacting.  A switch was kept atop the piano, and if I didn't practice enough or correctly, I caught it.  A white handkerchief was used to check out my dusting of the furniture, and if there was a dirty place on it, woe unto me!  I made sure to"accidentally" knock the switch off the back side when I dusted the piano top, you may be sure!  Daddy waited impatiently for me to learn to play.  Several months before my ninth birthday he offered me a deal: if I would play ten hymns before Christmas, he would get me a bicycle.  Oh, boy!  That was hard work.  I had only been studying two and a half years, and every musician knows that hymns are harder to play than classical music, as they are written for the four voices, not for the hands!  But I really put in my time, and for my Christmas birthday I got a pretty blue bicycle.  I never gave a thought to the fact that it was used.  I thought it was wonderful, and after a few rough hours of practice in an uneven yard, I was a real cycling pro!

* * * * *

All our lives now centered around the Sabbath.  If you think the Jews had burdened the Sabbath, you should read all the rules Ellen White laid down.  She gave nearly 500 do's and don't's regarding Sabbathkeeping.  Adventists keep the Sabbath from sundown Friday night until Saturday night sundown.  And the clothes for church must be ready before sundown Friday, all of the food cooked, the car serviced, the house vacuumed and dusted, all "worldly" magazines and newspapers put out of sight.  There will be no radio (or television) during the 24-hour period.  If your slip strap breaks, you will just pin it until after the Sabbath, if you are sincere.  You are to guard even your thoughts.  I can't judge how the average Seventh-day Adventist keeps from thinking his own thoughts, but I've certainly heard a lot of them -- myself included -- forget and "speak their own words."  (Isaiah 58:14).18

* * * * *

Daddy kept pushing, and moved along in business.  Mother felt the blessings were the result of keeping the Sabbath.  I think differently.  Jesus said, "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, that you have love for one another,"19 and Paul said that love, and bearing one another's burdens is the fulfilling of the law.  Daddy loved people, and didn't hesitate to put his money where his mouth was, so to speak.   

One very cold Sabbath an elderly man in a ragged coat came up to the church.  He only wanted some long johns in order to stay a little warmer in that unusually severe winter.  The deacon went running to Daddy, as everyone did, now that he was the leader of the little church.  Daddy talked with the old man and discovered that he had no home, no family, no job -- nothing.  We were still living on the little farm and had not much to offer.  But just as Peter said to the crippled man at the temple gate, I don't have much, but what I do have I'll give to you, so Daddy took old Mr. McClandless to our home and gave him a pair of his own long johns.  But that wasn't all.  We had an unused chicken house which he and Mr. McClandless whitewashed inside and out (whitewash is lime mixed with water) to brighten it and kill all the germs.  From somewhere Daddy came up with a little wood stove, an old chair and rickety table, and a cot.  A kerosene lamp on the table completed the decor, and Mr. McClandless stayed cozy in his little hidey-hole until Spring's warm breezes, when he left.  We never heard of him again.  Even though it sometimes embarrassed Mother, Daddy never, to my knowledge, turned anyone away, regardless of race, color, or creed.

* * * * *

As time went by, Daddy worked back into the oil business, and by the time I was ten years old had three or four crews in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas steam-cleaning the big oil storage tanks on the big "tank farms".     

Mother wanted to finish her education, and couldn't conscientiously attend a "worldly" college.  Sister White condemned it.  So Daddy moved us up to Madison College, Tennessee, into an old house across from the campus.  He returned to the oil field to work, coming up every weekend or two.  That got old pretty fast, so he made a decision he was always to regret: He left the oil field.   

He and Mother found a cute little stone house, and Daddy began his usual beautification program.   

Some leaders in the Adventist denomination considered accreditation of their schools to be giving in to the devil, so many schools were not accredited by the State.  The Madison College location, along the banks of the Cumberland River, was said to have been chosen by the prophetess herself.  The fine sanitarium was a big plus for the college connected to it.  Adventist health organizations were "the right arm of the message,"22 their sole purpose, according to the "servant of the Lord, "for the winning of souls -- to the church, of course.23   

I enjoyed living there.  Never had there been so many kids with which to play, and so much freedom.  All the parents felt their kids were safe anywhere in the neighborhood.  And I guess we were.  I never was in any danger.  One kid I played with would swagger down the street singing, "I got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle," at the top of his voice.  My mother and his became friends.   Sometimes when Daddy was there, Lanny's folks would invite us up for Sabbath sundown worship.  I hated to go because his father would read and read, then we knelt for prayer.  I was sure he prayed for everyone in the State of Tennessee by name!  My body would hurt when we were finally permitted to get up. 

Meanwhile, Mother got me started in piano lessons.  The lady who taught at the college was herself studying with a renowned concert pianist in Nashville.  After only a few lessons, she told Mother that she didn't feel qualified to teach me, and I began studies with her instructor, Mr. Goodman.  One of the triumphs of my musical life happened at Madison College.  When spring recital time came, the more advanced students, the college kids, refused to have me play in their segment.   

"She would show us up!" they protested.

On the other hand, Paderewski's Minuet certainly didn't belong in the category with John Thompson's Teaching Little Fingers to Play.  However, it surely made my Paderewski sound fantastic!  I was given a standing ovation.  Mother was sitting by one of her teachers who leaned over and whispered, "I know who deserves most of the credit!" 

Mrs. Christian, my teacher, pushed me back out on stage and said, "Go out and play 'The Flight of the Bumblebee', Pat!"  Mr. Goodman had marked the fingering for me, and because I loved the piece -- what kid wouldn't? -- I had worked hard on it.  However, I was smart enough to know that the two or three weak spots could blow it for me, and besides, by now I was shaking from head to toe, so I made a little bow to the still applauding audience and rushed off the stage, where I sat with my hands covering my face, and cried buckets.  Mother came back there, maybe to congratulate me, but she said, "What on earth are you crying for?"

My own nervous little Mother didn't understand.  I didn't know until later that the audience had been standing.  I didn't know what a standing ovation was, anyway, so it wouldn't have meant anything to me had I noticed!  I was eleven years old.

* * * * *

Madison College was an interesting place.  We had soy milk delivered to our door each morning!  (How on earth does one milk a soybean?)  Soy buttermilk, too!  Sister White had said that "according to the light given me," which to the devout Seventh-day Adventist means sent straight from God, "it will not be very long before we shall have to give up," among other items, "milk."24   Although she continued to serve milk at her own table, those within the church who took (and take) a great deal of spiritual pride in "doing," dropped milk, cream, eggs and butter from their diets, in addition to meat.  So the diligent ones invented soy milk!  "Cheese," she said, "is wholly unfit for food."25  You should see all the footnotes and explanations of those who manage her writings as they endeavor to explain that one away by saying that cheese was made in such an unsanitary way in those days!  That was so they can at least hang on to their cheese!

There was a friendly, slightly stooped man who walked back and forth to the college down our road.  He always had a smile for us, as we passed him on our bikes.  I discovered he was Elder Julius Gilbert White, who had complied recipes for Seventh-day Adventists into an attractive book with color plates of fresh fruits and vegetables.  He didn't use any animal products at all -- after all, he had known Sister White personally!  We looked at him with great awe, this thin, kindly minister who had actually spoken to the prophetess who had given all the wonderful health rules.  "Cancers, tumors, and pulmonary diseases are largely caused by meat eating," she warned.  The degeneration of the human race -- antediluvian, post-Noahic flood, B. C. and A. D. -- is mostly due to the eating of meat.26   So we knew that Elder Julius Gilbert White should live just about forever.   Not too long afterward, he died of cancer.  Years later, when I told a fanatical sister about that, she said, "Well, maybe he ate meat, once."

* * * * *

As October 22, 1941 approached, a sense of expectancy was discernable around the school.  Elder Spaulding, another who had known Ellen White, was planning a celebration on the anniversary of the Great Disappointment, October 22, 1844.  Wagons, pulled by horses, would arrive at the school to take the students and teachers to the Spaulding farm, where there would be early-Advent hymn singing talks, and prayer.  

In the early nineteenth century, William Miller, farmer and converted skeptic, began to study the Bible earnestly, his only aid a Cruden's Concordance -- no commentaries.  The entire story is well-documented by various sources, including Adventist,27 but to a ten-year-old, it was like this: William Miller's research showed him that the end of the world, the Second Coming of Jesus, would be on October 22, 1844.  He proved this with various texts in the Book of Daniel and substantiated it with texts from Revelation.  As translation day approached, the little groups around the country who believed left their crops unharvested, quit jobs, gave away property.   Some were arrested for being "a vagabond and idle person," "neglecting his employment," "not providing for his family."28   After all, Jesus was coming, and they would need none of this worldly stuff, right?    

Well, Jesus didn't come, and they were desolated.  Many left their ranks, embarrassed.  But a stubborn nucleus hung in there, and another farmer, Hiram Edson, had a "vision" the next day which explained everything.  Following a prayer session, he and a friend were walking through a corn field, and Mr. Edson "saw" heaven open, and there was a tabernacle just like the one in the Old Testament!  There were two apartments, and two phases in Christ's heavenly ministry, as in the earthly.  Eventually, this little group, most of them in their early twenties, not an educated person among them, only a King James Bible for their source material, worked out a fantastic cover for their "Great Disappointment": Jesus had moved from the first apartment of the heavenly sanctuary to the second apartment, there to begin the "Investigative Judgment" -- the going over of the records of the lives of every one who has lived from the beginning of time!  So the test William Miller had built on -- Daniel 8:14 -- which says, "Unto 2300 days, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed," did not mean the earth, as he had thought, but the heavenly sanctuary!  (Miller never accepted this theory.)  The Adventists believed, when I was a kid, that that generation would not die out before Jesus' return.  In 1941 they were saying, "There's an old black man down at so-and-so who was alive then," and similar statements.  We knew, on that October evening as we rode in the wagons, that we would never live to adulthood on this earth.  Time was running out.

The big question posed to us in the sermon around the campfire was: Are you ready for Jesus to come?  There were many, many things to do to become "perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect,"29 for "higher than the highest human thought can reach is God's ideal for His children."30  Not just our diet, dress and actions, but even our thoughts!  It always seemed hopeless to me.  Since the great theologians were of the mainline churches (daughters of the great whore!), there was no one to show the early Adventists, or even us in 1941, that we are saved by the grace of God, an undeserved gift manifested in the perfect life lived for us, the guilt lifted, and the unbelievable gift of eternal life given us -- all done, finished, completed, at the death and resurrection of Jesus.

* * * * *

Camp meeting the year I was ten had been held in El Dorado.  Daddy had really worked hard to prepare for all the meetings, children's classes, hotel rooms and food service.  One of the speakers was Elder Frazee.  When the appeal was made for those to make decisions for Christ, I went down the aisle.  "Just As I Am" and some of the other "call" songs always got to me as a kid.   However, getting baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist church is not that simple.  One must study all the twenty-seven fundamental beliefs of the church and answer the thirteen questions of the Baptismal Vow in the affirmative, publicly, before baptism is permitted.  In addition to expressing one's faith in the Trinity, Jesus as Savior, the Bible as God's Word, one must agree to keep the Saturday Sabbath from sundown to sundown, even if it means job loss; Believe that Ellen White is a prophetess whose words are as much from God as the prophets of the Bible35; that the Seventh-day Adventist Church comprises God's last, or remnant, church; agree to tithe (mandatory) and give offerings.  One must abstain from the use or sale of alcohol and tobacco in all their forms, and from the eating of unclean foods -- pork, catfish, seafood.  The latter items call for church discipline.34  A far cry from Jesus' salvation requirements, yes?

Well, Mother didn't think I should be baptized since I still read the funny paper, and Elder Frazee agreed with her.  So that took care of that!

Meanwhile, Daddy and Elder Frazee had become fast friends.  Strange, when they were so different.  Daddy, laughing at himself and everyone else, the Elder bound with hundreds of "works" trying to achieve his "perfection."  Elder Frazee came to Madison College on some mission, and he and Daddy renewed their friendship.

"Come down to Wildwood to see us, see what we're doing," Elder Frazee said.

"Just might do that," Daddy replied.

So before long we were driving down to Wildwood, Georgia, not far from Chattanooga.   

The Frazees had started a self-supporting missionary work in the area.  A large older home was functioning as a little sanitarium, and a couple of Registered Nurses and several practical nurses cared for the patients, using the water treatments so strongly urged by Ellen White.  The church still believes these instructions to have come from the throne of God, or say they do.  Although I doubt you could tell the difference in a visit to an Adventist doctor and any other AMA doctor, now. 

In actuality, most of the church's "health message" was copied from the lectures and writings of Sylvester Graham, Dr. Larkin B. Coles, Dr. James C. Jackson, and others.35  Following the "counsel of the Lord" -- and I promise you, Mrs. White's counsel is referred to this way -- the residents of Wildwood ate no meat, since "those who continue to eat meat will not be translated"36  (Hitler was a vegetarian -- d'you reckon he was translated?); they ate no fish, no fowl, no dairy, no cheese, no eggs.  They ate only two meals a day,37 at 6:30 a.m. and at 1:00 p.m.  There were no snacks, as "not one morsel should pass the lips between meals."38  No beverages were served with meals except occasional soy milk.39  No soda or baking powder was permitted in bread-making.40  Breakfast consisted of boiled soybeans, boiled whole grainheat, heavy brown bread, and whatever fruits were season.  Lunch/dinner differed in that vegetables replaced the fruit.  Fruit and vegetables were never served in the same meal.41

Daddy once talked the cook into baking him a birthday cake.  He brought her some walnuts which he had shelled, and she made a pretty good cake, raised with yeast.  After the meal he told her he had a birthday every Wednesday!  She just twinkled at him, but we got some yeast raised cake occasionally after that.

The women wore dresses nine inches from the floor.42  Sister White had recommended that length in an endeavor to get the skirts up, off the streets, but this didn't seem to affect Wildwood's interpretation.  Slips were three inches shorter than the dresses.  No half slips, as Sister White said all the clothing should hang from the shoulders.43  Hose were heavy cotton or cotton lisle, wool in winter.  Sleeves were wrist length, but could be rolled to the elbow for work.  The endeavor to relate the nineteenth-century codes to a late-twentieth-century lifestyle would be hilarious if it were not so sad.  The Review, the official weekly paper of the church, carried a picture in the late 1970's of an outfit, a regular length dress over pants, which should satisfy the "reform dress" which was, according to Ellen White, "designed by God"44 a hundred years earlier.  Pants suits were in vogue in the 1970's, so the outfit was not totally embarrassing.  Tall, slender women would look good in it.  The rest of us would surely look like blimps!  Preachers (males, yes?) get all in a stew about women wearing men's clothing.  Anyone who can read should know that the men were wearing skirts in Bible days!   What Moses had to have in mind was cross-dressing for the purpose of perverted sexual activity.  Furthermore, the great Apostle Paul said if one is going to insist on keeping part of the law, he is obligated to obey all of it,45 so read the rest of that twenty-second chapter of Deuteronomy.  He must build parapets around the roof of his house; never wear blended fabrics or plant different seeds in his vineyard; if he sleeps with a married woman, kill him!  Wow!  Moses done stopped preachin' and gone to meddlin' now, ain't he?  I bet we'd even lose a preacher or two that way!

Since Sister White condemned the "bonnet which exposes the face" as immodest,46 the ladies of Wildwood wore large brimmed hats to church with their long dresses and flat-heeled shoes.  Snapshots in my old albums look like a gathering of the poorer class in, maybe 1890.  This, remember, is in the 1940's when slacks and two-piece bathing suits were in vogue for women!  Oh, well, were we not to be a "peculiar" people?  What a pleasant surprise I had when years later I discerned that God didn't mean we had to look like drowned, gray rats, but rather, that the word "peculiar" in both the Old and New Testaments meant special treasure; one's own; jewel!  Hoo--ray!  We don't have to be ugly to be saved!

I was in the room with one of the "sisters" who was receiving some fomentations -- hot and cold water treatments -- on her chest when her husband walked into the room.  She jerked the covers up to her neck.  I wondered about it.  Later, I read where Sister White said a woman should not excite the "animal passions" of her husband as many "have no strength to expend in this direction."47

* * * * *

We stayed at Wildwood only until Thanksgiving.  One Sabbath Mother came out dressed for church in a new pink dress she had made.  It had tiny rose and gray flowers in it, and she had done some special effects with the stitching.  It was really pretty, BUT: it had three-quarter length sleeves, it was an inch or two longer than her dresses usually were, and she had on a wide-brimmed hat and low-heeled shoes.  Daddy exploded.  They quarreled all the way to church.  Daddy said we were leaving Wildwood now!

"That does it!  You are a good-looking woman, and I'm not going to stick around here and let you start looking like them!"

So they loaded up my brother, left me in the charge of Sister Alexis at the San, and took off back to Arkansas to find a new home for us.

* * * * *

It was good to be back with my family.  Now my problems would be familiar ones.  Sister Alexis had known nothing of kids.  I had been pretty sure, as I shared her sparse attic accommodations and listened to her legalistic religious musings, that she had never been a child herself.  The one neat thing I remember about her was her heavy black hair.  I had never seen such marvelous hair.  Of course, to let it down would have been worse than worldly -- maybe even sensual -- so she kept it braided and pinned up.

* * * * *

Several years later.

A goat farm was a lot of responsibility and hard work, but not without rewards.  There were the early and late milkings, the chilling and bottling of the milk, cleanup in the milk preparation room as well as in the milking rooms.  The joy of milking was the personalities of the goats.  They lined up to be milked, fighting to be first to jump upon the concrete block which made them high enough for us to work with.  Rarely did we have to lock their heads for milking, as they loved us so much.  They would turn their heads back toward us and nibble at our ears, or in my case, grab a mouthful of my braid and give it a jerk, all the while whinnying softly.  The Nubians were very picky eaters.  If one of our little bantam chickens just ran through the manger the goats wouldn't touch the feed for which Daddy paid over $8.00 per 100-pound bag back then!  So Daddy had to fence in the feeding area with chicken-wire, and he installed automatic watering cups, which solved the problems of clean feed and water.

In time our goat farm become a tourist attraction, even eleven miles out.  The sightseers were not disappointed.  A young doe would edge up to a lady absorbed in watching the milking process, and would ever-so-quietly nose under the hem of her dress, grab a mouthful of her slip and -- jerk! -- at which the poor lady would lunge for the nearest human being, shrieking in fear!  Our babies could never resist satin or silk!   

They had developed a taste for the crumbled chewing tobacco which Daddy had placed in a special feeder box in the barnyard as a vermicide.  Dapper fellows in their gambling duds would get edgy when a goat began to nuzzle their pockets until one of us would laughingly say, "She wants a cigarette!"   

The gingerly proffered gift, enthusiastically receiver, brought laughter from everyone.  Often we were asked to sell a kid for butchering, but we could never do that.   

"Would you eat your pet dog?" I demanded of one gentleman.  He looked at me as if I were nuts.  But those were my little rascals, from the creaky arthritic old lady we called Whiney to the tiny auburn male kid which I had nursed through the scours.   

No, we would never eat a goat or any other meat, but Sabbath noon meal was the time we "dished up" the preacher, or anyone else that merited our criticism that week.  Any religious organization held together by hundreds of rules rather than by love for God and concern for the welfare of the individual -- well, the rules are going to dominate.  Invariably, those members judge the other person by those rules, and not himself.  I heard Daddy say more than once, "Look, I'm going to need the Lord to go easy on me.  Let's take it easy on other people."

I have never known such cannibalism as in the church where I grew up.  Someone came in with a feather in her hat.  "Sister White says we shouldn't wear feathers!"52

One young mother discovered her child had just been given a bite of tuna sandwich at a church gathering.  She yelled and stuck her finger down the baby's throat in a attempt to cause her to throw it up.  Not only does Sister White say meat causes cramps, convulsions, apoplexy and sudden death,53 but it causes animalism!54  Who would want all that for her child?

One of the Elders sat on the aisle every Sabbath to better check hemlines and hose.  One little lady, bringing up a houseful of kids by herself, seldom had money for hose.  "Sister White says we're supposed to dress modestly," Elder C. would remind us.  When seamless hose came out, they were sinful because they made the legs look naked.  Thirty years later when seamed hose came back they were immodest because they attracted the eye to a woman's legs!  The tiniest bit of lipstick was noticed and condemned.  We had one little lady who just grinned and kept right on wearing her lipstick.  All these years later she still wears it.  She is the one who stayed by my Daddy when he was dying.  She is the one who was awarded special recognition by the community for her compassion for the elderly.  The unadorned, unpainted, hypocritically plain members are still bickering and criticizing each other.

Never, in all my life in the Adventist Church, did I hear a sermon preached on Galatians 6:2.  That'll be the day!

"You shouldn't celebrate Christmas.  It's pagan!   

"She used candles in church.  That's Catholic!"    

At fellowship dinners: "Does this bread contain oil?  Sister White we should use oil only 'as it is in the olive'."55  That was the big issue when I finally saw the light of grace and left the confusion (Babylon!) behind.

"Easter is a pagan holiday!"  So the celebration of the resurrection of the Savior goes by, practically unnoticed.  I don't remember ever hearing a sermon centered around the resurrection at any time, much less at Easter time.

"You shouldn't bring guitars into the church."  Especially not drums.  "Sister White condemns drums."56

I really had it out later with one aging fanatic.  She insisted that I "swung" my music, that there was too much rhythm in my playing.  It all started because she had seen my little daughter patting her foot.  I said, "So?  I could pat my foot to the 'Hallelujah Chorus'."

"Oh, my," she said primly.  "That is absolutely sacrilegious."

"No, it is not!" I insisted.  "There is rhythm in everything God made.  The entire universe moves in rhythm.  I can sit by a waterfall and find a rhythm I can pat my foot to!"

I was wasting my time.

* * * * *

 

 

Part  Two "She Made Her Bed -- Let Her Sleep in It"

 

 1947.

Keene was frightening to a small-town girl of fifteen, at least to this one.  Some of the kids acted like they owned the place.  I found out later that they were the ones who had been there a year or more.  Dorm and campus life was the norm for them.  Since Seventh-day Adventists can't permit their children to attend public schools, especially the minister (he would lose his job), the academies and colleges hold a tremendous position in the denomination.  The small churches do well to afford an eight-grade school, so the off-spring are sent away from their parents at a crucial time of their young lives, just as the frustrating, decision-making years come along, and are placed in the care of those who, no matter how devoted and well-meaning, cannot replace a parent.

Students worked at the College Store where there was a fountain where one could get sodas, ice cream, and Vegeburgers.  No meat, of course, only fake hamburger meat made from wheat gluten and soy beans.  We thought it tasted wonderful, though, especially served with corn chips and a chocolate shake!  Some of the constituency didn't approve of the ice cream, but Mrs. White had not said to stop milk products, only that the time would come when we would have to quit using them.  Interestingly enough, she didn't mention chocolate at all.  We asked her grandson about this once when he was visiting the college, and he said that chocolate shouldn't be placed in the category with coffee and tea since she was not "shown" anything regarding it.  I'll bet she liked chocolate!

Skating was the most fun I had at Keene.  It replaced dancing, although music was not played for our skating periods.  The faculty tried it one time, and all the kids began to skate in rhythm.  That convinced them that it was a bad influence on us, and would lead to dancing.  Never mind.  They couldn't keep me from humming the music that was in my head!  Later on, trying to hang on to "the truth" with one hand and help my children enjoy life with the other, I took them to the public skating rink where we took the classes together and learned the steps.  As I've said, if it looked good, sounded good, tasted good, felt good -- it was wrong!

* * * * *

One night after we had enjoyed the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, we were at the "eatery".  Most Adventists were vegetarians, but I discovered that their kids would usually digress when out from under parental control.  I was so sure that Sister White had been "shown" that I could not be translated if I ate meat, that I didn't eat meat.  It was just that simple.

"Do you want a hamburger?" Bryan asked.

"No, thank you.  I don't eat meat."  His look was unreadable as he ordered cherry pie a la mode for each of us.  Later he said that he began making plans for us at that time.  After all, if you are aspiring to be President of the General Conference, the top of the Adventist totem pole, you should have a wife who believes the whole ball of wax, shouldn't you?"

I guess when they passed out brains, I thought they said trains, and said No thanks!  I sailed right along, assuming everything was going to work out fine.  After all, I was a good Seventh-day Adventist, eating no meat, drinking no coffee, tea or cola drinks.  I didn't wear jewelry, make-up or immodest clothing, not even feathers or artificial flowers!  I was in an Adventist school.  Everything had to be all right, didn't it?"    

Out of six weddings that year, there was not one that seemed happy years later.  Three ended in divorce.  One couple "had to" get married, and the last time I saw the other couple he was yelling at her, and she had lost the bounce and pizzazz she had in school.  Her hair was dull and her clothes looked as if they had come from the twenty-five cent table at Goodwill.  Well, at least they were safe "in the truth".  Daddy said one reason the kids married so early in our era was because we wouldn't sleep together before marriage.  I know that I and my friends were very concerned about "doing right" in every respect.  "Standards" was the main topic of conversation among the more serious of us.  Being good was what was going to save us -- and I don't mean just for marriage, either.  One of my friends wrote in my Yearbook: "Hold your standards as you have and you will be assured of God's leading hand."  Even the most naive of us knew we would be saved or not-saved according to our behavior.  None of us had ever heard of salvation by grace alone.

* * * * *

Much of the classical material in English Literature class was deemed to be unfit for Seventh-day Adventist children, so we were assigned only key phrases from carefully chosen poetry and essays.  Sister White had fallen apart to the point of becoming sick in bed from just seeing a picture of Shakespeare and an article about him in a denominational paper!

I was asked, years later, where on earth I had received my education.  I knew nothing of the greats of literature, or of their works.  Perhaps Ellen was intimidated by those with more education.  She also refused to take any medication which had a Latin name.  "I would not touch their nostrums, to which they give Latin names.  I am determined to know, in straight English, the name of everything that I introduce into my system."2

She was very negative about students learning biblical languages.  She somewhat grudgingly admitted that a few might benefit by studying Latin, Greek, and even Hebrew, but "It is folly for students to devote their time to the acquirement of dead languages", and "Those who think that a knowledge of Greek and Latin is essential to a higher education cannot see afar off."3  I have sung in Latin, and have learned the Latin names of my plants and flowers with ease.  It goes to show her semi-literacy.  Those who contend that she received all her "wisdom" directly from God should note her fear of higher education.  On the other hand, if she did receive directly from Heaven, who needs Biblical languages and other research?

Sister White's counsel to two young people was to read only the Bible and spiritual material which, of course, would be Seventh-day Adventist material.4  The church was instructed to give her books the widest possible circulation and translate them into many languages.5  Adventist books were a means of quickly giving "truth" to the world.  (And a quick boost to the checking account?)   And a severe warning: many an inmate of the insane asylum got there because of a novel reading habit.6

* * * * *

Sex training in all our homes had been limited to Don't you ever..., and Never let a boy...  At school it amounted to the faculty "beating the bushes", as we called it, after every social event.  So 360 kids tried to figure everything out.  Bryan told me that every boy in the dorm masturbated.  I wasn't sure what that was, but I recalled hearing about it on several occasions.  At a Home and School meeting once when I was thirteen one of the mothers asked a question pertaining to that evil habit.  And I remembered a pale little girl in church school some years before, big allergy circles under her eyes and a constant post-nasal drip, whose mother told the teacher, who told her daughter, who in turn told her girlfriend, me, that she thought her child was masturbating.  The mother knew that Sister White described some of the symptoms that way.  Dear Lord, how many have suffered untold agonies at the hands of such stupidity!

Sister White called self-abuse, masturbation, "a hellish practice."7   She claimed this information was given to her in vision in mid-1863, notwithstanding Sylvester Graham (of Graham Flour fame) had published on the subject in 1834.  She also had in her possession in 1863 books by both Doctors Trall and Jackson on sex.  "I have been shown," she wrote, "that persons of apparently good deportment" were "guilty of practicing secret vice nearly every day of their lives.  They have not refrained from this terrible sin even while most solemn meetings have been in session.  They have listened to the most solemn, impressive discourses upon the judgment, which seemed to bring them before the tribunal of God, causing them to fear and quake; yet hardly an hour would elapse before they would be engaged in their favorite, bewitching sin, polluting their own bodies."8  Parents who "have abused their marriage privileges" produce children "easily excited", "born with natural irritability of the sexual organs" whose early secret vice cause them to become "puny and dwarfed".9  Masturbation is the cause of complaints such as "dizziness, headache, bleeding at nose, palpitation, and a sense of lassitude and weakness,"10 and is "killing thousands and tens of thousands."11  In a "vision", everywhere she looked, she saw imbecility, dwarfed forms, crippled limbs, misshapen heads, and deformity of every kind" caused by the practice of solitary vice, which was the reason "a large share of the youth now living are worthless"!  In addition to all of the above, continued masturbation causes hereditary insanity and deformities, liver and lung problems, neuralgia, rheumatism, spinal problems, diseased kidney, and cancerous tumors, frequently resulting in early death!12  Remarkable!

The poor lady was so horrified at the thought that she might accidentally ask God's blessing upon a "self-abuser" that she even began refusing requests for prayers of healing.13

We girls couldn't figure out how females could get caught up in that horrible trap, but thought boys probably could.  At least we knew we weren't among the 99 percent of children Sister White said were "corrupt as hell itself!"  Whew!  What a relief!

Bryan didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with the practices going on in the Boy's Dorm, though I knew Sister White had to be right.  But where, I wondered, were the puny dwarfs, the crippled limbs, misshapen heads and imbeciles?  I thought the guys looked pretty healthy, myself!

* * * * *

1948 wedding.

There was no ring, of course.  For nearly a century Adventists didn't wear rings, and many still do not.  Sister White said that not one penny should be spent for a circlet of gold to state that we are married.  A woman's deportment will take care of everything.16  During the years of school to come, we wives got together and traded stories of men expressing anger that we had no ring to signify our marital state.  I discovered that I was not the only young wife who was embarrassed about the situations we got caught up in because of this rule of the church.

* * * * *

Honeymoon at 1948 Houston
Youth's Congress.

The theme of the Congress was, as usual, the Gospel to all the world in this generation, the Gospel being the Sabbath, the Spirit of Prophecy writings and the Investigative Judgment.  At all meetings, Seventh-day Adventists must be reminded of the lateness of the hour, which puts them on a guilt trip, so they will work harder toward two goals: reaching their own personal perfection, and convincing the world, not of the forgiveness Jesus offers, but of the importance of keeping the Commandments, that is, the Sabbath commandment.  You'll hear them bearing false witness, coveting, see them dishonoring their parents, and yes, even committing adultery.  But never, never would they turn the TV on or buy a loaf of bread on the Sabbath.  Once, after I left the church, an Adventist gentleman (?) said he would like to make love to me.  Before I could respond, he said it would never work, though, because I no longer kept the Sabbath!  Can you believe it?

* * * * *

Since the Church teaches that between the time Jesus finishes "going over the books" in the Heavenly sanctuary and the time he actually returns to earth the believers will be without a mediator, it follows that at every convention they must be exhorted to "get ready", since they do not know at what instant "probation" will close, and never after will there be a chance to come to God.   (What do they do with Jesus' own promises to be with us always, even till the end of the world, and that He would never forsake us?)17

* * * * *

Assisting in evangelistic meeting in
Austin, Texas, 1951.

Elder Winders was a pleasant bachelor who always had time for a person.  One of the church sisters, married no less, said, "He could sure eat crackers in my bed!"  Many years later, in another conference, we heard he had experienced an unfortunate marriage early on and for reasons never disclosed had decided he was not marriage material.  The thing I remember most about him was the cheese.  He had mentioned, in a sermon, that as a kid his favorite dish was macaroni and cheese, so all the little ladies were trying to bring back those childhood memories with a plethora of macaroni and cheese dishes at the church dinners.  This really caused a dilemma for him.  He could talk to us about it since we were part of the "ministry".  You see, he had "given up" cheese since "the Lord through His messenger" had stated that "the effect of cheese is deleterious".21  He would eat a small amount to keep from offending.  I liked him for that.  Only eternity will tell how many have been turned away from religion altogether because of harsh, unbending "Christians."

Another incident I appreciated was the way he handled a situation in which the entire church was up in arms over the request of an older man to be permitted to "come back to the Lord."  Many years earlier he had left his wife, and eventually remarried.  Elder Winders gave it some thought.  Finally he announced that in any event he would rather err on the side of mercy.  Maybe he was remembering a sad experience from his past.  He baptized the man.  I never again saw in the Adventist church such genuine compassion as in that minister.

Pastor and Mrs. Beck were our "overseers" at this (another) series of meetings.  The fellows put up a tent which, of course, attracted a lot of attention.  Since Seventh-day Adventists don't identify themselves when they enter a community, the guys were surprised to see a sign in front of the local Church of Christ:

ADVENTISM EXPOSED!
SUNDAY, 11:00 A.M.

Our two preachers went to the church that Sunday and heard, among other things, that "Ellen White got hit on the head with a brick and thought she saw visions, when all she saw was stars."  In fact, Ellen White was hit in the face at the age of nine years with a stone thrown by an angry schoolmate, and her nose was broken.  The cause of the anger has never been revealed, to my knowledge, in any of the dozens of books written about her life.  Ellen lay in bed for three weeks in a stupor, some have said in a coma, and when she came around her face was badly disfigured, her body wasted and weakened for life.  Some students of the life and works of Ellen White feel that this disfigurement may have motivated her condemnation of women who wore beautiful clothing and jewelry.

The Church of Christ itself is considered by some to be cultish because of certain of its doctrine, especially on baptism.  Of course, since music is my thing, I especially don't care for their teaching on church music.  Every response I have received to my question, Why no instruments in your churches? has been, "Well, the New Testament doesn't mention instruments, and we are a New Testament church."

Come on!  Let's be serious!  Neither is there any mention of the kind of edifices the Churches of Christ are erecting now.  The last Psalm not only permits, but commands the praise of the Lord with all kinds of instruments, (even the dance! Wow!)  The book of Revelation is full of the trumpets and harps of Heaven.  I have often felt pity for my Church of Christ students who would never know the deep spiritual thrill of listening to the sounds of a great pipe organ leading the people of God in praise and worship of the One Who loved them so much.

And they can be harsh.  One minister of that church, in a debate with a Christian Scientist, hauled off and kicked his opponent.  When the man yelled, "Ouch!  What did you do that for?" the Church of Christ man replied, "You didn't feel that.  You aren't even here!"

* * * * *

After the tent came down, Bryan continued studies with a small group of interested people in a rented building.  The daughter of one of the new converts attended for awhile.  Her husband had recently given her a pair of real diamond earrings -- small, but genuine.  Bryan preached on the sin of wearing jewelry.

"Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.23  If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.24  Complete surrender is required!"  Complete surrender, in actuality, means agreeing to following a set of rules.  Take off your jewelry; don't drink tea or coffee; don't eat meat; don't turn on the TV on Sabbath or sew on a button or buy gas for the car or cook your dinner.  You must accept Ellen White as a prophet equal to the Biblical prophets, and in buying that you will also buy everything she wrote, hundreds of "testimonies" and rules.

So Bryan preached with growing intensity.  The favorite text is in Isaiah three.  He started with the sixteenth verse which states that because the daughters of Zion were haughty and walked around in a seducing manner God was going to take away all their ornaments: Tinkling ornaments about their feet, their cauls, round tires like the moon, chains, bracelets, mufflers, bonnets, ornaments of the legs, the headbands, tablets, earrings, rings, nose jewels.  Several other places where the Bible mentions jewelry in a negative way provided him more ammunition.  Then he replaced the ornament word with "idols" and "Other Gods," and all the wrath of God against His people "going a-whoring after other gods" came down on those who wear jewelry.  There were only fifteen or twenty of us there, and everyone knew to whom he was preaching, the only attractive young woman there.  He pled and pled at the call for a "full surrender."  When no one came forward, he took the text concerning Ephraim in Hosea four, and changing two or three words, declared:

"She is joined to her idols.  Let her alone!"

The young lady never returned to the meetings, and was estranged from her mother who was very defensive about "my pastor."

* * * * *

Bryan had a sermon based on the story of the Alamo.  In telling the romantic and tragic tale, he built to the point where General Travis drew a line in the dust, inviting everyone who was willing to stay there and die with him to step across that line.  All but two stepped across, one of which was Jim Bowie, lying very ill on a cot.  He requested they lift his cot across the line, which they did.  The point, Bryan expounded, was; "They may not have been happy, but they were right.  God has drawn a line which you must cross.  You will be right.  You may not be happy, but you will have done right."

* * * * *

1954.

 
The other trip we made that summer was to Colorado for a vacation.  It wasn't done in the greatest of styles, as we hadn't much equipment.  Mainly a tent and camp stove.  But inconvenience nonetheless, I thought it was the most breathtakingly marvelous spot in the world -- at least in what I had seen of the world!  Looking up at those marvelous heights, I was reminded that Sister White said where the earth was torn up the worst by the flood was where the antediluvians had been most idolatrous.  Addressing the devastation following the Noahic flood, she stated: "Everywhere were strewn the dead bodies of men and beast."  The book of Genesis states that God sent a wind over the earth, a violent wind, according to Sister White, which, she said, blew trees and rocks over the decaying bodies, and even blew the tops off mountains to bury them, along with the gold, silver, and precious stones "which the inhabitants had idolized".  I wondered, but didn't dare question the geological "science" she expounded:  That the earth is 6,000 years old;28 that at the time of the Noahic flood "immense forests were buried.  These have since changed to coal, forming the extensive coalbeds that now exist, and also yielding large quantities of oil.  The coal and oil frequently ignite and burn beneath the surface of the earth.  Thus rocks are heated, limestone is burned, and iron ore melted.  The action of the water upon the lime adds fury to the intense heat, and causes earthquakes, volcanos, and fiery issues.  As the fire and water come in contact with ledges of rock and ore, there are heavy explosions underground, which sound like muffled thunder.  The air is hot and suffocating.  Volcanic eruptions follow; and these often failing to give sufficient vent to the heated elements, the earth itself is convulsed, the ground heaves and swells like the waves of the sea, great fissures appear, and sometimes cities, villages, and burning mountains are swallowed up."29  Since these words were given to Ellen White by God, who needs geologists, seismologists and other scientists?  (I've seen a lot of other close-minded Christians on the subjects surrounding the age of the earth.  Personally, I have never opened my mind to possibilities like, maybe there were millions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, without seeing God as bigger, not smaller.  I don't want to ever be guilty of creating God in my image!)

The sin that is above all others "which called for the destruction of the race by the flood...was the base crime of amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of God."30  The Ellen G. White trustees have printed a seventeen-page paper to try to satisfactorily explain what she meant by this statement, but it has never meant anything more or less than what it looks like, to me, especially when she follows it with a statement concerning amalgamation since the flood which may be seen "in certain races of men."31

As I sat looking at the magnificent scenery in Rocky Mountain National Park, my mind would churn with all this information (disinformation?) and I could only wonder.

* * * * *

Most of our neighbors had televisions and would invite our boys over to see "Lassie".  Bryan didn't object to that.  I was glad they had the chance to see the harmless little show, and would like to have had a TV myself.  But we never were permitted to own one.  I have known of dozens of Adventist families who would not have a television set in their home, but would let their children go bug the neighbors.  In fact, I've known of some families whose kids practically lived at their neighbors' homes after school, while mommie and daddy refused to have such "evil" in their own houses.  The denomination made a strong statement against several shows, particularly Gunsmoke.  But I still get a kick out of the continual rhubarb between Doc and Festus in the re-runs.

One week Elder V. came to the school to hold a seminar.  In the course of his message one day, as an illustration of our inherent tendency to sin, he told of going into a restaurant with his two sons.  A fellow walked over and put money in the jukebox.  As the music started playing, one little son stood up from the table and started moving to the beat -- horrors!  I have a hard time with that.   Shouldn’t a little boy feel like dancing?  The word "dance" or tenses thereof, is mentioned twenty-seven times in the Bible.  Two of those times are in reference to the daughter of Herodias dancing for King Herod for the head of John the Baptist and one time refers to the Children of Israel dancing before the Golden Calf.  All the rest of the references are to dancing for joy, and with God's approval.  Check it out.  Many years later I read in the newspaper that this very minister's son tried to kill his father.  I do not know why but one does wonder, doesn't one?

* * * * *

Meanwhile, back in Arkansas, a situation which had been developing over the years was coming to a head.  That "medical work" which the Conference had told Daddy about when we left Tennessee, that little hospital where Daddy lay so ill when I was called home from Keene -- let me tell you about it.  The brothers and their wives, one of whom was a doctor, and the mistress of one of the brothers (a relationship not yet known by the church), were all members of the local church, and so fanatical that none of us kids growing up there could stand them.  They quoted Sister White in more ways than even she intended.  One of their followers scolded mother for letting me take off my long, heavy stockings in summer!  A shock to the system she said!  After his testimony at each Wednesday night prayer meeting, at which time he invariably thanked God for his personal humility, the elder of the brothers then took up most of the prayer time.  One of the boys clocked him at nine minutes once.  We were mostly sitting by then, as we had no padded kneeling benches to protect our knees from the bare tile floor.  On Sabbath, in this area where the church had many visitors, this brother loved to interrupt the preacher with an Ellen G. White quote, "Brother so-and-so," he would whine in his nasal voice, "Sister White says thus-and-so on page 326 of Volume one of the 'Testimonies'."  We kids could not believe the church would permit this to go on and on. 

Finally, Daddy had enough.  Next time it happened, Daddy contradicted him.

"No, no, Brother Fake.  It's on page 461!"  It only took a couple of those to halt the little drama.  Daddy got a kick out of discomfiting the old geezer.

* * * * *

1957, eastern North Carolina.

 
A number of people in the district would have been baptized except for their use of tobacco.  You have to quit smoking or chewing or any other use of the weed before you join the church.  Some people do get in before they quit, and try to hide it.  You may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, you may believe that He has redeemed and saved you, but you may not be baptized until you conform to a set of rules, thirteen, in fact, in the Baptismal Vows, and twenty-seven in the Summary of Doctrinal Beliefs.  If baptism is essential to salvation, then what is the condition of one who, though a believer, dies while trying to conform his life to the thirteen requisites for baptism?  Believe me, Adventists lie when they sing "Just As I Am."  In fact, some other fundamentalists do, also.  They do not really believe one can come to Jesus just as they are.  They must get prepared to come to Jesus.

The church where Dan and I found "grace" treasures and nurtures the brother with a drinking problem, the woman who has been divorced.  Is there any other way?  There they grow into the person God has in mind for them, surrounded by the warmth of God's other children.

So there were folks we couldn't baptize.  One really special little lady who chewed the fresh leaves out of her commercial tobacco patch.  (Everyone raised tobacco, which presented another problem for the church.)  Growing and selling tobacco are frowned on, also.  I only hope those sweet people found a church where they could experience the warmth of the love of Jesus and an environment conducive to Christian growth.

* * * * *

Other than singing the song, "Blessed Assurance" in church, I had never heard the word assurance in the Seventh-day Adventist Church until Mother used it in this context.  Nor do I remember hearing it since.  Salvation was once described in a sermon as an umbrella which God holds over our head.  As long as we keep ourselves under it, we are safe -- saved.  But when we walk out from under it, we lose our salvation.  Never, wrote Sister White, should one dare to say, I am saved.34  No wonder the Seventh-day Adventist lives in perpetual fear, in and out from under that umbrella, singing, "Am I ready for Jesus to come?"

* * * * *

Thanksgiving, 1958, after a
visit in Arkansas with
my dying father.

 
A sweet little Adventist lady had accompanied me, to help with the baby daughter.  We stopped at a little cafe that looked clean to give ourselves a Thanksgiving dinner of sorts.  It was pretty good.  All vegetables, of course.  Suddenly Sister Bea left the table and hurried outside.  A few minutes later she returned, looking pale.  After we were on the way again, she said, "Didn't you taste the pork in the string beans?"  I really had not notice.

"The Bible says we mustn't eat the swine or the broth thereof.  I have to throw up when I get even a taste of it."

* * * * *

Bryan had found a friend in Elder R. A. Anderson, of the Ministerial Association of the Denomination.  The advice he gave was that Bryan had better apply for mission service pretty soon, as one wouldn't have a chance for the position of running the denomination if he hadn't put in time outside the United States.  Bryan asked Elder Anderson to come down to our little church and hold a week of lectures on the Book of Revelation.  He thought he would enjoy that, so we had a house guest from the General Conference that January!  His wife joined him the first weekend, and I enjoyed her a lot.  Imagine playing hostess to such dignitaries!  We had interesting discussions.  One was concerning the church ruling -- actually Sister White's -- against wearing a wedding ring.  More rings are seen nowadays, but back then you didn't dare!  The Andersons were from Australia, where not only did they wear them, they had double ring ceremonies in the churches!  Mrs. A. said the Australian Adventist ladies, married to men who were transferred to headquarters, were so embarrassed at not having their rings on they wouldn't let their husbands put an arm around them in public.

The continuing discussion that week, however, was the story of the General Conference encounter with Walter Martin, a young theologian and cult-watcher, who had published a book called The Rise of the Cults.  I listened attentively as Elder Anderson described the cover of the book, illustrated with an octopus whose tentacles were named Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, Christian Scientists, and -- you guessed it -- Seventh-day Adventists.  Martin was contacted by one of the brethren, T. E. Unruh, and eventually a discussion was set up between several of the church leaders and Dr. Martin and Dr. Barnhouse of Eternity Magazine.  The outcome of the dialogue, after thousands of hours of research, was the publishing of the book, Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine,35 which satisfied Martin and Barnhouse that Seventh-day Adventists were not an anti-Christian cult.  While the General Conference president and several others, including Elder Anderson, were pleased with the encounter and the resulting book, many others were not.  Many actually considered themselves suffering for Christ to be labeled a "cult".  Many in the Evangelical community, also, were not pleased.  Eternity Magazine lost 11,000 subscribers.37  I will never forget the light in the eyes of Elder Anderson as he talked of the project.  There are two kinds of church leaders, I decided.  One wants to dictate, to have the devotion of his constituency, and the less educated, more gullible his constituents are, the easier it is to dupe them.  The other type encourages an intelligent search for truth.  I believed Elder Anderson searched for truth.

* * * * *

  
My father died,
1958.

 
It was a typical Seventh-day Adventist service.  That is the only church I have ever known to use Psalm 126:2, "He giveth His beloved sleep" to indicate death.  It is so plainly referring to rest from daily labor.  Over and over the "sleep" part of death was mentioned in the service, including two lengthy poems.  Those who believe in "soul sleep" sorrow at a graveside as deeply as those who have no hope.  I discovered that when I started playing professionally for other churches where they believed that to be absent from the body was to be with God.

I remembered Daddy singing a song from an early Adventist hymnbook which had the words in the chorus:

                   In a look there's life for me,
                   In a look at Calvary.
                   Blessed thought, salvation free,
                   By a look at Calvary!

It was taken out of future books.  Too true to the Bible, I guess.

After the funeral I walked in the yard and looked at the daffodils Daddy had planted.  The irises were showing buds.  The gardenia bushes he had placed under each bedroom window would blossom in the summer and perfume the air, the dahlias flaunt their color.  But the joy, the laughter, the songs and the whistling -- they would never return.

A letter from my Mama Miles the following week stated,

I have never stood by the casket of anyone that I felt more sure of than he.  I only hope that when my time comes that I can feel that sure.

* * * * *

Several years ago, an old Bible which had been Daddy's in his youth was discovered, and his family graciously sent it to me.  On the fly-leaf, in the beloved handwriting, was written:

I vow I will never go against this Holy Book in any way.

Oh, yes.  He was ready.   He knew Where his salvation came from.  And I know where he is!

* * * * *

The test of a man's life is not his birth.  It is how he ends it.

* * * * *

One day Bryan came in and said, "I need you to make me some additional visual aids for my black light display."  He had display boards, two 4 x 8 foot plywood sheets covered with black flannel on which those frightful beasts of Daniel and Revelation; the time charts which "prove" the year 1844 to the beginning of the "Investigative Judgement"; the woman sitting on the scarlet beast of Revelation seventeen, and many other colorful subjects, paraded as he spoke.

"I want a picture of Adam and Eve clothed in fig leaves, and another of long white robes which can be placed over the fig leaves."

I told him what I would need, and he brought the supplies from town.  I never considered myself an artist outside the field of music, so I set up the slide projector, focussed an appropriate slide from his religious slides file onto the double length of poster board, and outlined Adam and Eve in fig leaves.  Then I took the black light paint and finished them out.  The white poster board, unpainted, comes out blue under the black light, so even the white for the robes had to be painted.  The figures looked pretty good, and were nearly life-sized.  The topic which necessitated these helps was "Righteousness by faith."  The denomination had been struggling with this subject since 1888 when they heard their first sermon stating that Jesus had done it all for us; We can't do anything at all toward our own salvation.  Many accepted the joyful news of the Gospel, but those who did either left the church or were gradually sucked back into the old way of trying to get themselves ready for Jesus.  What is "grace"?  What is "justification"?   "Sanctification"?

Justification, according to the Adventists, is forgiveness for past sins only, at conversion, and "In order for man to retain justification, there must be continual obedience," Ellen White states.5 

It is by continual surrender of the will, by continual obedience that the blessing of justification is retained."6

So, using my art, Bryan explained how we are like Adam and Eve clothed in fig leaves.  When we come to believe in Jesus, He covers us with His righteousness.  So far, so good.  But then, Bryan continued, we begin to weave our own righteousness underneath that robe of Jesus', until one day we don't need His covering!   Sister White agreed. 

By His perfect obedience He has made it possible for every human being to obey God's commandments.  When we submit ourselves to Christ, the heart is united with His heart, the will is submerged in His will, the mind becomes one with His mind, the thoughts are brought in captivity to Him; we live His life.  This is what it means to be clothed with the garment of His righteousness.  Then as the Lord looks upon us He sees, not the fig leaf garment, not the nakedness and deformity of sin, but His own robe of righteousness, which is perfect obedience to the law of Jehovah."7

Perfection is required.  While most Christians understand that Jesus is their substitute, that His perfect life substitutes for our imperfect lives, Ellen White tells her followers that "God requires perfection of His children."8  And "when the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim them as His own."9  It's a "Yes, but..." situation.  Yes, Jesus is our substitute, yes we are Justified by Faith, but we conform to the image of Christ until in spiritual growth we attain unto the full stature in Christ.  This is the way Christ ends the curse of sin!  Only by continual obedience is our justification retained.10  Discouraging, isn't it?  I know the harder I tried, the more I messed up my life, and the less likely it seemed that I'd ever make Heaven.  And guess what!  In the hundred and fifty years or so since the "Investigative Judgment" began, they haven't produced one perfect person yet!  At least, if they have, they've kept it quiet.  As kids we used to look around and try to spot some perfect ones, but then those persons would end up saying or doing something which we would decide a perfect person wouldn't do!

There is an interesting passage of scripture in Isaiah 28.  God has said "this is the resting place, let the weary rest, but they would not listen.  So then, the word of the Lord to them will become:  Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here and a little there, so that they will go and fall backward, be injured and snared and captured."  (NIV)  I didn't know that it is a lot easier to "Come unto me and I will give you rest."11

* * * * *

 
November, 1960, missionaries
to the Middle East.

 
Our very worst seas of the entire trip occurred in the middle of a Wednesday night in the Mediterranean out of Genoa, more accurately, the Ligurian Sea.  I slept right through it!  Good sailor by now, huh?  The pilot had come out to bring the Taleb into harbor, and due to the roughness of the sea he banged our ship up when docking it.  Our Captain was really unhappy about his new vessel having a big dent in it.  He announced Thursday morning that we would be in port over the weekend so that he could contact Concordia's insurance company and have someone come and assess the damage.  We were wishing we were not so far from Rome.  Bryan asked a few questions and discovered that we could take the train to Rome and have Friday and Sabbath to see Rome!  Not very long, but absolutely worth it!  The steward helped Bryan locate the proper person and have our passports stamped so we could go.  Seating in the train was different from our trains in the United States.  We were in a little compartment which our family almost filled by itself!  We rode through the night so missed the scenery.  On arrival in Rome Bryan called the headquarters of the Church and a nice young man came out and took us to a hotel "for one night", he said, "and a better room will be available tomorrow."  He left us and we prepared to rest.  There was no tub, just a sink, basin and bidet.  The kids didn't care -- they seldom minded missing a bath.  The hotel was not bad, but it wasn't heated well enough for me.  Next morning we discovered the "Continental Breakfast."  Hard rolls and coffee.  The poor servers had five non-coffee drinkers on their hands, so they very graciously heated milk for us, and brought out some butter for the rolls.  I bet they never had folks consume as many rolls with hot milk as my little family did!  We were used to a large breakfast.  Sister White had said that breakfast should be the largest meal of the day,14 and I tried hard to follow her counsel.    

The Communist headquarters in Rome was in the same block as the hotel.  It didn't feel right to have that sign on out in the open.

The young man from the Conference Office was very kind, and took us around at a fast pace to some of the interesting outlying places: the catacombs, the Appian Way, the Circus Maximus.

The catacombs, originally called "coemeteria" -- cemetery -- were the original burial places of the early Christians.  Burial or burning of a dead body in the city of Rome was strictly forbidden, so subterranean tunnels at several levels were cut into the tufa stone outside the old circle of walls.  It is estimated that the fifty-two known catacombs in Rome, if laid end to end, would total at least 360 miles in length!

Although some recent statements deny that the early Christians hid in the Catacombs to escape persecution, our guide not only said that they hid there, he showed us the symbols carved into the stone, presumably as a means of signaling the presence or the direction of passage, of other Christians.  The first letters of the Greek words, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour, spell the Greek word, fish.  That's how the ichthus, the fish, became the primary symbol for the early Christians.  Other carvings and symbolic decorations to be seen in the Catacombs are olive trees, doves, palms and vines.  Along the network of tunnels and walls of the stairs are rectangular niches for the bodies, which were once closed with marble or other type of tombstone.  The larger chambers were used for chapels.  During the seventh century many bodies of martyrs were moved to churches, and gradually, as the cemeteries lost their use; even the location of the entrances of most of them were forgotten.

Anyone fleeing there to hide these days would have to carry along a large metal-cutting device, as there are locked iron gates down most of the passages to prevent tourists from entering and becoming lost in the maze of tunnels.  As I walked through the labyrinth I tried to imagine myself there with my three precious children, looking for a place to keep them safe, wondering what I was going to feed them, and what the future held.  I thought the issue of our life on earth was the Saturday Sabbath.  I truly didn't know if I could let us die for that.  The question is: Is the Sabbath your Christ?  Or is Jesus Christ your Sabbath, in Whom you rest from all those works with which you are trying to make yourself fit for Heaven?

The Via Appia, considered "the queen of roads", built in 312 BC, is the longest, widest and finest of the Roman roads.  Paved with polygonal slabs of basalt brought from the hills, it crossed marshland, valleys, streams and mountains.  It was fascinating to stand there, looking at those stones, and imagine the great Apostle Paul walking along those very stones!  I didn't appreciate Paul so much then, as I had never seriously studied the powerful message of freedom in Christ which he preached.  I took Sister White's word for everything, and she said we must live in harmony with God's law, day by day, hour by hour, with special effort on our part, in perfect obedience to all of God's commandments.15

* * * * *

Our Adventist preacher-guide took us to the Lateran church where is the supposed "Pilate's Staircase," which was believed to have been miraculously transported from Jerusalem to Rome.  Martin Luther, the great reformer, wishing to obtain an indulgence promised by the pope to all who should ascend on their knees, was humbly creeping up those steps when the statement from Scripture burst into his memory -- again.  Twice before he had been impressed with

"The just shall live by faith!" 

The implication of righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ alone finally jolted him away from the superstitions of a religion of works.16  I envisioned Luther on those stairs, but I had no idea what "living by faith" implied.

* * * * *

The Mamertine Prison, twelve feet underground, lightless, clammy, traditionally held both Paul and Peter during Nero's persecution of the Christians.  Since Paul was under house arrest in Rome, it is not certain that he was ever in the prison.  There is no factual evidence that Peter ever got to Rome, although it is likely.  If so, he was surely in prison at some point in time.

As we went down the steps to the prison, the guide pointed to an indentation in the stone wall "where St. Peter's head hit the wall when he was pushed by one of the guards."  I jerked around to face him, and he gave me a look which said, Dare to contradict me.  I was the only one asking a lot of questions, so I guess that was the reason I got the look!

Poor Peter.  What was his attitude?  His first letter is largely concerned with the undeserved suffering of the Christians, probably because of persecution.  "Resist the devil," he admonished the young church, "standing firm in your faith, remembering that the strain is the same for all your fellow-Christians in other parts of the world.  And after you have borne these sufferings a very little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to share his eternal splendor through Christ, will himself make you whole and secure and strong.  All power is his forever and ever, amen!"17

And Paul -- how did he react?  In a letter to Timothy, he wrote, "As for me, I feel that the last drops of my life are being poured out for God.  The time for my departure has arrived.  The glorious fight that God gave me I have fought, the course that I was set I have finished, and I have kept the faith.  The future for me holds the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the true judge, will give to me in that day."18

* * * * *

Our brother from the Conference headquarters could not take us around on that Sabbath, so after attending the service in the little Adventist church Bryan absolved us of Sabbath-breaking, and since one of the young men of the church offered to show us around, we had a fleeting view of several other places.  I got pinched on the backside as we were riding the bus to the Coliseum.  Bryan was upset about it, but I had read in some of my travel books that it was considered a compliment and should be laughed off.  Our meager knowledge of Spanish was of some value in Italy, as it is so nearly like Italian that we could communicate after a fashion.    

* * * * *

One thing that really upset me about Rome was all those little brass plaques.  Kiss this plaque and receive forgiveness for fourteen sins.  Or nine.  Or twelve.  I didn't yet realize that my religion of works -- righteousness was not much different from kissing a plaque, counting beads, or any other type of penance.  Martin Luther, in his De servo arbitrio, stated, "The righteousness of faith ... does not consist in any works, but in the favorableness of God, and in God's imputation through grace."  And the Apostle Paul in Romans one calls the Gospel "the power for the salvation of everyone who believes.  For in the Gospel a righteousness is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last!"  My problem was that I had lived always in an environment where the members preferred the simplistic writings of Ellen White to the sturdy, virile depths of the Scripture.  The Bible is heavy, man!  I think that believing, merely having faith in the free salvation offered by Jesus, seems just too simple for do-it-yourselfers!

* * * * *

When Pope Nicholas III undertook the rebuilding of the Vatican Palace and gardens, he also built a protected secret passageway between the castle and the Vatican, which was used frequently by popes in time of danger.

We would have time to visit St. Peter's Basilica Sunday morning before we were due to meet our train back to Genoa, so we hobbled back to the hotel on our sore feet, and gladly "hit the sack" for a night's rest.

Next morning, as we were standing on the curb waiting for a traffic light a lady moved closer to me and pointing to Patti asked, in broken English, "Your daughter?"

I smiled at her and replied, "Yes, she is."

"She is very beautiful!"

"Thank you.  Thank you very much!" 

I gave her a bigger smile.  She wished us a good day and went on.  I had dressed Patti in pink dress and tights, over which she wore a brown and pink coat with pink pom-poms on the ends of the tie.  A pink knitted hat was over her golden-brown hair.  I thought my sons attractive, too.  All three children were well-behaved and obedient, as well as beautiful, and everyone noticed.

The Pope was to appear in a window overlooking the piazza that morning, to address and bless the crowd.  We were in plenty of time for the event.  I was not prepared for the reaction of the hundreds of people packed into the Piazza.  I was standing close beside the splendid fountain, admiring, when suddenly there was a hush and a kind of soft "whoosh" as all the people fell to their knees right there on the pavement!  There were only two or three other than ourselves who remained standing.  I looked up in the direction everyone was bowing and could see that a banner had been dropped out of the window, and the Pope was standing there, pronouncing a blessing on us!

If Peter was the first pope, there have really been some changes.   Remember when he went to minister to Cornelius?  Cornelius met him and fell at his feet with reverence, and Peter chided him: "Stand up.  I'm just a man, myself."20

* * * * *

An American couple had flown to Rome with their new baby explicitly for his baptism in St. Peter's and the ceremony was in progress as we were there.  The first chapel of the south aisle had been converted into the baptistry about 1694.  Its walls are lined with polychrome (multi-colored) marbles against which are set little sidetables of porphyry -- purple stone with crystals, and rich bronze.  The center of interest is, of course, the rose-violet porphyry font, and the beautiful gilded bronze cover of cherubs, swirls, and vines, crowned with a gold lamb representing the Lamb of God.  Breathtaking!

Looking straight down the nave I could see through the baldacchino to the cattedra, or main altar.  The baldacchino theoretically is a canopy.  In fact, however, it is a canopy-like structure as tall as the Farnese Palace, the greatest of Renaissance times.  It is built slightly off-center under the gigantic dome, so as to be exactly over the "Apostle's tomb".  The canopy and four supporting spiral columns are of bronze, opulent with olive foliage, naked children and bees, Pope Urban's insignia.  Pagan and Christian motifs intermingle strangely all over the masterpiece of baroque art, from the rich altar below, up the Bronze pillars, across the canopy with its sun heads, the Holy Dove, the crown with a ball with bees on it, and topped with across!

For centuries a chair believed to have been sat in by the Apostle Peter had been on view.  It has four legs of yellow oak to which iron rings were once attached.  Solid panels between the legs and the arcaded back with pointed crest are of acacia wood, inlaid with ivory.  Because the years, as well as relic hunters, were taking their toll on it, Bernini, creator of the Baldacchino, schemed to enshrine it.   Hence, when I looked at the Cattedra Petri -- the Throne of Peter -- I did not see the worn old chair.  I saw a bronze throne overlaid with gold, seemingly floating in the clouds high above the altar, surrounded by two of the Church fathers and two Saints of the Greek Church.  The papal tiara crowns the throne, and two cherubs hold the golden keys.  The old chair is ensconced in the back of the grand golden throne.  Behind and above the throne rise golden clouds, and above the clouds inan explosion of rays cherubs and angels point to a central vision in brown and yellow glass of the Holy Dove with outspread wings.

It must be remembered that when I was in Rome, I had this overwhelming fear of Catholicism and tremendous lack of appreciation for the arts.  I knew I was seeing marvelous things, and fantastic history, but I knew so little of art and literature, thanks to the negative attitude of Ellen White regarding art, music, and literature and the dinky little unqualified schools I attended.  While I know that many of the marvelous objects I saw in Rome were paid for by taxing and the sale of indulgences, much of it was given out of a sincere desire in the hearts of the contributors as well as the builders to present to God a beautiful offering.  Have you ever read about Solomon's temple?21

* * * * *

We went into a museum off the nave, where we saw many, many precious stones, priceless pieces of jewelry, cherished icons, relics and other treasures.  Because I had always believed the wearing of jewelry to be a sin, and could think of no other purpose for precious stones, even the world's largest emerald did not impress me greatly!

The Swiss Guards made their trek, so many steps one way, so many steps the other way.  Bryan very much wanted a color slide of the Papal triple crown.  Picture taking was strictly forbidden in the area, but Bryan put the camera around my neck so that my coat would cover it.  He quietly instructed me when the Guard turned South to brace the camera on the pedestal in the center of the room so that I could get more exposure time without jarring the camera, and get that picture.  So, following my husband's orders, I got a prize picture.

The importance of this slide to Bryan's evangelistic efforts was in the belief of Adventists that the pope represents the beast of Revelation 13:18, whose number is 666.   They claim the letters of the words "Vicarius Filii Dei" found in the papal mitre (they say) which translate "Vicar of the Son of God", total, in Roman Numerals, 666.  Let's have a look-see.  First problem is that the Adventists always place the letters perpendicular and treat them as a simple problem in addition, adding each single number.  However, any educated person is aware that a smaller number placed before a larger number decreases the larger number by that amount.  V equals five, as you know, but IV equals five less one, or four.  IC equals 99, IV equals 4, and IL 49.  So using the seven numerals of the Roman number system: I, V, X, L, C, D and M, with U the same as V, the equation would look like this: 

V - I - C - A - R - I - U - S   F - I - L - I - I   D - E -I 
5      99                    4                  49     1   1  500     1

giving us a total of 660.

George Lamsa says this number represents the Aramaic letters which spell Nero Caesar.  Robert Faid states that the full name of Gorbachev equals 666 in three different languages!  Ellen Gould White, with its "W" -- double "V" -- gives us 666!  Imagine!

* * * * *

 

 

Part  Three "Too Wet to Plow"

 

 Easter in Shiraz, Iran,
1961

 
I had always enjoyed participating in Easter Sunrise services.  It was frowned on by many Adventists ministers, who considered it pagan, but a few others, eager to try to impress non-Adventists that we were truly Christian, jumped at an opportunity to assist in the program. 

The word Easter is not used in the writings of Ellen White.  The resurrection of Jesus is mentioned some 80 times, mostly as simply a part of the life-story of Jesus.  Compare that with her over 1800 Sabbath-related references.  She said that Satan decided to make the crucifixion and resurrection work to his advantage by causing believers to think that the ten commandment law was nailed to the cross along with the ceremonial law, thereby doing away with the Sabbath commandment.  "Satan presented before them the glorious resurrection of Jesus, and told them that by His rising on the first day of the week, He changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week."24  Pertaining to the resurrection, she also says the angels unwrapped the body of Christ, but "it was the Saviour's hand that folded each [grave cloth], and laid it in its place."  The lesson is Christ's "attention to little things", and to remind us that "Habits of negligence should be resolutely overcome."25  What king makes his own bed?  Is neatness the significance of the resurrection?    

Any Seventh-day Adventist will be quick to tell you that Easter, along with Christmas, was a pagan holiday.  Actually, the pagans over the centuries have had so many deities that I doubt there is a day in the year without some connotation of paganism, even the Saturday Sabbath.  In fact, Saturday was the day of the Roman god, Saturn, the god of sowing.

If Jesus had not risen, His death would have been for nothing.  In 1961 I did not realize that our entire salvation is centered in the resurrection.  I had no joy in my religion, and didn't know that our joy, our future, our eternal life, and our blessed hope -- the resurrection -- is the source, the dynamo, for our entire Christian life!  I had never noticed how the centrality of the New Testament is not the Sabbath or the gift of prophecy, nor yet speaking in tongues.  It is the resurrection of Jesus Christ!  Paul mentions more than once that he was in chains, beaten, persecuted -- for his belief in Jesus' resurrection!  I had not yet learned why I loved Easter-time -- the lilies, daffodils, cantatas and sunrise services!

Bryan had brought a pair of public address speakers with us from the States.  I decided I could use them.  We lived upstairs in the living room almost as much as downstairs.  How could I have music both places?  I had already run a wire from the stereo to the organ for the second stereo speaker.  There was a lot of electrical cord in the garage, I knew, so I proceeded to run wire from the stereo to a speaker at the top of the stairs and another at the bottom.  I knew absolutely nothing about sound systems other than that the sound traveled through the wire.  I had plenty of wire, and by George, by the time I was through, I had plenty of sound!  Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tennessee Ernie, George Beverly Shea -- they never traveled on cheaper wire, and were certainly never more appreciated than when they boomed through out my house!  Now I had huge orchestras to conduct!  I could conduct with the wooden spoon as I was cooking, with my pen as I was writing home, or with no baton at all.  Or I could grab little Tammi up and dance with her.  Or perform my own interpretive ballet to Swan Lake!

I had discovered that Mendelssohn wrote a symphony around the great hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."  What a work!  I enjoy worshipping with my charismatic friends, and recognize a place for choruses in worship, but I really miss the great hymns when I'm in their services.  Strong words and strong music!

                Crown Him with many crowns,
                          the lamb upon the throne;
                Hark!   How the heavenly anthem
                          drowns all music but its own!

                Awake, my soul, and sing of Him
                          Who died for thee;
                And hail Him as your matchless King
                For all eternity!

And,

                All hail the power of Jesus name,
                          let angels prostrate fail!
              Bring forth the royal diadem
                          and crown him Lord of all!

Only the totally ignorant and uneducated could resist the thrill of singing those powerful praises!  The latter hymn has three fine tunes.  I had made my own arrangement using all three before I knew that Paul Michelson had done so.  And how many religious cults would there be if every believer took to his own heart that

                The Church's one foundation
                          is Jesus Christ her Lord?

* * * * *

Iranian friends told us that the Baha'i World Faith had its origins on the street we lived on.  I have not been able to verify whether the "Bab" was born there, or whether, perhaps, the first meetings were held there.  The first I ever heard of Baha'i was as a kid out on the big farm.  Our neighbor, a beautiful older lady who had once danced with the Ziegfeld Follies, was a believer in the Baha'i Movement.  Since we were ignorant of everything except Adventism, we couldn't understand either her profession or her religion.  Actually she was a lovely and caring person.  I always wondered at all the non-Adventists who were so nice, and a bunch of Adventists I knew who were not so nice.  The "pat" answer I was always given was "The devil is very devious.  Be careful that he doesn't deceive you!"  We made no effort to learn what Avonelle believed.

In the mid-1800's a young Iranian businessman, Mirza' Ali Muhammad, came to believe himself a "Bab", or "Gate," into a new era for mankind, divinely manifested.  Particularly nettlesome to the Moslems, he was put before a 450-man firing squad which he survived, so the story goes, miraculously.  He was executed by Islam fanatics in 1850 at age thirty-one.  The purpose of the Baha'i World Faith is unity of all faiths into one universal brotherhood with a right to disagree on peripheral issues, but agreeing on all great central truths of the world religions, with Baha' u 'llah as the messiah for this age.  They hold the number nine equal "manifestations of the divine mind": Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Confucius, Christ, Mohammed, Krishna, Lowe, and Baha'u'llah.  They now have a temple in Wilmette, Illinois, with nine sides, nine concrete piers, nine pillars, and nine arches.   It sits in a nine-sided park with nine avenues and gateways and nine fountains.  Jesus, you noticed, is only one of nine great manifestations.  They do not believe there is a need for substitutionary atonement.  "By the practice of principles laid down by Baha'u'llah and by making every effort through prayer and personal sacrifice to live in accord with the character of the divine being revealed in him, we can arrive at eventual salvation..."26  Another religion of works, do-it-yourself salvation.  Only there just ain't no such thing!

* * * * *

We spent quite a bit of time walking through the royal ruins: audience halls; treasure; administrative and store houses.  Last, but judging by the size, not least, the harem, which belonged to both Darius and Xerxes.  Did Queen Esther reside in the magnificent mansion over there?  Did she make the trip down from Susa for a while each year?

* * * * *

Of Pasargadae, built by Cyrus in his native district, not much is
left.  The ruins are a great terrace like that in Persepolis, and the remains of three buildings, on which the inscription "I Cyrus the king the Achaemenid" occurs five times in Persian, Susian and Babylonian.  They were built of bricks with a foundation of stones and stone doorcases, like the palaces at Persepolis; and on these fragments a procession of tribute bearers and the figure of a winged demon were preserved.  We took pictures of the storks who nest on top of one of the columns left in the lonely palace ruins.

Outside the town was found the tomb of Cyrus, a stone house on a high substructure rising in seven great steps, surrounded by a court with columns.     

And speaking of tombs; behind Persepolis you can see three sepulchres hewn out of the rock in the hillside, the facades of which are richly ornamented with reliefs.  About eight miles away four similar tombs are cut in a perpendicular rock at a tremendous height.  One could visit Darius' tomb by climbing long ladders, one to the first level, then another to a much higher level.  I just couldn't do it.  But I kept telling myself that I would always hate me if I didn't take advantage of this opportunity.  So with great fear and trembling, I finally went up.  Once I got to the top of the second ladder I knew that I had made a bad mistake.  I was going to have to walk a ledge about 14 inches wide to get to the sepulchre opening!  I kept my eyes focussed on the door to my left, not daring to look down.  I finally got inside, and was so fearful of going back down, that I didn't soak up much of what was in the big dark room.  There were several "vaults", I suppose you would call them.  They looked a lot like concrete septic tanks carved from the stone.

Let's just skip any attempt to describe the descent.  It was terrifying.  I had to sit on the ground and let my pulse return to normal when I got down.  My Laurie never got up.  He was smarter than his ma!

Another structure a short distance away, a tower-like stone building, is reached by many steps, again, much too high for me.  There is a difference of opinion about this particular structure.  We were told it was a fire temple, but others say it is a tomb.  At least it was being used by fire-worshippers when we were there.

I was really learning a lot.  Zoroaster has been placed as far back as 2000 BC, which is probably too early, but as far as we know now, he was teaching some 300 years before the invasion of Alexander the Great, which would place him between the seventh and sixth century BC.  He is suppose to have laughed on the very day he was born, lived in the wilderness on cheese, and retired to live alone on a mountain.  The mountain was consumed by fire, but Zoroaster escaped unharmed!  Legend presents him as endowed with superhuman powers.  At his appearing all nature rejoices; he enters into conflict with the demons and rids the earth of their presence.

The religion of Zoroaster was too abstract for most of the people.  He taught one primeval spiritual being: the Ahuro Mazdao, the Wise Lord, the All-father, from whom the world has emanated and is guided by his foreseeing eye.  There is a holy spirit and divine fire.  And there was a mixing in of many of the old Aryan deities as spirits -- mostly evil ones.  There were no pompous temples.  The center of worship was the holy fire on the altar.  There developed a system of minutely elaborate laws for keeping body and soul clean; numerous ablutions, bodily chastisements, beneficial works, support of comrades in the faith, alms, chastity, improvement of the land, aboriculture, breeding of cattle, agriculture, protection of useful animals -- all good things to do.  Do, do, do.  Another religion of works.  Check out all nine great prophets of Baha'u'llah, and only one says simply, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved!"

* * * * *

The Gore's asked if we would like to go watch the march dedicated to the mourning for the death of Hossein.  Men, bare from the waist up, march down the street, beating themselves with chains, most backs showing blood.  We were advised to be as inconspicuous as possible, as sometimes emotions got pretty high, and we wouldn't want to get caught up in some unpleasant or embarrassing incident.  Aren't you glad that the blood in Christianity is Jesus' blood, already shed?  You don't have to do any penance.  He did it all for you!

Norooz, the new year of the old Persian calendar, was a day of great celebration, having religious significance as well, since Moslem tradition says that on this day the prophet conferred the caliphate on Ali, the "patron saint" of the Shi'ites, "the party of Ali".  The Shi'ites regard Ali and his descendants as the only rightful caliphs.

Islam, meaning "submission", the name which all Moslems give to their religion, claims to be a divine revelation communicated to the world through Mohammad, who was the last of a succession of inspired prophets, beginning with Adam.  Its doctrine and practices are based on the Word of God -- the Koran, and the traditions -- the sayings and manner of life of Mohammad.    

The Moslem creed is "There is no God but Allah: Mohammad is the apostle of God", to which the Shi'ite adds, "and Ali is the vice-regent of God."  Basic beliefs are: God; angels -- pure, sexless beings, some of whom bear the throne while others sing to God continually, and still others serve as messengers and are sent to help the faithful in their fight with unbelievers; the inspired books; the prophets; the day of judgement and God's predestination of good and evil.  We discovered that Moses is held in high esteem, as the law came through him.  Twenty-eight other prophets from the Old Testament are recognized, from Adam through Jonah, as well as Zachariah, John the Baptist and Jesus.  Mohammad is (they say) the promised Holy Spirit.

The Moslem considers Abraham his father, through Ishmael, whom they contend was offered, not Isaac.  In actuality, history shows the Arab nations to have descended from Joktan, a descendant of Shem; from Lot, Abraham's nephew, whose daughters gave birth to the Moabites and Ammonites; and from Keturah, Abraham's third wife, who gave birth to six sons, as well as from Ishmael.  An excellent book, Islam Revealed, by Dr. Anis Shorrosh, is available from Thomas Nelson Publishers.    

The Moslem food laws are much like those of the Adventist's.  I never saw a pig the entire time I was there.  If there was any pork around, it came in through the commissary of the foreigners.  No whiskey was seen in the shops, and only some occasional low-alcohol-content wine, probably for the Armenian and other non-Islamic peoples.

There were many washings.  Friday is bathing day at the public bath houses, separate for men and women.  My maid told me that a woman was required by Moslem laws not only to go each Friday for a ritual bath, she must for go douches after her period and after sexual intercourse.  This is more believable when you remember that most of them live in a one-room mud home with no facilities other than water drawn in buckets from the jube.

When we were in Iran the Shi'ites were considered to be far less extreme than their Sunnite brothers.  There was a lot of theft, but I never saw any one-handed people, and if they missed one of their prayer times it wasn't too big a deal.  (In Arabia, according to the captain of our ship, one had his left hand severed if caught stealing.  A second offense took the right hand, and a third offense got the head!)  Every man is required to worship God five times in each day: Just before sunrise, just after noon, before sunset, just after sunset and after the day had closed.  After the washing of face, hands and feet in a prescribed manner, the worshipper faces Mecca.  Detailed physical positions are defined for each part of worship.  Fasts are rigorously observed.  During the holy month of Ramadan, Moslems are not permitted food, drink, or sex between sunrise and sunset each day.  This fast is associated with the statement that in this month God sent down the Koran from the seventh heaven to Gabriel in the lowest heaven that it might be revealed to the prophet.  From my observation, the Moslems "pigged-out" after dark, as far as food and drink was concerned.  I can't judge the other!

Alms are required of the Moslem, both voluntary, as alms given
to a fellowman, and legal, to be paid once a year after a years' possession.  Of grain and fruit one-tenth is required if it were watered by rain.  If one had to irrigate, only one-twentieth is required.

The other requirement of most believers is a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca.  The Shi'ites were permitted pilgrimages to nearer places.  But if one went to Mecca he must leave his family provided for, as well as afford his journey.  Within six miles of the holy city the pilgrim must put off his ordinary dress after washing and prayer, and put on two seamless wrappers, remove head-covering and boots or shoes.  He may not shave at all, or trim his nails or anoint his head until the completion of the entire ceremony, which includes visiting the sacred mosque, kissing the black stone, and a number of time-consuming rituals of walking, running, climbing, throwing stones, feasting, and sacrifice.  More works!

We did not study the Moslem religion before we arrived there, nor did we, particularly, after we arrived.  We were so sure we had truth for everybody in the world, that there was no need to learn anything about the other person's belief, right?  Just sock the truth to 'em!  Wrong.  The Wise Man said in Proverbs "He who answers before listening -- that is his folly and his shame."  The mind-set of any cult or group must be understood in order to minister wisely.

* * * * *

 

Part  Five "All Dressed Up, Finally!"

 

"Proving all things" time,
the 1980s.

 
When you study the Sanctuary from an Adventist standpoint, you must combine it with the great 2300 day time prophecy of Daniel eight, which has been figured to end in the AD 1844 time frame.  The book, Seventh day Adventists Believe,1 published in 1988 and sent by the thousands to ministers and others in an attempt to spread the SDA "gospel", explains from their standpoint how they came to believe that Jesus entered the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary in the year 1844.  Dr. Walter Martin's book, Kingdom of the Cults, found in any Bible bookstore, analyzes the "Investigative Judgment" -- totally unscriptural -- as well as other tenets of the Adventists.  A Rabbi was heard to say that the Adventists "out-Jew the Jews" when it comes to the Tabernacle services!     

The sanctuary of Moses' time had two compartments.  The Levitical priests had specific functions in each compartment.  However, while in the first compartment, or room, was performed daily ceremonies, only the High Priest was to enter the second, or Holy of Holies, and that only once each year.  His role was to make atonement for the congregation.  Two goats were chosen, one to be sacrificed and its blood sprinkled before the Ark of the Covenant (Leviticus 16), and the other to symbolically carry all the accumulated sins to a solitary place in the wilderness where it was left to perish alone.  "...the sin-offering pointed to Christ as a sacrifice, and the high priest represented Christ as a mediator, the scapegoat typified Satan, the author of sin, upon whom the sins of the truly penitent will finally be placed," future tense, notice.2  These are the doctrines which I espoused and taught before I learned that I could study, research and think for myself, rather than accepting all denominational tenets like I was some kind of robot to be programmed.

Leviticus 16:5 actually states, "take two male goats for a sin offering."  Ellen White makes the first goat only, the sacrifice done, to be the sin offering.  Not so.  The sacrificed goat pictured the fact that Jesus was to shed His blood to redeem us from our sin, and the goat left in the wilderness showed that our sins have already been placed on Jesus; that by His atoning work Jesus has carried our sins far from us -- we are forgiven! I didn't realize that I, along with the church, had been transferring a work of Christ to the Devil!

Somehow by using the year 457 as a starting date, William Miller came up with a closing date for the "2300 day/year prophecy", at which time, he warned, the sanctuary -- this world -- would be cleansed.  That is, the world would end: Jesus would return.  March 21, 1843 was the first date.  Then March 21, 1844; and finally October 22, 1844.

Completely disregarding that statement of Jesus that no one knows the day or the hour of His coming, Miller and his associates spread the warning far and wide.  Guess what!  Jesus didn't come!  Even Miller was convinced that he had made a mistake.  Many of his embarrassed followers returned to the routines of their lives, breaking away from the others.  The little group remaining, however, could not take the shock to their egos, and set about to find a face-saving cover for their disappointment.

One of the believers, a farmer named Hiram Edson, had a "vision" out in his corn field shortly thereafter which gave them what they needed.  He said he was shown that the prophecy was correct, but the "sanctuary" to be cleansed was in heaven, not on earth!  Thus ignorance of Scripture, of the writings of the Church fathers, and of the great reformers -- gave birth to a "cunningly devised fable", the doctrine of the "Investigative Judgment".

Ignoring the many times the book of Hebrews states that Jesus "once for all" offered Himself for the sins of His people, then "sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven," they enlarged on that devastating doctrine which removes any security to which the believer is entitled through belief in the substitutionary act of Jesus on the cross.  It teaches that Jesus went, upon His ascension, into the second apartment of the heavenly sanctuary "to plead His blood in behalf of penitent believers,"3 that is, to go over all the books of record to see who was "ready" to be saved.    

"The blood of Christ, while it was to release the repentant sinner from the condemnation of the law, was not to cancel the sin; it would stand on record in the sanctuary until the final atonement."4    

The Bible teaches, and theologians have always believed, that Jesus' work was finished at the cross.  However, I had believed that when Jesus cried It is finished!, "this was to show that the services of the earthly sanctuary were forever finished...  The blood of Jesus was there shed, which was to be offered by Himself in the heavenly sanctuary."5  "It is this coming, and not His second advent to the earth, that was foretold in prophecy to take place at the termination of the 2300 days in 1844.  Attended by heavenly angels, our great High Priest enters the holy of holies, and there appears in the presence of God, to engage in the last acts of His ministration in behalf of man -- to perform the work of investigative judgment, and to make an atonement for all who are shown to be entitled to its benefits."6   (Emphasis mine.)

Ellen White uses the phrases, "final atonement", "final intercession" many times.  The poor Seventh-day Adventist does not know that Jesus' atonement on the cross was "complete, consummated, accomplished, paid" -- in full!7     

So we never knew any sense of security of salvation.  He is up there now, we thought, going over the books, checking out the names of every individual who had ever lived.  We never knew when He would come to our name and the die would be cast for us, forever!  Furthermore, we never knew when He would be finished (once again) and leave the heavenly sanctuary, at which time we would have to stand alone, without a mediator, until Christ should come to earth.  That is why it was so necessary for us to become perfect.  How could we stand alone if we had not become perfected?  Which brings us to their belief in the sinful nature of Jesus.  Because Jesus, to the Adventist, was more "example" in His life on earth than substitute, they teach that we, too, may overcome exactly as He did, and become pure, as He was. 

Mrs. White says:

Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin.  Like every child of Adam He accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity.  What these results were is shown in the history of His earthly ancestors.  He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life.

... into the world where Satan claimed dominion God permitted His Son to come, a helpless babe, subject to the weakness of humanity.  He permitted Him to meet life's peril in common  with every human soul, to fight the battle as every child of humanity must fight it, at the risk of failure and eternal loss."8

So was Jesus human?  Could He have failed?  Was He only an example of a perfection to which I may attain?  Or was He God? 

I had learned that I need a God to save me.  Men have been trying to save me, one way or another, for years, and the results were that I was worse off than before.  I need God, and so do you!  Believe me!

* * * * *

The "Shut-Door Theory" of Ellen White and her cohorts was, and still is, a real embarrassment to the denomination.  After the disappointment, still so sure that Jesus was almost here, the group of adventists, who in fact were called "shut-door believers" for a time, taught that the door of salvation had been closed to all but "the little flock"; that when Jesus entered the most holy place (according to the new "theology"), He went in to intercede only for those in the little community of adventists.  It didn't take long for James White and others in leadership to begin back-pedaling!  There is abundant material on this humiliating episode if you want to research it.  For me, it suffices to say: the God I worship doesn't make mistakes.  This is just one of the many fallacies of early Adventism.  (See R. D. Brinsmead, Judged By the Gospel.)

* * * * *

The church I had grown up in was famous (infamous?) for going through preachers like a mower through weeds.  They had been fighting since before we moved there the Christmas that I turned twelve.  They had now gone through several pastors in the past four years, and then came Pastor Tracy.  He had the Gospel with him!  The real Gospel!  It would not, of course, be accepted by everyone, but some would hear it.  I don't know how he has been able to stay in that denomination after knowing the Gospel.  Maybe he had a head knowledge only, or maybe it was the security of his job, I don't know.  But I shall always be grateful to him for steering me toward justification, forgiveness, grace, righteousness by faith in Jesus.

I would hear some little nugget in his sermon, which seemed to me to go right by everyone else, then during the week I would call him about it, we would discuss it, and he would suggest something for me to read or think about.  I discovered that the tremendous unifying force of the great Reformation of the fifteenth century was justification by faith alone.  This is the one point on which they stood unanimously.

But what, exactly, did that mean, Justification by faith?  I had heard the religious cliches all my life.  I even knew who Jesus was, but I didn't know Him.  I had heard that phrase, "personal relationship with Jesus" for years, but I didn't have it, and I didn't know anyone who did.  The only person in my lifetime whom I felt got through when he prayed was our Nazarene friend in Iran.  I thought most of the prayers that I heard in church insulted a powerful, sovereign God, One who was smart enough to make this world and all the seen and unseen, known and unknown, universe.  Now all this new belief about Jesus having done everything for us -- there's nothing we can do toward our salvation?  Heresy?

Well, I had started out trying, trying, trying to follow all those rules.   Trying to eat only whole grains, soy beans and peanuts, with my fruits and vegetables.  But all my trying was never good enough.  Now, after I had about trained Dan into the diet, someone decided that Sister White said that we should use oil only "as it is in the olive"!12  So the entire denomination was trying to re-learn bread-baking without oil!

The Gospel, in Ellen White-ism, leads man to obedience to the law.  The merits of Christ's sacrifice means divine power to become holy.  So we worked to keep the law, to become holy.    

I had nearly killed myself every Friday in order to be ready for the Sabbath by sundown.  I knew a lot of church members who, in winter months, were driving home from work at sundown.  But that didn't make it right!  No way!  Sister White said everything must be ready and the family gathered for worship "before the setting of the sun".13  So no matter what anyone else did, I had to be sure I was right.

Sister White goes even farther than the Old Testament prophet Isaiah (chapter 58).  Not only should we not do our own pleasures or speak our own words, we shouldn't even think our own thoughts!14  Now that's a tough one!  You will hear statements every Sabbath like this:

"Remind me to tell you something after the Sabbath."

"Did you know that -- oh! -- that's not Sabbath talk.  I'll tell you later."

"I brought you something.  Put it in your purse and don't open it until after sundown."

Everyone keeping the letter of the Ellen White interpretation of the law.  She said we must observe the day according to both the letter and the spirit.  No one in the entire history of the Church ever seems to have noticed that the Israelites were instructed (Exodus 16:29) to stay in their places on the Sabbath day.  Sister White stated that if the world had always observed the Sabbath, it would have been preserved from idolatry.15  Do the Adventist idolize the Sabbath or not?

* * * * *

My son at Adventist College began sending me articles and tapes about a hiatus in the denomination.  I read a book, The Shaking of Adventism by Geoffrey J. Paxton which had been published in 1977.  The thrust of the book was that Seventh-day Adventists taught a works-righteousness very like that of the Catholics!  Since we were taught from our youth up that the Catholic Church is Babylon the Great, the most dangerous foe of Ellen White's "little Flock", the right arm of Satan, and is distinguished by the mark of the beast,18 I found Paxton's premise amazing.

I had never heard of the two being compared, and I devoured the book.  Then I went through it again, checking it against the Bible.  Adventists have believed themselves to be the heirs to the great Reformation, taking up where Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformers, as Adventists believe, fell short.  They are convinced they are the end-time reconstructors of "the Reformation edifice" as well as restorers of the early Church framework.  It is their perceived duty to "restore original features omitted by the Reformers", which includes the Saturday Sabbath and the "spirit of prophecy", that is, Ellen White; to "rebuild the parts distorted and rejected by the latter-day perverters of the Reformation positions", thereby "bringing the full structure to completion."19

Pretty awesome responsibility, right?  Who laid that trip on the Adventists?  Ellen White and other pillars of the church promoted the idea that the Reformation was to be "carried forward to the close of time by those who also are willing to suffer all things for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ."  And in my mind, as with everyone else in the church, the "testimony of Jesus Christ"20 was the "spirit of prophecy", and that is translated:

Ellen White and her visions, writings, sayings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!

I read with intense interest Paxton's analyses of these and other quotes.  The Reformers taught justification by grace alone.  The Council of Trent, on the other hand, stated that it is anathema to say that men are justified by the sole imputed Righteousness of Christ.  I had been taught, similarly, that justification was for past sins only, that is, Christ's death was for sins of the past.  His life on earth was for our example.  As we endeavor to copy His life, we become sanctified.  Just the other day I heard an Adventist minister on their television network saying, "Sanctify yourselves.  Sanctify yourselves!"  We, according to their teaching, must "get ourselves right" before the end of that Investigative Judgment, the close of Probation!    

Because of the emphasis on behavior, Jesus becomes "the Pattern Man",21 as Ellen White calls Him Whom we endeavor to copy (not a bad goal, but totally without value toward our salvation), rather than the God-man who lived the perfect life as our Substitute.

* * * * *

About footwashing: In the first place, the three synoptic Gospels, which report on the institution of the Lord's Supper, or Communion, do not even mention the footwashing.  Biblical scholars doubt that the supper mentioned in John is, in fact, the same supper mentioned in Matthew, Mark and Luke.  John says, "It was just before the Passover Feast."

* * * * *

Justification -- righteousness by faith in Jesus' great act in my behalf, "not of works, lest any man should boast" (and Brother, wouldn't we boast!), was a new and almost indigestible thought to me!  My faith plus zilch!  Martin Luther, the great Reformer, is quoted selectively by the Adventists.  But never had I heard or read his "Since our sins were so great that nothing could take them away except a ransom so immeasurable, shall we still claim to obtain righteousness by the strength of our own will, by the power of the law, or by the teaching of men?"  I discovered that Luther so loved the "freedom" book of Galatians that he said he was "wedded" to it.  I, too, have experienced that marriage!  Try it, you who are in bondage to denominational do's and don't's!

* * * * *

I was still wrestling with that when I began to hear that Sister White had plagiarized some of her writings.  Impossible!  The Church was saying that she only "borrowed" a few good thoughts now and again.  Borrowing, however, is done with permission, and indicates there will be some type of repayment.  Ellen had prefaced most of her profound statements with "I was shown."  Didn't she say she didn't write to express her own opinion, only what God "opened before me in vision"?  God spoke through clay (herself),22 and if anyone should "lessen the confidence of God's people in the testimonies He has sent them, you are rebelling against God as certainly as were Korah, Dathan, and Abiram"!23  The Review, the church's periodical, constantly states, "heaven sent a message," or "the pen of inspiration tells us."  Surely she had not copied!

More and more, the truth came out.  I was more than skeptical.  Had I been duped all these years?  Was I stupid?  I had had occasional doubts, yes; even more as I grew older, but I was so well indoctrinated that I couldn't dis - believe.

I had heard there was a book out, Prophetess of Health, by Ronald Numbers.  Patti and I went to the Little Rock Library where I had to pay $5.00 for a card I would never use again in order to borrow the book.  Heavily documented, it was something else!

In the very first sentence of the Preface I had to face the unpalatable fact that "Sister White" was just another in a chain of prophets starting their own cultic following in the nineteenth century.  Joseph Smith was diligently accepting brass plates from the angel Moroni, or, as he claimed in the earlier edition of the Pearl of Great Price, the angel Nephi, take your choice.

Mary Baker Eddy was busy becoming ill, "taken for dead" (which her attending physician denied under oath),24 and searching for trusting people to make Christian Science "the anchorage of their souls and its founder the infallible guide of their daily life."25

Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Russellites, which were to become known as Jehovah's Witnesses, was rushing around piling confusion upon confusion as he was starting his own organization.  In Great Britain May Campbell and Margaret Macdonald were producing "visions", as were certain women in Finland.  So "Sister White" was a daughter of her era.

Since my youth I had been regaled with the stories of Ellen's childhood experiences.  William Miller had been predicting the end of the world for some time, a thought which terrified Ellen.  About this time she was struck on the nose with a stone, a serious injury which left her in a coma for three weeks, and chronically ill and disfigured for life.  For two years she sat propped up in bed, making crowns for the hats her father manufactured.  Her fear of the end of the world was magnified, as she worried about her own unworthiness.

When Miller put in a personal appearance in her home town of Portland, Maine, that heavy fear increased even more as she listened to Miller, whose sermons were graphically illustrated with canvasses depicting the terrible beasts and images of Daniel and Revelation.  I was familiar with that on a first hand basis.  Had I not only designed and painted his illustrations, but placed the black-light pictures on the board as Bryan preached many times?

During Ellen's early teen years she was assailed by depression, "a melancholy state, and finally in deep despair.  In this state of mind I remained for three weeks, with not one ray of light to pierce the thick clouds of darkness around me," she wrote.  The conviction settled upon her that she must pray in public.  Finally, "as I prayed, the burden and agony of soul that I so long felt left me, and the blessing of God came upon me like the gentle dew...  Wave after wave of glory rolled over me, until my body grew stiff.  Everything was shut out from me but Jesus and glory, and I knew nothing of what was passing around me...  For six months not a cloud of darkness passed over my mind."26  But she never learned to retain her peace and joy.     

Ellen was baptized in 1842.  She referred to the rite as taking up a "heavy cross", but as she arose from the water she had peace.  That afternoon as the candidates were received into church membership there was a young woman by her side who was also being accepted into the church.  When she noticed the girl's rings, earrings, bonnet with artificial flowers, bows and puffs, her "joy was dampened by this display of vanity."27

* * * * *

I had always bought the whole ball of wax.  Having discovered that she had copied from other authors even a little gave me the doubts necessary to cause me to research further.  Prove all things, the Good Book says, and try the spirits; study to show yourself approved by God.28

So -- I started studying.  I was to learn a lot!

In the very first place, the Seventh-day Adventist Church accepted the "whole ball of wax" on Ellen's word.  They still do.  The 1990 General Conference Session in Indianapolis appealed for more translations of E. G. White's writings, greater world-wide distribution, and urges the members to, without reservation, accept and follow the counsel "God had bestowed so richly", "every aspect of His instruction that we have either ignored or neglected in days gone by."29

Grown-up and supposedly intelligent, college-educated men and women persist in proclaiming the "inspiration" of this nineteenth century visionary. 

* * * * *

One reads constantly in her writings: "As the Spirit of God has opened to my mind..."; "I have been bidden..."; "I am now instructed..."

The entire Seventh-day Adventist dogma has no credibility without a belief in her work, and they continue to fool themselves, for the denomination is a playing out of her dreams, visions, rules, regulations, prejudices, and ignorance.  Robert Olsen, of the Ellen G. White Estate, states, "Here are claims as broad and unequivocal as any found in the Bible,"32 and then, as do most Adventists, he begins to compare her writings with those of the Bible writers.

While the Adventist will stop short of saying he considers her writings to be a part of the canon, Olsen continues: "...are cognition of the final authority of the Scriptures in matters of faith and religion does not thereby deny authority to those prophets God has used who were not Scripture writers... the existence of the sacred canon does not exclude other inspired authorities.  To say that the Bible is our authority, but Ellen White is not, is a false dichotomy.  We can have both..."33

* * * * *

After all those years of reading, memorizing and quoting Ellen White writings, I sat and read some of them back in my mind.  It was true.  Compared to the great Reformers and theologians, her writings are pap.

There were no theologians in that little band of early Adventists.  Ellen herself was only seventeen and had only a third grade education.  Even including the over-fifty sea captain and a farmer in his thirties, their average age was early twenties.  They were of the lower social, economical and educational classes.  They came from various religious backgrounds and entertained serious heresies, some with no belief in a Trinity or even the divinity of Christ!  They were not schooled in the rich heritage of Reformation theology, nor did any of them know Biblical languages.  They had only a King James Bible and were not well versed in it.

Recently, when I read an ad for the new "Spirit of Prophecy Study Bible", I thought, How utterly ridiculous!  A Bible with Ellen White's comments all the way through the margins, as if she were the final authority!  But of course, that is exactly as the average Adventist looks at her work.

I was jolted, as I continued my research into Ellen White and her church, to discover that the little group of early Adventists were what is sometimes called "holy rollers".  What I had read of Ellen's opinion on the subject was that there was a "spirit of fanaticism" among a "certain class of Sabbath-keepers", which she "was shown" was "an unmeaning gibberish" called unknown tongues.  "Fanaticism, false excitement, false talking in tongues, and noisy exercises have been considered gifts which God has placed in the church...  Satan has pushed them in to disgust intelligent and sensible unbelievers."35    

The Piscataquis Farmer, newspaper in Dover, Maine, on Friday morning, March 7, 1845, carried the story of a rambunctious meeting held in Atkinson, Maine, on the second of February, 1845.  It was a court trial of one of the participants, Elder Israel Dammon, who was charged with being a vagabond and idle person; a common railer or brawler, begging, misspending his earnings and not providing for the support of himself and his family.  Church leaders have tried to say it was a false charge, brought by those who didn't believe in Miller's prediction of Jesus' coming.  In fact, Miller had given up and admitted his mistake, but the youngsters would not give up.     

A John Cook wrote on the fifth of April, 1845, that some were convinced that the appointed time was the fourth day of April because of the visions of a girl.36  Whether that was Ellen or not, I don't know.  There were several visionaries at the time, including one besides Ellen who was at this particular meeting.  Descriptions, given under oath at the trial, went like this:     

People setting on the floor and laying on the floor; Dammon setting on the floor; they were leaning on each other.  It did not have the appearance of a religious meeting.
 
                                                                   *
 
They were hugging and kissing one another...  The meeting appeared very irreligious -- have seen him sit on the floor with a woman between his legs and his arms around her.
 
                                                                   *
 
There was a woman on the floor who lay on her back with a pillow under her head; she would occasionally arouse up and tell a vision which she said was revealed to her.
 
                                                                   *
 
The woman that lay on the floor relating visions, was called by Elder Dammon and others, Imitation of Christ... the one that they called Imitation of Christ, told Mrs. Woodbury and others, that they must forsake all their friends or go to hell.
 
                                                                   *
 
Imitation of Christ told her vision to a cousin of mine, that she must be baptized that night or go to hell -- she objected, because she had once been baptized.
 
                                                                   *
 
Imitation of Christ was said to be a woman from Portland.
 
                                                                   *
 
Imitation of Christ lay on the floor during the time they went down to the water to baptize, and she continued on the floor until I left, which was between the hours of 12 and 1 o'clock at night... [she] lay down on the floor I should think about 7 o'clock.
 
                                                                   *
 
I have been young and now am old, and of all the places I ever was in, I never saw such a confusion [Babylon?], not even in a drunken frolic.
 
                                                                   *
 
Saw the woman with a pillow under her head -- her name is Miss Ellen Harmon, of Portland.
 
                                                                   *
 
Sister Harmon would lay on the floor in a trance, and the Lord would reveal their cases to her, and she to them.
 
                                                                   *
 
They lose their strength and fall on the floor.
 
                                                                   *
 
She told them their cases had been made known to her by the Lord, and if they were not baptized that evening, they would go to hell.
 
                                                                   *
 
I saw Elder White ... near Sister Harmon in a trance -- some of the time he held her head.  She was in a vision, part of the time insensible.

[Of Miss Dorinda Baker, another visionary] We believe her visions genuine.  We believe Miss Harmon's genuine -- t'was our understanding that their visions were from God.  Miss Harmon told five visions Saturday night.
 
                                                                   *
 
I have seen both men and women crawl across the floor on their hands and knees.
 
                                                                   *
 
We do wash each other's feet -- do creep on the floor very decently.   [Witness affirmed the story of kissing, rolling on the floor and washing of feet.]
 
                                                                   *
 
I have seen prisoner on the floor with a woman between his legs -- I have seen them in groups hugging and kissing one another.  I once saw Elder Hall with his boots off, and the women would go and kiss his feet.  One girl made a smack, but did not hit his foot with her lips.  Hall said, "He that is ashamed of me before men, him will I be ashamed of before my Father and the holy angels".  She then gave his feet a number of kisses.  [I don't know about you but that makes me want to throw up!]
 
                                                                   *
 
They would at times all be talking at once, halloing at the top of their voices; some of them said there was too much sin there...  they were sitting and laying on the floor promiscuously and were exceedingly noisy.
 
                                                                   *
 
The vision woman called Joel Doore, said he had doubted, and would not be baptized again -- she said Brother Doore don't go to hell.  Doore kneeled to her feet and prayed.
 
                                                                   *
 
Miss Baker and a man went into the bedroom.  The door was opened -- I saw into the room -- she was on the bed -- he was hold of her; they came out of the bedroom hugging each other, she jumping up and would throw her legs between his.  Miss Baker went to Mr. Doore and said, "You have refused me before", he said he had -- they then kissed each other -- she said, "That feels good" -- just before they went to the water to baptize.  Miss Baker went into the bedroom with a man they called Elder White -- saw him help her on to the bed -- the light was brought out and door closed.  I did not see either one of them afterwards.  [Someone else denied that it was Elder White who entered the bedroom, then another witness said that it was Elder White.]

Elder Dammon was sentenced to "the House of Correction for the space of Ten Days."    

Ellen Harmon (White) spent a lot of time ministering from the floor, sometimes "slain upon the floor", and sometimes just lying on the floor.  Crawling was to demonstrate humility.  A correspondent of the Norway Advertiser wrote of seeing, at one meeting, a woman creeping over the floor like a child.     

A man, in the same position, followed her, butting her occasionally with his head.  Another man threw himself at full length upon his back on the bed, and presently three women crossed him with their bodies.

A number of warrants were issued for the arrests of many of the "believers" for fanaticism.  Before the fateful weekend which precipitated the foregoing trial, Ellen's mother had begged her to come home to Portland because of "false reports" being circulated concerning her.

* * * * *

Ellen's life was a cycle of illness, despair, vision, super-joy; illness, despair, vision, super-joy.  She would go into a swoon, collapse on the floor, her body and limbs stiff, and in such a position produce messages -- from God?   She was deeply hurt when it was suggested she was mesmerized.     

Extensive and excellent research proves what the White Foundation has hidden all these many years:  that in many cases she had been listening to, or reading on, a subject prior to experiencing a "vision".  Often her "vision" was simply a confirmation of her husband's latest doctrine.  I discovered more than one indication that James White took advantage of the apocalyptic mysticism of the nineteenth century and promoted his wife's unusual "talents", thereby securing the family's finances, as well as those of the denomination. 

(They missed occasionally, however.  When Kellogg offered his cereal rights to the Church, Sister White spurned the offer.  She didn't think so much time should be taken up with temporal food.  She didn't like cornflakes, and stated that it was being too highly exalted; she felt it would be unwise for the church to have anything to do with it!  That was a really bad move, to which anyone walking the cereal aisle at the supermarket can attest.)

This was when I discovered that Ellen's White's "health reform" message came from Graham, Coles, Jackson, and Trall, as well as William Alcott and others.     

Etched deeply into my memory were all those little nuggets I had been assailed with since childhood by everyone from my mother to the preachers to the critical busybody sisters in the church, and especially by what I had read as an adult in my search to know the "will of the Lord" in all things.  In addition to no eating between meals, no cheese, no coffee, no meat, no soda, there were hundreds of other "works":    

Milk and sugar eaten together are dangerous.37

Covers on the bed should be thrown back to air every morning.38

Windows should be open at night in the bedroom regardless of outside temperature.39

A diet of flesh meat tends to develop animalism.  A development of animalism lessens spirituality, rendering the mind incapable of understanding truth.  This is presented unabashedly as "the word of the Lord God of Israel"!40     

Butchers, as well as meateaters, will not be translated into heaven.41 

Over and over and over Mrs. White blasts away at the eating of flesh, even stating that God's people cannot stand before Him a perfected people as long as they continue to use flesh.  All of which makes it more interesting to note that Mrs. White continued to eat meat off and on as long as she lived.  Early on, she had criticized a brother for urging abstinence from pork, but later she made it a test of fellowship.  Later yet she ate a pork sandwich in the presence of one of the ministers.  She celebrated her homecoming from Europe in 1887 with a fish dinner, and ordered fish and chicken from the meat wagon at camp meeting.  She requested meat and fried chicken when at Battle Creek Sanitarium, served both meat and oysters on her own table, and in a letter from her Elmshaven home to her daughter-in-law requested that she be brought some fresh snails.  When her husband was ailing, she prepared fresh venison for him.42

Cakes, pies, puddings, are active causes of indigestion.43

However, "Lemon pie should not be forbidden."44  (Her favorite, I guess.)

Mustard, pepper, spices and pickles cause cravings for liquor.45

Small bonnets are immodest.46

Hot drinks are debilitating.47

Water should not be taken with meals.48

A woman should not seduce her husband as "many have no strength at all to waste in this direction";49 married couples are accountable to God for the expenditure of vital energy which weakens their hold on life.50  "Because they have entered into the marriage relation, many think that they may permit themselves to be controlled by animal passions.  They are led on by Satan, who deceived them and leads them to pervert this sacred institution.  He is well pleased with the low level which their minds take..."51

* * * * *

In 1862 Ellen White had written,

The sciences of phrenology, psychology, and mesmerism are the channel through which [Satan]comes more directly to this generation and works with that power which is to characterize his efforts near the close of probation.52

Can you imagine my shock when I discovered that two years later she took her two sons to Dr. Jackson for "head readings"!  Although she had said phrenology was one of Satan's most powerful agents to deceive and destroy souls,53 she yielded to the popular practice, and at the doctor's price of $5.00 a reading, had both sons evaluated.

The supposed "science" of phrenology theorized that the brain was composed of many "organs" which were "read" by feeling the "bumps" on the patient's head.  The strength of the related mental faculty, or trait, was therefore measurable by the "bump" on the head!  Sister White often used phrenological terminology such as "animal propensities" in her works.  The organs which govern the "animal" propensities were located in the back of the head, and the organs of the intellect and reason occupied the frontal region.  I wondered all my life what "animal" propensities meant.  Something sinister, I was sure.    

Not only did meat, butter, eggs, cheese and spices, as well as overeating, according to the prophetess, cause the "animal propensities" to strengthen, but wigs!  Covering the base of the brain, wigs, artificial braids and hairpieces heat the "lower animal organs of the brain," and "the moral and intellectual powers of the mind become servants to the animal."  One becomes unable to discern sacred things, "many have lost their reason, and become hopelessly insane, by following this deforming fashion."54  Remarkable!    

When I read these and similar statements, I found myself ashamed and chagrined that I had ever belonged to such a sect.  There were not only contradictions between her life and her writings, and within her writings, but there were many embarrassingly unscientific and unenlightened statements.  One could laugh and say "poor, deluded dear!" if she had not insisted that all of the "wisdom, knowledge, and doctrine" came directly from God!

* * * * *

While it was really difficult for me at first to think that Mrs. White was a victim of hysteria, the more I researched, read and analyzed, the more I became convinced.  The cause of her trances was widely disputed at the time, her friends believing they were of God, others believing her to be mesmerized.  Some physicians diagnosed her condition as hysteria, an ill-defined disease which sometimes produced deathlike trances and hallucinations, especially in women; and the Doctors Kellogg believed she suffered from catalepsy, "a nervous state allied to hysteria in which sublime visions are usually experienced.  The muscles are set in such a way that ordinary tests fail to show any evidence of respiration, but the application of more delicate tests show that there are slight breathing movements sufficient to maintain life.  Patients sometimes remain in this condition for several hours."55  Dr. William Russell of the Western Health Reform Institute, the first of many Seventh-day Adventist health institutions, reportedly stated that Mrs. White's visions were the result of a diseased organization or condition of the brain or nervous system.56  Dr. Trall predicted that her visions would cease after menopause, and, as a matter of fact, they did.  In 1869, she wrote her son Edson that she was experiencing the change of life and

I have more indications of going down into the grave than of rallying.  My vitality is at a low ebb...  My lungs are affected.  Dr. Trall said I would probably go with consumption in this time.  Dr. Jackson said I should probably fail in this time.  Nature would be severely taxed and the only question would be, were there vital forces remaining to sustain the change of nature...  The fainting fit I had on the cars nearly closed my life.57

She had no more daytime visions after that time, although she did continue to have dreams at night which she felt were from God.

* * * * *

I could write books filled with all the disappointment I felt with Ellen White and the denomination.  I had believed her to be inspired, and had overlooked the accusations that she was a victim of hysteria, catalepsy, and so forth.  But one thing I could not overlook:  Plagiarism.  How often she stated emphatically that her work came from the hand of God.  Now I was seeing that her "health reform" was the same "reform" which was thick all around her in the mid-nineteenth century.  She even copied those "reforms" which have since proven to be without validity.

Well, so maybe she did copy from her contemporaries on health topics -- surely her spiritual works were inspired.  Disappointed again!  They were saying now that she plagiarized those, also.  I was hearing that all her best works were copied -- "borrowed", her supporters claim, not plagiarized!

I went to the Bryant Library and had them order, from the University of Arkansas Library, a very old, very fragile, book: Origin and History of the Books of the Bible, published in 1868 by Calvin Stowe.  I had to put up a deposit, and when it came in it was wrapped in tissue paper inside a plastic bag, then wrapped again and placed in a box.    

I carefully carried it home, and with a strange mix of feelings I cannot even describe I unwrapped it and laid it down beside Sister White's Selected Messages, and saw with my own eyes an almost word for word likeness to her Manuscript 24, dated 1886.  I suddenly had that same horrible sinking feeling I experienced that day the phone rang and the voice on the other end told me to get a newspaper and check the divorce column.  Or that night in San Antonio.    

For all this I had given years of my life.  I had even raised my children in this cultic religion!  I was devastated!    

Further research revealed that Ellen White copied most of what she wrote, changing possibilities in the other writer's works to absolutes in her own, and then crediting them to her "visions"!  Walter Rea's exhaustive research has produced letters and records which show that Mrs. White, like other humans, became senile in her old age.  The church's leaders had promised its members that God had shown Ellen flash pictures of time from Creation to the Second Coming.  She and her secretaries had drawn from the greatest religious writers of the era to write Patriarchs and Prophets, Desire of Ages, Acts of the Apostles, and Great Controversy.  But there was a gap during the time of Ezra and the Israelite Kings.  Guess who came up with a book to fill the gap?  C. C. Crisler and W. W. Prescott.  And guess who never even read it?  Ellen G. White.  She had begun repeating herself, and had to be led from the podium at times.  See Rea manuscripts on the Conflict series.    

According to the new promotional book, Seventh-day Adventists Believe...,58 Mrs. White wrote 80 books, 200 tracts, 4600 articles, plus 60,000 pages of manuscript material.  Much of the material is duplicated in all kinds of compilations the denomination publishes and pushes on their captive market.  But not one mention is made in that book to the copious amount of copying, or "borrowing", however you view it.  She is quoted constantly on the 3ABN Satellite Network, sometimes by name, sometimes not.  When the Adventist preacher says, "My favorite author says..." you may be sure it is Ellen White.  Somewhere, sometime, that lady has a lot to answer for because of the lives which were wrecked as people tried to follow the hundreds of rules she imposed on them in the name of God.    

A skit performed at the 1990 General Conference (there were at least two built around Mrs. White) depicted Ellen White and other Adventist leaders meeting and greeting each other in the New Earth.  After a bit of conversation Mrs. White says she will meet them later under the Tree of Life, that she needs to go now, as she has not seen Jesus yet.  My reaction was, Ah! I rest my case.  They have not seen Jesus yet!  They truly have not.

* * * * *

I have heard that it takes two years to de-program those who have been caught up in a cult.  Dan says it took me longer, because, I suppose, I was so heavily indoctrinated from my childhood up.  One minister predicted, as far as Seventh-day Adventists were concerned, that it would be rare for anyone over forty to accept the Gospel.  Am I glad I heard and recognized the Good News!  We began hearing the true, unadulterated Gospel preached on Sundays.  Our lives began to be saturated with the love and truth about Jesus.

If you have based your entire life on something -- a belief, a church, a person -- and you get the rug jerked out from under you, what do you do?  Where could I go from the Only True Church?  I was discovering the answer: Go to the Book!  I could have stayed with the Adventists and be reading thirteen pages a day for the year in order to read through all of Ellen G. White's Testimonies or I could go with the Bible in a search for Him Who is the Truth!  And I have to thank God for whatever He had to do to get my attention and get me to study, whether it be divorce, the ugliness of church members, whatever.  Like the old songs says, "Blest be the conflict, kind the storm, that drives us nearer Home!"

A red-letter edition, with all the words of Jesus in red, was a good place for me to start!  Over and over I read where the Authority said, "He that believes in me has eternal life."  I had read those texts off and on all my life, but I had never thought much about what belief meant.  In my church we had all been trying to sanctify ourselves.  Believing on Jesus just meant we thought Him to be God's Son, somehow.  Now we were hearing entire sermons on grace -- the unmerited, undeserved, favor of God toward us.  God could have simply told us all to go to hell!  I certainly knew that if by some slim chance I was going to receive some of that favor, it would most assuredly be undeserved.  Hadn't my marriage problems left me sympathizing with the woman at Jacob's well in Samaria?  But look at the quality time Jesus spent with her!  Ah, hope was rising.    

The mystery of God's love in sending His Son to suffer the consequences of my sins, and setting me free of the guilt, the shame, the embarrassment -- no church could ever make me feel like a nothing, an outcast, unfit to worship God with them because of my past.  Never, never, again!  Had not the "brethren" time and again through the years been clear about my unfitness to fellowship with them?  What I was hearing now was that our own righteousness, everybody's righteousness, is as filthy rags, that Christ is our righteousness.  What on earth did that mean?  I knew He was the only righteous One who ever walked this earth, but how could that apply to me?     

I found in the book of Romans, which theologians call "the compendium of Christian doctrine", this text.  It blew my mind, for if I had ever read it before, I had glanced at it through a thick lens of Seventh-day Adventism.  This is what I read: 

Nobody will ever be declared righteous in God's sight by observing the law. 59     

The purpose of the law was to show me what sin is, how sinful I am.  It's like looking in a mirror when you've been cleaning the chimney.  You see the soot all over your face.  The mirror didn't make you dirty, and the mirror can't clean you up.  It simply reveals your condition.  The same with the law.  How else would we even know a need for cleaning up, for salvation?  I had been aware for years that I couldn't "keep" the law, especially when Jesus said if we hate it's the same as murder; if we lust we have committed adultery in our hearts, and more.  I and my Adventist friends had been trying for years to control our thoughts on the Sabbath, and you could tell from the conversations that we were all having trouble with coveting, judging, lusting, jealousy, hate.  I was ready for some answers.     

So now God offers me a righteousness apart from the law, which "comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe."60  All who believe?

What is belief?  I had believed there was a Jesus all those years.   That hadn't saved me.  And James wrote, in his second chapter, that the devils believe, and tremble.  So I had to study on to try to know what was meant by believing, having faith in, Jesus.

Back in Romans, Paul tells us that everyone of us has sinned -- no matter how good we think ourselves to have been -- BUT: we are justified freely because of the incomprehensible, surprising regard with which God views us.61  He justifies us -- makes us just-as-if we had never sinned.  He did this through His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, Who came to this earth by a great mystery, and lived the perfect life for us which God accepts in the place of the sorry messes we make of our lives.

Imagine!  Jesus, leaving the splendor of Heaven, coming to earth, walking for over thirty years amid the stress, sickness, immorality, greed and death -- of this world!  And all that after the beauty, joy and purity of Heaven!  I had not known, when I was giving those lectures on the Old Testament tabernacle in the wilderness, that the purpose of the fabulous golden mercy seat atop the ark of the covenant was to shut out the testimony of the law against us.  Between that law, which points out our insufficiencies, weaknesses and sins -- between that law and the justice we deserve stands Jesus Christ, our Mercy Seat, our protection, our covering.     

Another tremendous thought which I had missed:  The sinner had to bring a spotless, healthy lamb for sacrifice as payment when he sinned.  It was the lamb which was inspected by the priest, not the sin, nor yet the sinner!  That made clearer than ever to me that Jesus was standing in for me.  God has permitted Him to be the sinner in my place and bear the ignominious, despicable, heinous and shameful death which each of us as sinners (and all of us have sinned, remember) deserve.  But God inspected the Lamb, His only begotten Son, and found Him to be a completely worthy, spotless and perfect sacrifice.  Incredible!  It's the greatest mystery in the history of mankind!

Slowly these enormous ideas began to sink in.  After over 40 years at hard labor, I was given a pardon!  It's a long hard road when you're trying to do it all by yourself.  I was learning that I couldn't become too bad -- nor could I become good enough -- for Jesus to save me.  His salvation is a gift!  Accepting that gift, believing that Jesus is the Son of the living God, and that He gave His blameless life for my sorry life, is the only door to salvation, to everlasting life, which is the end result of this fantastic gift.  If there is any other way to Heaven, if I can do anything to get there, then God certainly made a terrible mistake when He sent His Son to be crucified for me.  As the apostle Paul states, If righteousness could be gained by the law, then Christ died for nothing!62

Our home began to be more comfortable as Dan and I embarked on an intense search for knowledge of Jesus Christ by a deeper study of the Scriptures, at the same time listening to the many different religious voices around us.  We found that our religion became less denominational, and more a one-on-one with the Bible.  I was excited to discover the text in 1 John 2:27 which says I don't need anyone to teach me, that the Holy Spirit will guide me as I seek truth.  God gave the promise that I would find Him if I searched with all my heart;63 that I would know the truth, and the truth would set me free!    

Free from every kind of bondage:  The man-made rules; concern about what others will think of me; free from the bondage of fear itself; free to move on into my life with confidence, knowing that the Holy Spirit will be nearby; free to study and interpret for myself without rushing to find Ellen White's comments on each and every text I read.  The Truth, Jesus Himself, set me free.  And to emphasize, He said, If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed!64  

So there!  If that doesn't mean free from all the ponderous struggle to "get ready", what does it mean? 

* * * * *

The Jews of Jesus' time had a do-it-yourself religion.  So do the Adventists, Mormons, Holiness groups as well as many congregations who say they are saved by grace alone, yet continue to lay a burden of man-made rules on each other.  A big fringe problem with all those do's and don't's is the fact that we invariably try to measure the other person, more than ourselves, by the rules.

The poor male Jew could not even go to the rest room in peace, because the busybodies were always checking to see who had been circumcised, and who had not!65  I became convinced that the rules put the cart before the horse!     

Paul felt the same way, because he said of those who would force rules on each other that he would like them to go the whole way and castrate themselves!66

Another text that blew me away was Galatians 5:4.  I had heard the Baptists, the Church of Christ, Adventists, and Assembly churches using the term "fall from grace", arguing back and forth whether it was possible to fall out of favor with God.  The Apostle Paul says if you are trying to be justified by the law you are alienated from Christ, fallen from grace!  Wow!

If you are bound by some person's, church's, or organization's rule, you'd better do as I did and Stop, Look and Listen to the Book, the Word of God!  It's time to grow up, I decided.

* * * * *

I keep this thought before me constantly as I explore ideas from many sources:

Truth of any kind does not threaten a house which is itself founded upon the Truth!

* * * * *

Now that I have met and accepted Jesus Christ I may do anything I want to.  Hold on!  Don't have a convulsion!  Just think a minute.  If you are searching for Him with all your heart, your want to's are changing, yes?  Jesus, our Messiah, becomes the most important Person in your life.    

The freedom book -- Romans -- saved my life, literally!  I had tried to adhere to all of the health and diet rules of Ellen White, and I had ended up with allergies and other problems due to having had too much bean-family foods and wheat in my diet.  Paul, again in Romans (14:2) says one man's faith permits him to eat anything, but the one whose faith is weak eats only vegetables!  That's God's word, not mine, remember.  On down in the chapter the tough apostle continues with vigor:  The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.  Do not, he continues, destroy the work of God for the sake of food!  I love it!  Jesus had already said that it is not what goes into one's mouth which makes him unclean, but what comes out of it.

* * * * *

There had always been a lot of hassle over the "sin" of wearing jewelry.  As I perceived it, I needed to take the entire picture of a subject, lay it all out and have a long comparative look.  Proof texting -- building a doctrine on one text which is often taken out of context -- can be ridiculous, or even dangerous.  For instance, the text in 1 Peter 3 which says, "Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold," also says, "or of putting on of apparel."  As I see it, if that text says we should not wear gold, neither should I braid my hair or wear clothes.  Let's not be absurd!    

Dan bought us a huge concordance which we really could not afford, and we already had several translations of the Bible, so I set out to do my own research.  I looked up every reference to jewelry and ornaments, and found most of them to be positive.

The first time I read about golden ornaments is in Genesis 24 when Abraham, father of the Jews, and spiritual father of Christians, sent to his homeland for a wife for his son, Isaac.    

His servant left for Northwest Mesopotamia with a gold nose ring (NIV) weighing about 5.5 grams, two gold bracelets weighing about 110 grams, and other items of gold and silver jewelry and articles of clothing for the intended bride.  Daniel, Joseph and Saul wore gold.  Both the Old and New Testaments refer to brides as being "adorned".  It was often permitted to keep the spoils of war in the forms of gold, silver and precious stones.  The reign of King Saul was economically sound, to the extent that it says he clothed his people with scarlet and put ornaments of gold on their garments.    

Upon preparing to leave Egypt, the children of Israel were instructed to "borrow" gold and silver jewelry from the Egyptians and put it on their children.  Gold, silver and precious stones were given as money offerings.  Moses had to ask them to quit giving for the tabernacle, they had so much and were so generous.  Job was given gifts of money and earrings.  Isaiah says, "My God covers me with a robe of righteousness as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments and a bride with jewels.67    

God told an unfaithful Jerusalem in Ezekiel 16, "I clothed you in embroidered, fine linen garments; I adorned you with jewelry: bracelets, necklaces, nose rings, earrings and a crown."  The crux of the whole jewelry matter lies in this statement in the fifteenth verse: "But you trusted in your own beauty".     

Jezebel is cited by many preachers as the reason we should wear no make-up.  Well, have a look for yourself in 2 Kings 9.  Jezebel painted her face, attired her head, and looked out at a window.  If that says we mustn't paint our faces, then neither must we fix our hair, wear a hat or scarf, nor should we look out at a window!    

Adventist lecturer and writer Joe Crews states in Colorful Cosmetics and Jewelry that God refers to objects of adornment as "filth".68  He ignores the fact that robes, capes, shawls, purses and linen garments are included.  The "filth" clearly was their defiance of God, the oppression of His people.  It is absolutely amazing to what lengths do-it-yourselfers will go to make their rules Biblical!  In another place Crews compares the "great whore" of Revelation 17 "decked with gold and precious stones" to the woman in chapter twelve.  He states that this woman who was clothed with the sun, had a crown of stars on her head and the moon under her feet is the same as the bride, the Lamb's wife, in Revelation 21:9, and says she wears no ornaments.    

Wrong and wrong.  In the first place, a crown of stars is certainly an adornment!  Second, the Lamb's wife, the bride of which he speaks, is the New Jerusalem, see verses nine and ten.  Then just gasp at the many, many jewels:  Precious stones; semi-precious stones; gold everywhere, even paving the streets; twelve gates of solid pearl!  Ridiculous again!    

The father of the Prodigal Son placed a ring on his son's finger as a sign of great affection.  James said if a man comes into the church with a gold ring and fine clothes, he shouldn't be given a better seat than the poor man.

* * * * *

Once God told Moses that He was fed up with the "stiff-necked" people, and threatened to consume them.  They mourned and removed their ornaments, which according to Strong's Concordance, includes finery; outfits, specifically a headstall (whatever that is).70

* * * * *

Giving the church a rule about not wearing jewelry must bring a lot of satisfaction to those who are trying to work their way to Heaven, don't you think?  They get the gratification of feeling embarrassed whenever it is noticed they don't wear a wedding band -- and "suffer for righteousness sake"; the men feel safer if their wives are plain, or ugly, and the ugly wives can criticize the pretty wives and feel superior because, in their ugliness, they have to be holier!  I finally decided that God was not in any of it, after reading all the ways He would like to clothe His people!71

* * * * *

Legalism: "the principles and practices characterizing the theological doctrine of strict conformity to a code of deeds and observances as a means of justification."72  I knew that I had been a legalist, maybe not so fanatical as some, but a legalist, nonetheless.  Legalism is an attempt to gain God's approval by outward conformance to a list of do's and don't's, and minimizes the importance of motives.    

After a year or so of study and thought on the matter, I came to this conclusion:  Legalism is blasphemy!  It says what Jesus did at the cross was not enough, and lays out a program of works by which I am supposed to make up the difference between what Jesus did and what is demanded for my salvation.  Sacrilege!  Jesus did a completed work for our salvation.    

Paul was terribly upset when the Galatians went off into a legalism he called a "different gospel".  A legalist will exhibit self-sufficiency, while claiming to believe in salvation by faith in Jesus.  He will reply, "Yes, but..." to every gospel truth he hears.  He will be self-serving.  You will hear him say he pays tithe, maybe even a second tithe.  He has raised his Ingathering goal every year for the last umpty years, hasn't missed Sabbath (Sunday) School in "X" number of years.  He will have his morning devotions no matter who may be inconvenienced, or as my Daddy used to say, "even if it hairlips Arkansas".  He does good things for the wrong reasons.  Instead of humbly crediting the Lord for what he accomplishes, the legalist gets a real bang out of letting everyone know of his good works.

I found the legalist to be rather shallow spiritually.  Mostly talk, he doesn't dig deeply into the word of God for himself.  He may pretend to have it all together, but when the chips are down, there is no firm foundation to support him, and he falls apart.  He really prefers to have a set of rules laid out for him by some hero so he doesn't have to think or reason or make a decision for himself -- just him and God.  By keeping those rules laid out for him by someone else, he is able to "prove" his religiosity.  He becomes totally law-bound, into that "other gospel" for which Paul says one should be "accursed" -- damned!

An outstanding characteristic of the legalist is his hypersensitivity, and I don't mean allergic, either.  He is hypersensitive to any idea of behavior that isn't exactly like his own.  Intolerant, unloving, condemning, touchy, he judges people by their appearance or actions without looking to discern motive.  He finds it impossible to fellowship with anyone who holds a differing view of prophecy, or studies from a different translation of the Bible, or who may attend social events which he would not attend.  He cannot accept others into association with his holier-than-thouself if their clothes, hair style or political views don't suit him.

I thought:  The hypersensitive legalists of Jesus' time, totally wrapped up in their man-made religious system, rejected Him as their Messiah, and arranged for His crucifixion.

Those particular legalists were also the greatest Sabbath-keepers of all time.  They hated Jesus because He did not conform to their laws, especially the Sabbath laws.

* * * * *

Another point any reasonable sabbatarian must consider: Which twenty-four hour period is holy, that which starts in at Mount Sinai, or at the International Date Line, or in one's own hometown?  I think if you work it out with the Sabbath beginning where it was given at the Mount, you will find that Sabbath in Australia would begin six hours after it begins in California, rather than eighteen hours before, making Sunday the seventh day for the Aussies!  If those 24 hours were the actual holy hours, when are you going to start your observance of the seventh day?

Adventists become irrational on the subject.  When presented with the special problems which arise when those who live above the Arctic Circle try to keep the Saturday Sabbath from sundown until sundown, Sister White told them that God's world was big enough that no one needed to find homes in those objectionable areas!76  Sure!  Let the Norwegians and Eskimos just move south!

If one is going to keep the Sabbath day, one must also keep the Sabbath year.  In Exodus 23 both the day and the year were set apart, and again in Leviticus 35 the Israelites were commanded to give the land a rest in the seventh year: "thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard...for it is a year of rest unto the land."  The way I saw it, if I was going to do part of it, I had to do all of it.  How does one support one's family when taking a twelve month rest?

* * * * *

One bright day, after much study, reading, research and mental frustration, the truth exploded!  Jesus is our Sabbath!  He is our rest!  Didn't Jesus say, Come to Me all you who are weary and loaded down and I will give you rest?78  Does that simply mean call on Him when I'm tired, as I've heard it taught many times?  That's a good idea, but Jesus had something heavier in mind, I discovered.  In Hebrews the fourth chapter, we are invited to enter into God's rest.  What is that?  I wondered.  Then back in the first two chapters of Genesis I saw how the record of each day of creation closed with "and the evening and the morning were the first," second, third day, and so on.  But not the seventh day!  It was open ended.  What did that mean?    

God finished His work, and rested.  Now we are invited to finish the work we make in trying to work our way to Heaven, and relax in His rest, His grace, His peace.  When Jesus hung on the cross He cried, "It is finished!"  Running down all references in Strong's Greek Lexicon, I discovered that a more literal translation is "Paid in Full", as paying a debt, a tax, an assessment.  He paid the debt, the tax, which I owed, due to my sins -- didn't God say that all who sinned would die? -- but Jesus died that ignominious death, with enough guilt and suffering, punishment and pain, to cover every sin ever committed by those who believe in Him as God's only Son, and accept Him as their only Way to salvation and Heaven.

I wept with joy as I realized that He took what I deserve, so that I could have a right to what He deserves.  What a gift!  And now we may enter into that finished work, that rest and peace of God which William Barclay declared to be "the greatest and the most precious thing in the world."79  All the pressure, all the stress was gone, once I recognized the astonishing fact that when it comes to the debt for our sins, the works necessary for salvation, Jesus, our Substitute, our Sabbath, in Whom we have rest from our works, our legalism -- this Jesus paid all the debt, He did all the works!  And that, I finally realized, is the Gospel!  Christ is the end, the goal, the conclusion, the termination -- of the law.80  This is the good news, the message we are commanded to take to the world!81

* * * * *

Continuing to study, to "prove all things and hold fast to that which is good,"86 I found this in the first two verses of the book of Hebrews:  God spoke through the prophets in times past, but now He speaks to us by His Son!  As far as I'm concerned, that takes care of all modern-day prophets, including and mainly, EllenWhite.  Never, never again will I give my God-given reason over to a human authority.  That's how the cults have developed -- by people who are willing to give over their consciences to some smooth-talking, heavy-handed dictator.  When I read how Paul said he would know nothing among the Corinthian church except Jesus Christ and him crucified, I vowed, Me, too!  Those of us who have come from bondage can appreciate the fact that true faith, real Christianity, is not Do, do, do! but It is done!  Jesus paid it all!

I buried myself in Romans, Galatians, Ephesians and Colossians.  With the help of my huge concordance, I got my Bibles out and dug deeper.  I say Bibles, plural, because I like to use several translations, although it is not necessary to do so if you have the Strong's Concordance.  Learning to use the Hebrew and Greek Lexicons in the back of the big book was lots of fun.  Because I was born in the twentieth century, I prefer a Bible written in the language I speak and understand.  Since the important thing is finding Jesus I don't get involved with fanatics who believe in only one God-blessed translation.  Personally, I prefer the New International Version.  It is a real experience.  Listen to Paul on the Gospel: "In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding."87  Absorb that!

* * * * *

Since the gospel gives us everything -- forgiveness, assurance of salvation, eternal life, everything! -- it therefore demands a continual spirit of celebration.  Never again will I be afraid to speak for my Lord Who saved me, not because of any righteous things I have done, but because of His great mercy!89  Never will I be shy about His salvation just because I've been married more than once!  The apostle Paul, who said he was the chief of sinners, writes to the Christians in Rome that he was not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.  A righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from A to Z!90    

I had seen throughout a lifetime that the religions of the world were all attempts to become acceptable to God, whomever that may be to each one.  Reincarnation is the same.  Man realizes he can't achieve a perfected state in one lifetime, so he has to live through many lives until he finally becomes one with Nirvana, one with the universe.  I had seen for myself that my church, Seventh-day Adventism, was the same as all the other cultic-type, works-oriented religions.  It was man trying to reach God.

But the true religion of Jesus, genuine Christianity, is one where God reaches down to man -- reaches down and pulls us upward to Him!

* * * * *

A little lady said to me not long ago, during a discussion of grace, "Yes, but we have to do something for our salvation." 

We have to believe on Jesus Christ, the Son of God, for our salvation.  Period.  The do-it-yourselfers see belief as simplistic.  But Jesus is the one Who said it.  How dare we refute His authority?  If we believe that HE is the Son of God, trust that His death and resurrection provide everlasting life for us, we have done all that we can do.  God then places His seal of ownership on us, and puts His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.91  Everything in my life had become reversed.  I had always had "assurance" of the meaning of every little prophecy, of every diet requirement, of the "Investigative Judgment", of the mark of the beast and the seal of God."92  Therefore, no "sabbathing", or resting, in the assurance of our salvation, since we all transgress the law!  "No sanctified tongue will be found uttering these words [I am saved] till Christ shall come, and we enter in through the gates into the city of God.  Then, with the utmost propriety (no praises or dancing for joy?), we may give glory to God and the Lamb for eternal deliverance..."93

Ah!  But now it is different!  I have assurance of my salvation, my everlasting life, and I wouldn't swap it for anything on this earth!

God is going to judge us by the way we treat His Son.  Jesus said, I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has -- present tense -- eternal life and will not be condemned, does not come to judgment (see Strong's Concordance).  J. B. Phillips says "He does not have to face judgment; he has already passed from death into life!"94

You will discover, as I did, three very basic doctrines in these few texts.  You will reinforce them with many, many others as you study.  First, we can know that we are saved.  Second, salvation not only includes, it is, everlasting life.  I can't find any place where Jesus says He gives everlasting life after a soul-sleep interruption.  The soul-sleepers ignore Paul's statement that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord,95 and to die is gain.96  Gain -- better? -- in a cold wet hole in the ground than to be in Heaven with God?  Of course, any reasonable Christian has to know that God will surprise us all in the ways He will do things, but why do the soul-sleepers get so agitated because the rest of us believe the soul and body may be separated at death?  Why is that any more difficult for a God such as ours than to re-form the entire human unit at the second coming?  So often there is much more interest in upholding the beliefs of the organization than in discovering truth.  I got my concordance out again and looked up the more than 100 times "life" is used in regard to the marvelous gift brought to us -- given to us -- by Jesus.  I found in John 5 and John 11 these words of Jesus:

The Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.

Indeed!  Then,

whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed from death to life!

and

I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will never die! 

Soul-sleepers love to quote one text lifted out of a book which starts out "Emptiness, emptiness, all is emptiness!", and is so depressing that one wonders how it came to be in the Canon of Scripture!  The text the soul-sleepers love is the fifth verse of the ninth chapter: the dead know not anything.  Now if you prefer the words of Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, and yet was so stupid as to leave his God for multiple idolatrous wives -- it's your choice.  I opted for Jesus, the only begotten of the Father, THE way, THE truth, THE life!  And my life began, my heart filled with unbelievable peace, once I took Jesus at His word.  Paul believed his soul would go to Jesus upon death.  He said it would be preferable to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.97  Again, in Romans 8 he stated he was convinced that even death could not separate us from the love of God.  Now that should set your toes a-dancing!  It does mine!

I wish I had known all of this when Daddy died.  The loneliness would have been bearable.  There would still have been the tears along the way when I heard a song he loved, when the boys accomplished something I wanted to share with him, when the little girls talked and giggled.  But there wouldn't have been the awful, gut-wrenching sobs, the deep unquenchable sorrow.  I have told my beautiful grandchildren that even though they will cry for missing their grannie, they should laugh because they can know where I will be -- finally pain-free and praising my wonderful Lord!!

The Adventists quote the text "God only hath mortality"98 to prove that we can't possibly go to Heaven when we die.  That's correct, we are not immortal.  However, eternal life is the gift of God!99 

One question I cannot get any soul-sleeper to answer for me is: Why wouldn't every Christian want to go to God upon death?  Why wouldn't he be straining to prove he would be going to God upon death rather than grasping so hard to prove that even the part of him which loves God will be decaying in a hole in the ground?  And why wouldn't any Christian give the words of Jesus, Son of God, God Incarnate, why wouldn't everyone give His words priority over those of a back-slidden King Solomon, or an invalid woman 1800 years later?

The third basic doctrine I see in those texts is that judgment is nothing to be feared if I believe in Jesus as my only salvation.  As an Adventist I was terrified of the judgment, as is ever other church member.  I thought I couldn't possibly go to Heaven when I died because I had first to face judgment, the Great White Throne judgment -- this, in addition to the "cunningly devised fable"100 of the Investigative Judgment.  But now I could see that Jesus didn't say that at all.  Ellen White had scared me to death all those years by telling us that the only question to be asked at the judgment was: Have you been obedient to the commandments?101  But now I know that because of my faith in, and my love for, God's Son, I don't have to face judgment, because Jesus, my substitute, will stand in for me!  Again, a toss-up between the words of Jesus and the words of Ellen White.  Take your choice.  You already know mine.

* * * * *

Danny and I were so relieved to know that we knew that we knew we were safe in the love of Jesus.  We watch a lot of preachers present their sermons, and we "try the spirits".102  No longer spiritual infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men," we know that now we must "become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ."103  So we try to "prove all things", to search the scriptures" to see what things are true.104  I can never permit myself to be deceived again.  Never.  Ever!

* * * * *

I no longer know everything about end-time events as I once thought I did.   Nor do I even pretend to know the mind of the all wise, all knowing, omnipotent Maker of Heaven and earth, Planner and Creator of the Universe, as I once liked to think I did.  But you see, I don't need to know it all, because the One Who does know it all is my Close Personal Friend!  I don't have to worry about that horrible close of probation which kept me so frightened as an Adventist, because my Close Personal Friend made me a promise: I will never leave you or forsake you, not even until the end of the world!108  So take your choice, dear Adventist friend: Ellen White or Jesus Christ!

* * * * *

Jesus said, "I am the truth."110  He did not say: The church is the truth.  If the church does not rightly represent Jesus Christ, if it does not hold Him high for all to see, the church is a false church.  The church will not answer to God for me.  I will answer for me.  The church will not answer for you.  You will answer for you.  And by simply trusting Jesus for our salvation, Jesus will be our Answer.  He will stand in our place.

My pretty little Sam sent me a ticket to fly out to Florida and spend a week with her.  There was a misty rain falling as we began to lose altitude out of Jacksonville.  As the pilot began his slow turn, I noticed a lovely rainbow.  Then I did a double take.  The rainbow had no end!  It was a full circle, continuing under the plane!

I was reminded of the prophet Ezekiel's vision of God's throne room in the first chapter of that book.  He saw a throne of sapphire, can you imagine!  The Man who sat upon it looked like blazing, glowing metal as if He were full of fire.  A brilliant rainbow encircled the throne, radiance everywhere; everything luminous!

I thought: Jesus is central.  He is the center of the universe, the center of Heaven, the center of the affairs of this world, whether or not its leaders are aware of the fact.  And He should be the center of our church and of our lives.  He should be central in every sermon that is preached, every song that is sung, so the many facets of truth and light may be preached and taught, but always Jesus Christ is central!     

Did your prince evolve into a frog?  Did your princess fly away
on her broom?  This Jesus will not let you down.  Go to the Book and get acquainted with Him.  There are only two answers to
Jesus Christ -- yes and no.  There can be no mugwumps, no fence-straddlers, when it comes to Jesus and the life everlasting which He offers you.

Now that I am in Christ, Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, I am a new creation!  Old things are passed away.  All things are become new!  Leave the past in the past!  Become a new creation in Jesus!  God has reconciled us to Himself through Christ.

Then the Apostle continues with the most astounding, staggering, awesome; the most stupendous words ever penned:

God made Him Who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God! 111

What an incredible mystery!112  And I've read the last chapter.  I know Who-dunnit!  And I will spend all eternity marveling at why He did it!  For the next ten million years as I roam His fantastic Universe I will wonder at the amazing love God has for us.  I will listen in grateful awe to tales of the times our guardian angels have moved in our behalf, the many miracles done in defense of God's people -- won't that be great fun?

* * * * *

In the book of the Revelation Jesus says, "I counsel you to buy of Me white raiment, that you may be covered, and that the shame of your nakedness not appear."113  My own works are not adequate to cover the shame of my sins, nor can those works ever become adequate.  But the robe Jesus offers me covers completely and beautifully, for it is His own robe, His righteousness which is seen, and not my own "filthy rags"!114

Now, at long last, I am all dressed up and ready to go!  Anywhere, as long as He is with me!

How about you?

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES

 

Excerpts From Part One
"Shug"

1-3. Courtesy of Arkansas Oil and Brine Museum, Smackover, Arkansas.
4. Dan Blume, A Pictorial History of the TALKIES (Grossett & Dunlap,1958), page 9.
5. Courtesy of Arkansas Oil and Brine Museum, Smackover, Arkansas.
6. Ellen G. White, Manuscript 14, 1901.
7. Ellen G. White, Testimonies, (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1900), Volume 6, page 352.
8. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1888), page 383.
9. Ellen G. White, Early Writings, (Washington, D.C., Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1882), Page 32.
10. Ibid., page 285.
11. Ellen G. White, Letter 44, 1896.
12. Ellen G. White, Manuscripts number 76, 1905; 85, 1908; Letter 90, 1897.
13. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, page 455; Testimonies to Ministers, (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1923), page 83; The Youth's Instructor, January 1, 1907.
14. See Comprehensive Index to the Writings of Ellen G. White: Amusements; Ball Playing; Card Playing; Checker Playing; Chess Playing; Cricket; Sports.
15. Robert D. Brinsmead, Judged By the Gospel, (Fallbrook, CA: Verdict Publications, 1980), page 178, footnote.
16. Seventh-day Adventist Church Manual, page 148.
17. E. White, Education, Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1903), pages 216, 217; 248, 249; Testimonies Volume 1, page 394; Volume 5, page 90.
18. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 6, page 193-205.
19. John 13:34
20. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 6, page 356.
21. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 1, page 412.
22. E. White, Review and Herald, March 23, 1905.
23. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 7, page 59.
24. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, page 369; Union Conference Record (Australian), July 28, 1899.
25. E. White, Ministry of Healing, page 302.
26. See E. White, Counsels on Diets and Foods, (Review and Herald Publishing Association, compiled 1938), pages 373-380.
27. E. White, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, page 317.
28. The Piscataquis Farmer, Dover, ME, March 7, 1845.
29. Matthew 5:48
30. E. White, Education, page 18.
31. E. White, Testimonies, Volume one, page 361.
32. See Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, "kill", in Exodus 20:13.
33. See Robert W. Olson, ONE HUNDRED AND ONE QUESTIONS ON THE SANCTUARY AND ON ELLEN WHITE, Ellen G. White Estate, Washington, D.C., 1981.
34. See Church Manual, "Unclean Meats".
35. See Ronald L. Numbers' Prophetess of Health, New York, N.Y., Harper & Row, 1976).
36. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, page 352; Volume 9, page 381; Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene (out of print), quoted in Counsels on Diet and Foods, pages 380, 381.
37. E. White, Testimonies, Volume four, page 416, 417; 502.
38. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, page 373.
39. E. White, Review and Herald, February 21, 1888.
40. E. White, Ministry of Healing, (Mountain View, CA; Pacific Press Publishing Association, published 1905), pages 300-302; Review and Herald, May 8, 1883.
41. E. White, Ministry of Healing, page 299, 300.
42. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 1, page 521.
43. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 4, page 635.
44. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 4, page 639.
45. Galatians 5:3.
46. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 1, page 189.
47. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, page 477.
48. Isaiah 40:1
49. E. White, Education, 216, 217.
50. E. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1890), page 459.
51. E. White, Counsels on Health, (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1923), page 119.
52. E. White, Messages to Young People, (Nashville, TN: Southern Publishing Association, 1930), page 346.
53. E. White, Spiritual Gifts, Volume 4, 147, 148, quoted in Counsels on Diet and Food, page 386.
54. E. White, Review and Herald, May 27, 1902, quoted in Counsels on Diet and Food, page 382.
55. E. White, Ministry of Healing, page 298.
56. E. White, letter 132, 1900, quoted in Selected Messages, Book 2, page 36.
57. Proverbs 17:22.

Excerpts from Part Two

"She Made Her Bed - Let Her Sleep In It"

1. E. White, Letter 106, 1902.
2. E. White, Manuscript 86, 1897, quoted in Selected Messages, Book 2.
3. E. White, Review and Health, August 17, 1897; Ministry of Healing, page 444.
4. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 3, pages 81, 82.
5. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 9, page 67.
6. E. White, Ministry of Healing, page 446.
7. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, pages 402, 403.
8. E. White, Testimonies, page 469.
9. E. White, Testimonies, 391.
10. See SDA Comprehensive Index to the Writings of E.G. White.
11. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 4, page 97.
12. E. White, An Appeal to Mothers, (Battle Creek, MI: Stream Press, 1864).
13. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, page 349-350.
14. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, page 360.
15. E. White, Counsels On Health, pages 108-110.
16. E. White, Testimonies to Ministers, pages 180, 181.
17. Matthew 28:20; Hebrews 13:5.
18. Daniel, chapter 2.
19. E. White, Manuscript 91, 1903.
20. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, pages 595 and 596; Testimonies to Ministers, page 83.
21. E. White, Counsels on Health, page 114.
22. Acts 6:2.
23. Matthew 7:14.
24. Matthew 16:24.
25. 1 Thessalonians 5:17
26. Matthew 6:5
27. E. White, Ministry of Healing, pages 320, 321; Testimonies, Volume 2, page 362.
28. E. White, Desire of Ages, pages 49 and 759; The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, pages 518 and 656; Review and Herald, July 28, 1874, quoted in Selected Messages, page 267.
29. E. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, pages 108, 109.
30. E. White, Spiritual Gifts, Volume 3, (Battlecreek, MI: James White, 1858), page 64.
31. E. White, Spiritual Gifts, Volume 3, page 75.
32. 2 Corinthians 13:11
33. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 7, pages 95 and 96.
34. E. White, Review and Herald, June 17, 1890, quoted in Selected Messages, Book 1, page 314.
35. Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine, (Washington, D.C.,: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1957).
36. See Adventist Currents, (Loma Linda, CA: Mars Hill Publications, Inc.), July, 1983.
37. See Christian Research Journal, "From Controversy to Crisis", by Kenneth R. Samples, (San Juan Capistrano, CA: Christian Research Institute), Summer 1988 Issue.

Excerpts From Part Three
"Too Wet To Plow"

1. Seventh-day-Adventists Believe... (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988).
2. See Review and Herald, General Conference Session Report Issue, 1990.
3. E. White, Counsels on Health, pages 20,21.
4. Ibid., page 495.
5. E. White, Letter 33, 1889, quoted in Selected Messages, Book 1, page 366.
6. E. White, Bible Students's Library, April 1893, quoted in Selected Messages, Book 1, page 397.
7. E. White, Christ's Object Lessons, Washington D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1900), page 312.
8. Ibid., page 315.
9. Ibid., 69.
10. See Selected Messages, Book 1, pages 389 - 398, "Justification By Faith."
11. Matthew 11:28
12. E. White, Messages to Young People, page 342.
13. E. White, Fundamentals of Christian Education, (Nashville, TN: Southern Publishing Association, 1923), pages 475, 476.
14. E. White, Letter 3, 1884, quoted in Counsels on Diet and Foods, page 173.
15. E. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, pages 73; 153, 154. See over 400 references in the Comprehensive Index to EGW writings: "Obedience", "Perfection".
16. D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation, (New York: American Tract Society, 1847), pages 186-200.
17. 1 Peter 5:8-11.
18. 2 Timothy 4:6-9
19. 1 Peter 4:12-16.
20. Acts 10:26.
21. 1 Kings, chapters 5-8
22. 1 Peter 4:12-19.
23. See Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., (1959), St. Bartholomew Massacre".
24. E. White, Early writings, 216.
25. E. White, The Desire of Ages, 789; Christ's Object Lessons, 358.
26. See Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Baha'u'llah".
27. Luke 6:23.
28. Matthew 6:7,8 (NIV)
29. Proverbs 23:7.
30. 2 Thessalonians 2:11.

Excerpts From Part Five
"All Dressed Up - Finally!"

1. Seventh-day Adventists Believe... A Biblical Exposition of 27 Fundamental Doctrines, Produced by the Ministerial Association of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, (Hagerstown, MD,: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.
2. E. White, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, 422.
3. E. White, Patriarchs, 357.
4. Ibid.
5. E. White, Early Writings, 253.
6. E. White, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, 480.
7. See Strong's Concordance: "finished", on John 19:30.
8. E. White, The Desire Ages, page 49.
9. Ibid, page 122, 123.
10. E. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, pages 459, 460.
11. E. White, Manuscript 91, 1903, quoted in Evangelism, page 510.
12. E. White, The Ministry of Healing, page 298.
13. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 6, page 355, Counsel to Teachers, page 356.
14. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, page 583; Volume 6, page 350.
15. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 1, page 76.
16. E. White, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, page 490.
17. E. White, Christ's Object Lessons, page 155.
18. E. White, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, pages 50: 382, 383; 448, 449; 566; Testimonies to Ministers, page 473; Testimonies, Volume 8, page 117.
19. L.E. From, Our firm Foundation, Volume 2, page 81.
20. E. White, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, page 78.
21. E. White, Notebook Leaflets, The Church, Number 8, quoted in Selected Messages, Book 2, page 163.
22. E. White, Selected Messages, Book 1, page 27.
23. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 5, page 66.
24. See Walter Martin, Kingdom of the Cults, (Minneapolis, MN. Bethany House Publishers, 1985), page 134, footnote.
25. Ibid.
26. E. White, Early Writings, page 12.
27. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 1, page 20.
28. 1 Thessalonians 5:21; 1 John 4:1; 1 Timothy 2:15.
29. Adventist Review, (formerly Review and Herald ), July 5, 1990.
30. E. White, Letter 55, 1905, quoted in Selected Messages, Book 1, page 36.
31. E. White, Letter 244, 1906, quoted in Selected Messages, Book 1 page 36.
32. See Robert W. Olson, ONE HUNDRED AND ONE QUESTIONS ON THE SANCTUARY AND ON Ellen White, Ellen G. White Estate, Washington, D.C., 1981.
33. Ibid., page 40.
34. Ibid., page 41.
35. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 1, page 412.
36. See Adventist Currents, April 1988, page 33.
37. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, page 370.
38. E. White, Counsels on health, page 58.
39. Ibid.
40. E. White, letter 59, 1898, quoted in Counsels on Diet and Foods, pages 382; 471; Counsels on Health, pages 575, 576.
41. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, page 60.
42. See Ronald Number's Prophetess of Health.
43. E. White, Ministry of Healing, page 302.
44. E. White, Letter 127, 1904, quoted in Counsels on Diet and Foods, 288.
45. E. White, Ministry of Healing, page 325.
46. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 1, page 189.
47. E. White, Review and Herald, July 29, 1884, quoted in Councils on Diet Foods, page 420.
48. Ibid.
49. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 2, page 477.
50. Ibid, page 472.
51. Ibid. page 478.
52. E. White, Testimonies, Volume 1, page 290.
53. See Number's Prophetess_of_Health, page 234, number 28.
54. Ibid, page 244, number 31.
55. See Prophetess of Health, notes on chapter one for doctors' diagnoses and comments on the state of Mrs. White's mental health.
56. Ibid.
57. E. White, letter to Edson White, 1869, quoted in Prophetess of Health, pages 180, 181.
58. See note number one.
59. Romans 3:20.
60. Ibid., verse 22.
61. Ibid., verses 23 and 24.
62. Galatians 2:21.
63. Jeremiah 29:13.
64. John 8:32.
65. Galatians 2:4.
66. Galatians 5:12.
67. Isaiah 49:18.
68. Joe Crews, Colorful Cosmetics and Jewelry, (Baltimore, MD.: Amazing Facts, Inc.)
69. Luke 15:22; James 2:2; 1 Peter 3:3, J.B. Phillips.
70. See George M. Lamsa, Old Testament Light, (San Francisco, CA.: Harper and Row, 1964), on Exodus 33:4,5.
71. Ezekiel 16:9-14.
72. Webster's Third New International Dictionary, (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc, 1976).
73. Exodus 31:16,17.
74. Ibid., 14, 15.
75. Charles Wittschiebe, God Invented Sex.
76. E. White, letter 167, March 23, 1900.
77. E. White, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, page 604.
78. Matthew 11:28.
79. See William Barclay, The Letter to the Hebrews, First Edition, (Philadelphia, PA.: The Westminster Press, 1955), on Hebrews 4.
80. Romans 10:4. See Strong's on "end".
81. Matthew 24:14.
82. Hebrews 2:3.
83. John 3:36
84. Matthew 6:15.
85. Luke 23:34.
86. 1 Thessalonians 5:21.
87. Colossians 1:14.
88. Philippians 2:6-11.
89. Titus 3:5.
90. Romans 1:17.
91. Ephesians 1:13,14.
92. E. White, The Review and Herald, June 17, 1890, quoted in Selected Messages, Book 1, page 315.
93. Ibid., page 314.
94. John 5:24.
95. 2 Corinthians 5:6.
96. Philippians 1:21.
97. 2 Corinthians 5:8.
98. 1 Timothy 6:16.
99. Romans 6:23.
100. 1 Peter 1:16.
101. E. White, Gospel Workers, (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1915), page 315.
102. 1 John 4:1.
103. Ephesians 4:13.
104. 1 Thessalonians 5:21; Acts 17:11.
105. 1 Peter 5:8.
106. John 16:33.
107. Zechariah 4:6.
108. Hebrews 13:5; Matthew 28:20.
109. Matthew 5:6.
110. John 14:6.
111. 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 (NIV)
112. Romans 16:26; Ephesians 1:9; 6:19.
113. Revelation 3:18.
114. Isaiah 64:6.

END OF REFERENCES