It was just a regular brown mailing envelope – the kind a catalogue would come in. Addressed to my parents who were both deceased, I figured it was some business my mother had ordered from as she loved shopping by mail.
Inside I found a booklet that I thumbed through just enough to see that it was a religious booklet talking about keeping the feasts of the Bible. I promptly dropped it in the trash and continued opening my mail.
A few minutes later, my daughter phoned. We talked many times a day and discussed all of our problems and joys together. This conversation was about her “ladies group.” She had started the internet visiting of friends to share ideas and provide friendship for stay-at-home moms. It was called “Care-2-Share” and had about 15 regular readers and contributors. This morning my daughter was asking if I knew of a new topic of discussion she could suggest as the last one was about exhausted. I said yes, and that I would post one right away.
The question I posted destroyed her Care-2-Share group and led to her losing most of her then current friends. I simply asked, “What do you think of the Biblical Feasts? Should they be kept?”
Neither of us were prepared for the anger, outrage and recriminations that flowed from that single question. Over the next few weeks she received not only email but phone calls that revealed the intense emotional response to even a discussion of the topic of the “feasts.”
As I read the first emotional emails, I recognized an uncalled for anger and defensiveness that was out of proportion to the topic.
I had witnessed this kind of overblown response before and believed it to be from Satan. Because of this emotional response, I got the booklet out of the trash and began reading. About halfway through I began to feel a worry forming at the back of my mind.
If this booklet were true, and every Biblical text used seemed to be used correctly, then I would be faced with the issue of obedience to revealed truth. What would my daughter say? Would I have to observe them alone? Would this issue come between us?
I didn’t even finish the book. I could see that it was teaching present truth and I dared not refuse to accept the light. I phoned my daughter and told her I was mailing her a booklet that I wanted her to read immediately. All the way to the post office and over the next few days I prayed continually that she would see the same truth that I had seen and be willing to obey. Satan constantly pressed thoughts of fear on my mind that I might lose my daughter’s companionship in study and prayer.
| Obedience to advancing light requires making a deliberate choice to follow truth be the cost what it may. |
Praise the Father in Heaven that my daughter also accepted the truth of the obligation to observe the Biblical Feasts and we made plans for me to fly home and keep Day of Atonement with her.
We didn’t really know how to plan a full day of fasting and repentance type worship. We studied what had been required of the Israelites and tried to pattern the day after what we thought their service had been. It was a blessing. I had to fly back to my work, but later did manage to drive five hours to the address given in the booklet where a large group feast-keepers were gathered for Feast of Tabernacles.
I continued to study and to attend the Seventh-day Adventist church where I tried to bring the conversations in Sabbath school around to the obligations of the feasts.
About a month later, I answered the phone one Sabbath evening to hear my daughter say that she had learned something earth shattering and mind challenging that she wouldn’t tell me about until I came home in a week's time. Of course, I talked her into telling me right then.
“Well,” she said, “Saturday is not the Bible Sabbath. The true Sabbath has to be figured on the same lunar calendar that you use for the other feasts.”
It felt like a physical blow! I was a fifth generation Seventh-day Adventist! I had tried to keep Saturday holy all of my life! The thought of having kept the wrong day was devastating.
Back to studying and searching; it soon became evident that the same Bible verses that applied to the feasts should be used for the Sabbath day. But I did not know how to figure the calendar. It seemed to be a huge body of knowledge I couldn’t get my mind around. Gradually the concepts began to take shape. As soon as we figured out the current lunation my daughter and I kept our first Sabbath. It felt strange and I didn’t know what to do except study and pray.
Over the next few weeks I learned so much that I wanted to share with friends at the local Seventh-day Adventist church. It became very apparent that no one wanted to even discuss the possibility that the Hebrews used a luni-solar calendar for their time-keeping. I visited two other churches in the area but never found even one person interested in discussing such topics.
Two months later, my daughter discovered the Grace Amadon Collection of documents at the Center for Adventist Research at Andrews University. She arranged to purchase copies and we began studying the proof that the Adventist church had known and buried the information that luni-solar calendation was used to find the October 22, 1844 date but they would not consider such a calendar for present use as it would be too confusing for the "common people."
The more we studied, the more we became convinced that we needed to write out what we were learning and print a book to get the truth out to where we could not go. We began writing in April and finally published The Great Calendar Controversy in October.
Copies were sent to every minister in our local conference, leaders in surrounding conferences as well as every minister in Canada. Now three years later, there has been only one inquiry from a minister in Canada and one in Tennessee. Materials were
| This truth is more important than all besides and if it costs all, that is cheap enough. |
The result was that my daughter and I were disfellowshipped in the summer of 2010, but not before we gave our testimony to a committee selected to handle our “case.”
Ellen White said it well: "Those who endeavor to obey all the commandments of . . .[Yahuwah] will be opposed and derided. . . . None but those who have fortified the mind with the truths of the Bible will stand through the last great conflict. To every soul will come the searching test: Shall I obey . . . [Yahuwah] rather than men? The decisive hour is even now at hand."
The truth about when to worship is as important as who to worship because it is on the Sabbath day that sanctification is given. This truth is more important than all besides and if it costs all, that is cheap enough.