A Minister’s Experience
By Wm. T. Stagg
I can truly say that I have been led by a way I knew not, and I wish to praise God that the Spirit of truth has brought me hither, notwithstanding prejudice and the corrupting influences of traditionalism. At the time I was converted, I felt called to preach the gospel, and at once set about becoming a Methodist preacher. The course of prescribed studies made but little impression on my mind, but my interest all centered in the unfolding of God’s revealed plan, past, present, and future; so I delved into the Bible, and the Lord graciously opened my eyes to some of his truth. From Walker’s “Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation” I obtained my first clue to the reason of Scripture and the purpose and distinction of moral and ceremonial law. In 1892 I accompanied Bishop J. N. Thoburn to India, and, after some travel, took work in Malaysia at Singapore, where, among others, it was my privilege to meet and labor with Brother R. W. Munson, now a Seventh-day Adventist missionary at Padang, Sumatra, but then the Methodist presiding elder at Singapore; and it was Brother Munson who examined me on the required studies and the Malay language. Little did the tedious volumes interest me, nor did I dream that examiner and examined would today both be Seventh-day Adventists. The blessed Lord mercifully kept me supplied with “meat in due season,” in the form of books to give me a bent for the truth, and I soon forgot everything else. Milton’s “Paradise Lost” gave me the true standpoint of Bible study in the great controversy in the unseen between Christ and Satan. A book on the catacombs, by Benjamin Scott, gave me an insight into the influence of papal compromise over Christendom, and I was further convinced of this by my own observation of Catholic methods among the heathen. A little incident will, illustrate: On Christmas, 1892, in the city of Bombay I stopped for a moment and looked into our Methodist chapel in Grant Road, where a few natives were listening to the simple preaching of a Methodist catechist. Passing down the road, I came to another chapel with a cross over it. A throng of heathen on tiptoe about the door showed the “standing-room-only” limit had been passed. It was the celebration of high mass,—robes, images, crucifix, candles, altar, and all,—and the Catholics had gathered the crowd in the same way they did in the days of the catacombs saints—by compromise. The majority of missionaries, like their brethren at home, were letting the Catholics have their own way with the people, but I met a few heroic, independent workers of a different mold, one of them being at work in the crowd at the door just mentioned. I recollect that the missionaries were strongly opposed to pre-millennialists, as they thought such doctrine subversive of missionary zeal; and I joined my voice with the rest. Mature observation later convinced me that the heathen were not going to be brought to Christ under prevailing methods, and I saw no hope for the Mohammedan world. Thus I was brought into a position to receive new truth on the scheme of redemption. Returning to America because of the illness of my family, I read Totten’s writings, and accepted the premillennial advent, but, though fascinated by his Anglo-Israel theory, I could never commit myself fully to it, appealing as it does so powerfully to fleshly pride, patriotism, and aggrandizement, assuming a partiality on the part of Jehovah, who is “no respecter of persons,” ignoring the true Israel of faith, and reincarnating the ancient Jewish cry for a temporal deliverer and king. The widely prevalent idea of a literal restoration of the Jews to Jerusalem that now is, is another of the same sort. Despairing, after much reading, of finding a clear and comprehensive system of interpreting Scripture symbolism, I drifted doctrinally farther from every one, as I thought; but I always felt sure that the Holy Spirit placed these things in the Book to be understood. Convinced of immersion, and repudiating the sprinkling of my childhood as a papal perversion, I could not get the Baptists to immerse me unless I joined them. From the Russellites I learned that the wicked will be annihilated. Finally, though I disliked being a spiritual vagabond, I took to independent preaching on street corners. The Holiness church would have attracted me, but they said it made no difference whether I held the post-millennial or the premillennial view, and their leading editor held the former! So I said, “Surely if we have the Holy Ghost to lead us into all truth, he will not suffer us to ignore these fundamentals of God’s Book.” My wife at this time assayed on several occasions to unite with some sect, but an inward check withheld her from so doing. Meanwhile an Adventist prayer-meeting was held with an invalid who lived10by us, and I expostulated with the elder, telling him this unconverted woman will could not be pulled two ways by Methodists and Adventists; that it made no odds which day it was, and that I was satisfied there was no mark of any beast on me; whereupon they all quietly withdrew. I suppose they prayed for me. However, a short time afterward, in a spirit of curiosity and fun, I paused before the tent where Elders Ballenger and Simpson were holding forth, and challenged them on the obligation of the law, change of the day, mark of the beast, and kindred themes. Little did I dream what heavy artillery I was thus unmasking on my head. Suffice it to say, before leaving their tent I was stocked with a judicious selection of reading, and far on the King’s highway of present truth. And as I see more and more the looming outlines of the divine plan and the great controversy, I find all Scripture texts, like disciplined troops, fall into ranks, platoons, and regiments, brigades, divisions, and army corps, like Israel encamped about the ark, each passage finding its only niche, like the irregular stones going into place into some great, beautiful, mosaic portrait of the Son of God. Surely he has piloted me around the shoals of error and through the fogs of prejudice, by a way I knew not, and to him be all the glory forevermore. Amen.