p. 18 | A Catholic Family Finds the Truth by M. J. Allen

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · May 23, 1907

A Catholic Family Finds the Truth

By M. J. Allen

I FEEL to rejoice and give thanks to God for what the third angel's message has done for my wife and me. A short time ago while on our way to the theater we saw a large tent. The meeting was almost over when we came along, and the speaker, Wm. Simpson, gave a very pressing invitation to his audience (about fifteen hundred people) to come back the next night to hear why God did not kill the devil. The nature of the subject at once interested me, so I took a goodly number of my neighbors with me to hear all about why God did not kill Satan.

At this time we were members of the Catholic Church. My wife was very devout, while I thought also that there was very little truth except in the Catholic Church. I was engaged in the grocery business at the time. The most of my neighbors were Protestants, and were much concerned about my salvation, so when I asked them to come with me to the tent-meeting, they readily accepted. I did not know who the speaker represented. Although up to the time I had thought that the devil was just a word that the church uses to scare people, I changed my mind when I heard Brother Simpson, as he read text after text from a book he called the Bible. To me this was a new book.

A few weeks later I saw his advertisement in one of the papers, stating that he was going to speak on Daniel and Revelation, so I gathered my good Protestants together again, and we went to the meeting, and took a front seat. Brother Simpson drew a line across his blackboard and took up the study of Daniel 2 and explained this vision. When he reached the toes of the image, I was intensely interested. He invited me back again, so I went with my wife for fifty-two evenings. I made up my mind that I would not let the church do my thinking any longer. I heard God's Word explained, heard the truth for our time, and saw how clearly God's Word pointed out the falling away and the development of the man of sin. I began to rejoice that I had found something better than going to theaters and smoking and chewing tobacco, and baseball games. I am so glad that there is power in God's Word to change us.

I kept the first Sabbath after I found the Sabbath truth, and I am rejoicing in the third angel's message. I sold my business, and came to Fernando to study the Bible, as I see very clearly that if we do not know God's Word and live up to what it teaches, we shall not have a home in the new earth. I would say to my Catholic friends, Study the Bible, as each one of us is responsible for his own salvation. I was a member of the Hibernian Society, and of the Knights of Maccabees, and others also, but gave it all up, and to-day am rejoicing and thank God that I ever heard the books of Daniel and Revelation explained.

M. J. ALLEN.