[Believing it would be of interest to our readers, the editor of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES has asked Sabbath-keeping ministers and evangelical workers to tell in a few words the scripture or scriptures, the truths and principles, which constrained them to accept the unpopular truth of the seventh-day Sabbath. These testimonies must not exceed 500 words. Let us hear from all.]
LXXVI.
I was born Nov. 7, 1833, six days before the great meteoric star shower of that month,—November 13.
I remember distinctly the proclamation of the coming of the Lord, in Michigan, in the spring of 1844. It caused a very solemn feeling on all who heard of it.
When about fourteen, my attention was called to the Sabbath change by my mother’s Bible, in the table of weights, measures and time, according to Jewish custom, between the Testaments. In the table on time, and its divisions, it said: “Saturday, the seventh day of the week, or Sabbath.” As she had not had the Bible long, I thought she had not seen that. So I went to her and said: “Mother, your Bible says that Saturday is the Sabbath.” “Yes,” she replied. “Saturday was the Sabbath of the Jews, till the crucifixion; then it was changed to the first day of the week, or Sunday. From that time till now, Christians have kept the Sunday, in commemoration of the resurrection.”
I believed what mother said, till I was twenty-seven years old.
In 1860 I read “Truth Found,” by J. H. Waggoner. Its clear and logical deductions led me to read the Scriptures with more care and attention. The Saviour’s words in Matthew 5:17, 18; and Luke 16:17, settled the question forever, from that time.
Jesus said: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” Matt. 5:17, 18. “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.” Luke 16:17. I said: He did not destroy it, therefore His death and resurrection did not change the Sabbath. I saw the law was more enduring than the heavens and earth. I saw men trying to do the hardest thing first,—trying to get rid of the law.
This is how I became convinced. I am still convinced I was right then. Am still convinced I am right now.
“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid up for you in His excellent Word.”
E. VAN DEUSEN.
Kingstown, St. Vincent, W. I.
LXXVII.
I was born in 1829, and had a good Presbyterian, Christian mother who walked in all the light that she had received at that time. My father, while holding to the Presbyterians, favored the Methodists more, for he said they did not put on so much style, and they sang with spirit. He called himself a nothingarian. The summer of 1841, as we were returning from Sunday-school, my father sat on the front stoop, reading an old-fashioned leather Bible. He remarked to my mother as she came in, that Saturday is the right day to keep instead of Sunday. “But it has been changed we are told,” was her reply. My father’s remark was the first impression, or seed thought, in my mind of God’s holy, Christian, seventh-day Sabbath. [And every Bible tells the same story as the “old-fashioned leather Bible.—Ed.]
