How They Became Convinced
By Editor
[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.] My parents were Baptists. They had always taught me the Bible as they understood it. As I came to understand by investigating the various systems of theology, I found some who taught man’s mortality. I had been taught and believed, with the great majority, the immortality of the soul. I could not meet their arguments, yet I believed I was right, until I read a tract prepared by Phineas Smith, of Rochester, N. Y., giving the Bible teaching on the subject. I have always taken the Bible as God’s Word, and therefore the best authority, and I have believed and taught immortality only through Christ, received at the resurrection of the just. As I yet knew nothing of Seventh-day Adventists, I attended the only churches near, and had the superintendence of the Methodist Episcopal and United Brethren Sunday-school, until Brethren J. N. Loughborough and Isaac Sanborn came to our town with the Third Angel’s Message. They presented the Bible Sabbath in all its force. I saw that I was wrong, and that they presented the truth. I told my folks that I could not keep Sunday any longer and be an honest man. Christ has told us that "the Sabbath was made for man" (Mark 2:27), and "all things were made by Him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (John 1:3); and He never uttered a word about Sunday being the Sabbath. IN the autumn of 1902 Brother Herbert Hartwell came to this section to labor as a missionary canvasser, and came to my house to hold a Bible reading, one Saturday evening. I had been an infidel for some years, and was opposed to the Bible; but, as he took up the Sabbath question and showed why he observed the seventh day of the week, I became interested, and did not object to his coming again. So it became a regular thing to have a Bible reading Saturday evening. As time passed, my interest increased, as he proved by the Scripture so conclusively that the Sabbath had never been abrogated, or changed. When people would ask me, jestingly, if I was going to keep Saturday, my answer invariably was, It is the Sabbath of the Bible, and if I ever become a Christian, it is the only day I shall observe. Brother Hartwell came to my house every Saturday evening, with possibly two or three exceptions, all winter and up till the month of May, when myself and wife surrendered our hearts to the Lord. Now the point I wish to make is this: We were convicted of sin, became repentant, and were converted to God through the Bible, by a calm, sober, and reasonable study of it, with the aid of the Holy Spirit. "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." The morning of Saturday, May 9, I spent in labor, having the afternoon’s work planned, but at noon I surrendered myself to the Spirit’s pleadings, and became thoroughly repentant. I spent the remainder of the day in the study of God’s Word and in prayer, and in due time the answer came. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." "Thy Word is truth." I OFTEN asked my mother why the Adventist people kept the seventh day. She would say that she did not know, but she knew they had a good reason or they would not keep it in preference to the first day. I was raised a Campbellite, and from there I went into the "Holiness" movement in June, 1891. Then the dear Lord called me out to keep His commandments. The Scriptures which convinced me most were Eze. 20:12; Rev. 14:6–12, Ex. 31:12–18.