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Some of My Experience

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 4, 1865

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 25, No. 18.

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Some of My Experience.

By Chas. Stratton

In the year of 1842 I was awakened to see my lost condition out of Christ, and led, as I humbly trust, to seek a pardon of all my sins, and thereby obtain a good hope in Christ. Then I began to live for God, and learn to do his will, one important item of which was to be buried with Christ by baptism into death, in order to walk in newness of life. I cheerfully obeyed, and joined the Christian church in Albion, Me.
About that time the doctrine of the immediate coming of Christ was preached, in which I became deeply interested, and labored with all my might for the salvation of souls. When the time had passed, I labored on, occasionally hearing of the Adventists, but having no opportunities of associating with them. I lived in this way eleven years, feeling at times, woe is me if I preach not the gospel. The inquiry would come, Lord, what shall I preach? God alone knows the ordeal through which I passed, before the decision was fully made. Not feeling quite satisfied with the theology of the Christian denomination, my greatest anxiety was to know the truth. I studied the Bible as I never had before.
Just prior to this time, Eld. Z. Manter became pastor of the church, and from him the church received more good instruction than they ever did before or have since. I saw at once that he did not preach as others had been wont to do, and soon learned by his preaching and conversation that he neither believed or preached that men had immortal souls, or that they received their reward or punishment at death, but at the resurrection. I was encouraged and strengthened by him to enter the ministry. About ten years ago I commenced the work tremblingly, with a very deep sense of the responsibility resting upon me. In a few months, quite a number requested baptism, and I was accordingly set apart by the laying on of hands, and joined the ministerial conference. My Bible and concordance were my only companions. I could find no eternal life out of Christ.
As I was preaching to the Christian church in Cornville about four years ago, spiritualism came up among us and prevailed to some extent. After a great trial in my mind, I decided that it was my duty to come out more fully on the truth relating to the unconscious state of the dead and the destruction of the wicked, for which I have received much persecution from the ministry and membership. It was rather hard at the time, but at the present, I can look back and count it all joy. Bless the Lord.
A year ago last June, I went as usual to the yearly conference. When the time arrived for the business meeting to commence, I soon found that the most important business they had to attend to, was myself. Accordingly I was arraigned before the conference without any previous notice, and one false charge after another brought against me, till my spirits were nearly crushed. Things that I never heard or thought of were laid to my charge. However, none of them were sustained but that of believing and preaching the unconscious state of the dead and the destruction of the wicked. They all acknowledged me to be a Christian. It was evident they were in a sad dilemma, and did not know how to get out. They had not taken one little step. At length they voted a member into the conference that had not previously belonged with them, and he helped them out. After giving me a little time to talk, my case was taken before a committee and examined more thoroughly. The conference tried hard to get me to ask a dismissal but I felt disposed to let them have their own way. After a good deal of trouble they voted to give me a letter of dismissal, wrote and read the letter, and had it recorded. I waited one year and did not receive the letter. I called in at the next yearly meeting and asked for my letter. Eld. Z., who gave them such timely help, deliberately said the conference never voted to give me a letter. I was shocked at such willful prevarication. I did not wonder that the Revelator said, “Come out of her my people, and be not partaker of her sins,” &c.
I am searching for light and truth with all my heart. About one year ago Bro. Cornell came to our place and gave us a course of lectures on the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, and I am thoroughly convinced that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, and I am cheerfully keeping it, and find it not a yoke of bondage. I am trying to be a faithful under shepherd, so that when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, I may receive a crown of life with all the ransomed ones in the kingdom, when the night of our trials has all passed away, and the joy of the morning has come.
CHAS. STRATTON.
Cornville, Me.
P. S. The above was sent to the World’s Crisis a few months since, but as that part relating to my embracing the Bible Sabbath was rejected, I now re-write the whole for the Advent Review.
C. S.