HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2008 / JANUARY/FEBRUARY / STORIES OF FAITH

JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2008
VOLUME 9, ISSUE 1

---

D E P A R T M E N T S

STORIES of Faith

I found rest in the journey

Royce Earp

 

Be careful what you pray for! Several years ago my wife Karen and I started praying for God to show us truth. We realized it was time to start teaching our children what we believed, so we began a journey to know God. Although we took separate paths on our quest, Karen and I arrived at the same place.

I was a second generation Adventist. Looking back, I am grateful to the Adventist religion because it brought my parents to the same place at the same time. My mother came to Emmanuel Missionary College (now Andrews University) from Puerto Rico, where as a teenager she had been converted to Adventism by SDA missionaries,. My father had accepted the Advent message as a teenager, and he, too, headed to Emmanuel Missionary College in Berrien Springs, Michigan. My parents raised four of us children in a very loving home in which our religious life consisted of weekly church attendance and a daily devotional. We did not have Ellen White overtly pushed upon us.

I graduated from Chisholm Trail Academy in Keene, Texas, and from Southern Adventist University in 1984. My religious life was alive but not vibrant; spiritually, I was dead. It was not until it came time to educate my two children that I began to question my beliefs. I home-school my two children, and the Adventist Home Study International curriculum was heavy with indoctrination into Ellen G. White (EGW).

 

The question

I wanted to know more about her, so I read some of the books she had authored including The Great Controversy and Steps to Christ. Then at lunch one day, I was telling my father about my EGW questions when he asked me, "Where was Adam when Eve took and ate the fruit?"

I knew the answer Ellen White and the Adventists proclaim, but I realized I didn't know what the Bible said, so I looked it up. Gen. 3:6 says, "…She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."

So Adam was with Eve? Ellen White said Eve had wandered away from Adam and had thus been vulnerable to the serpent's temptation. I had learned that God had inspired her writings, but Genesis 3:6 contradicted what she said. Now I seriously started questioning who this Ellen White was, and I found there was plenty of information.

The information I found about Ellen White was not flattering to her. I read White Washed by Sydney Cleveland, White Out by Dirk Anderson, Dale Ratzlaff's books Sabbath in Christ and Cultic Doctrine of Seventh-day Adventists, and A Theologian's Journey: from Seventh-day Adventism to Mainstream Christianity by Dr. Jerry Gladson. What I found is that a thoughtful and open-minded person that is intellectually honest must reject Ellen White as a messenger of God.

During this time of study and investigation, God sent a number of different people into my life to teach me about the new covenant. What took place over the next few months was a simple process of God teaching and me learning. I had been praying for an open heart and mind so that whatever God showed me, I would be ready and willing to accept.

 

The teachers

Now that the student was ready, the teachers came. I had a very good non-Adventist friend, Mike, who had recently become a Christ-follower, and he began to teach me about life apart from the law. Our discussions had begun because I thought it important to teach Mike about the significance of the seventh-day Sabbath. Mike's response marked the first time I heard that Christians do not live by the 10 Commandments but by the influence and fruit of the Holy Spirit.

I taught him everything I knew about the Sabbath using all of the Adventist proof-texts referring to Sabbath-keeping. He tried to teach me that the issue is not about a day of worship but about a relationship with God. I finally gave up trying to convince him of the Sabbath. I still did not grasp his teaching, but I was open to learning.

Then God sent me a life-long family friend. This gentleman, Uncle Ed, had been a devout "Ellen White Adventist", but while he was in his seventies, he had rejected the teachings of EGW and the Adventist religion and had become a new covenant Christian. This transition made quite an impression on me.

Ed was the first person to introduce me to the magazine Proclamation! He was very matter-of-fact and taught me about the new covenant using Paul's writings as his textbook, but I never understood which "law" Paul was talking about in his epistles. Then God led me to Sam Pestes' presentations of The Stone Cutter's Bride. The picture of the new covenant was gradually becoming clear to me.

Finally, my wife came home telling me about an encounter she had at our YMCA with a preacher's wife while they were next to one another on treadmills. Karen told her new friend her story of growing up in a legalistic religion. The preacher's wife told her that she, too, had grown up in a legalistic religion, and she had recommended that Karen read Galatians. Consequently, Karen came home and told me to read Galatians.

I read it over and over. "Where has this book been all of my life?" I wondered.

 

Galatians

What I read in Galatians changed my life. As an Adventist I had always believed that the commandments had been in place before the earth was made and that we are still under the law. But in Galatians Paul very clearly states that the law was given 430 years after the promise given to Abraham (Gal. 3:17), and he says that the law was put into place until the seed (Jesus) had come (Gal. 3:19). In Gal. 3:19 he even says why the law was put into place; "It was added because of transgression." If Paul were here today he might say, "You foolish Adventists! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? …Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard? " (Gal. 3:1-2)

The Adventists teach that the law is separated into ceremonial, civil, and moral laws, and this artificial division is the reason they keep some of the law and not all of it. Once again Paul is very clear about these issues. First, he says in Eph. 2:15 that the law is the commandments and regulations. (…by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations). He does not separate the law into three divisions. Second, he repeats Moses' words in Deuteronomy when he says in Gal. 3:10, "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law." So on what authority do Ellen White and the Adventists say that they can decide to keep only part of the law? Jesus does not separate the law; Moses does not separate the law, and Paul does not separate the law. I even did a Bible search on the computer looking for the words ceremonial, civil, and moral followed by the word law. They are non-existent.

Paul's writings made sense for the first time in my life! I was no longer trying to figure out which "law" Paul was referring to. He only referred to one law. It was as if the scales had come off of my eyes.

 

New church

So where did this realization leave me? I was a Seventh-day Adventist that did not believe in Ellen White, and I embraced the new covenant of faith in Jesus Christ. Karen and I decided to begin attending a different kind of Adventist church— Franklin (Tennessee) SDA Church. It was different because the pastor there preached righteousness by faith. It was in one of his sermons in which he used an illustration of salvation as a free gift that finally moved me to see I am not saved by the day on which I worship but by accepting the gift. I finally got it!

I had still been trying to make my new understanding fit my Adventist worldview. I just couldn't do it. God had given me the desire to know him better, and then he sent people that I loved and knew to help lead me to His truth.

Now we had the task of finding a new church. Once again Karen and I asked for guidance because we did not know where to start. An Adventist friend of mine that did some accounting work for the pastor of a local community church called World Outreach Church told me I might want to check out that congregation. At the same time a number of Karen's co-workers recommended World Outreach Church.

One memorable Sunday we finally went and experienced our first service at a non-Adventist church. Karen and I were so moved by the presence of the Holy Spirit there. This inter-denominational church had been placed in our path so that we might continue in our new-found love of Jesus and belief in salvation by faith.

My journey to become a more devoted Christ-follower began with a desire to teach my children and to know the religion that I had professed all of my life. When I took off my Seventh-day Adventist-colored glasses and took away the Ellen White filter, I found the message that had been there all along. God's message was clearer than I had understood before.

I am blessed to have my wife Karen in my life, sharing this journey of discovery and commitment to the Lord Jesus. She is a godly woman and is not afraid to seek Christ's will, wherever that may lead. My journey happily continues today as I rest everyday in the finished work of Christ. †

 

---

Royce Earp lives in Smyrna, Tennessee with his wife Karen and their sons Cameron and Kendall. He is a graduate of Chisholm Trail Academy in Keene, Texas, and of Southern Adventist College in Collegedale, Tennessee. He has a BS degree in Long-Term Health Care and is currently a stay-at-home dad. Royce home educates his two children, is a member of the Christian Emphasis Committee at the Murfreesboro, Tennessee, YMCA, is a USA Hockey Certified coach and coaches his sons' hockey and soccer teams. He is a member of USA Racquetball and plays competitively, and he is involved in Children's Ministry at World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro.