Testimony from Anabaptist to Adventist - Gerry Wagoner

[Music] you [Music] hello friends Jerry Wagoner from Ohio I'm here to tell you today the story of our journey my wife and I how we went from the Anabaptist movement to the Advent movement I've titled the story in the falling mantle and I ask you to pray with me as we begin father each of us have a testimony and our prayer today is that each of our stories would be heard would be encouraging to one another and would ultimately speak of you for we ask it in Jesus name Amen I would like to illustrate my story my testimony with a story from the Bible that has always been fascinating to me the setting of this Bible story is just beyond the Jordan River in the area of Jericho you see two men cross the Jordan River and they stand there for a moment in the wilderness Elijah and Elijah in my mind's eye I can see the hand of the older man resting gently on the shoulder of the younger man a request is made from the younger man a conditional promise is given and then they move on and then all of a sudden the Lord of heaven shows up a chariot from heaven itself bursts into the atmosphere and it comes down near the earth it picks up Elijah he's now gone and in these silence that fills that wilderness you see a piece of cloth falling and gently to the ground suddenly the most important thing in the world to Elijah is what that old piece of cloth and he runs over to it picks it up and holds it to himself it's all that he has left of a dear friend but more than that it symbolizes a promise every quest granted a double portion of the spirit of Elijah now rest upon Elijah my friends I would like to ask you a question this morning what mantel are you wearing has it fallen from heaven or is it come does it come from men what mantel do you have in your life what is there around your shoulders that identifies you as connected to heaven you see that mantle that fell from heaven that heel I sure ran and picked up was old it was probably threadbare it was worn and it may symbolize how some people who are born into a religious movement a Christian movement eventually come to regard that movement after a while it becomes old and threadbare and a bit worn to them you see the advent mantle dear friends the Advent message has fallen from heaven it hasn't really come from our parents it's come from heaven now your parents may have lived that message in a righteous way and in an alluring way that has attracted you to it but ultimately the Advent message comes from heaven my friends that Advent message has a great power in it it will soon divide the waters of humanity there's something else about that mantel it has to be picked up doesn't it no you can't just leave it live there on the ground and go your own way satisfied you have to pick it up if that mantel is going to become you and these symbolic power of the Spirit of God is going to become yours you have to pick it up and it's the same way with the advent mantle dear ones you have to pick it up and you have to make it yours if it's going to be yours I was raised in an old German Baptist brethren home as were seven generations before me I would have been the eighth generation and I was the eighth generation for a while I guess you could say one of the mantles that I was given in the heritage of my father's was a black hat a broad Ram black hat and pants that buttoned instead of zipped for my wife it was a little different she wore a prayer covering and the uniform of the church which was a very modest female dress now as you might expect with a group that has ties going all the way back to the radical Reformation believers baptism was a choice that you must make when you are ready and not before none of this infant baptism but only when you are ready and when you understand the implications of the gospel and you say I'm ready for me that choice came two years after we were married 1984 I joined the Church of my father's that year baptized in the chilly spring that flowed through my uncle Carl's farm there was no heavenly phenomenon as I walked up out of the cold water that morning just the quiet realization that I was carrying the torch for yet one more generation now this was expected of me of course and I was very comfortable in this role and I began to fulfill my twentieth century and a Baptist role in the best way that I could comfortable in the approval of my peers we had a lot of friends I had a lot of family in the church many uncles that I looked up to that were leaders two and a half years went by now I will show you just a few pictures there is a picture of the mantle of Elijah falling from him these are my people this tent in the background you see there is what's called annual meeting every year somewhere around the country they have their annual meeting and there they make decisions they have some of the most wonderful fellowship that you can imagine they stay in each other's homes and they just have a good time again this picture is from annual meeting these are sisters in the church my wife wore the same dress that you see here these gentlemen here live to the in the county just west of me there in Ohio the individual on the right is one of my old softball buddies we used to play a lot of softball we grew up without television and radio we had a lot of other things that we did to fill in the gaps and it created a lot of good healthy pastime softball was one of them Gerald flora there man on the right that's my uncle Karl my Aunt Mildred this is the man that married Nancy and I in 1982 wonderful couple dear people and both gone now there's a picture of me on the left and my father on the right dad was a polio victim he contracted polio three months after they were married in 1954 and so they had three normal months together as husband and wife and then their life changed dramatically he lost most of the use of his arms and legs good man wonderful man devoted his whole life to helping people and I was very comfortable in that environment I was determined to be the best German Baptist I could be my father had hoped that I would become a preacher in the church that would have been his greatest aspiration for me and I have to tell you that was the path I was probably on but in 1986 a colorful brochure showed up in the mail advertising a Daniel and revelation seminar there in Ohio the brochure came into the mailbox of a friend of mine a business partner and we shared a meal with him that evening and Eric brought this brochure out and we passed it around the table everybody got a look at it and says what do you think of this it's talking about revelation about the future about Bible and about prophecy and all these kind of things and I could tell that he was kind of interested in it and I was too so just before dessert I made a suggestion why don't you and I or it just you and I sneak out to this meeting and see what it's all about if it's good maybe we'll go back but just you and I well the wives would stay at home our children so that's what we did Eric and I got in our car we got our hats and we drove over to where the meeting was held so without knowing a whole lot about it we just went in there and we did it kind of covertly in the church of my father's you you don't you're not encouraged to do things like that at least not openly so we went in there and I put my black hat on the coat rack Eric put his beside mine and we went in and sat down in the small auditorium and I can't speak for the rest of the audience that night but there were two German Baptist men sitting there just riveted to their seats by what we were hearing I remember it well the very first night was on the seventy weeks of Daniel and I was absolutely thrilled as I watched this panoramic prophecy unfold and touched down exactly where it was predicted that it would ending in the book of Acts amazing stuff you see Jesus Christ was lifted up in that prophecy and I found it irresistible I was drawn to it just as Jesus said it would be if I'm lifted up I will draw all men unto myself my friends I heard this message for the first time in my life some of you have heard it many many times from a little boy or a little girl on up is your mantle from heaven or is it for men well on the ride home that evening we talked about what we had learned we were both pretty excited about it Eric was an excitable fella and he was pretty excited and I was too so we went home on the next night which was Monday night and we went back again took our wives and children with us this time we say you're coming with us and they did and we went and we got a good seat down front and we sat there and night after night there in 1986 I returned to that same spot the Bible would open itself to me in new ways under the supervision of the Holy Spirit and like the unnamed disciples on the Emmaus Road we would often say to each other did not our hearts within us as we learn these things as the Scriptures were open we were drawn to them and I began to discover that the Bible was held together by an extraordinary power you see each night we were handed a link a golden link if you will of a chain and it was a lovely link and there were 27 links as I recall and each one of them were unique and when some in their own way but by themselves they didn't have a lot of strength a lot of power but when you began connecting all those links together and finally at the end of this seminar the chain was complete Wow Jesus had been lifted up and I was drawn to him it was like walking down a hallway with 27 windows and every so often I would stop and pause and look in one of those windows and I would see Jesus Christ from a unique perspective doctrinal perspective and it was beautiful and it was alluring and it was liberating somehow I attended every one of those meetings even after circumstances prevented me from attending a few of them I had to go to Minneapolis on a business trip at that point in my life I had just started a commercial roofing company as a 24 year old boy and I was now 26 and the business was just starting to move along pretty good and I had to go to a meeting in Minneapolis dealing with spray foam insulation so I went there and I missed out on probably three or four nights of this seminar but I couldn't wait to get back and I couldn't wait to learn what I had missed while I was gone and they were kind enough to give me some amazing facts Bible studies that covered all the material that I had missed when I was in Minneapolis and I still remember that amazing facts brochure that had the tall hat where the Hat was actually wider than it was tall but it didn't look that way I probably still have that somewhere so here I was coming down to the end of these meetings and by this point I had learned three serious truths number one the Bible is held together by an extraordinary power remember that chain I told you about yep it's the power of truth and the truth is a person as Jesus himself said I am the way the truth and the life no man ever dared makes such a claim but Jesus did well that was enough to occupy my mind for a long time however I had been brought face to face with certain truths of Jesus like conditional immortality the judgment confronting everyone the everlasting gospel the Sabbath rest and the panoramic view of redemptive history we call it the great controversy Wow each one of those beautiful links in that chain were a specific unique truth that set me free from misconceptions that I had grown up with for seven generations now having said that let me affirm that I learned many wonderful things in the Church of my father's and I appreciate those things and that which is biblical I have held on to but there were certain scriptural myths as we are told in the great controversy that began to encircle Christianity down through the ages and we were no different in some of those areas for instance the revelation that when you die you don't go directly to heaven or hell well somehow very comforting to me to learn that and I could see all the verses in the Bible and I said no problem it's in there and I want you see I'd grown up with the uncle Arthur Bible story books funny little story about that my parents had a set of him and I read them as a boy I thought they were great when I became an Adventist years later my dad kind of muttered under his breath I knew I should have gotten rid of those books I reached in my pocket pulled out my checkbook and I said how much do you want for them he said I think I'll keep them good choice so what do I do with all this truth that I was shown it was like water from a well and they all pointed to Jesus and his unbelievable love every every doctrine of the Adventist Church said something about Jesus as I walked down that hallway and looked in each one of those windows they would show Jesus in a unique light and they all pointed to the wonderful love of God as he revealed his truth to humanity but now I had a problem now where had these truths been for seven generations where were you Jesus I've never seen you this clearly before or in this light you see truth has an an uplifting a noble element to it and as I was confronted with all of this truth in this in these meetings they began to fasten themselves upon me I was drawn to them but at the same time part of me was resisting them going back to that unspoken question where had these truths been for seven generations maybe they weren't truths after all so I was shaken to the core revelations seminar indeed there had been a revelation so I did the only thing I could think of I got out my Bible began to study it carefully now my Bible was fairly small in those days it was given to me as a gift when I was baptized and so I went to what we call odd Lots there in Ohio they call it Big Lots now it's a chain for a lot of refurbished material and I went there and I found a Bible white cover and had wide margins it was $9.88 they do the 88 thing instead of a 99 thing we got from the Dutch I bought that Bible I brought it home and had plenty of room to write in it and the margins and I read it through in about three months time I was testing every one of those links in that chain systematically and come to number one okay number two night Ville Wanda number three the immortality of the soul the condition of man in death is that true the promise of the Resurrection and how it all ties together I checked each link in that chain to see if I could break it maybe I'd missed something you know a seven or eight generations can't be wrong and so I resolved to disprove this message that had shaken my foundation but I would learn in the next two years of intensive Bible study that if a pillar of faith topples and there were several that did during this two years they were a false pillar they weren't real Jesus does not fail and you know why because his mantel is from heaven where's your mantel my friend where's mine is it from heaven or from men at the end of two years of this research I had earned the suspicion of my wife who quietly watched her husband confirmed this message that he had set out to disprove I spent two years trying to disprove this stuff because it troubled me now if I believed it was false I would have just said okay it was interesting it's not true and I would have thrown it away net have been the end of it but I could not walk away from it it had slowly fastened itself around my neck and the only thing I could do was prove it to be wrong so I worked at it pretty hard by the way nowadays sometimes people come to me in the Adventist Church and they're they're angry or upset at the church and I understand where some of that comes from but it's a beautiful message that we have in the Advent Church in spite of all of its challenges it's full of a lot of beautiful people people who want to know Jesus and they want to see him come and I'm glad that you're a part of that and today sometimes I people come to me and they'll they'll want to condemn the church or criticize the church and I tell them don't don't trouble me with that I tried harder than you did for two years don't bother me with that this went on for two years time I went to a Christian bookstore down in Salem Avenue in Dayton and I bought a book titled avoiding the snare of seventh-day Adventism about that not a very objective title is it No written by David W cloud who in the opening pages identified himself as a once saved always saved individual therefore he writes from that perspective with a particular theological beef against arminianism and it was out of that beef that he condemned the Advent message I read the book and I also read that $9.88 Bible that I got from Big Lots I still have that Bible get it out every now and then just to remember the old times my wife was watching all this she was very comfortable in the ad near the Anabaptist church of my father's her family had been raised Catholic and there are very few converts into the German Baptist Church but her family was one of those converts family of 12 children and so they joined the church way back in the 70s and she became a member her parents became a member and that's how I met Nancy and she was very comfortable in this way of life and she wondered at times if what I was doing was threatening that comfort and it was but here's what happened during that two-year time I went from a well-respected individual to a complete and the eyes of many of my erstwhile friends and family I was smart enough to which isn't real smart but I was smart enough to conceal what I was doing studying this message I did it all privately I did confide in my father a couple of times that I had questions about the Sabbath nice at all he said that's that's nothing that we need to be worried about he's the disciples met on the first day of the week I said well that's not the whole story they met for fear the Jews the Bible says and he knew that I was looking into it but at that point it wasn't critical in any way and I was quiet about it but slowly as I was studying the message the the Advent mantle was fastening itself around my shoulders in my neck and I was being held a prisoner now in 1988 it was coming to a head I'd been this now for two years and no prisoner has been held tighter by these chains of convictions that were fastening around my neck but the best was yet to come you see intellectual assent to the Advent message wasn't enough there had to be something that happened at the heart level and that came to a head in 1988 it was a year of complete turmoil I would I would push the study of the Advent message aside because it was it was just it was making me tense I didn't know where I belonged anymore and yet it was so attractive to go back and review those beautiful links of the chain and so I would pick the Bible back up and I would look back through the things that I had been taught in the Advent meeting an Adventist meeting and I would compare that with the things that I were taught as a boy from the Anabaptist knew some of them were good things but there were many powerful truths that had been concealed from me now I had them here in my hands what do I do with it it came to a head in 1988 one evening amidst the confusion that I felt over the tremendous pull of my heritage against the power of the Advent message I fell to my knees one night in late 1988 and I prayed probably like I never have before it was a simple prayer but it was profound because it came from the heart and I said lord please help me you alone know the struggle within me just take it out of my hands and lead me by your will that is the only thing that I want I want your will and your will alone if you want me to be a German Baptist the rest of my life I will be the best one possible I promise if you want me to become a seventh-day adventists I will be the best one possible I I want your will and your will alone something happened that night and that prayer I guess the cemani was behind me God took it out of my hands when the morning broke my life began to reveal a series of events as if I was being guided by a hand from heaven God had heard and he had been listening and he cared now he was guiding the cemani was close behind me and it was then that I began to take step after step in the direction of the Advent movement the next morning I got up my wife was out of town she had made the trip to Indiana to a baby shower of one of her relatives new child and so I was there in the house by myself and lo and behold it was Saturday morning I thought there's a church not too far away maybe I'll just run over there and see what it's all about an Adventist Church I had no idea what time they started I took a guess at 10 o'clock might be a good starting point so I jumped in the truck and drove over there and pulled into the parking lot and walked in past her there at the door said hello how are you and I said fine and there induced myself and he said so what's going on in your life oh boy it's almost like God told him to ask that and I said oh I'm fine good year I didn't want to tell him oh the term I was going through but later on as I became a little more trusting and comfortable I said you know I've actually been a year of turmoil I've been studying the Advent message and I'm not sure what to do about it he said oh dear I remember it well I said oh dear he said well hey we're having a potluck after church he said you're welcome to stay they don't have meat and I okay I said it so I knew I needed to clean up my diet I didn't know how so I said that's fine I'll stay plus Nancy wasn't home to provide some good cooking so here's a way to get a free meal as I listened to the sermon the sermon was does God mean what he says well he sure does and I needed to hear it that day and then I sat down there and I ate the potluck meal and the pastor sat beside me and he said you know you mentioned that you've been studying some this year I said yeah sure have he said would you like to get together with me and maybe we can study the Bible if you have any questions I said yes he's alright where should we meet I'll come to your house and I said nope nope not coming to my home but I'll meet you somewhere neutral he said great you can meet me here at the church on Thursday night would that work for you yes Thursday night it was seven o'clock after supper on Thursday night I told Nancy I said I'm gonna go for a drive and I was I went for a drive to Piqua to the church and I drove there pulled into the parking lot there was one other vehicle there great I thought that must be this pastor and I have some questions I was going to hit him with I went inside he wasn't there there was a schoolteacher there working on some material curriculum for the children so I paced around in the foyer for a while for five minutes waiting on the pastor he's probably running late you know and then ten minutes went by and then it was 15 and it was 20 and then it was 30 and I'm starting to feel awfully alone at this point so I stuck my head in that office where that school teacher was and I said I'm I guess this pastor is coming he said I'm gonna he said I'm gonna call him he said it's not like him to be late so he called and he got a hold of the pastor's wife found out he was in another town over an hour away and he had forgotten the meeting he stood me up not off to a good start right actually I think God arranged it instead of going home I got to talking to this school teacher he and I became very good friends it began that night he shared with me his testimony how he had been attending college in Cincinnati he was an atheist could care less about God the things of God he believed that if there were answers science had them and he was also a bit of a fatalist at that point in his life thinking there was really no way out and he found jesus christ down there in the university of cincinnati for former adventist and he told me the story in my heart just thrilled as I listened min we were so different he and I where we come from him from an atheistic unbelieving background me from a long heavy train love tradition but I shared with him my story and then he asked me a question would you like to pray and I said do you mean outloud he said you know if you're comfortable with that now I wasn't and I said sure don't give it a whirl so we knelt down there and I prayed a very simple prayer Lord I need some help show me where to go and what to do and God did and so I took step after step in the direction of the advent movement and now I was unable to hide it any longer word broke out among my childhood peers my German Baptist friends rumors about me went from Ohio all the way to California in two weeks time I went from well-respected to complete idiot in the opinions of my fellow church members and that's to be expected they didn't understand I don't hold that against them through it all I had to cling to something though and I clung to the scriptures as I now understood them and the one to whom they pointed I was never ever going to let go of those beautiful truths and the one to whom they pointed vaguely vaguely I remember thinking in late 1988 this should really bother me walking away from this kind of heritage friends it didn't in fact it was the only road to peace I'm here to tell you it didn't bother me because something else had taken control of my heart and that is the convicting truths of the Advent message nothing mattered nothing except doing the will of my Heavenly Father you see our mantle friends is from heaven the Advent message has fallen from heaven and there are millions of people around the world who had this same experience each of you need that experience dear ones well walking away from tradition of that depth is neither easy nor casually done it wasn't for me but it was the only road to peace I surrendered to God in late 1988 and the peace he brought still warms my heart without the support of my wife I was baptized into the seventh-day Adventist Church on January 7th of 1989 once again there was no divine phenomena as I rose up out of that water but the Scriptures that I loved as a boy were now permanently fixed in my heart as the great guide to Jesus and now I understood them with a greater depth and I ever had and that kind of treasure my friend is indeed a heavenly phenomenon incidentally Nancy joined the church eight months later I was taught by the Lord not to pressure her during this period of time and to allow her time to come to a conviction had she just jumped in the water to be with me it would not have been hers I would have been me putting that mantle around her shoulders but she had to come to the point in the place where she picked it up on her own and that's what happened eight months later and now we work together for eight months period of time although we had to balance something we never balanced before and that was this similar worship practice God had to show us during that period of time how to connect with each other and how to still be a family and how to guide our children and we learned a lot of things in that period of time that benefit us now as we close to questions what can we learn from the Anabaptist and what can they learn from us can we learn anything from the Anabaptist I think so we can learn one of the attributes of simplicity that they model so well my grandfather by the way was Amish Old Order Amish my great-grandparents were Amish so I'm 25 percent our mission 75 percent tremoring baptist it makes a pretty good blend I think but I'm a hundred percent Adventists now both in my head and my heart simplicity is something we can learn from the Anabaptist family togetherness many of us in our fast-paced Western culture need to relearn the beauty of slowing down once in a while and whispering love to our family instead of shouting it that's one of the things that we can be reminded of we can also benefit from not being too enamored with academics in the Amish church you have eight grades of education and that's plenty for them most of them are some of the best tradesman in the entire world not to be too enamored with academics education is fine if it's the right kind I'm all for it but education can close more doors than it opens some time so be be aware of that tension out there I have eleven grades of education I only needed a credit and I think three quarters to finish and I didn't care about that at all I wanted to get out of school a school was holding me back I wanted to start my own business and that's exactly what I did no regrets I've owned a business corporation for 34 years so don't be too enamored with academics I notice a trend in the Adventist Church where a lot of emphasis is placed upon degrees in fact to some degree the ordination controversy that circles around us at times is predicated upon the presumption that you have a have to have a degree to do some kind of ministry that's not true friends anyone can minister is someone else you can hand someone a cup of warm water or cool water you can say hi to someone coming out of Walmart and ask them how their day is going you don't have to have a degree to minister to people what can the Anabaptists learned from us a lot they can learn a number of truths that were lost sight of theological e down through time it's very interesting to me that some of the early and a Baptist did stumble upon the Sabbath truth and they began to observe it but there weren't very many of them it was not a popular truth at that time and now it's fascinating to me how some of them are coming back around and accepting the Sabbath Daniel Licht II a theologian in the Mennonite Church has been keeping the Sabbath for a number of years a close friend of mine family yeah Andy and Naomi Weaver from northern Ohio they came out of the Amish church like my grandfather was and they've accepted the Advent message and many many other people are now discovering the beautiful Adventist truths among the Anabaptist people this is fascinating what can they learn from us the Berean life in other words to go into the Bible to see if these things are so you're not taught that in the Anabaptist Church generally the heavy emphasis is placed upon tradition and in some ways that may be okay Paul writes about good tradition so I'm not against tradition but it has to be the right kind doesn't it what I am against is honoring tradition for a traditions sake when it doesn't have Bible support so that's our story that's my story anyway thank you for listening and I'd like to just sum it up by asking this final question your mantle where does it come from what are you wearing on your shoulders as your mantel been placed around your shoulders by tradition or by your parents is that all the Advent muscle message means to you or have you picked it up and made it your own the choice is ours dear friends god bless you I hope to see you again someday on the sea of glass amen [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Quo Vadis Ministry

Views: 3,080

Rating: 4.9523811 out of 5

Keywords: sda, seventh day adventist, adventist, ellen white, egw, sabbath, health message, three angels, 3 angels message

Id: mI-lZ0kj50U

Length: 41min 15sec (2475 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 18 2020