Our journey to Adventism has been a long one with many detours along the way.
I sometimes envy those who were raised Adventist or came from multi-generational Adventist families. I was raised Lutheran – Missouri Synod.
Lutheran and Catholic
My father was Lutheran when he met my mother. She was Catholic and had been through a tough divorce back in the 1940’s because of her husband’s unfaithfulness and abuse. (He had actually married another woman while married to her.) She was seeking an annulment from the church, but at that time those were hard to come by, no matter the circumstances. My parents corresponded for three years during WWII while he was overseas serving in the Army.
When the war ended, my father took her to his Lutheran pastor, and he was able to convince her that biblically she had grounds for divorce, and could marry my father. The rest is history; my parents were married for 62 years and raised 5 children.
In my early twenties I began playing guitar with my friend at her church. She was studying to be a nun and at that time I knew nothing about the practices of Catholics. I simply enjoyed playing guitar, and thankfully my limited theology was not jeopardized there. It wasn’t long before my friend decided that the convent lifestyle was not for her and we went our separate ways.
Presbyterian
When I met my husband, he was Presbyterian, although not a practicing one. He didn’t have fond memories of being forced to sing in the choir as a youth and simply going to church was painful for him. We met at a roller skating rink, dated for five months, and were married in a Methodist Church. The pastor who married us was a dear friend of mine because I had attended a youth group at his church during my teen years.
Evangelical Lutheran
Our married life began with my husband attending various churches with me, but nodding off during most of the sermons. I again was placed in a position to attend a Catholic church when my brother-in-law was working at one and invited us. Our oldest child was baptized as an infant there. We moved on to attend an Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA) but soon left due to theological issues.
Non Denominational
Our final church before Adventism was an Evangelical Free Church – Non Denominational. This experience was a breath of fresh air, as we felt its teachings were more biblically based. I was re-baptized at this church, and my husband committed to a personal relationship with Jesus during this time. We became active members and grew in our faith.
The Advent Message
Throughout this journey of faith, I was praying that God would show me His Truth. I wanted to know His Truth. That’s when we found a flyer on our door inviting us to attend an evangelistic series. All the strange animals on the flyer intrigued my husband and we started attending in the middle of the series. This is a whole other story that you can read in my article, “The Flyer on the Door” that F7 published. God had shown us HIS TRUTH!
My faith journey leads me to the story of the Women at the Well in John Chapter 4. I have a friend who always told me that Jesus is never finished with this story. He always has something else to reveal to us. (Isn’t that true of most of/if not all of the stories in the Bible!)
The Woman at the Well
So the story tells us that Jesus and his disciples came to the city of Samaria and made a stop at Jacob’s well. A woman comes to draw water and Jesus asked her for a drink. She is surprised and says to Him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” Jesus, although knowing her background intimately as a harlot, divorcee, ostracized and lonely, does not cast her aside. He tells her of the gift of living water He could give her. She’s confused, because he has nothing with which to draw water from a very deep well. She begins a historical discussion about “our father Jacob” who gave them this well. Jesus says, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.” All this sounds too good to be true. Then Jesus gets up close and personal, asking her to call her husband to come here. She reveals she has no husband and Jesus confronts her with the fact that she has had five husbands and the one she was living with was not her husband. She now sees him as a prophet and states that she knows that the Messiah is coming and that He will tell us all things. Then Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
Ellen White writes in The Desire of Ages, p. 189:
“As the woman talked with Jesus, she was impressed with His words. Never had she heard such sentiments from the priests of her own people or from the Jews. As the past of her life had been spread out before her, she had been made sensible of her great want. She realized her soul thirst, which the waters of the well of Sychar would never satisfy. Nothing that had hitherto come in contact with her had so awakened her to a higher need. Jesus had convinced her that He read the secrets of her life; yet she felt that He was her friend, pitying and loving her.”
This gets me to the point of viewing this story through a whole new lens.
In Bible symbolism, a woman is a church. Jesus went to the well, a source of life in those days, to meet His bride and pursue her. Though she was a harlot and believed false doctrines that drew her away from Christ, yet He knew her heart. He knew that she would grasp on to His Truth when it was presented to her.
If I may be so bold—let me suggest that her five husbands could symbolize the apostate churches that she had been in, and with her sixth apostate relationship she had not yet joined that union. When we chase after worldly “grooms”, they fail us. We are unfulfilled, hurt, overlooked, misunderstood, and lost, just as she was. Jesus was her “seventh” husband – perfect in all Truth and the One who would satisfy all her needs. She could not contain herself with this new relationship, and went to evangelize her entire town to tell them of her new-found Truth.
In these end times, Jesus is pursuing His Bride. The Bible states in Isaiah 54:5, “For your Maker is your husband, The Lord of hosts is His name.”
Many, like myself, who have been involved in so many other church experiences, will be drawn to the well of Truth, to the Living Water, and there find our Jesus, our husband. Again Ellen White writes in The Desire of Ages, p. 189:
“The religion that comes from God is the only religion that will lead to God.” Whenever a soul reaches out after God, there the Spirit’s working is manifest, and God will reveal Himself to that soul. For such worshipers He is seeking. He waits to receive them, and to make them His sons and daughters.”
Friends, a second Pentecost is coming, when God will call all true believers to join His Remnant church, His True Church, and call them out of Babylon. He will meet us at the Well of Living Water and invite us to drink of the water that He will give where we will never thirst again. He will reveal to us our past apostate relationships and free us from the bondage of these false unions. He yearns to take us to that wedding reception He has prepared for us in heaven.
Conclusion
How many of us know people, even loved ones, which are thirsting for this Living Water? We need to run with excitement as the woman did to share the Good News that the Messiah is coming again soon to be with His Bride.
Let that be our passion and our goal!
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Karen Phillips is happily married to her husband, John, and they are enjoying their new home in eastern Kentucky, USA. She enjoys spending time with their four children and three grandchildren. Along with additional staff, they operate an international ministry called HeReturns. Her passion is to serve the Lord in any capacity and to be a conduit to save lost and suffering souls.