I joined the Seventh-day Adventist church when I was 24 years old in 1976. I’m 73 now.
Before joining the church I spent a couple of years in the army and even owned my own business for a short time. I spent the younger years of my life sowing wild oats, if you know what I mean. I was drafted and while in the army I began my serious search for God and ended up joining the Catholic church. I know you might be wondering, if I was searching for God how could I end up in the Catholic church.
Well, it’s easy for me to see as I look back, God was staging me. He was preparing me to join the Advent movement. I know a lot of people are in shock that so many of our politicians are becoming Catholics. The apparent world-wide revival that seems to have exploded surrounding Charlie Kirk’s assassination is interesting as well.
Many people want to see it as a false revival, and it may very well be, but the way I look at it the Lord could be staging some, and maybe many, of these people right now, preparing them to be a part, maybe a big part, of the proclamation of the Three Angel’s Messages. Are we ready for an influx of these believers from outside the church?
When I got out of the Army I moved back to my home town in north-eastern California. My older brother, on his own journey towards God, was soon hanging out with the Adventists. I invited him to attend the Catholic church with me. He came once but he wasn’t impressed. Then he came to me one day and he did something which—I learned later—was a big no-no for some people. He gave me a Great Controversy. He said, “Here you need to read this book. It was written by a woman who had visions from God and she wrote down here what she was shown.” I’m an open-minded guy so I thought OK I’ll read it. I couldn’t believe it.
What amazing truth I found. Truth like I never imagined possible. I remember lying in bed one night reading the story of the martyrdom of John Hus and in tears I whispered, “Lord I want religion like this.” I had found what I was searching for.
I read and I studied. I attended prayer meeting with my brother at the Adventist Church for a while until I could get Sabbaths off. The young pastor there in the church at the time grounded us in the subject of righteousness by faith as it related to A.T. Jones and E.J. Waggoner in 1888.
Eventually I quit working on Sabbath started attending church. The little church where I attended began training me. I taught the Sabbath School lesson, and preached sermons in a bright yellow-orange shirt with a big collar, without a tie (I didn’t own a tie). I even braced myself and did Ingathering. Finally I was baptized. It was a costly decision for me to join the Adventist faith. The little community where I grew up, as well as my family, thought my brother and I had gone off our rockers.
I fell in love with Jesus, He was coming soon. I fell in love with the Bible and the Advent message. The thought of a spiritual preparation for that event gripped me. Jesus was in the sanctuary working to prepare us. A great outpouring of the Holy Spirit was coming. The Three Angel’s Messages, a message of righteousness by faith that would prepare us for that event, welled up within me. The mark of the beast. The close of probation. The time of trouble. Victory over sin. The sealing. Becoming so settled into the truth that you could not be moved. I could be like Jesus and love like Jesus perfectly, in my own little sphere. Jesus had taken upon Himself the same fallen human nature that I had so I could be like Him. (That thought still gives me goose bumps.) That’s what I wanted; to be like Jesus.
“The little community where I grew up, as well as my family, thought my brother and I had gone off our rockers. I fell in love with Jesus, He was coming soon. I fell in love with the Bible and the Advent message.”
I wanted to be part of that group that would live through the time of trouble, live to see Jesus come and never taste death. I still want that. It was something bigger than myself and that appealed to me because my little self wasn’t much. My world-focused life wasn’t that meaningful.
I didn’t realize it but, (and this is the point that I really want to get to) that little group of people in that little church kind of set me up for disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, those people were sincere, dedicated Adventists. This little church had been joined by three retired couples who had pulled up stakes in Paradise, California and moved to our little rural community in north-east California to do evangelism. My brother and I were some of the fruits of their efforts. For that I will be forever grateful. The little church there was revitalized. I would say however that maybe (that’s maybe) they made a mistake in pointing to the amazing institutions of the church as a part of their appeal for me to join. I mean just look at the educational and medical institutions. Some of the best in the world. And look at the organizational structure of the church from the General Conference on down. Look at the structure that has been put together to get missionaries spread throughout the world. Something to be proud of for sure. All the more reasons to join the Adventist church. God was at work in this body of believers.
It wasn’t long before my church family was encouraging me to go to college and become a pastor. I guess they saw something I couldn’t see. College? I barely made it through high school. I was goofing around too much. To avoid college I went to Utah and sold Adventist books as a colporteur from door to door. I couldn’t see myself doing that for the rest of my life so my little church family finally prevailed and I ended up at Pacific Union College (PUC) taking theology.
It was while at PUC that I began to realize there was trouble in River City. I was studying my Greek in one of the side rooms in the cafeteria one day. Also in the room, was one of the young students vacuuming the floor. (I say young because by this time I was 27 years old. He was maybe 19.) We spoke, and he was curious, so I told him how I had become an Adventist Christian. When I was finished he looked me straight in the eye and said, “You’re a fool. You were out there and had the things we want and we’re stuck here in this church and don’t know how to get out there and get them.” I soon realized there were a lot of young people at PUC, totally disconnected from Christ who were sowing their own wild oats. What was going wrong?
Many of the students and even teachers seemed to have little to no interest in the preparation needed to be ready for Jesus to come. Some of the behavior I saw was surprising if not shocking to this new Adventist. I won’t go into it.
I came to PUC just at the time the “theology crisis” was ramping up. Dr. Desmond Ford had just arrived. Our foundational beliefs on righteousness by faith and the cleansing of the sanctuary were being challenged. It was a righteousness by faith message that would take the air out of our preparation for the time of trouble and the coming of Christ. While it appealed, in some strange way, to many people in the church, it didn’t seem to have that transformative effect in their lives that I had experienced. It appeared to be just an outward bandage that didn’t heal the wound from the inside. They weren’t excited about the coming of Christ, the sealing, or victory over sin. It appeared to be just an intellectual consent to the cross event that happened 2,000 years ago. There seemed to be no need to take up a personal cross and follow Christ. Over the years I have seen this “no victory” theology growing throughout the church. It’s been an ongoing disappointment for me as a pastor.
On the other hand many students and teachers at PUC saw the dangers of this (new) theology and they along with the pastor of the PUC church fought valiantly to preserve the true faith. In time we gravitated together and had many times of sweet fellowship in the Word.
But this departure from the faith was not just on the campus. As a theology student I was assigned to a nearby church for part of my training. I was asked to preach there one Sabbath. We gathered in the ante room just before we went on the platform. A few of us were just chatting and the subject of Ellen White came up. The head elder there made the statement that as far as he was concerned, they could take all of Ellen White’s books and “throw them in the river.” The pastor agreed. Again, I knew we were in trouble. But I do digress. Or do I?
The Enemy Within
Satan’s puppets are doing this for him. This attitude toward Ellen White seemed at that time to be part and parcel for those at PUC who were embracing the errant righteousness by faith Omega apostasy of the Des Ford theology crisis. So if we aren’t willing to listen to the true guidance of the Bible and the testimonies what hope do we have in keeping on course? Dr. Kellogg would be happy.
Along with some of the students at PUC I found myself speaking up and asking questions that some in the Theology Department and Administration of the college didn’t want to hear. We wanted answers as to why things were being taught that undermined the Advent message. A fairly large group of theology students, as well as alumni, were involved.
Somehow, I think because I was older than the other students, I along with some others gravitated into positions of leadership of this student “resistance” group. We wanted a hearing.
Toward the end of my time at PUC when I had already been given a call to the ministry I was called into the office by one professor who said to me, “Owen I just want you to know that all I have to do is pick up this phone and you will lose your call.” I explained to him that all we wanted was to be heard. We wanted a forum for discussion where our questions, could be answered. We wanted dialogue about these things.
He said he didn’t call me in to discuss anything, and pointing to the phone on his desk, he said again that he was just there to let me know that “all I have to do is to pick up this phone and you will lose your call.” Really?! An administrator of the college later admitted to me in front of a group of theology majors that he himself was the one who had asked my professor to bring that message to me. What happened to these grown men?
The rosy image I had formed about our educational institutions was beginning to smear a bit but my faith in the Bible, the Testimonies, the message and the mission grew stronger. But my faith in the institution began to slip. Fortunately I had been hired by a conference president who knew what was going on there at the college.
It was the war between good and evil.
Stay tuned for Part 2 . .
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Owen Bandy