Seventh-day Adventist® Church

Sermon by Havard Thomsen
Blog by Paul McMillan

On Sabbath, December 7, 1940, my parents and their three boys, Robert(13), Paul(10) and Frank(7), became members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. We had come out of a Community Christian church in which Dad was outspokenly active. That had led him to disagree with the church over having “Junior Deacons” and he and his Sunday School class split and started a new church. This didn’t last long because he soon learned that the book he had been using to teach his Class, Bible Footlights, was an Adventist publication. This came about because I needed a tonsillectomy and the doctor they took me to, Julius Schneider, was an Adventist graduate of Loma Linda’s College of Medical Evangelists. The rest is history.

I share this because this is how we were introduced to daily family worship and study of the Sabbath School lesson. So it was that on January 1, 1941 Dad initiated daily family worship with the study of the Sabbath School lesson. That first week the memory verse was Acts 1:11, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye here gazing up into heaven, this same Jesus you have seen taken up into heaven will so come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven?” As a boy of 10 years old that promise was indelibly impressed upon me. Therefore, Pastor Thomsen’s sermon hit a responsive chord in me.

After having reviewed how John responded to each of the 3 times Jesus said in Revelation, “I am coming soon,” he closes the sermon with several challenging questions. Questions like, How does that announcement influence the way you spend your money and time? Do you seek for ways to tell others that He is coming again? It is my prayer that some of us will be more serious about our commitment to Him.