I loved reading about how other people came to the SDA message! Your stories are very fascinating. OntheDL, that had to be a very scary experience for you. God pulled me to the message through a tragedy too.
My mother-in-law is Adventist but all of my family is either Baptist or Methodist. I attended my brother-in-laws funeral (he was only 35) a few years ago and I remember my mother-in-law telling me that he was sleeping until the resurrection. I thought that was a HORRIBLE thing to believe, but I knew she couldnt possibly want to believe that if it wasnt true. This is a woman that practically has the entire Bible memorized so I knew she wasnt just making it up. Something (Someone) compelled me to keep asking questions after that.
My husband was Wiccan at the time and I was a Christian (only in the name, I hadnt been a very good person for many years). He is actually the one that told me to give the message a try because I was all set to just start attending the Baptist church again.
My MIL simply pointed out scripture when I asked questions, and she would give me the Adventist teaching on many of the subjects I was inquiring about, in short form. She never pushed or overloaded me with information. Now that I look back on it, she approached me in the ONLY way she could have because anything more wouldve just pushed me away.
When I first heard the Adventist message from her, in its simplest form, I thought that sounds way too simple and why would millions and billions of other people believe otherwise if its the truth?
I did read the Bible though. I decided to do it even if I thought Id find some fault in it. I read it, quite honestly, with the determination to prove my MIL wrong. I read the Bible cover-to-cover one Spring and it changed my life. I dont think I wouldve read the Bible but my husband and I were going through a VERY scary experience and I knew Id never make it without some help from God. I came back to God, but I still wasnt completely sure what the Adventist message was entirely.
A couple of years ago my MIL loaned me some tapes of a Prophecy Seminar given by Leo Schreven and Ill admit right now that I probably wouldnt have listened to them but I had a really long commute to work at the time and I was sick of listening to the same old music. There were days that I hated to have my long drive end because I knew I was hearing the truth, and a message that absolutely upheld Biblical truth, even though it was difficult for me to swallow sometimes. Its my firm belief, now, that you have to read the Bible before you can seek out a church that actually teaches what it says. That is what *I* encourage people to do anyway.
The Sabbath was an easy thing for me to believe (I was one of those rare people that just thought that Sunday was the seventh day....lol), but I really did not want to believe the state of the dead. Once I studied that, and it really sunk in, I knew they were teaching the truth.
What really, really hammered everything home for me was when a teacher in the Adventist church pointed out HOW you study the Bible.....precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, there a little. I had read the Bible but for some reason that hadnt really clicked with me.