Inside Story: One Single Book
I was a troublemaker.
Image © Krieg Barrie from GoodSalt.com
I disobeyed my parents and teachers and questioned every authority. My parents weren’t religious, but they had strict standards. But I refused to follow their rules.
One day as my mother traveled by bus to another city, a man stood up and talked about a book he was selling. The book was The Great Controversy. He said that this book had changed thousands of lives. Mother was desperate and sacrificed to buy that book for me.
I love reading, and when Mother gave me the book, I went to my room and started reading. The book’s ideas were new to me, and some things were hard to understand. But I kept reading. I looked up references to the Bible and realized that this book taught straight from the Bible.
The book mentioned the Sabbath. I’d never heard of the Sabbath before, but I knew it must be important. I asked a boy at school who worshipped on Sabbath to let me go to church with him. He took me to a charismatic church that worshipped on Sabbath. I joined that church. My parents might have objected, but they saw changes in my life, so they said nothing.
I kept reading the Bible and asking lots of questions. The church elders didn’t answer some of my questions, and one elder accused me of being a Seventh-day Adventist. I didn’t know about Adventists, but started looking for one.
I met an Adventist man and peppered him with questions. He answered them all from the Bible. We had some long and heated discussions. I wasn’t interested in a church; I just wanted to understand the Bible.
I finished high school and took a job teaching elementary school in a small village to save money for college. I discovered that the school was Adventist! I began attending the Adventist church in the village, and soon all doubt was gone. I wanted to be baptized.
I shudder when I think of where I would be if my mother hadn’t given me that book. God used that book to turn my life around. Before I read the book, I was a nuisance to my family. After I discovered the truth in this book, I became so excited about my faith that I became a different kind of “nuisance.” It’s my mission to tell my family—and everyone—about God’s great plan of salvation.
The Adventist Church has a huge publishing work around the world. Our mission offerings help support the publishing work so that people such as I can experience God’s love. Thank you for your offerings. Thank God for His salvation!
Oliver Eshun lives in Ghana, West Africa.
Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission.
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Thanks for sharing your testimony dear brother! If, as Seventh Day Adventists, we had heeded God's Word and Jesus' testimonies, we would have experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, spread the Word in all the world and Jesus would have come back to get us! I am encouraged by the way God took you out of darkness into His marvelous light! Press on! Maranatha!
This week I have learned that God is there to forgive us. With His big and best memories God chooses to forgive us each morning like how the book of Lamentations puts it: His mercies are fresh and new each morning.
What a wonderful story, brother. Thank you! What if the man had not stood up and talked about the Great Controversy? You might not have had another chance to hear it. And you would not have been teaching children and your family the truth. What a chain reaction of goodness came from it. It re-affirms my belief that the Great Controversy teaches the truth as it is in Jesus and the Bible. And teaches me to not be afraid to speak for The Lord with a holy boldness.