Why I LEFT Adventism | SDA of 39 Years: Teresa Beem | For the Record: Ep. 2

Dear sister thank you for being here I appreciate you giving us some of your time let’s start before we get too far into it what is your name and how long were you a Seventh Day Adventist I’m Teresa beam and I was a Seventh Day Adventist for 39 years I was born on the same day as Martin Luther and interestingly I found that out when I was a little girl and that affected me through my throughout my entire life I studied him I took classes uh uh University classes on him I read everything that he wrote for some weird reason I thought there was a cosmic

Reason for me being born in the same day that well not the date but the day he was born and um that God had placed me in proximity to this great reformer and uh anyway so my life has been unusual and for you to understand me this fact that my life has been so unusual has has been for foremost in my worldview but I’m going to lay out why my life has been unusual and I’m just going to hit some of the points neither of my grandfathers graduated from high school but they both compensated by being overly educated they both read voraciously and my grandfather on my

Dad’s side knew everything about history my grandfather on my mother’s side knew everything about business and history you know church history and he could also read Latin from the time he was like 13 he could read Latin so I grew up in a family that highly prized self-education whether or not you went to school didn’t matter I mean they didn’t care if you they still just wanted you like my grandfather said that he uh on my mother’s side said he like read three or four books a week and my dad continuously had this Mantra of uh growing up that he told

Kids he said think think think think for yourself and don’t be spoonfed so we were all very independent thinkers as you can imagine okay so my mother’s father was an extremely successful

Businessman Ling Tempco vot one of the fastest growing major corporations in the United States is a highly Diversified Enterprise composed of 11 publicly owned companies with more than 125,000 employees competing in more than 30 diverse markets with more than 15,000 products and services to serve the increasing demands of millions better faster more economically and more conveniently a company that will never be dependent upon on any one market any one product or any one technology to sustain its progress and growth to freeze LTV into any history is

Like trying to stop time it simply cannot be done for it is a constantly changing entity different today from the company it was yesterday but you can pick a moment stop the clock and say this is the LTV we speak of LTV as it is today and I grew up actually seeing articles about him in the New York Times and his face was on the cover of business week and Time Magazine he rebuilt a house in Dallas to resemble Versailles Palace and that was just a few minutes from our house it had a gate house that announced your arrival to the main house it was just so cool

When we’d arve at the the guy at the gate house would say oh the fries are here and then the gate would slowly open it was just so cool they had a pool next to a pool house or it was really like a Junior Olympic pool so it was this huge pool the pool house was larger than most people’s homes and this house was about 25 times bigger than my other grandfather’s home which was quite the opposite um the fries which that’s my ma name my name is Teresa Bean that’s my married name and Fry was my maid name so my other grandparents had an 800t house in grap Vine and it was an

Very old you know just frame house I mean it was it was a sweet little house but it was very small and it they’re they just had a very different lifestyle so my childhood was spent going between uh spending summers at the elite and lavish Brook Hollow Country Club in while my father played golf or my mother played tennis or you know just it was just really cool at night we’ go to my grandfather’s mansion and he had a butler and a staff of all these people that work for him that would meet your every need and then the other side was sitting outside that

Little old house on a hot Texas summer day watching my other grandfather cutting open a watermelon that he had grown in his garden and then we get to go drve drive into the little town of Great Vine and buy snow cones so it was very simple they had no money and I loved them both and respected them both equally and I didn’t have any idea that this wasn’t a normal childhood but this experience gave me a 50 yard line seat to see what money was capable of doing and I came to realize that the very rich and the very poor had w more in common than the

Middle class they both understood that many doesn’t make you happy so that was unusual and then I was the oldest girl of six kids and we all sang together like an Adventist bont trap family we would go around we’d sing in church we’d sing at parties we’d sing at weddings and and um so we performed a lot and uh it was a lot of fun but again that’s very unusual but one thing I forgot to tell you um I grew up because I told you about my Granda parents houses but um my family lived in a large estate called Blossom Manor and it was designed in the 1920s by this British architect sir

Alfred bossom and it was in the Lakewood area of Dallas Texas now what’s really interesting about this house which I don’t have time today to talk much about but what’s interesting is my parents bought it for next to nothing because they were there were rumors um that it was haunted and we believe that’s quite possible because of a lot of stories I have about that house that a lot of Adventists I don’t know if you would know Penny Estus wheeler she’s a cousin of ours and she worked at Junior guide or I think it was Junior guide for years and she would

Write about our experiences in this haunted house for my first year in School my grandfathers the rich grandparents really wanted me to go to nice schools like super high Elite schools and so I went for the first year in in um first grade but my Mom finally realized no no no she wants me to grow up Adventist so they took me and put me in Dallas um Dallas Junior Academy and that was in on a Central Expressway in Dallas but understand I was a very happy child I didn’t care where I was I was just I was a very very happy child another weird note is Vernon

Howell H you might remember him AKA David KES themselves you know between what’s right is right it’s Christ and what’s wrong is wrong that’s the devil and I have to admit doing right in my life and doing wrong in my life but this was David Kish when we first met him in an exclusive interview back in 1987 at the time he was known as Vernon how and he was involved in a deadly dispute for control of the branch Divan remember the big Inferno Inferno and Waco and uh anyway he was there and went to the same elementary school that I did for at least a couple years and David Kesh

Worked with my dad for a while building you know one of our houses um when we eventually would move to King Texas but in one of those houses that we lived in that he built a veronal came in and he would put up sheetrock and one time he grabbed me and made me sit down and he sketched out on the sheetrock all his prophecies and the timeline and somewhere if people knew you know that underneath their in that house underneath the uh I don’t know if they put what they’ve done but there’s a big uh David Kesh prophecy chart right there so that was kind of interesting thing

That happened to me and I married my high school sweetheart who I met at Valley Grandy Academy in West leco Texas that was an SDA boarding school on the border of Texas and Mexico and I’ve got a Bachelor of Arts degree in vocal performance and in

English both sides of my parents were Adventists on their maternal side my mother’s father was a Catholic but very nominally and my dad’s father was an atheist now my grandmothers were not devout administ they were not strict and they came from a background of adventism so the generational on we uh had already settled into their generation my mother’s mother did cycle through times when she was more strict so we saw what strict looked like when it you know what it could like looked like Anyway in adventism but after a few years she’d relaxed so our family was

From Dallas and we grew up there surrounded by wonderful generous and fairly normal people the Dallas first 7day Adventist Church had a lot of progressive Adventists and they were not very strict I grew up around the Gilly Family you know Jim Gilly some people will know know his recognize his name carry it away he said well we’ll carry you away and um so I’ve uh tried to get through here and in my normal 42 minutes maybe shorten it down a little bit if I get would love to bring a lot of word to you about 3abn let me simply bring greetings from Danny and all the he would later

Become president of 3abn which is the Three Angels Broadcasting Network and that was a great great church I sometimes even wonder if we had if we’d stayed in Dallas and stayed at that church if I would have ever left adventism so as wonderful as it was I’m I’m thankful we left for that one reason so growing up sabbaths were the reason for the week we were allowed sweets on Sabbath and that often started with donuts so we loved Sabbath then we’d go out to eat with our friends mostly Mexican food because we lived in Texas and that’s what everybody ate and I can

Tell you very honestly we had roast preacher for every Sabbath dinner our friends would get together and my dad and his friends would argue every single thing that the preacher said and discuss adventism and every Sabbath we’d have guest over most sabbaths we we’d have um lots of people in our house and we’d play sabathy games you know that kind of thing until the sun went down and then we’d go swim in our pool and my family was very involved in the church and church school and while my family didn’t really push Ellen White um we push the wholesome values and fun

Christianity I mean my mother uh oh my word there was no way on Earth we would ever like she this woman was a she was like a one of like that dog that can smell things out and goe a hound dog and I mean she could smell when anybody was telling a lie and she was not going to let it go so she was very very into making sure we lived righteously but um but they really didn’t push Ellen White now she loved Ellen White but but she didn’t really push them we didn’t really ever read the morning watch or anything like that but she did send us to AVST churches I mean at church and school in

Our house there were groups like The Aya that was the Adventist Youth Association that that a lot of times they would sing and they’d come to into town you know to sing at the church and so I grew up in the 1970s and 80s now when the Dallas Church seemed to be the Hub of a lot of stuff that went around as far as adventism because they had a lot of people that were high up or at least family that had high up in the GC and stuff so we had this great big breath of fresh air come through um the Dallas First Central Church and it was a breath of fresh air of righteousness by

Faith and my dad had been um teaching us righteousness by faith in our house since we were little so uh it was really wonderful to see this going through because we immediately was like oh yeah that’s familiar that’s what my dad’s always taught us at my church there were some traditional Adventists who tried to hold the line but I was there to see it it was really interesting I remember the Dallas church that had uh Whispers of Scandal when uh the avenus public Scandal hadn’t quite got gotten out to other groups and uh this caused my mother to do a lot of grieving because she was a

Big fan of EG white and my dad had attended some Seminary classes at Andrews because he was going to be being SDA pastor but he gave up on it you know he said that when he was at Andrew’s University that the teachers told him that we made way too much of a big deal about Ellen White that she was she was actually a nice good Christian woman who the 7 Adventist Church made made into a bigger deal and made her into this infallible Prophet they said she was not and you know back offs pastors about making her you know this inval infallible prophet and so during my

Elementary and Academy years uh I remember just very vaguely I remember them talking about the 1919 avidus conference um where Ellen White there was something ruling there about Ellen White you know it was just newly discovered supposedly the minutes of those meetings and S swau uh self Western avenus University president Don McAdams uh found some stuff about Ellen White and her plagiarism and that was leaked and people were talking about it and I remember desz for the atonement on Calvary is not just one part of Christian doctrine it’s the life blood

That runs through all biblical theology it includes and presupposes every other truth it includes all the things we need to know all truth is wrapped up in the Cross of Christ all other knowledge except that of the cross’s chaff and later on the bite lie they say about you in Time Magazine Ford’s challenge was mild compared with a bombshell dropped by Walter T ray of Patterson California a veteran Pastor Ray in the course of PhD research stumbled across some long buried writings by forgotten divines that matched huge swatches of prophet white’s books and it goes on to say Ry

Was the first to document the vast scale of borrowing from 75 assorted books on history Doctrine and the Bible and last April Rey issued his full findings in a book titled the white lie you’re holding the white lie in your hand and there was just a lot of things going on that I was I was around that time but um the Dallas church was so just solidly Christian well and I I you know I know as Christ let me put this way I remember them loving the Lord I don’t remember anyone talking about anything that was like the the adventism of the day nothing like my husband uh

Was and he was you know raised in Orthodox home my dad’s extended family were mostly in Kean Texas and that’s an advent ghetto about an hour south of Dallas and I remember sitting in the Parlor of my aunt’s house and listening to the debates on Sabbath afternoon and it was thrilling the house was filled with kids you all the the cousins and um uncles and and aunts and uh they’d all go out after dinner uh to play except for me to the irritation of the women Folk I didn’t want anything to do with the kitchen I didn’t want to make the food or clean up the food but I begged

To sit in with the men from the time I was probably six listening to them debate Ellen White and adventism and it was so exciting because I mean they get heated and it kind of honed my skills of looking for who was

Right so I really wasn’t proud or ashamed of being an Adventist you know that a lot of people like my husband was kind of ashamed of being an Adventist but but you know what I felt I just felt different and what Adventist had done to me is it just made me scared of people see I had assumed all Sunday Keepers knew that they were doing wrong and had a rebellious heart and if I was around them I would be deceived and I’m sure that a lot of Adventists relate to that statement so our SDA Elementary School teacher when I was I think around fifth grade read one of those last days

Books I remember being terrified of persecution for keeping the Sabbath in the last days that book really got to me I hadn’t really heard much about it before but boy they you know reading that book um I would pray at night that I remain strong even under this duration one time I remember I was so worried about the police making me watch as they gruesomely tortured and assassinated my little brothers and sisters that I remember running into my mother and I fell faint near her bed but she you know it was interesting because I think she just thought I was being dramatic or

Something I don’t think she took me seriously because she pulled me up next to her and just started laughing when I told her what I was upset over and she just said um honey none of those things are ever going to happen and so the wonderful thing was I just believed her and that was it I never after that accepted the SDA last day prophecies again now I had prophecy around me all the time though because I had an uncle his name is David fry for 50 years he was a professional eschatologist who had been raised 7 Adventist and so we discussed prophecy all the time we loved

Our Uncle David we’d go out to his house and hours and hours he would tell us all about prophecy but he didn’t believe exactly like Adventist do and so we were kind of open to many different scenarios and I can tell you during those years I know this is not normal in the Adventist Church but I’m going to tell you anyway I loved Christ from the moment I could think I mean I really did think that Sabbath made Christ happy and so that’s what I did it was very simple for me Jesus loved me and came to save me and died on the cross for me and he wanted me to be good and

I’m talking I’m 5 years old here four or 5 years old and so I was good at age 12 I got a bunch of money for my birthday and my birthday is near Christmas so I got a bunch of money for my for Christmas and for my birthday and so I went out and bought a bunch of Bibles and I committed myself to reading the Bible through every year now that was my promise was to myself not to God because I was so uh it would have put me under too much pressure I thought I would probably go to hell if I didn’t keep a promise I made to God so I just made a promise to myself that I did try to keep

It and as I got older I realized you know that commitment was too hard because you’d start skimming if you got once you got towards maybe October and you only had three more months to to go I would just start skimming just you know at night as quickly as I could because I had had been very faithful you know for a few months maybe during the year trying to keep up in the Bible so anyway so what I did was at night I would keep up the routine of going through the Bible once but I want I knew that wasn’t probably such a good idea so when I was in college I started a a morning reading

Where I would go really carefully Through the Bible so I actually had two different readings of the Bible um so that I could really understand it at that same time at 12 I wanted to be baptized and you know in adventism you they really want you to wait till you’re 12 to be baptized and so I had waited and waited and I remember I was almost 13 and I went in to I had gone into my principal and signed up to to be baptized several times and they wouldn’t let me at this one time the principal and the youth pastor of my church and there was a man who came in

That I didn’t know who he was but they came they brought me into the principal’s office and they told me they wanted me to get baptized that Sabbath I just was like okay I have been asking for years why in the world this sabbath do you want me to and they said we want you to get uh baptized at this bowling alley and I told them but you know I I would really like to get baptized at my church I I I you know I love my church I want to get baptized there and they said no no no no the Lord is calling you to be baptized at this bowling alley and they told me that they were

Having a Daniel and Revelation seminar in this bowling alley in Dallas and I was very disappointed but I did comply because I was I just tried to be good girl but what I later realized as they had used my baptism to boost their evangelization number I had to walk through a bowling alley which Ellen White had said we weren’t supposed to go bowling the true Christian will not desire to enter any place of amusement or engage in any diversion upon which he cannot ask the blessing of God he will not be found at the theater the billiard hall or the bowling Saloon and there was

A very busy very loud arcade that you had to go to before you reach this little room where they had been doing the meetings and they had set up this little baptismal tub that was oh my word it was awful so I was baptized by some stranger which made me feel a little bit guilty because I had agreed to participate in what I considered the fraud to boost their success for these seminars I would later attend a 7 avenus boarding school and then later our family moved to Keem Texas so so that all the fry kids could ATT attend Southwestern aenis University where most

Of them graduated a lot of kids feel like a lot of former avenus kids feel like the church robbed them um of doing something they felt like they really wanted to do and so I thought back on that so you know what what really did I feel robbed me because I was brought out Seventh Adventist you know some dream and my parents were pretty liberal and so the only thing I could think of is that I wanted to be uh in musical theater I wanted to be like a barber Sten an Adventist Barber Sten or Judy Garland but every single time I would go to a tryy out or I would you know talk

About with somebody oh no you have to work on Friday night or Saturday you know or during Sabbath hours and so so I just I was just oh my word and so I I would get parts and then say well here’s the problem I can’t work these days and they would just give the part to somebody else my grandmother on my mother’s side the the one that was you know more wealthy wanted me to date jnf Kennedy Jr and they had known the kennedies and they did a lot of work together and my grandfather was always at the White House and so she was going to set up a date for me to meet him but

My mother was terrified of me not not marrying an Adventist so I never got to meet the kennedies all my grandmother’s exciting plans of taking me to the Oscars and meeting all the Hollywood big stars was always crushed because my mom didn’t want to push me um being an actress and you know and the truth is I I knew in my heart that I never I could I wanted to be an Adventist and I wanted to marry an Adventist and I probably should be a pastor’s wife and have lots of children and so I didn’t really get too upset by that I knew there was a lot of evil in Hollywood

That was much worse than Breaking the Sabbath but I just wanted to bring up just you know a lot of people ask you you know what did you give up so that was

It you know I had a very long process of leaving I wish I could say that it was was just this one thing but it wasn’t it was a series of shocks that adventism the Orthodox the true adventism was not like I had been raised um when our family packed up and moved to Kean Texas so that my brother could still live at home and attend Southwestern abist University um leaving the big city of Dallas you know and that adventism was very hard Keen Texas was almost 100% Adventist the 1893 General Conference opened an industrial School in keing Texas and all Adventists were there and

It was all Adventist even the post office closed on the Sabbath and uh that that made news they were so excited our post office is closed on Sabbath and to keep Sabbath hours and everybody went to the same church there was only one Church in Kean and we had lots of family there and uh those were that was the place again we had had all those Long Afternoon Sabbath Deb debates you know and I had grown up going to the Texas camp meeting that was held there and uh I often thought that the Adventist kids were way Wilder in Keen than in their big city

Counterpart at least when Dallas Adventist teenagers took drugs or had sex they knew it was wrong Keen Adventist kids glorified in their rebelliousness and and I’m telling you I’d hit some very Wicked behavior that i’ might I would come home and tell my mother and she just wouldn’t believe it it was shocking to everybody and Dallas nobody would believe King but actually King was that bad you know um to me the Dallas Adventist had seemed like true Christians they were kind and unselfish um the fact that they had had one foot in adventism and the other in

The Dallas culture you know where they had to live and work and adventism was was the tiny majority I’m sorry ad adventism was the tiny minority I mean such a handful of Adventists in Dallas at that time um that it kind of ke kept them in reality and um it kept adventism in Dallas from becoming radical and cult-like in Keen no matter how nice the parents were the kids were raised um to very incredibly unhealthy um when they would ever talk about anything spiritual there they would talk about Ellen White and not Christ and Keen I found very little spiritual Joy there everyone

Wanted to be appear perfect and go to church on Saturday but they most of the people my age had utterly rebelled against everything and everyone was sleeping together and having abortions and nobody was feeling guilty as long as someone was keeping the Sabbath and for you know that was the mortal sin of adventism you know everything else was a little tiny Veno sin Arthur and I got married while we were attending University there and because he ended up getting a job there after we got married we got stuck there for the next 20 years and see my husband came from a good

Super Orthodox Adventist background and which I’d never been around um he had never gone to out to eat on the Sabbath and uh I was with him during our senior year in academy when he ate his first meat a hamburger and I’m just letting you all know my in-laws think that I was the I was the bad one I influenced him to do bad things but I didn’t I didn’t push him and um he’d never eaten it before and he threw it right at the party so anyway you know one time we went to a wholesome Disney movie and I mean it was one of the really old old wholesome ones and uh after the movie

When we left the theater he admitted he’d never been in a theater before and so I kind of hated that I made him break his family Rules but in the end he was much wilder than I was you know after getting married Arthur quit going to church he had never actually liked adventism and the minute he got away from his parents it was over after we had kids I begged him to come to church with us as a family but uh I never rely ever won that argument I have was very involved you know in the avenus church just like I’d been raised and I think it’s very weird

Because I was a liberal Seventh Adventist and I stayed within and I stayed within the church even though I didn’t believe most of what Adventist taught I mean I was a joyful and committed saboaria and that’s what kept me going where Arthur had been raised with the super Orthodoxy you know reading EG white daily but he didn’t have any Joy accompanying that their families kept the rules and he told me this one time I thought it was was very I think it’s very typical that somehow his family Incorporated shame even when they kept the rules just in case they dared question them even in

Their thoughts so he had he was raised just terrified to question adventism and I think that that’s a good thing for Gen Christians in general to remember you know it’s a good lesson to learn Joy keeps people in the church the minute you start Bec this uh you know dwell so much on legalism that you you lose sight of Christ and our family were happy as Adventists now I knew there were a lot of things wrong things that I questioned but my relationship with Christ was so strong I just looked the other way those Pharisee Adventists who kept all the

Rules were the problem I thought so when I moved to Keen everything changed I was now smack dab in the middle of Orthodoxy and and I absolutely absolutely hated watching my children grow up in the culture it was like spiritually stagnant lukewarm bath water that nobody ever cleans out everyone there seemed utterly oblivious everybody said okay Keen is a very good safe place to live it it was very low in crime and but you know there was just a lack of Christ let’s just be honest you know it was like living in the mix of two movies I don’t know if you would recognize the

Movie but it’s the Trump show and ight shamon’s uh the village Keen was sweetly creepy I’m going to tell you some stuff that you know you may want your small children to leave but this really happened this was an SDA Pastor that I loved we trusted and he I took classes from him he was incredibly popular and he advised young married students to watch porn and so it was an oppressive spiritual Oblivion that you were constantly having to figure out how to stay above if you were really a Christian now there was really nothing different between the Seventh Day

Adventist in Dallas and the Seventh Day Adventist in Keen but how they as far as being people you know what I mean they were the same people but I could see what Orthodox adventism did to people the more One Believes things that are not true the more dysfunctional one becomes and when you’re in a bubble that fortifies the errors and nobody challenges it ever like in Keen um this falsehood sinks into like like a corporate normaly so this really isn’t about people nothing really about people but this is what happens when people believe falsehood for Generations no one ends up

Having the courage to stand up and question um or shout once they do realize that they shout that the emperor has no clothes and so Keen was my first step of waking up to what adventism really was now I had various since under positions in Sabbath school and church and and SDA schools and I wrote for S SDA periodicals but what’s coming next was the biggest shock of my

Life I had found out that some SDA girls had abortions because they they would even tell me their Bible teacher told them to uh when they found out they were pregnant to have an abortion and even one instance a girl told me that her Bible teacher drove her to have a secret abortion I heard a friend um a friend story who told me that she got pregnant by her Seminary boyfriend you know her her who was a Seminary Student and her boyfriend uh tried to convince her to have an abortion which she did and then afterwards she was suicidal I had another friend who got pregnant before

She was wed and her SDA OBGYN suggested abortion and said well just don’t don’t let your life be interrupted you need to finish your school and you don’t want to you know get the an unway pregnancy to stop you from your your dreams well I could not believe it and so uh I start to look into what the AVST Church taught about abortion and so in the 1980s I ended up founding the first SDA uh Church organization that was prif because the church the 7eventh Day Adventist Church was pro-choice and I could not believe it it was the very first pro-life organization in SDA

History you know for the church and I was President for 15 years and I I was going to change the church I was going to I was going to change change them and and and show them don’t be killing your babies so the house of Cs for me came down in uh 1989 when I wasn’t on a SE avenus human life committee at luminda University that was deliberating the SDA view that was going to come before the 1992 executive committee to to decide on what the Adventist official a view on abortion was going to be but let me tell you what I heard so revulsed me that I

Knew that I’d either have to leave adventism and be that Martin Luther that I knew I was or fight from within and I decided I was going to fight from within and I stayed in for the next 12 years with my conscience always grinding in the back how could I be a part of an organization that sanctioned killing unborn babies even if all the Adventist I spoke to were against it they were against it in theory they said well I’m never going to have an abortion but they didn’t want to get involved the SDA belief that under the nature of man man does not become a living Soul until he takes his

First breath and see that provided the theological reason for the church to be pro-choice now most people hadn’t read that I don’t think it was something that most aist said oh well according to the nature of man we are we can be have abortions up until birth or up until the first breath because a child is not a living Soul until that point no they I don’t but I do think that there was something in the worldview of adventism that Pro that that just provided a way of a woman um accepting the abortion it really does affect how avenus view human life and so from 1989

To 2001 yeah the year I officially sent in our resignation letter it was very awful those years were just terrible I and I could write an entire book about that because it was then that I saw the zone out the maybe that’s not a good word the zone out of the zombie is uh Adventist consciences I saw that they would rather a million unborn babies a year be butchered then experience any persecution themselves because if they voted against abortion that would jettison themselves into the last day persecution and I think most people would understand that

But but the whole thing was if you can’t have the Ten Commandments um oh that you know you can’t have you can’t legislate morality is what I kep say hearing over and over for year after year you can’t legislate morality oh and so that was kind of the first of the last draws moments for me anyway so I sat down and I wrote my resignation but then I was talked out of it by a pastor or family member because I I took it to several of them okay so abortion was the first situation and then the next one was the 2000 the year 2000 General Conference session where

They voted that AVST the AVST church was the sole Remnant I was very careful I read every single word that of what they brought to the floor and they voted almost unanimously the Seventh Day Adventist Church is the sole Remnant which made me fall to the ground arms straight out I know this going to sound dramatic but I was by myself I wasn’t trying to be drama queen but I literally outstretched my hands and sobbed with my face on the floor and I asked God forgiveness for our church you know I had read scripture I knew the heart of Christ was for Unity not

Elitism and fear but the final final moment was after speaking to Doug Bachelor this is how the devil destroys a lot of people he buries the truth in he buries the diamond in broken glass he takes the truth and he surrounds it with a lot of things that pretend to be the truth and they aren’t and so when people to war were the remnant of her seed which keep the Commandments of God the remnant church will keep God’s Commandments and what was the other thing they have the testimony of Jesus what is the testimony of Jesus that moment no one could stop me from leaving

The church Doug had come to the King Church for a series of meetings for the college and I had run into him accidentally before he spoke one night and I asked him join to join our avenus for life and uh he was very nice he sympathized with our movement and I quote what he said to me that night do you want me to get fired now he was in a hurry trying to get to the meeting and I understood that and he was being flippant and I’m not I’m not upset of Doug at all but I did know at that moment my my fight to get abortion to be seen as a sin in ISM was completely over

If Doug Bachelor was scared of the people above him then that was just it I went home just sick just heart sick that night I got up the next morning and rewrote my resignation letter I don’t know for the fifth time maybe now I presented to my husband the next morning and he needed some time to think about it because he himself was considering leaving too but for a different reason so finally it was on February uary of 2001 I turned my resignation into Ron haverson Jr’s office at the King Church and on it the first reason was for leaving was abortion the second reason

Was their view on salvation by works which I’d always known was wrong I was raised on righteousness by faith and my parents were still in the church so I had seen no conflict in that position but since um a family member told me that abortion was not a good reason to leave I said okay fine if I need more I can find some reasons So I listened listed all the reasons um that I felt were wrong with adventism none of them to me was a a reason to leave except for abortion because and this is the reason I knew that I thought at that time that the church was changing at least my own

Children uh were being taught more biblically within adventism than I had been and they were not being raised with the Adventist traditions of men but what I did know everything was changing but abortion wasn’t going to change and that I had personally seen so when I walked away uh I knew life would never be the same again I was flooded with sorrow like there was a death um a death in my family or something like that but deep down I have to tell you the honest truth I knew God was proud of me and was with me and that I had done the right thing and it was

Interesting because my parents didn’t say much actually nobody said very much to me the church no one you know it was just like dead silence radio silence um forever it would they never no one ever tried to stop us I think that nobody said at that moment anything to us because they thought it was a phase that I was going through and that I’d come

Back so after leaving adventism this is going to sound weird but I start I just questioned everything I was like okay I have been so lied to everything I believed that was was true is not true and didn’t blame my parents or my grandparents or I didn’t blame anybody because I knew they had just believed what they had been told so I was in a quest to figure out re reality and so I said okay I’m there’s no no no no uh boundaries for me so I decided I’m going to look into atheism and not thought I wanted to be an atheist and I believed in God but I

Thought I’m not going to be scared anymore I’m done being scared and so I read every single book out there of dawkings and or Dawkins and H stepen Hawking and all the arguments against God and I have to tell you I thought they were all stupid I have to be honest I’ve never heard an atheistic argument that could that made any sense to me about when you would look at the Blue Sky and love the love of family and singing and beauty and especially reproduction symmetry language and even time itself these things could not have just happened all arguments against God just

Seem silly to me even when I accepted that Genesis may not have been literal and evolution could it needs to be considered I even realized that time itself was a human construct and what may look like eons to us may have been an instant God and I just I was like okay I’m so glad I’m I’m not going to be afraid I’m just not now um we continue to keep Sabbath even after leaving adventism for a while because even though I didn’t believe it was necessary for salvation it was the thing I loved about adventism and I had no reason to stop you know I knew reading the Bible it wasn’t wrong

To to keep Sabbath the Bible said you could follow your cons conscience on that uh topic you know as well as eating meat we’re not supposed to be judging others and so uh about after an A year of of a I would say mourning my entire life up until that time of not knowing truth there’s something that happened God just opened the window well I wouldn’t even say open the window I mean I he just let me out of the dark house and joy flooded me and I decided I wanted to embrace all the people from every different all the different denominations I wanted to meet and greet

With love everyone I had been told to be scared of that was going to deceive me because I knew they weren’t going to they had loved Jesus all along it had been me with my born and bred uh Pride and Prejudice I had been wrong the Advent had been wrong there were these sweet little Christian women like Aunt be and their little pearl earrings who went to happy Sabbath on Sunday and um I was going to go out there and meet them and love them as part of this restoration that I needed in in inside of me and I would show Jesus that I loved him by my love for

His other children and I can tell you my heart exploded with this new world that Christ had opened up to me and so after a couple of years of being thoroughly convinced it wasn’t going to be a sin to go to church on Sunday I had done my you know hundreds hour of hours of research into can I do this from the Bible I decided to do it now the day that I finally went to church on Sunday Arthur was working and my kids were all teenagers and they had um they were busy so I decided to take the plunge I was going to do by myself the first time because I just wanted to I just wanted

To check it out make sure make sure I was right so anyway uh so my husband’s a travel nurse and at that time we were in Newburn North Car Carolina and we had always passed this beautiful historic Christ Episcopal Church H and that’s the one I decided to go to to break this curse of the law that had been over over me uh for my entire life and um so I got into my car and started driving and I kept saying to myself over and over and racing my and and calming down my racing heart you know it’s okay not to be 7eventh advs it’s okay not to be s davist I’m not hurting God I’m not

Hurting my soul and that that it’s okay not to be some davist had been a mantra that I had had G through my brain for for years and so I amused myself because I gazed into the rear rear the the rear view mirror and was looking for that little 666 to be emblazoned on my forehead and I parked the car and walked into the church and I have to be completely honest I thought I had entered Heaven the music was Sublime and I could write a book another book on the next few years as I visited every church that I could all the different Baptists and lutherans and

Pentecostals and Presbyterians each time my husband took a new contract and we would move um we I would get out my map a local map and um I would pinpoint all the different denominations that I wanted to go to and quite literally and I’m not kidding you about this I really did this I would go because my kids now are in college and I would go to four to five uh Services a week Wednesday night in the Baptist um you know Saturday evening because sometimes they have a Saturday evening at at the Pentecostal or Baptist and then Sunday at you know the Lutheran or

Whatever and I would go and I got to know people I I I spent so many hours talking to pastors and asking them questions anywhere from Seattle to Houston to North Virginia I mean all over America I would sit down and dis discuss with all these beautiful wonderful Christians what they believed and I can tell you it was such a high I loved it and I never ever wanted to officially join another church I wanted to worship with a full body of Christ in any way they wanted to worship whether it was clapping and jumping in the church or sitting still whether the

Church was a high or low church I just thought it was all amazing and during this time I began writing um a book called it’s okay not to be a s the Adventist and I’ve never publicly told this story so I want to really quickly tell it because so many people misunderstand but I had a friend of mine when I was a 7th Adventist he he never went to church but he always wanted me to take his son to church with my kids when I went which I was glad to do but one time I asked him I said you know I don’t want to say his name but I said hey friend why why don’t you just go to

Church and he said I can’t he said I did some terrible things in the Vietnam War and I’m not proud of them and I know know that Ellen White I I believe Ellen White is a true propheus and so therefore I’m going to hell I’m never going to make it to Heaven I was shown that God’s people who are his peculiar treasure cannot engage in this perplexing War for it is opposed to every principle of their faith in the army they cannot obey the truth and at the same time obey the requirements of their offices there would be a continual viol a of conscience and he said I have to

Accept that but he said I don’t want my son to not get to experience heaven and I just couldn’t believe it and that wasn’t the only time I talked him I talk him several times after that and just come on the lord loves you you don’t have to um and I knew at that moment I had to write this book and I started writing in my brain but I never ever expected uh this book and the book’s purpose was if you have left 7day adventism if you aren’t going if you if you whatever you’ve done uh in your past don’t allow the S Adventist Church to stand in the way of you becoming a

Christian and loving the Lord keep walking and I was a happy of BST at that point and it really was um during those years that I started then actually writing it after ID left and that was one of the most surprising things when I was finished with the book that I had written most of it after I had left adventism and that was not what I expected it wasn’t until 2008 that we decided to joined the Catholic church and that was when my family and friends finally realized that our exit from adventism was permanent and that same year was when I wrote it’s okay not to be some of the

Adventist but that was when things got very difficult with my family and friends this was it was one thing to leave quietly but then to leave and become Catholic and then to leave and write a book publicly uh then oh my it was very

Difficult um my family had been too long brainwashed against Catholicism so even though they were liberal aists um and they never brought us up with any of this belief of last day beliefs it started to show up one of my relatives in fact several of them um came to me and said that well they had just had all this misunderstanding based on what Ellen White you know told us about the the Catholic Church um and so even though they were liberals they had read read um the great controversy and they came to me and said that Catholics were conceited and that Catholics degrade the

Intellectual powers to serve their carnal desires that that’s actually a quote from um the the uh great controversy while romanism is based upon deception it is not a coarse and clumsy imposture the religious service of the romish church is a most impressive ceremonial its gorgeous display and solemn rights Fascinate the senses of the people and silence the voice of reason and of conscience so my Adventist and family did not even realize that that time that they were breaking one of the Ten Commandments Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy

Neighbor so my liberal EG white disregarding Adventists had fallen prey to the SDA anti-catholicism propaganda and they had never even realized it until I became Catholic some of them um actually still believe that in the last days um they’re going to be the object of Christian hatred and they’re going to be persecuted for keeping the Sabbath and and even mared uh we were at that time given a list of things we couldn’t do around the family like Crossing ourselves or doing or sounding Catholic in any way and I had one family member that just kept

Reminding me that you know she said now Teresa everybody mistrusts the Catholic not just Adventists and I agree with that Protestants have pointed out corruption and theology that they disagree with and I get that that’s not what I’m talking about Adventist anti-catholicism is of a very different quality and uh yeah quality and quantity because they add that Catholicism is going to murder them and that’s a future crime that Catholics have no way of re rebutting and that’s very unfair it would be like Catholics publicizing the fact that a saint had a vision that one day

Adventist churches would be filled with cannibals and would kill and eat Catholic children and uh let’s just say that that a whole bunch of avist began to believe it and join the Catholic Church see that’s outrageous and unjust slander that does not leave the lips of anyone who is Christian Aven a slander against Catholic is demonic because it defaces Brothers and Sisters in Christ in the future in a way they can’t defend

Themselves if I had just one thing I would like to say to them N I was asked to say this I wouldn’t have done this unless miles had asked me to do it but I’m going to to just pour my heart out see Christian Scholars my sweet AVST loved ones out there Christian Scholars of all denominations have really actually sincerely studied the Sabbath question for centuries and centuries and they have sincerely come to the conclusion that the Sabbath was fulfilled in Christ or some believe that Sunday is the new Sabbath these people are just as devoted to Christ as you are they study the

Bible with as much education as much prayer as much calling on the Holy Spirit they are doing their best to understand scriptures and it’s very unfair and very unchristian to call them deceived or rebellious simply because they interpret scripture differently than you do some things that Adventist teach about this is demonstrably false such as Ellen y wrote in the great controversy that Catholics hate the Bible Sabbath well I can tell you I have now been a Catholic since 2008 and many many times do Catholics go and worship publicly at Mass on the

Sabbath when you do when you run the numbers there are way more than 10 times as many Catholics in the United states in the pews on Sabbath which they don’t call Sabbath they they call Sunday I mean a Saturday but um they don’t call Sunday the Sabbath either but they are in church on the seventh day in the PE worshiping God so go out Adventists Don’t Be Afraid go find the truth out there have faith enough in Christ that you’re going to seek his kingdom Above All Else and you’ve got to have faith that he’s going to protect you so he who began a good work in you will be

Faithful to complete it now this is what I told myself after leaving adventism the truth can withstand a nuclear blast have the courage and the faith to look outside that box of adventism and you’re going to find that but it’s not the scary deceptive place that you were told God is good God loves you and don’t be afraid and that’s it