U.S. Biker Embraces Sabbath

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

The invitation startled Richard Smith as he stopped at a senior center to collect meals to deliver on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle to retirees in the U.S. state of West Virginia.

Image © Pacific Press

“Would you like to go to the Seventh-day Adventist church with me?” asked Ruth, who also worked at the senior center.

“I don’t know”, Richard said. “I don’t know anything about the Adventist Church”.

Richard, 72, had visited various Sunday churches during two marriages and two jobs. But he had never been baptized. He didn’t know which church to join, and he often thought, “If God wakes me up one day and says go to a different church, I want to be able to pack up and move”.

So, when Ruth invited him to church, he replied, “Let’s try my churches first”.

He asked Ruth, a divorced nurse six years his junior, for her opinion after visiting a first church together on Sunday.

“If I just wanted breakfast, it was good”, Ruth said about the church’s doughnuts and fruit juice.

In reply to his query after the second church, Ruth noted that the pastor had spent much more time on the announcements than the sermon.

Ruth’s observations gave Richard a new perspective, and he finally agreed to go with her to an Adventist church. Soon he began to ply its pastor, Bill Hunt, with questions about the Bible, and the answers amazed him.

“It was like I had this veil over my head”, Richard said. “I could see through it, but everything was kind of hazy. Bill yanked that veil off my head and I said, ‘Wow, things are as clear as a bell!’”

Richard also shared a common interest with the pastor; they both are bikers.

Then the pastor invited Richard to attend an evangelistic series—one of 35 evangelistic series in West Virginia that were funded by a 2015 Thirteenth Sabbath Offering. Richard attended with Ruth and was baptized. In all, eight people were baptized after the 2016 meetings at the Huntington church.

Today, Richard, pictured left, is 72 and sharing his love for Jesus with anyone who will listen.

“The Lord takes such good care of me, and I think, ‘Why?’” he said. “I know He talks care of everybody, but why? It’s like I am sitting down at the table, looking at my plate, and everything on it I like to eat. What more can I ask for?”

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

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Further Thought:

Read Ellen G. White, “A Higher Experience”, pages 503-516, in The Ministry of Healing; “Duty to the Unfortunate”; and “Man’s Duty to His Fellow Men”, pages 511-526, in Testimonies for the Church, vol. 3; “Doing for Christ”, pages 24-37, in Testimonies for the Church, vol. 2.

“Search heaven and earth, and there is no truth revealed more powerful than that which is made manifest in works of mercy to those who need our sympathy and aid.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

This is the truth as it is in Jesus. When those who profess the name of Christ shall practice the principles of the golden rule, the same power will attend the gospel as in apostolic times”. – Ellen G. White, Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, p. 137.

“Supreme love for God and unselfish love for one another—this is the best gift that our heavenly Father can bestow. This love is not an impulse, but a divine principle, a permanent power. The unconsecrated heart cannot originate or produce it. Only in the heart where Jesus reigns is it found … This love, cherished in the soul, sweetens the life and sheds a refining influence on all around”. – Ellen G. White, The Acts of the Apostles, p. 551.

Discussion Questions:

Summary: 

Becoming a follower of Jesus will change our lives in many ways, including producing in us a passion to join in with God’s active concern for the poor and downtrodden. Never an easy task and rarely popular, this will change our priorities and motivate us to take active steps to heal the hurt in the world around us.

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