My childhood environment, although intensely religious, was one in which the teaching of doctrine was all but taboo. It was believed that each person ought to work such things out to his own satisfaction, and that agreement in theology was unimportant. I was trained, however, always to think of God as a loving Father, of Jesus as the one who had most fully revealed the love of God to men, and of the importance of a life of sacrificial service to my fellow men. The Bible, though the greatest religious book, was still considered the product of human minds, and subject to all the limitations of sincere religious people. Neither its history nor its predictions were in any sense divinely inspired.
Nevertheless, like the blind man whom Jesus healed, I can say that I believed in Him even though I did not know who He was. Anything I was sure Jesus had taught was always to me like an axiom of geometry—too obvious to require proof. I was ready to learn that Jesus was truly the Son of God, and wanted only to have sure reasons for my faith. It seemed impossible that I should ever think of the Bible as essentially different from any other human book. Yet I was ready, even eager, to be shown that I was wrong.
I became a Universalist, and was ordained into the ministry of that denomination chiefly because this was one church in which the ministers professed openly what they actually believed. They had carefully discarded the "sheep's clothing" of traditional Protestant Christianity by which many ministers of other communions seek to veil their radicalism. The blood of Christ was erased from the hymnal, and trinitarian hymns were revised to teach only the unity of God.
In the fall of 1942 I resigned from my pastorate in the Universalist Church, determined to study more deeply in some conservative seminary into the great facts of Christian faith. This led to my acceptance of a supply pastorate in a Methodist church, together with attendance at Drew Theological Seminary, one of the great Methodist schools. In this way I came to believe in the divinity of Jesus, in salvation through His blood, and in a final judgment. The basis of my belief, however, was not the Scriptures so much as reason, history, and the needs of human nature. Under Prof. Edwin Lewis, of Drew, I was taught to reverence the Scriptures because they contained the great facts of Christian faith, rather than to accept the doctrines because of finding them in the Bible. I was encouraged to believe that whereas John, in his gospel, presents most fully the faith once delivered to the saints, I should not rely on that Gospel for an accurate presentation of New Testament history. The Bible itself was still considered the same human, fallible, self-contradicting collection of writings.
Considering this background, I continue to be amazed and grateful at the means the Lord employed to bring me into His remnant church. The background for this radical change includes, first of all, a growing question in my mind as to the soundness of what I had been taught in the Methodist seminary about the Scriptures. Why did Jesus speak so often of the Old Testament, in all its parts, as pointing toward Him in type and prophecy, if its authors were not divinely guided in what they wrote?
There were other factors too. I was more convinced of the need for upholding high standards of membership in the church. During the war years I became even more deeply disturbed than before over the need for finding a way out of the terrible "tailspin" into which human events had plunged. I was still seeking, though less consciously, a firmer foundation for my faith.
And so it was that in the first week of 1945 I met a former Seventh-day Adventist who had come as a visitor to our interdenominational ministers' meeting. This chance acquaintance ripened into friendship, and Mrs. Felt and I were soon enjoying long and fascinating Bible studies with this independent missionary. His evident sincerity and devotion to the gospel as he understood it, together with his long and deep acquaintance with the Scriptures, enabled him to lead us far along the road to acceptance of God's prophetic message for our time. It was through him that I made my first acquaintance with Seventh-day Adventists.
By the time of our Methodist Annual Conference in April of that year I was ready to resign my pastorate. The reason, as announced from the pulpit, was to be free to make a thorough study into the question of the Bible itself, its inspiration and authority. I could not finally accept or teach even one of the distinctive Seventh-day Adventist doctrines until this fundamental problem was solved. Several months later we moved to Takoma Park so that I could study at the S.D.A. Theological Seminary part time while working at the Library of Congress. Lack of time for study under these circumstances limited me to one hour in class each day. This hour was spent with Lynn H. Wood, in his interesting course on archaeology and the Bible. It went far to establish my faith in Bible history, and whetted my appetite for more. Six months of full-time study at the Seminary followed.
In June, 1946, I was buried with Christ in baptism, and became a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. My wife followed in December. I have since been privileged to assist in two large evangelistic efforts.
This story leaves out far more than it tells. The human agents the Lord has employed to help us find our way into His truth and work have won our everlasting gratitude. It is my earnest prayer that now I shall not fail the Lord as He seeks to use me to bring many more of His people out of Babylon to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus Christ.
