The Sabbath Shoes, Part 2

I was so confused! I didn’t understand. Why won’t she take the shoes today?

Editor’s Note: Last week we read about Becky, a young lady who ordered a new pair of shoes. Every day she checked to see if her shoes had arrived, but they had not. They finally arrived on Friday evening, but now Becky wouldn’t take them until Saturday night.

I was so confused! I didn’t understand. Why won’t she take the shoes today? I wondered. Suddenly, I had to know the answer. I ran out of the store and caught up to Becky.

“Please, just tell me why you wouldn’t take the shoes today,” I asked her. “I know you wanted them for tomorrow, and now that they have come in, you won’t take them. It doesn’t make any sense.”

She waited for a minute and then said, “I’m a Christian.” “I’m a Christian, too,” I told her. “But why won’t you take your shoes today?” Now I was really confused. “If you are a Christian,” she said with a smile, “then you know that the Ten Commandments tell us to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. That means we shouldn’t buy or sell or work on God’s Sabbath day.” “But it’s only Friday,” I said with conviction. “The Sabbath isn’t until Sunday.” “No,” she smiled again. “The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week, not the first day. Check your calendar.”I invited her to come with me back to the shoe store where I had a calendar on my desk. We walked back together, and I pointed to the calendar. “See?” I said. But then I looked at my calendar again—Saturday was the seventh day, not Sunday. How could I have not seen this for 25 years? I muttered to myself. Then I told her, “But today is still Friday, not Saturday. You can still get your shoes.”

An Invitation to Understand

“I’ll still wait to buy the shoes until tomorrow night,” she said. “It is a little more complicated than that, but the Bible explains it quite well. Would you be interested in learning about it? The church event that I will play for tomorrow is actually a Revelation Seminar presented by a visiting pastor. He’ll be talking about Bible prophecy, and about the Sabbath and Sunday. If you’re not afraid to learn the truth from the Bible, I’d like for you to come.”

“No, I’m not afraid,” I said bravely. “As a matter of fact, the book of Revelation is totally confusing, and I’ve never heard anyone even attempt to explain all the symbols and beasts and kingdoms and things. Yes, I think I will go.”

So the next morning I rode my motorcycle to Becky’s house and followed her family van to church. As I was riding along, I started to worry.

“What are you doing following strangers to a religious meeting in a church you’ve never even heard of?” I asked myself. “This could be a boring waste of time, or maybe it could be something even worse!”

I kept thinking about these things for several minutes. Then I thought, “I could take the next highway exit and forget this foolishness.

I asked God to help me decide, and all of a sudden I felt very peaceful. I decided to attend the seminar. The truth that I learned there shocked me, and I spent the next seven years trying to show that the things I had learned weren’t true.

How could so many Sunday-keeping people be so wrong? I asked myself. But the more I studied, the more I realized I could not argue against the truths I had learned in the Adventist church. Finally I could not deny the truth any longer. I stopped fighting and became an Adventist.

I’m so happy that this young lady refused to do something she knew wasn’t right—to break the Sabbath and buy the shoes she had wanted so much. Her faith led me to truths in the Bible that I had never heard of. I am so thankful that I learned about the true Sabbath.

Dwight McKeever lives with his family on the island of Guam.