HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2013 / FALL / FAITH STORY CUFF AND MILLER
Dondra and Winona are sisters-in-law who have co-written their faith stories because their journeys out of Adventism and into trusting the Lord Jesus were journeys they took together with their families.
Dondra’s story
I was raised as a third generation Adventist. We moved frequently around the western states because of my father’s work, and I went to several different Adventist elementary schools, many of which were near San Francisco. My memories of those schools are mostly positive.
Our moving, however, made it hard for me to enjoy high school. In 1949 I enrolled for my freshman year at the newly-opened San Pasqual Academy, but we moved again—this time to Albuquerque, New Mexico, just in time for me to attend Sandoval Academy for my sophomore year. That year I learned what it meant to be a minority; I was one of only six non-Hispanic students. We moved back to California in time for me to spend my junior year at San Diego Academy, and then we moved to the little desert town of Twenty Nine Palms, California. I spent my senior year in a public high school—my first venture outside the Adventist educational cocoon.
That was the year I began questioning my very stringent faith; it was not at all compatible with the new and interesting things that I wanted to do in school that year. I talked to my mother about my dilemma, and she said, “You are old enough to decide; it’s a choice of faith that only you can make”. It didn’t take long for me to decide what my choice would be; I deeply believed that the teachings of E.G. White were not relevant to my time.
I stopped going to church and stayed away for several years. I felt guilty, of course. I didn’t feel like an Adventist, exactly, but I didn’t feel like a non-Adventist, either. I was a quasi-Adventist, and all I knew was the worldview Adventism had taught me.
It was in Twenty Nine Palms that I met and married my first husband, and we soon had two little girls. We thought it was important to raise our daughters with religious values, so we started taking the girls to church, but I was not too enthused about returning to the Adventist church.
After just seven short years of marriage, however, my husband was killed in a private airplane crash. The happy life we had planned was gone forever. I was devastated—but I was also grateful for the friends and family who helped me through the next difficult months.
I thought I should return to an Adventist environment—go back to my roots—so I sold everything and moved to La Sierra, California. I lived there alone for over a year, and then I married again. We lived in the La Sierra area for several years before moving to Auburn, California—a move that brought about change that I could not have foreseen!
As my husband and I were preparing to move to Auburn, California, my sister-in-law Winona was helping me pack. Before she said goodbye, she said, “I know you believe in the Adventist doctrines, but I’m wondering: do you have the assurance of your salvation? When you get settled would you do me a favor? Please read 1 John and Romans 3, and tell me what you think.”
After getting settled in Auburn, I began to read the New Testament. Inevitably, I compared the things I had always been taught with what I was finding in my Bible. Slowly but surely my reading opened to me the miracle of freedom in Christ. I was becoming very secure in what I was learning, and then one day I had a huge moment of clarity. I compared the investigative judgment to the Bible, and I realized the Adventist teachings on this subject were not at all compatible with the Scriptures.
I knew that the time had come for me to act on what I believed. I wanted to find a non-denominational church with strong biblical teaching. Truth, after all, is not an organization. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” and I wanted to find a church that taught about Jesus directly from His word.
I have learned to search Scripture and to listen to God’s language of love and freedom. The reality of the gospel had been like a beautifully wrapped gift sitting on my table, a gift which I was never curious enough to open. Then one day, I untied the bow and looked inside, and to my amazement, there was the freedom and life I had always needed. Through the years that gift has become very special to me.
Eventually I shared my discovery of the gospel and my reactions to Adventism with my mother, and she responded, “If you are leaving the Adventist church, so am I, because I feel so discouraged with my spiritual life.” Not all of my family, however, were that accommodating with our choices of leaving “the church”. In fact, their responses varied from disappointment to overt hostility.
Since my journey out of Adventism into freedom in Christ has been a family journey, my daughters and my husband’s daughters also share their reactions to leaving Adventism. Even though they have “landed” in somewhat different places, they all demonstrate that Adventism robbed them of truth and reality.
The daughters’ stories
Debi says, “Throughout my education in Adventist schools, I felt there was too much emphasis on the negative. When I was at Monterey Bay Academy, it seemed there were so many rules to keep and so little of the love of God shown. I felt there was no way I could ever measure up to that life. I tried it and for me it didn’t work, so I left it behind.”
“I, too, was educated in Adventist schools,” says Jennifer. “I conformed to the church’s rules, but I enjoyed school, my friends, and the school activities. I didn’t pay much attention to the theology, so I didn’t question my life. I have no bitterness toward the church in which I once believed. When I left as an adult and learned about God’s grace and His love, I was in awe at the freedom I felt. There is so much beyond Adventism. What a change in my life!”
Lori reflects, “I know that to this day I carry many beliefs from Adventism. As a girl, I loved the pastor at the La Sierra Church, and I went to the nearby school and then attended the academy. It wasn’t a conscious decision when I left the church; I was just tired of the rules. I do remember the overwhelming peer pressure I felt as a teenager. Later I learned that E. G. White was in error in some of her teachings. That was mind boggling, because churches don’t lie—do they? Do I believe in God today after leaving Adventism? Absolutely.”
Finally, Nicole shares, “I realized, after going through the Adventist educational system, that the church never allowed an understanding of grace and mercy and all that the cross of Jesus had accomplished for me. I view this lack as something very sad because of my wasted years, years of not knowing what I now know. In my first year of college I met the man I was to marry. In conversation one day, he asked if I was a Christian, and I honestly didn’t know what to say. My title was 'ex-Adventist’. He invited me to attend his church, and it changed my life. For the first time I began to understand that God was not a God that was about writing my sins in a book, but, He is a God of love.”
As I reflect on how Jesus has brought me to know Him, I don’t try to understand all the negatives that happened to me. If I couldn’t find joy and blessings in my life and have the assurance that there is a life beyond this one, I truly couldn’t keep on going.
I thank Him for using Winona to direct me to God’s message of assurance. He has given us life!
Winona’s story
I was raised in a Seventh-day Adventist home. I didn’t call myself a Christian, but rather an “Adventist”. In fact, I found the word “Christianity” a bit hard to define. I didn’t hear the true gospel of the Bible until I was 37 years old. I was taught to keep the Ten Commandments, especially the fourth, as a prerequisite for salvation.
The Sabbath restrictions were endless. Much of Friday was spent getting ready for the Sabbath; in fact, the preparation days were so intense they made me forget who it was I was worshiping. Sabbath, by contrast, was stifling. There was little we could do during the hours of the Sabbath—except we were told to take nature walks and think of God’s creation.
As I look back on my Adventist years, I see so many mixed messages. I can now see why I became so confused and felt hopeless in my faith. What is the required level of compliance? How can anyone know when they have been obedient enough? When it came down to deciding right or wrong, Mrs. White always had the final say. For someone not raised and educated in “the church”, the reality of Adventism would be terribly confusing. It would be very difficult for them to understand what we went through, trying desperately to comply with the rules of our faith, but in the end realizing that we had been deceived.
In recalling how we were immersed in the seemingly endless rules and doctrines that we were to apply to our lives, I now understand why we were frustrated. Adventism’s requirements were taught in our homes, our schools, and our churches. The rules were embedded in our minds. We were taught never to question our beliefs, only to accept them.
I was living in La Sierra, California, and going to school at La Sierra University. I met and married my husband there, and we had two boys. I was still in “the church”, and I took my boys to Sabbath school and tried to live the Adventist life.
My husband and I had been married six years when things began to fall apart. We were young and didn’t understand that through some effort, we could have kept our marriage intact for the sake of our boys. Neither of us thought then about having a God-centered marriage; Adventism did not show us how to do that.
Searching and alone
After our divorce, I went off the deep end. It was a fearful thing to me, but I realized I wasn’t bound for heaven; I would never be good enough to live as an Adventist. I was already breaking almost all the rules, and I thought, “I might as well enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” For a few years my life was on the wild side. I’ll just say I moved beyond the sins of drinking coffee and wearing make-up and jewelry!
A number of years later, when I was working in the Board of Realtors, I met an influential man who was associated with the board, and we became friends. Eventually we married, and we had two girls just a year apart.
Then, suddenly, my life changed in a single day. Our family was at our mountain home in Twin Peaks, California, when my husband had a massive coronary and died instantly. I was shocked, devastated, and terribly frightened. My boys were almost finished with high school, and my babies were one and two years old. That awful day I knew that I would be raising them alone.
My sons went into the military, and I was trying to cope with my new life. I really wanted to raise my girls differently than I had raised my boys. I thought it was important to find an acceptable church for my new, young family, but where should I begin?
I had a friend in very similar circumstances who was a Catholic, and she seemed content in her faith. I liked the idea of not having as many rules as Adventism had, but I had too many residual Adventist feelings about being a Catholic to seriously consider that religion. I talked to some of my family who were Christian Scientists. They shared with me some of their beliefs; for example, sin, sickness, and death will only exist if one gives them a place in one’s thoughts. They were telling that to the wrong person; I knew my husband had just died. Thinking away his death couldn’t fill my lonely heart or create a new reality for me.
My search continued. One of my close friends was a Mormon; I thought it might be worth studying with the Mormon missionaries. I was giving Mormonism some consideration, but soon I developed some misgivings about their teachings.
I finally came full circle. The Adventists were having local evangelistic meetings, and I knew my mother wanted me to attend them and, of course, come back to her church. Not knowing where else to look, I decided to go. Remarkably, the night I went the sermon was on the investigative judgment, a doctrine of many requirements with no biblical basis. This judgment is to be a time when one’s destiny is set and is forever thereafter unchangeable. I was so discouraged with the topic that I cried all the way home. That night I knew with great assurance that I had reached the end of Adventism in my life.
Assurance of salvation
By this time my son Larry had met the girl he would marry, and he had been going to church with her. He told me about this church—a Sunday church—that taught the assurance of salvation. Assurance of salvation? How presumptuous! Certainly none of the churches I had been exploring had ever mentioned such a remarkable thing! Nevertheless, I visited this new church. One day I found this verse in the Bible:
“And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life” (1Jn. 5:11-13).
This is my salvation passage, and I absolutely stand on it. In March, 1969, I totally accepted the gospel that I had learned in the new church, and I finally understood that I was truly a child of God.
Today I look back and remember when I shared 1 John 5:11-13 with Dondra. When the truth of that passage finally sank in for her, I was so happy that she, along with me, finally understood the truth about God’s grace. Now more than forty years later, being saved and knowing I am saved still almost seems new to me. It seems surprising that there are still so many people in denominations that learn just parts of Scripture, or they learn theologies based on a “prophet” and then build a religion around it. They are good and sincere people, but they miss the point of what Christ did for us. The Scriptures are full of texts that prove His work on our behalf. Those verses have always been there, and I am one of the many who overlooked them for half of my life. I praise God He revealed Himself to me. †
Copyright 2013 Life Assurance Ministries, Inc., Casa Grande, Arizona, USA. All rights reserved. Revised October 1, 2013. Contact email: proclamation@gmail.com
Dondra Christman Cuff and her husband Ernest live in Auburn, California, and are both retired. She attends the Gold Country Church in Auburn. Their daughters are: Debi Smith of Oceanside, California; Jennifer Smelser of Medford, Oregon; Lori Philips of Springfield, Missouri, and Nicole Baker of Mt. Shasta, California.
Winona Cuff Miller lives in the San Bernardino mountain community of Twin Peaks and attends Twin Peaks Community Church.
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VOLUME 14, ISSUE 3