BY MARVIN MOORE
ACK AND MARY KING WERE QUITE satisfied with the Protestant church they attended in Lafayette, Indiana, back in the late 1970s. They enjoyed their friendship with other members, and they were "involved." He was chair of the church's administrative board and taught a Sunday school class. She helped in the cradle roll division. Their children-Jeff, Janice, and Julie-attended the same church. They were a happy family, content in their religious faith and practice.
Then a friend-Dick Pfeifle, an Adventist construction worker who had helped several family members with repairs on their homes-started sending them Signs of the Times. Daughter Janice was especially fascinated with the magazine. She read every issue, and she was particularly impressed with the way the articles helped her understand the Bible.
In 1978 the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona-and Signs of the Times followed them. Janice kept reading.
A Deeper Understanding
A few years later Janice started attending the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Since she was a spiritual person, she attended church services regularly. For a week or two she attended services of the Protestant denomination the family had been a part of back in Indiana, but something about it didn't satisfy her. She decided to try out the church that sponsored Signs of the Times. The following Sabbath found her in the Desert Valley Seventh-day Adventist Church in Tucson.
Janice was profoundly impressed with the Bible-based, nonpolitical messages she heard, and when Pastors Augie Winner and Paul Gibson offered to study the Bible with her, she accepted. A few months later, in 1983, she attended a Revelation Seminar conducted by Pastor Carl Johnston, and at the conclusion of the seminar she was baptized.
Jack and Mary-Janice's parents-were a bit perplexed about her new spiritual commitment, but they drove to Tucson to support her by attending her baptism. Mary in particular was quite impressed with the service, especially the pastor's Bible-based sermon. The family had continued attending their Protestant church in Phoenix, but based on her positive experience in Tucson, Mary decided to try out an Adventist church. Somewhat apprehensively she attended the Paradise Valley church in Phoenix one Sabbath morning. Again she was profoundly impressed with the strong biblical orientation she found.
"After three Sabbaths I was hooked," Mary says. "I began finding answers to questions that had bothered me all my life." She began taking Bible studies from Pastor Larry Moore, and three years later, in 1986, she joined Janice in the waters of baptism. Now two family members had joined God's remnant church.
The Ripple Effect
A few years after the family moved to Arizona, son Jeff returned to Indiana to attend law school at Indiana University at Bloomington. Upon completion of his degree, he returned with his wife, Joyce, to Phoenix, where he started practicing law. Soon after that David Sharpe, the pastor of the Paradise Valley church that Mary had joined, conducted a Revelation Seminar, and Mary encouraged Jeff and Joyce to attend.
Jeff was impressed that people could actually understand Revelation. Shortly after the conclusion of the seminar, in 1988, Jeff was baptized and joined the Paradise Valley church. His wife, Joyce, who had been baptized by immersion in her former Protestant church, joined by profession of faith.
Still there were Dad (Jack) and daughter Julie. Jack was strongly opposed to his family members' choice of a church and felt no need to change himself. For many years he remained active in his own church.
"I preached the Bible to him for quite some time," Mary says. "But I began to realize that I was actually antagonizing him, so I quit." About the only thing she said to him about her faith after that was to report on the topic of the pastor's sermon when she got home from church each week, quote a Bible verse from the sermon, and share the pastor's basic theme.
Yet this little bit paid off. In 1994 Ben George, the pastor of the Glendale church in Phoenix, conducted a Revelation Seminar at Paradise Valley church, and this time Jack attended regularly. By the conclusion of the series he realized that he was an Adventist at heart, and he decided to be baptized. "I've learned more about the Bible in the past eight years than I ever did in the previous 55 years," Jack says.
Quick Facts About Signs of the Times
Signs of the Times was established by James White in 1874.
Adventists at the Yountville, California, camp meeting in October 1874 contributed gold and pledges totaling $19,414 to establish a publishing house in Oakland to publish Signs.
A building constructed in Oakland began operations in 1875.
In 1904 Pacific Press and Signs of the Times relocated to Mountain View, California.
Signs of the Times was a weekly publication until December 1956. In January 1957 it became a monthly.
Signs has had 10 editors. The first was James White. The editor with the longest tenure was Arthur Maxwell, from 1937 to 1970. The current editor is Marvin Moore.
During the 1980s Signs of the Times developed a news box program that puts free copies of the magazine in airports, shopping malls, and street corners.
Signs is primarily a nurturing magazine, so subscriptions need to be maintained over a long period of time.
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Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
By this time four family members had become a part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Still there was Julie, the younger daughter. She started driving 14 miles each Sabbath to attend church with the family, and one day she observed someone being baptized. She turned to her mother and said, "I want to be baptized."
Julie lived near Camelback, so her mother said to her one day, "Honey, why don't you attend the Camelback Adventist Church? It's so much closer to your home!" Julie decided to give the Camelback church a try, and liked it. She took Bible studies from the pastor's wife, and in 2000 she too was baptized.
More than 25 years have passed since the Kings began receiving Signs of the Times from a caring friend in Indiana. Today every one of them is a baptized Seventh-day Adventist, and their children and grandchildren are growing up in the Kings' faith. All because one man cared enough to send Signs of the Times to his friends, and Adventists along the way welcomed the family into their fellowship and nourished them with the truths of God's Word.
Not surprisingly, Jack and Mary King now keep a Signs of the Times list of their own-people who mean a lot to them, friends and loved ones who are receiving their own gift subscription to Signs of the Times. At last count there were 21 people on the list, nine of them prisoners and former inmates in a prison ministry that Mary has become involved with over the past few years.
That's the difference that a little caring and a little sharing can make in people's lives.
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Marvin Moore is editor of Signs of the Times, published by the Pacific Press Publishing Association, in Nampa, Idaho.
