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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Wes Peppers

The Atheist Who Found God

Dear Father in heaven, we thank you so much for this great privilege Lord to be here together We thank you that we have the opportunity to just come together and fellowship and in worship And Lord, this is an opportunity to worship you to give our hearts more deeply to you We can sing we can pray we can hear a testimony and Lord We all have a testimony with you whether we've grown up in the church or not.

Lord, we all have a testimony that, of how you have intervened in our lives.

And I pray today as I share this story, that it may be an encouragement to someone.

It may be the means by which they realize that you're also reaching out to them.

So I pray, Father, that you would uplift Jesus today.

It's not my story, it's your story of your great and saving grace.

And I pray, Lord, that we'll see that here today.

I pray you help it to be clear, to be concise, to be specific, Lord, and to the point of what needs to be said.

We ask Your blessing, Your Holy Spirit to be here with us.

Well, there is a Bible verse I want to just share with you that really speaks to my life in a very special way.

I would like to ask you, how many of you were, as we all know the phrase, raised in the church?

That's often the case whenever I share this, I find a lot of people that were not, or mostly were raised in the church, but only a handful that were not.

But I want to share this with you, it's from Jeremiah chapter 9, And I believe that every verse in every Bible promise applies to every person.

But there are some verses that either we haven't experienced with or they kind of describe the course of our life that are kind of like our verses.

Not that they're not someone else's verses too, but that they just really speak to our situation and our circumstance and our history.

And the verse that really does that for me is Jeremiah chapter 9, verses 23 and 24.

And when I first read this verse I was like, wow, that's the course of my life right there in 2 verses from my time before I knew Christ until now.

Jeremiah 9, verse 23 and 24 and the Bible says this, thus says the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches." Now in my life I have, before I knew Christ, and even I'm ashamed to say at times in my life after knowing Christ, I gloried in those things.

My wisdom, so-called wisdom, my so-called might, and my so-called riches." But then verse 24 is the beautiful verse.

It says, 24 But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord exercising loving kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth, for in these I delight, says the Lord." And so I could say, safely say that verse 23 describes my life before Christ, verse 24 describes my life since I met Christ.

And these verses are very, very powerful.

So, as I mentioned just a minute ago, I did not grow up as a Seventh Day Adventist.

In fact, in Alabama there's not very many Seventh Day Adventists at all.

There's only about 12, 000 members I think in the whole state, you know in the whole Gulf States Conference So that's Alabama, Mississippi in the Panhandle, Florida So there's a very few amount of Adventist and in those 2 states And so my family grew up as I was growing up.

My family had never heard of a Seventh-day Adventist.

We'd have been like most people saying, a 7 what?

We don't have any idea what an Adventist is.

But about 20, now it's been about 20, a little over 20 years ago my uncle, my father's brother was an alcoholic, he was smoking pot, he was drag racing, He was doing all these crazy things and he thought all Christians were hypocrites as did my dad but he Received a flyer in the mail for an amazing facts Bible prophecy seminar and so it was in the just the next town over from where pretty much where we all live And so he went there and his life was changed.

And my dad, he kept trying to get my dad to go, but my dad wouldn't go.

And he said, all these people ever want is money.

Well, the night he happened to go, guess what they talked about?

And so it wasn't exactly the very best subject for him to go to, but he was the very first Seventh-day Adventist in my family.

My aunt, who had grown up Church of Christ, she didn't go to the first few nights of the meeting, but she was thrilled that she'd been praying for years that my uncle would find God, and he was kind of a pretty lawless person.

You know, he cursed so much he would make a sailor blush.

And so after he went a few days, you know, a week or so, he came home and telling her all the things he learned and how excited he was, and then he started telling her about the Sabbath.

And she was like, well, what in the world is he getting into here?

She said, I better go with him to make sure he doesn't become deceived.

And at the end of the meetings, they were both baptized in the Adventist church.

And then after that, my cousin joined the church, and then my other cousin joined the church, and then he left the church for several years just because he wanted to do his own thing, but he came back, and he's now the head elder of the church, our home church in Alabama, and then his wife was baptized, his wife's mother was baptized, his kids were baptized, And then about 2 years ago, my sister was baptized.

So now we have a whole lot of Adventists in our family.

But we're all first generation Adventists, amen?

I believe that any true seventh day Adventist should actually be a first generation Adventist.

Doesn't matter how many of your predecessors were Adventist even going back to NY, everybody ought to be a first generation Seventh-day Adventist.

So, that's kind of how my family was introduced to Adventism.

So, but growing up in elementary school and other things, You know, we didn't know God.

I had grandparents that went to church, and I would go some with them to church growing up.

Well, as you know, my last name is Peppers, And when I was in school, when I actually had more hair, my hair, brother, would you, Daniel, right?

And just like, just do this right here for us, right here, so everybody can see you.

My hair was about the color of his pants.

But I had fire red hair and my last name was Peppers.

So that didn't really go over well in elementary school, you understand.

And so I went to public school all my life.

My first experience with Adventist education was in a master, starting a master's degree at Andrews.

And so I never went to anything but public school, went to public elementary school, middle school, high school, and university, a state university I went to.

But the thing that always benefited me was that I was always the biggest kid in my class.

So if anybody messed with me too much, I'd catch them by the back of the neck in the back of the playground and take care of them.

So everybody liked me, because even though they kind of picked on me some, It didn't take long for them to learn, right?

So growing up, I did go, as I mentioned, to church.

I remember going to, my 1 grandparent, grandmother was, she used to go to the church of the Nazarene, And then my other grandparents were kind of like United Free Methodist or something and my 1 set of grandparents were actually in a gospel singing group and my uncle played the piano my Grandfather sang the bass sang bass and they had a couple of the people in the group of my grandmother Actually played the drums And so my grandmother was about this tall, Joanne Alice Goodman was her name, and she would be in the back behind that drum set going, you know, doing her thing.

And so I actually learned to play the drums, which is not probably the best thing to learn as an Adventist, right?

And some of you may disagree, and that's okay, but we all have our opinions on that.

But anyway, I wish, like, why didn't I watch my uncle play the piano, you know?

But anyway, so I used to travel some with them and that was really my only exposure to church as a young person.

So as I grew up I began to be very involved in sports and I played high school football and I really wanted to, my ultimate dream in life was to become a high school football coach and a history teacher, because I loved history.

I said, if I could do that, that would fulfill my 2 greatest loves in life, to be able to teach history and also be able to coach football.

So I played football in junior high school, then in high school I continued and I became really 1 of the best, well I was and still hold the record for the weightlifting, but I became 1 of the biggest and strongest football players in the state of Alabama, which you know, Alabama's pretty prime picking for football, right?

And so I was the first high school graduate to get a college football scholarship.

Now, let me just back up here just a little bit.

The Bible says, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, right?

Well, when I was in high school and even in college, I was a very, the top 10% of my class and I didn't have to do a lot of studying, I just kind of pay attention in class but I had high academics as well so I was probably going to get an academic scholarship also.

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The Atheist Who Found God

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