Divorce for Religious Differences

 

[1]

1 Corinthians 7:13,16 New International Version

¹³ And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. ...  ¹⁶ How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? …

 

In the 1940s and 50s we spent many years at Helderberg College of Higher Education where Dad was teaching. I remember a Mrs. Bower attending the Helderberg SDA Church every Sabbath. My parents became good friends with her. She and her husband lived in the Strand, a seaside village about 6 miles (10 km) from the college. On the rare occasions when we would go to the beach, we often stopped in to see her. She served us tea while she and my parents had a good visit.

Mrs. Bower had a great desire to see an Adventist church in her town—the Strand. She conducted many bake sales and other money raising events to help raise the money to build that church. My parents admired her for her almost single-handed efforts towards her goal.

Mr. Bower was not a believer, but he tolerated his wife’s devotion to Adventism—to an extent. Of course, he also criticized her publicly for her Sabbath keeping and singleness of purpose to build the church.

Years went by, and in 1954 our family moved to Solusi in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where Dad converted a 10-grade school into a 4-year university. We heard, through the “Adventist grapevine," that in 1955 Mrs. Bower finally achieved her goal, and a church was built in the Strand. A few years later she passed away.

[2]

 

In 1960 I returned to Helderberg as a college student. On one Sabbath at Helderberg Church, they held a baptismal service. To my surprise, Mr. Bower was one of the people who was baptized. After his baptism he gave a tearful testimony. He spoke of his devoted wife and how much he had laughed at and hindered her zeal for the Lord and a church in the Strand. He only wished he could do those years over again. He also wished he had taken his stand for Christ while she was still alive to rejoice with him. Every time I read First Corinthians, Chapter 7, I am reminded of the Bowers.

 

Lord, thank You for encouraging us to keep the salvation of our families in mind throughout our lives

 

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[1] A picture of the Strand SDA Church from Google Maps

[2] A close-up of the church’s 50^th anniversary celebration, from the previous picture. This memoir comes strictly from my childhood memories and may have gotten some details wrong, for which I apologize.

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School Amongst the Hillbillies of Oklahoma

[1]

Psalm 48:14 Good News Translation

¹⁴     “This God is our God forever and ever;
    he will lead us for all time to come.”

 

Grampa lived with us during his last six years. For much of his life he successfully ran his own feather-duster factory in Buchanan, Michigan. Around the year 1900 he became a Seventh-day Adventist. Always insistent on doing everything with his might, he sat his son and daughter down and read E.G. White books to them by the hour.

Margaret, his wife, was blest with good practical wisdom. She took him to task: “Now Papa, you’re going to drive them away from Christ if you keep this up!” He heeded her warning, and the two kids grew up to be his strong supporters.

My mother came as a surprise to the family in 1907. The whole family doted over her and spoiled her. “I never received a spanking,” she would tell me while she wielded the wooden spoon on my backside. I needed it.

When Grampa turned 55, he decided that he had had enough of the entrepreneurial world. He sold his factory and packed the whole family out to the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in Oklahoma. Here, about ten miles outside of the tiny hamlet of Hulbert, the hillbilly children were growing up without any education. When he and Gramma started Ozark Mountain School, they had first graders as old as 21. He raised all of the funds necessary to operate this school from donations, mainly from businessmen in Chicago. Gramma ran the school, functioning as principal, teacher, disciplinarian, dean, and matron.

The sign on the gate read as follows:

Children who Can’t pay
      are welcome Here
Children who Can pay
      are welcome Elsewhere

When my mother, Esther, turned fourteen, they roped her into teaching in the school. In the mid-1920s she went off to college and earned a bachelor’s degree. In 1932 she married Fred Clarke, and in 1936 they arrived in Africa as Seventh-day Adventist missionaries. I was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1942.

Gramma passed away in early 1946, and Grampa joined us in South Africa in 1948. He was fiercely independent, and even at 78, he started selling Christian books door to door to support himself. At 85 years of age, he suffered a stroke that caused a steady decline in his health. He passed into a coma that lasted several days. Finally on May 7, 1954, he awoke from his coma. He was very lucid and chatted with a number of people in the house. When he specifically asked to see me, aged 12, they ushered me into his room and left me alone with him. He told me that he was dying and urged me to promise that I would see him in Heaven when all the righteous dead are raised to eternal life. Although I was not as yet a baptized Christian, I made a solemn promise that I would be there. Not many minutes later he passed to his rest.

“Grampa and Gramma” JW and Margaret Barnhurst

 

I have never forgotten that promise, and by the grace of Jesus Christ, I will indeed keep that promise. I trust that God, our God, will lead me for all time to come to that reunion.

 

Thank You, Lord, that I can trust You to lead me until the end.

 

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[1] https://documents.adventistarchives.org/ScholarlyJournals/AH/AH19911001-V14-02.pdf

Lose It To Save It

[1]

Luke 9:23-24 Good News Translation

²³ And he said to them all, “If you want to come with me, you must forget yourself, take up your cross every day, and follow me. ²⁴ For if you want to save your own life, you will lose it, but if you lose your life for my sake, you will save it.

 

Mom and Dad, Esther and Fred, had no plans to go to the “mission field.” They said, “There are enough heathen in the United States that we shouldn’t be needed overseas.” Dad’s Uncle I. H. Evans had been a missionary in China for many years. By the middle 1930s, he had returned to the U.S. and was the president of the North American Division of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Yet when the call came to my parents to go to China as missionaries, they accepted it. Before leaving they had to have medical check-ups, which they failed. They felt the Lord was indicating that He, too, wanted them to work in the U.S. Very shortly thereafter, however, they received a call to go to South Africa and were accepted on the same medical results with no problem.

In 1935, they sailed to Africa. They served in Africa for 40 years, and Mom died and is buried in the missionary graveyard at Solusi University in Zimbabwe. She died six weeks before their planned retirement back to the States. Dad came back unaccompanied, feeling very much alone. He visited a number of his single lady friends looking for another companion. Finally, he settled on Helen Merriam Diehm. He said to her, “Would you be willing to go to Africa with me for two years?”

“I take that as a marriage proposal!” She responded and agreed to go with him.

They settled at Lower Gwelo, a school in the center of Rhodesia that is now Lower Gweru Adventist High School, Zimbabwe. Dad became the treasurer of the school and Helen an English teacher. Helen was terrified. This was 1975 and the beginning of the civil war in that country. Reports came in daily of the deaths of people they knew. But they had agreed to go there for two years, and they stayed for two years. Other missionaries whom they knew were brutally murdered, but the Lord honored their commitment. At the end of two years, they returned to a comfortable retirement together in the U.S.

Thank You, Lord, for the promise that even if we lose our lives for Your sake, You will save them!

 

 

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[1] Fred and Helen in Africa, 1976