August 2020

The Seventh-day Adventist Church to which I now belong, had one unique feature which differentiated from other Christian churches and denominations – we kept the seventh day Sabbath and worshipped on Saturdays unlike other Christians who attended church on Sundays. What is the Sabbath, and why is it so important to Seventh-day Adventistm will form the core of my narration below.

The history of the Sabbath goes back to the very beginning of time when our Earth was created by God. The very first book of the Bible, called Genesis, tells the story of Creation: how God created everything, including our first parents Adam and Eve in six days; and rested on the seventh day, blessed the day and called it the Sabbath. The Sabbath is also called Shabbat by the Jews; and it forms the fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments which were given to Moses on Mount Sinai after the Israelites had left Egypt. But the Sabbath was practiced right from the time of Adam and Eve, and the seventh day was kept as the holy Sabbath, where no secular work was undertaken and all rested from their daily labour. The Sabbath day began on Friday evening at sunset and ended at sunset on Saturday. And this is what we Seventh-day Adventists continue to observe and practice to this very day.

I will now explain why the majority of the Christians go to church on Sundays to worship and how this change came about historically. Christianity spread across the then known World and it received royal patronage from Emperor Constantine. To appease his subjects, many of whom were Sun worshippers and many also Christians, he devised a brilliant political solution when he declared that Sunday would be holiday and also a day of worship. With this one proclamation he was able to please the Sun worshippers. To the Christians he explained that Christ had risen on a Sunday and hence it was not necessary to observe the Jewish Sabbath! This practice continues till today, and the majority of the Christians both Protestants and Catholics go to Church on Sundays and observe it as a holy day. The original Saturday Sabbath therefore has been lost in the mists, of time and today only the Jews and the Seventh-day Adventists observe it strictly.

So when I became a Seventh-day Adventist in 1971, I knew that it would be very daunting to keep the Sabbath holy – in India the Colleges have exams on Saturdays and it is not so easy to get a Saturday off from work! With all this in mind I totally had faith in God who I was sure would find a way out for me and that is exactly what happened as you will see from the narrative as we take this story forward!

My nervous breakdown and the slow recovery gave me time to introspect and look at life in a very different context. As I mentioned earlier, I started attending church again and spent a great deal of time in studying the Bible and fellowshipping with the Members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church which was just across the colony where we lived in Bombay.

The Seventh-day Adventist Family in India is very cosmopolitan and there were people from various parts of India as well as from various religious backgrounds; who had converted to Seventh-day Adventism which is the Protestant part of Christianity. I came to know of their conversion experiences and this greatly encouraged and motivated me – amongst them were people who came from various backgrounds including Marwaris, Hindu Punjabis as well as Sikhs, Muslims and Parsis! This diversity attracted me and slowly I became comfortable mingling with these Seventh-day Adventist Christians.

Conversion and Christianity had negative connotations for me earlier and I felt that there was a social stigma associated with such conversions. And of course, it is also true that conversions were at times not because of genuine convictions but had ulterior motives like marriage situations and getting jobs. All this had created stereotypes in Indian Society and therefore this was a major mental block for me to overcome.

Seventh-day Adventists observe the Saturday Sabbath and therefore church attendance is on Saturdays unlike other Christians including Catholics who go to church on Sundays. Seventh-day Adventists believe in observing the Saturday Sabbath strictly like the Jews and this was from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset when we abstain from any secular activity; including going to college and attending exams on Saturdays. I realized that this would pose a serious problem for me both educationally and from a career point of view, if I decided to embrace Seventh-day Adventism.

So there I was, at the crossroads of my life and I had to make the decision – to be a Christian or not to be a Christian! My inner voice told me that if I truly believed that God was in charge of my life, then I had nothing to fear, and to go ahead and make my decision. So in the latter half of 1971 when I was just turning 20 years old, I decided to officially become a Christian. This was my rebirth when I was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Bombay!