By Ubaldo Gonzalez
I wasn’t Seventh-day Adventist as of May 2022. My family and I were attending the Baptist Church for more than 10 years. I considered our church to have good doctrine and scholars who knew the Scriptures, but, as in all places, there was wheat and tares. But I liked the fellowship with those who served the Lord from the heart, abiding by all that they knew.
My experience with church life has been extensive and varied. I gave my life to Jesus in 1992 at the Foursquare Church. I was a young man full of problems, but I found the solution to my struggles in Jesus Christ. Although I found deliverance from many of my issues, I knew I needed more of Christ and continued my search. I later united with Victory Word Outreach, the Assemblies of God, and the Baptist Church.
The journey has taken 30 years of searching and experiencing doctrines and people. I cannot say that everything I experienced was bad. In fact, I received one of the great blessings of my life when I met my wife in the church and watched my daughters grow up there.
But, one day, God revealed Himself to me in a personal way and that revelation made a profound change in my life. What made me change?
On one Friday afternoon, while watching an online video, I heard the presenter say, “The children of God follow His commandments and keep Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, as a day of rest, as is it written in Scripture in the Ten Commandments.” This was a new revelation to me as I had been a Sunday-keeping Christian from the time I first asked Christ into my heart. But I knew in my heart that I wanted to follow God and the example of Christ, and this revelation resonated with me.
I did not know where a Sabbath-keeping church was, so I went to Google to look for churches that keep the Sabbath holy. The research showed me a church just three minutes away from my house—the Mountain View Seventh-day Adventist Church in Longmont, Colorado.
For me, this was a very surprising thing as I had not heard of that church before.
On another Friday afternoon, I happened to be walking past the church and met some wonderful people there. Alphonso Magallanes, whom I later learned was one of the church elders, and his family were there cleaning the church and putting up a banner announcing a Bible Prophecy Seminar with Daniel Miranda. The seminar was to start soon, and they invited me to come to the meetings.
I was impressed to go to those meetings. There, I heard the most powerful presentations of Bible truth, and my life was changed as I received Christ as a “Commandment Keeping Savior.” He set me free from other doubts and gave me answers to questions that had been in my mind. After the Bible Prophecy Seminar on April 23, 2022, I was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church by Pastor Tim Jones.
My life is an example that Christ has been, and will continue to be, here for everyone. It was His love that brought me to understand His Word and His love that keeps me continuing in His Word. It is not because I deserved anything, it is because He loves me that I can boldly proclaim that I am a follower of Jesus Christ. I found a Savior who loves me. He brought me to Himself as the way, the truth, and the life.
This has been the most wonderful year of my whole life.
—Ubaldo Gonzalez is a member of the Mountain View Seventh-day Adventist Church in Longmont, Colorado. Photo supplied.
