A Journey to Seventh-day Adventism

Evangelist Samuel Kumuthia, a pastor of the Heroes of Faith Apostolic church was invited to come to England from his homeland in Kenya and engage in public evangelism to advance the work of the church in this country. He wasn't to know where his journey would lead him.

In England, Pastor Samuel was based in Bristol where he worked and gained much success in his mission. One day, while travelling on a bus he struck up a conversation with a lady whom he sought to witness to. As the conversation progressed, this lady proceeded to share with him the truth about the necessity of observing the seventh-day Sabbath in obedience to the Ten Commandments. She invited him to a Bible study group which he accepted, proposing to “put them right.”

Instead, in the process Samuel became convinced of the new truths that he was discovering in the scriptures and proceeded to share it with his church. The leaders of his local church took exception to this and finally expelled him from their church. This expulsion was a big step for him, for it meant the loss of his five bedroom accommodation provided by the church and his £18,000 a year salary. As a result of this change of circumstances, Pastor Samuel went through some desperately hard times with no income and no place to stay. He was determined however to follow where God was leading him no matter the cost. He spoke to the Pastor of the local Adventist church that he was attending, who took him to the local shelter for homeless people and was told that he could attend the church’s day centre where he would be fed one day a week. Though feeling disappointed by the response of his pastor, he was determined not to be distracted from the new pathway that he was now travelling on.

One day feeling depressed by his deteriorating situation he sat down on a bench in the town centre contemplating which way to turn, when a man on his lunch break came and sat down beside him and struck up a conversation. When asked how he was Samuel, rather than giving the usual platitudes,  told the stranger his story, and expressed his desperate desire to get his daughter, who had joined him before he left the Pentecostal church, out of the unstable situation in which he was living, by sending her back home to Kenya.

The man a stranger, took him to a travel agent on the high street and inquired as to the costs of flights to Kenya and bought his daughter a ticket and gave her £100 pocket money to smooth her way. This totally unexpected gesture of generosity greatly strengthened his faith and encouraged him to continue on the path on which he had started.

Shortly after this life-changing gesture, one of the ladies in the Bible study group in the local church took him in and housed him for a whole year until he got back on his feet.

Sometime later, he struck up a relationship with the leadership and members of the Manchester South SDA church and shared his testimony with the congregation there. After four years of attending the SDA church, Pastor Samuel began asking “How can I become a member of the Seventh-day Adventist church?” This led to many in-depth Bible studies and interviews between him and the local pastoral team. The church board finally recommended to the church that Pastor Samuel Kimuthia be recommended to be received into membership by vote, which took place on the 13th March 2010. This decision has resulted in extensive debate among some sections of the local church membership as to the rightness or wrongness of the decision of the church. The view of local church elder Dr. Isaac Nyakunde best summarises the feelings of the church when he said; “We are here to open the door of the kingdom and welcome people in rather than block them and turn them away.”

Five years after setting out on his missionary journey, Samuel is back in his homeland Kenya, but now on a different but related mission, to spread the news among his family and former fellow believers that to truly follow Christ one must do all that God requires including observing the Saturday Sabbath. Samuel wanted to seal his commitment to the Adventist message in the very place where he had discovered it before returning to Kenya. He was received into membership of the Manchester South SDA church by vote on the 13th of March and flew out to Kenya the next day. On arriving in Kenya he was going directly to a Minister’s convention of his former denomination where he would be called upon to defend his abandonment of Pentecostalism and his acceptance of biblical Sabbath keeping.

Samuel Kumuthia desires the prayers of the church family as he seeks to continue the spiritual journey on which Christ has called him. His view is that “the true believer will follow the voice of God and go wherever it leads even though the roads may be rough, dangerous and uncertain.”