everlasting-gospels.gif Meet John Nevins Andrews
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May 7  Meet John Nevins Andrews

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Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. 2Tim. 2:15, RSV.

John Nevins Andrews was the foremost scholar of the young Seventh-day Adventist Church. More than any other person he had a burden to study to show himself "approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth"(2Tim. 2:15).

Born in 1829 in Poland, Maine, as an adult Andrews could read the Bible in seven languages and claimed the ability to reproduce the New Testament from memory His was a life of learning up to his untimely death in 1883.

Appropriately, 15-year-old John Nevins Andrews read himself into the Sabath message when a copy of T. M. Preble's 1845 tract on the seventh day fell into his hands soon after its publication. He along with several other teenagers convenanted to keep God's special day even before their parents knew about the Sabbath, splitting their wood and completing their baking chores on Friday so that they "might not be Sabbath-breakers any longer." Only later did their parents join them in their new faith.

Andrews first met the Whites in September 1849 when the couple rescued some of the adults in his family and commuity from fanaticism. At that point, seeing the distracting impact of their teachings, he exclaimed, "I would exchange a thousand errors for one truth."

In 1850 John began traveling as a Sabbatarian minister in New England. But within five years he was "utterly prostrated" because of intense study and a heavy program of writing and public speaking. Having lost his voice and injured his eyesight he went to Waukon, Iowa, to work on his parents' farm while he recovered his health. But even in that condition he couldn't stay away from books. By 1861 he had published his monumental History of the Sabbath and First Day of the Week.

He would in 1867 become the third General Conference president and in 1869 take a short term as editor of the Review and Herald. Then in 1874 Andrews went to Europe as the denomination's first official foreign missionary. At that time Ellen White wrote that they had sent the "ablest man in all our ranks"(Lt 2a, 1878).

There is no limit to how God can use people who dedicate their lives to Him and the study of His Words.

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Help me, O Lord, to become "a workman that needeth not to be ashamed" when it comes to Your sacred Bible.

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