“You’re worshiping on the wrong day!” Bobby slammed his glass of whiskey down on the table.
“No, I’m not! Saturday is not the Sabbath!” Matthew retorted, his own glass of amber liquid sloshing wildly. “Do we have to go over this again?”
Bobby said, “You’re going to have to show me from the Bible!”
“Fine. I will,” Matthew growled, sure that he could prove Sunday was the right day to worship.
“Good! I’m going to give you something to help you.” Bobby grabbed Matthew’s phone and downloaded the Amazing Facts app onto it, where it would sit unopened for more than a year—until Matthew was ready to hear the truth.
“I’ll Prove Him Wrong!”
Matthew began reading the Bible for 30 minutes every morning. Before long, he was studying for two hours a day. “My outlook on life changed as I was studying,” he explains. “After a few months, I went back and started in Genesis. I got so lost in the Word that I forgot about the Sabbath issue and proving Bobby wrong. I was having such an amazing relationship with the Lord.”
Eventually, however, Matthew decided to look at the Sabbath question again. “I knew the answer but wasn’t ready to accept it,” he says. “I felt a weight on my shoulders while I prayed. Then a voice spoke to my mind, ‘Why are you trying to prove Me wrong? You’re not trying to prove him wrong anymore. You’re trying to prove Me wrong.’”
Instantly, Matthew’s mind flashed back to when he had first accepted Christ as a four-year-old in church. “I knew I needed to ask God into my life again.” Matthew knelt and again rededicated his life to God. He’d repented many times during his years of drug and alcohol abuse, but this time things were different. Matthew was finally ready for the full truth.
“Answers to All My Questions”
“That’s when I remembered the Amazing Facts app Bobby had put on my phone,” Matthew recalls. “I found it and watched a sermon about the Sabbath. I knew it was the truth! After that, I watched five or six sermons a day on the app. I was finding answers to every question I’d ever asked. The Sabbath, the Second Coming, hellfire—it was like a landslide of truth.”
Within a month, Matthew began running out of sermons to watch on the app. He had watched all of Pastor Doug’s sermons, all of the prophecy seminars, and even all of Joe Crews’ sermons. God had used those many messages to work a miracle in Matthew’s heart.
For years he had felt guilt that his rebelliousness had caused his godly father’s untimely death. Now, God gave Matthew peace. “I was so filled with joy during one of my morning Bible studies,” Matthew shares, pausing for a moment as tears choke his voice. “It was the first time in my life I knew that if I died, I would go to heaven. I always felt like I had to be good enough. I finally realized it’s all about Jesus.”
Transformed by the Sabbath
God started a cleansing process in Matthew when he began to keep the Sabbath. “I studied all the verses on the Sabbath because I didn’t know how to keep it holy. I decided not to drink, smoke marijuana, watch sports, or listen to unholy music,” Matthew explains. “It started on the Sabbath, then spread to the rest of my life.”
“God showed me how to live a holy life,” Matthew adds as a smile lights up his face. “It was so liberating. There was so much joy. My kids could see it; my wife could see it. I was completely changed. The love God filled my heart with spilled over into every relationship.”
In his zeal to share his new faith with his mother and other family members, Matthew wrote an 83-page paper on the Sabbath. That didn’t go over well. “I was machine-gunning them instead of sharing in a way they could hear.”
Still eager to share, Matthew invited his former marijuana dispensary clients to study the book of Daniel with him. He also studied with a Sunday-keeping pastor and led him to the truth about the Sabbath. “I was actively trying to share more slowly and spent a lot of time preparing,” Matthew says. “But I realized I needed to know how to share effectively.”
Soon, Matthew and his wife, Carolina, began to pray about him attending the Amazing Facts Center of Evangelism (AFCOE). Within days, Carolina received a job offer near AFCOE, which helped make it possible for Matthew to attend.
“I have a real conviction to share the truth with other Christians,” states Matthew, who attended AFCOE in 2021. “There are many people out there who are like me. They are searching for truth. I believe God is going to use me to share the gospel with them.”