Her personal testimony begins with an app for the Bible
By reading on her smartphone, this young woman accidentally falls in love with Jesus, then discovers the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Euro-Asia Division (ESD)
[Russia] I was born into a non-Christian family, and I learned to keep traditions and holidays of my religion.
While browsing the Internet, I came across an article which said that if women fasted during Lent (Orthodox), they would have beautiful children.
I was interested in this and began fasting. But I had been taught to do everything in a right way, so I looked for information about fasting properly during Lent. I found an article stating that in order to keep Lent properly, people must read the Gospels of the New Testament. At that time, I didn't have the Bible, but I did have a smartphone. In the next moment, I was installing an app and opening the Bible for the first time.
On the pages of the Gospels, I read about Jesus Christ. I saw His self-denying life, His unselfish love for people, and His kind heart which was always open to the poor, sinful, and suffering. Jesus’s love couldn't help but touch my heart. When I got to the moment of His crucifixion, tears flowed from my eyes. I was riding a bus to work early in the morning, and my family were at home sleeping peacefully. While I was crying, I realized that I had fallen in love with Jesus. That's how I met Christ.
Soon afterward my family found out about this and insisted in that I should pray for the true path. I started praying. One day on the Internet, I saw the testimony of a Seventh-day Adventist speaking about the power of Christ, and he referred to the book, The Great Controversy. Being an inquisitive person, I read this book also on my smartphone. That's how I learned about the Adventist Church.
Then the struggle began. My brother, a devout religious person, began convincing me that the Bible was distorted and changed by people. But God did not leave me. One day, when I was thinking about it, this passage came through the Bible app for the first time. These verses are from Isaiah 55:9-11, NKJV.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are my ways higher than your ways,
And my thoughts than your thoughts.
“For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven,
And do not return here,
but water the earth,
And make it bring forth and bud,
“That it may give seed to the sower,
And bread to the eater,
So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return unto me void,
But it shall accomplish that which I please,
And it shall proser in the thing for which I sent it.”
I immediately remembered one day when my brother's wife showed me photos of snowflakes. The Lord made it clear to my mind that as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, overcoming a long distance and falling to the ground and preserving their forms with mathematical precision—as we see from snowflakes—His word is not empty, but succeeds in the thing for which it was sent. This was God’s revelation to me and it strengthened me.
After a while, despite the difficulties and misunderstandings in the family, I left a profitable job in order to keep the Sabbath and become a follower of Jesus Christ.
Written by a student at Zaoksky Adventist University in Russia
Published in Mosaic newsletter, 2021 Q2, spring issue
Photo: Unsplash.com | Onur Binay
