FROM ADVENTIST TEACHER TO BIBLE TRANSLATOR

By Wes Ringer

 

I was raised a Seventh-day Adventist—a legacy that yielded blessings and challenges. Ironically, the challenges have ultimately yielded blessings as they helped me prepare to become a Bible translation consultant working to bring God’s word to the peoples of South Sudan.

One of God’s blessings to me was being raised by parents who loved me and wanted to serve Christ. Another blessing was my parents’ consistency in their faith. Matthew 25:34-40 spoke deeply to my mother’s heart as she sought to live out Christ’s teaching in practical ways by reaching out to the poor in our community with other ladies from our church. In addition, my father’s faithfulness to my mother helped to protect me from my desire to act out sexually during my college years before coming to Christ.

In 1969 I went with my parents on a short-term mission to Haiti where my father’s high school French came back to him. He so much enjoyed his time there, that my parents went on to serve in Korea from 1971–81 with the Adventist church, my father as a dentist and my mother as a worker in an orphanage. I followed their example of mission service by teaching English and Bible at the Adventist language schools in Busan and Seoul from 1973–74. 

Ultimately, their leaving to serve in missions when they were in their fifties led me to follow their steps after my children finished college. Instead of going as an Adventist missionary, however, I left to serve Christ in South Sudan as a Bible translator. But I am ahead of my story.

 

No assurance of salvation

From early childhood, I desired to be a Christian, yet I was never certain that I would finally be saved. I remember the fear that I felt during my academy and college years as I thought of the future time of trouble when Jesus would cease to be mediator for our sins. I had never met anyone who even claimed to have reached sinless perfection, and I felt certain that I had no hope of ever doing so. I was certain that I would never be prepared to stand before God without a mediator. 

I remember a particular Sabbath school discussion when I attended Grand Ledge Academy (1963-67). The question was asked, “How should we answer if other Christians were to ask us if we were saved?” After much debate the final consensus was this: we should ask our questioner for five minutes to think about it. After carefully reviewing our memories, if we were sure we had confessed all of our sins, we could say that we were saved at that present moment. Nevertheless, we still would not know if we would continue to be saved tomorrow.

By the time that I attended Newbold College in 1968–69, I had come to despair of ever being saved. Then, on Easter Sunday in 1969, I was walking through a park in central Edinburgh, when I came across a group of college students sharing the Easter story of the risen Christ. Stopping to listen, I told myself that I was just curious to know what church they belonged to. As I listened, however, I was impressed that these young people really knew the risen Christ in a personal and living way, while I only knew about him. 

I felt my heart grow hungry to know Christ. Within a few minutes one of the young men from the group approached me and asked, “Do you know Christ?” I still remember distinctly the dilemma that his question posed in my mind. I felt that if I said, “Yes” I would be lying, but if I said, “No” I would be denying Christ. I actually cannot remember how I answered him, but I do remember trying to shift the conversation to the prophecies in Daniel, since I had been taking a Daniel and Revelation class at Newbold College. Yet as I attempted to shift the conversation, I knew that I was acting just like the Samaritan woman at the well when she tried to shift the conversation away from her personal moral failure to a discussion about where one should worship God. 

For the next 18 months, I was sustained by my encounter with those young people in Edinburgh. The fact that they really knew Christ gave me hope that I could somehow also come to know him as well. I returned in the fall of 1969 to Andrews University and found myself at a religious retreat at the beginning of the year. The “Jesus Movement” was beginning to flourish during the late 60s and 70s, and it was impacting Adventism. At that conference, I heard Paul Jensen, a Seventh-day Adventist on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, sharing about his campus ministry at Michigan State University.

 I told Paul about a friend of mine, Dennis from my academy days, who had left Andrews to get away from “Christians” and had gone to Michigan State. I hoped that Paul would be able to share Christ with him. Somehow, I never seemed to doubt that God could save others, even though I was certain that I would be lost. 

After taking down the contact information that I had, Paul looked up at me and asked, “So how is it with you and the Lord?” I was finally ready to admit that I did not know him. He began sharing the Four Spiritual Laws with me. Nothing that he shared was new to me, and I readily acknowledged my desire to have a Christ-controlled life. However, when he turned to the next page which had a prayer to accept Christ, I immediately said, “I have already done that at least a hundred times, and it just does not work.” What I meant when I said that was that these prayers of acceptance never assured me that I could live a perfect life and therefore finally be saved after Christ had ceased to forgive sins during the time of trouble.

Paul then turned to his Living New Testament and began to read from 1 John 5:9-13, 

“If anyone does not believe what God has said about his Son he is calling God a liar. He who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son does not have life.  I have said these things to you so that you might know that you have eternal life.” 

These words struck me like a blow from a sledge hammer. Again, I found myself in an irreconcilable dilemma. I knew on the one hand that God was not a liar and that His word was true, but I also felt utterly convinced that I could not be saved. On the other hand, I also saw that God clearly said that if I received His Son I could now know that I had eternal life. At the same time, I was utterly certain that I could not be saved because I did not see how I could stand before God without an intercessor after Jesus would cease his work as a mediator for sinners.

 

Grappling with Paul

Paul Jensen gave me his pocket Living New Testament, and I read and re-read the Pauline epistles in particular during my junior year at Andrews. I could identify both with Paul’s wish to keep the law of God in Romans 7 and with his inability to actually do it. I felt that Paul was trapped as I was with no way of escape when he cried out, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”  I could visualize myself cornering Paul in a blind alley and demanding that he explain himself. 

Then, to my puzzlement, Paul suddenly escaped from his predicament before my eyes when he cried out, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  How could Paul, who was so unable to keep the law in Romans 7, suddenly have so much confidence that he now stood un-condemned before Christ at the beginning of Romans 8?  

One year later at a similar religious retreat at Andrews, I heard many fellow students share how they had come to know Christ. God opened my heart and gave me the faith to believe that He would save me. As I accepted Jesus as my Savior and Lord, God gave me the assurance that I was entered into an eternal relationship with Him as my heavenly Father. 

As God opened His word to me, I began to discover more and more passages that confirmed the assurance that God had given me that night when He gave me the faith to accept Jesus as my Savior and Lord. How sweet it was to wake each morning with the assurance that I stood without commendation before God only because of the shed blood of his Son. 

That year was one of deep joy, as God’s word seemed to open before my eyes. I came to understand that my salvation was secure because of Christ’s once and for all sacrifice on the cross. I experienced deep fellowship with my fellow students who had come to Christ and increasingly with non-Adventists when I discovered that they knew Christ. It was a joy to share Christ, and I saw many come to know him as their Lord and Savior. 

During those months Andrews became a place divided between those who knew Jesus as their Lord and Savior and those who did not. I would often start conversations during meals with, “What do you think about what has been happening here on campus?” I could tell by their answer whether or not they knew Christ.

 

Adventist inconsistencies with the Bible

Immediately upon coming to faith, I began to wonder why I had never understood the gospel—and what else might not be right in Adventist teaching. I decided to put all that I had been taught on a shelf. What I could confirm from a study of God’s word, I would take off the shelf and embrace, and what could not be confirmed, I would leave on the shelf. 

A month later in November, 1970, I read through the book of Hebrews. I thrilled at what I read of the work of Christ as my high priest, but I was puzzled as to how the book of Hebrews could be reconciled with the traditional 1844 Adventist sanctuary doctrine. 

As I read Hebrews 9 and 10, it was clear that the work of the earthly high priest on the Day of Atonement was being compared and contrasted to the work of Christ as our high priest in heaven. Only the high priest could enter the Most Holy Place, and that but once a year. He could never enter without taking the blood of goats and bulls. By contrast, Christ as our high priest entered the heavenly Most Holy Place once for all by means of his own blood. 

As I read and re-read Hebrews in November of 1970, a number of questions came to my mind. If Christ at his ascension entered the heavenly Most Holy Place as our high priest by means of the blood of his once and for all sacrifice, then what—if anything—did happen in 1844? If nothing happened in 1844, how, then, could Ellen White be a true prophet of God? If Ellen White is not God’s true end-time prophet, how could the Seventh-day Adventist Church be the only true remnant church on earth? 

Since I had first read Hebrews in the Living New Testament, I purchased a New American Standard Bible and read through Hebrews over and over again during the next two years, looking up all of the cross references and comparing the account of the work of the high priest on the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16 with Hebrews. I noted that the NASB consistently translated the Greek word hagia as Holy Place, but I saw that when hagia spoke of the place where the high priest went once a year, it was clearly speaking of the Most Holy Place. 

I looked up all of the cross references and read extensively of the work of the high priest in the Law of Moses. I was particularly drawn to the account of what happened on the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16 and saw how Christ fulfilled the work of the Day of Atonement when He sat down at the right hand of God. Finally, in 1972 I wrote to Roy Allen Anderson (one of the authors of the infamous book Questions on Doctrine published in 1957 to convince Walter Martin not to classify Adventism as a cult) about my conflict, but I received no helpful answer. He just urged me to continue reading the book of Hebrews and Ellen White. He never revealed that he knew the conflict between the sanctuary doctrine and the book of Hebrews to be a deep theological problem in Adventism, nor that he had been on a committee that had studied this issue in the 1960’s without being able to explain how Hebrews could be made to fit into the Adventist’s traditional teaching about 1844.

I do remember observing to myself shortly after coming to faith in Christ, that Paul did not seem interested in promoting the Sabbath or kosher food laws. I noted that Paul certainly did not see himself as obligated to keep the whole Law of Moses, and he never admonished Gentile believers of their need to keep the Sabbath. In fact, Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, spoke of festivals, new moons and Sabbaths all being a shadow of Christ, and as a result believers were not to be judged regarding them. I saw that Paul had to deal with a whole number of problems that new Gentile believers faced as they learned to live new lives in Christ. Certainly, Gentiles who had never kept the Sabbath would have had many questions about how to observe it, but I found that questions about how to keep the Sabbath never came up in any of Paul’s epistles. 

Furthermore, I also had from my Adventist heritage a firm belief that the Ten Commandments were all part of the unchanging moral Law of God. As a result, I was uncertain that I could really trust what I seemed to see Paul saying.

 

Finding peace with Paul

In 1972 I came across D. M. Canright’s book Adventism Renounced in a Christian bookstore. I did not buy the book, but I did look through it to find out what he had to say about the Sabbath. I already well knew that Adventists said Paul was not speaking of the seventh-day Sabbath in Colossians 2:16, because the Day of Atonement was also called a Sabbath of Sabbath rest. I was unprepared, however, for the number of Old Testament passages that Canright cited that spoke of festivals, new moons and Sabbaths. It was clear from these passages that the festivals referred to the yearly feast days, the new moons referred to special sacrifices offered at the beginning of each month, and the Sabbath referred to the weekly Sabbath. In fact, a number of these Old Testament passages also speak of the sacrifices offered every evening and morning. I saw that there was clear progression from the yearly, to the monthly, to the weekly, and to the daily. 

Why, I wondered as I pondered these passages, would Paul have used these three terms if he did not intend to include all of the holy days of the Jews—including the weekly Sabbath—as being shadows of Christ? Yet could I believe that Paul was really saying that the weekly Sabbath of the Ten Commandments was something that the Gentile believers were never called to keep any more than they were called to keep the Passover, Pentecost, or the Day of Atonement?

I had begun to teach history at San Gabriel Academy in California in 1977, and the next year I was also given Bible classes. Then, in the fall of 1979, I first heard Desmond Ford on tape explaining his own struggle in attempting to reconcile Hebrews with the Adventists’ traditional understandings of 1844. It was vindicating to realize that I was not the first Adventist to see a contradiction between Hebrews 9 and 10 and the Adventist teaching about what happened in 1844! 

I was puzzled, however, that Ford would continue to try to affirm Ellen White as a prophet while stating clearly that Hebrews taught that Christ entered the Most Holy Place once and for all at his ascension. After all, it was Ellen White’s early visions occurring between 1844-1851 which confirmed the traditional Adventist teaching, and Ford rightly saw them as conflicting with the clear teaching of Hebrews. How could a true prophet have visions confirming something opposed to Scripture?

Then came the Glacier View meetings where, in July, 1980, Desmond Ford was stripped of his Adventist ministerial credentials. I clearly saw then that my own days were numbered as a history and Bible teacher within the Seventh-day Adventist Church. 

I wrestled the longest over whether or not Christians were still called to keep the Sabbath. I read Samuele Bacchiocchi’s From Sabbath to Sunday and was surprised that he acknowledged that Colossians 2:16 was talking about the weekly Sabbath. I noted that Jesus healed on the Sabbath and justified working on that day because his Father was always working. 

Then, in 1981, I did an exegetical study of the book of Galatians and saw that Paul clearly stated that the Law was to last only until the coming of Christ. He uses the example of the slave-paidagogos who supervised the minor child only until he became an adult, as the illustration of how the Jews were kept under the Law until Christ would come. Once they believed on Him, they were no longer under the Law.

Finally, in the summer of 1981, my fighting with Paul was over. I saw that, indeed, the weekly Sabbath is a fitting shadow of Christ. God called the Jews to remember two things about Him as they kept the Sabbath: first, that He is the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and second, that He redeemed them out of their slavery in Egypt. Certainly, Christ is both the Creator of all things and our redeemer from our slavery to sin.

Disfellowshipped

I was suspended from my teaching position at San Gabriel Academy in August, 1981; however, I was kindly granted a study leave by the Southern California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. This leave extended from August of 1981 to April of 1982, and I spent my time reading extensively the primary documents dating from 1840–1853 on Ellen White’s first seven years of visions related to the sanctuary and the Shut-door. Without this study leave, I would not have had the time to have thoroughly read through much of the original sources that I cite in the paper that I wrote for the Southern California Conference, The Shut-door and the Sanctuary: Historical and Theological Problems. 

At the end of this study leave as I gave this paper to an official at the Southern California Conference, he told me, “Wes, you may well be right, but we do not want to deal with it, so do not feel bad when we fire you.” That same month my wife and I were disfellowshipped from the Temple City, California, Adventist Church.

Disfellowshipping resulted in a number of changes in my life. First was a change of occupation; I spent the next twenty-three years as a painting contractor. Sadly, another change was that within a year and a half of leaving the Adventist church, our marriage ended in divorce. I was left alone, cut off from the religious and social circles that had defined my life and stripped of my profession, to attempt to continue to be a father to our two small children. 

I went through a time of deep grief, but God remained faithful. Gradually He showed me that He had a future plan for my life. I would caution other couples going through the considerable stress of leaving Adventism to realize this added stress can place a strain on their marriage. It is important to pay attention to how leaving is affecting each person and to seek to prevent the breakup of their marriage.

 

Gift for language

I never would have guessed that God granted me a gift for languages. I had had a difficult time in my first attempt to learn German in college, never even understanding the meaning of four English words, nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative, that I heard repeatedly during the two years that I studied German. 

Meanwhile, I did learn enough Korean to get around and bargain in the market place during the year that I was there. However, I was impressed that my father was able to recall his high school French while in Haiti, that he had studied German for two years so that he could speak to his German-speaking dental patients, and that in his early fifties he and my mother had both learned Korean. 

I also realized that, because my BA was in history, if I were to consider myself to be a serious student of the New Testament, I needed more linguistic studies. I needed to be able to read the text in Greek. 

For over ten years I had a Greek New Testament and Lexicon sitting in my bookshelf, which I would open from time to time and quickly close again. I feared attempting to take Greek at seminary, since my first attempt at German had not gone well. 

Then, in 1994, I met a member of my church, Chris Gordon, at a men’s prayer breakfast doing a Greek word study. I went up to him afterwards and asked him if he would teach me Greek. He agreed, and we studied together once a week for the next five years, first completing the reading of John, and then completing a beginning Greek grammar. I well remember reading John 1:1 and suddenly understanding how the nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative cases actually worked in that verse. I looked forward to our time each Monday evening as we met in a coffee shop and studied Greek.

I’d had a heart to serve Christ in overseas mission for many years, a desire planted there, I believe, first because my parents had served in Korea, and secondly because I had enjoyed living abroad, first in England and then in Korea. But in what way could I best serve? 

In 1994 I knew that God had impressed on me that I was to learn Greek well, and I developed a faithful habit of almost daily reading the New Testament Greek text of John, 1 John, Romans 1–8, and then other New Testament books. I found that by reading and re-reading the text, that I grew both in understanding of words and, most importantly, in understanding how Greek sentences carry meaning. 

It finally began to dawn on me that perhaps I could best serve in working with Bible translators. So, I applied by letter to Wycliffe Bible Translators in April, 1999. They seemed eager to accept me to help paint their buildings, but they were certain that at 51, I was too old to work in Bible translation. I was discouraged but did not give up my ongoing study of the Greek New Testament. 

On a short-term mission trip to Mexico to build homes for poor families, I poured out my frustration to a friend named Bijan, mourning that this door to missions now seemed closed. Almost a year later, Bijan heard a mission presentation by Ron Binder, a representative of Wycliffe Bible Translators, of the great need for more workers and asked him why they were making it so hard for me to join them. 

Ron gave him his phone number and invited me to give him a call. I finally called him in January, 2001. and he encouraged me to apply again. I had purchased a computer in the fall of 1999 so that I could now email and send with my application a number of exegetical papers that I had written using my Greek. I sent them off and waited for several months before receiving an invitation from Freddy Boswell to come to Dallas, Texas, for a job interview. 

Freddy encouraged me to take a linguistic class or two at Biola University within an hour’s commute from my home. I enrolled in August, 2001, and graduated with a MA in Applied Linguistics in 2004. While taking my linguistic classes, I also took four upper division New Testament Greek classes and a hermeneutics class at Talbot Seminary which was on the same campus. I was very thankful that I had begun the study of New Testament Greek when I did, or I would never have been ready to understand the linguistic courses that I needed to take for my MA.

Finally, five and one-half years after initially applying, I became a member of Wycliffe Bible Translators in November, 2004, and was given an invitation to join the Sudan Branch to train to become a translation consultant. I arrived in the field in September, 2005. Since then I have been pleased that we have better translation software called Paratext that now allows me to learn much about the seven languages that I have worked with on an ongoing basis. 

I am able to learn much about these languages through the use of an interlinear window that allows me to see an English word or phrase under each of their words. Together with my linguistic studies, the interlinear helps me to understand how sentences work, and soon after beginning to work with a team, I can spot words or phrases that they are leaving out and often suggest the word that is missing.

Since coming to Sudan, I have had a lot to do with helping the Baka, Didinga, Keliko, Gbaya and Tennet translators complete not only their New Testaments but also Genesis, Exodus 1–20, Ruth, and Jonah. It has been a special joy to check the book of Hebrews with six different languages. 

I have just now finished reading, verse by verse with the use of the interlinear in Paratext, with the Gbaya all of their books. It is an amazing privilege to work with men who have dedicated years of their lives to help bring God’s word to their people. I have developed deep bonds of friendship and have the joy to know that I have helped to make God’s word clearer and more accurate in these languages. I look forward, God willing, to help in the revision and completion of several more New Testaments before I must retire from the field. 

I shared earlier the deep pain that I went through when my first marriage ended in divorce and wondered if I would ever re-marry when I came to work with languages of South Sudan. However, God led me to develop first a deep friendship and then love for Jackie Marshall. We married in 2014, with Jackie serving as the director of our work and I as both the translation coordinator and translation consultant. Yes, God does plan good things for us that we will discover as we walk faithfully with Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Each day I find great joy in serving him. †

 

Endnotes

1. White Ellen G., The Great Controversy p. 425. “Those who are living upon the earth when the intercession of Christ shall cease in the sanctuary above are to stand in the sight of a holy God without a mediator.”
2. John 4:19.
3. Romans 7:24.
4. Romans 8:1.
5. Assurance of Eternal Life: I recall Bible marking classes in my Adventist church when I was young, where we underlined and connected proof texts for important Adventist doctrines. But the assurance of salvation was not one of those doctrines. John 10:27-29, Romans 8:28-39, Ephesians 1:3-10, Ephesians 2:1-10, Philippians 1:6, Philippians 4:2, Colossians 1:1-14, 1 John 5:9-13, Jude 24.
6. Hebrews 9:7.
7. Christ fulfills the work of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement: Hebrews 6:19-20; 9:11-12; 9:24-26; 10:18-22; 13:11-13.
8. Wesley Ringer, The Shut-door and the Sanctuary: Historical and Theological Problems, See Appendix I, p.7-8, Raymond Cottrell, The “Sanctuary Doctrine” Asset of Liability? I digitized this paper with some updated revisions in 2011. It can be down loaded at www.LifeAssuranceMinistries.com
9. 1 Corinthians 9:19-21.
10. Colossians 2:16-17.
11. Leviticus 16:31; 23:32 σάββατα σαββάτων ἀνάπαυσις sabbath of sabbath rest.
12. Numbers 28-29, 1 Chronicles 23:30-31, 2 Chronicles 2:4, 2 Chronicles 8:12-13, 2 Chronicles 31:3, Nehemiah 10:33, Isaiah 1:13 -14, Ezekiel 45:17, Ezekiel 46:1-15, Hosea 2:11.
13. Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday: A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity, Pontifical Gregorian University Press, 1977, p. 358. The seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary interprets the “sabbaton-sabbath days” as a reference to the annual ceremonial sabbaths and not to the weekly Sabbath (Lev. 23:6-8, 15, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28, 37. 38).  It is a fact that both the Sabbath and the day of atonement in Hebrew are designated by the compound expression shabbath shabbathon, meaning “a sabbath of solemn rest” (Ex. 31:15; 35:2: Lev. 23:3, 32; 16:31). But this phrase is rendered in the Septuagint by the compound Greek expression “sabbata sabbaton,” which is different from the simple “sabbaton” found in Colossians 2:16. It is therefore linguistically impossible to interpret the latter as a reference to the Day of Atonement or to any other ceremonial sabbaths, since these are never designated simply as “sabbata.”
14. John 5:17-18: “Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.’ For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”
15. slave-paidagogos: Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament: paidagogos (1) literally boy leader, a trusted attendant who supervised the conduct and morals of a boy before he came of age guardian, trainer, instructor.
16. Galatians 3:19-25.
17. Exodus 20:8-11.
18. Deuteronomy 5:12-15.
19. Wesley Ringer, The Shut-door and the Sanctuary: Historical and Theological Problems, 1982. I revised this paper and digitally formatted in May of 2011. It can be down loaded at www.LifeAssuranceMinistries.com
20. Nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative: The nominative is subject of the sentence; the genitive means the possessive, for example something is “of God”; the dative is the location of the instrument, for example, “in the garden with the hoe”, and the accusative is the direct object—to whom or for whom something is done.