After the summer of selling Adventist books, I went to Pacific Union College, Napa, California, to start pre-medical courses. Carolyn moved to St. Helena and lived with an Adventist family and worked at St Helena Adventist Sanitarium, about seven miles from the College. I studied hard and got good grades. However, it seemed I could not put my heart toward becoming a doctor. I was not sure what I wanted to be.
After my first year of college, Carolyn and I were married. Our first house was upstairs over a horse barn with the address, “666-Z”, but for us, it was a “heavenly man- sion”! As we look back after 50 years of marriage, it still has many, many happy memories.
I again worked for my cousin, Harry Ratzlaff, hauling hay. I enjoyed every minute of it except for the trouble—like four flat tires in one day.
The next year I started college again. I liked school except for one class called “Western Arts.” In this class, we were required to listen to classical music,8 memorize pages of pictures of old statues, some with their arms or heads missing, and read classical literature. One of the assignments was to read sections from Shakespeare. I had remembered Ellen White commenting on the evil of reading fiction, so I looked up “fiction” in the Index to the writings of EGW and re-read her statements. I became convinced that a “good Adventist” would not read this junk.9 I did read a few pages, and on my book report, I wrote something like the following: “These sections are nothing but fiction and not worth reading.” Miss Babcock read my report and lit into me. She demanded to know why I would not read this literature. In answer to her probing, I relied on Ellen White’s statements. Her answer to me was, “Dale, you are reading too much of Ellen White.” Because of this statement, I thought she was a heretic and should not be teaching in an Adventist college.
Later that year, Bill Ruzicka, an Adventist friend who lived in Napa, found himself out of work. He knew I knew how to haul hay and said, “Dale, why don’t we go into partnership, buy a truck and haul hay. You have the contacts, and we could do it.” I was somewhat discouraged with the Western Arts class, as my refusal to do the work resulted in receiving a “D” in that class. This new idea seemed intriguing. Neither one of us had a dime to spend, but we were excited. We managed to get an Adventist farmer and an Adventist doctor to loan us enough money for the down payment, and off we went. All did not go well, however. We purchased what was said to be a “reconditioned” Freightliner. The diesel engine went out on the first load. After it was repaired, we had to replace the transmission. Soon after that, on a hot, dry, windy day, our load caught fire, and the truck burned to the ground. By now, summer was nearly over, and I decided perhaps God wanted me to go back to school. I was a little slow at times in discerning God’s will.
I still was not sure I wanted to be a doctor but jumped back into the grind. I loved my Bible and math classes. However, money was tight, and I was not motivated. The old trucking passion soon came back; it seemed diesel smoke was in my blood. Bill and I bought an old truck this time; we fixed it up, and things were going well until he, traveling about 60 mph, had a head-on collision with a Cadillac that was driving on the wrong side of the road, doing an estimated 80 mph. Bill was not hurt; the man in the Cadillac was killed. It took over a month to rebuild the truck. Soon we purchased a second truck and were in the hay business for a number of years.
Both of our wonderful boys, Bruce and Mike, were adopted during my hay hauling days. Bruce became ours when we lived in Napa, California. We moved to Woodland to be closer to where I could purchase hay when Mike was born.
Winters, when the hay hauling was slow, we sometimes hauled grain to Los Angeles. I recall how I used to race my trucking friends to and from Los Angeles. My truck was not faster, but while they stopped for coffee, I kept going. Fol- lowing the advice of EGW, I never drank coffee. On several occasions, however, I nearly fell asleep at the wheel. One day I ordered a tomato sandwich at a restaurant. It came with a thin slice of ham. I took the meat out and gave it to another trucker. Yes, I was a “good Adventist.”
One winter, when things were slow, Carolyn’s father invited us to move to Cornville, Arizona, to help him grow watermelons. Why not? We were not making much money trucking, so I took him up on the offer. We hauled our own things out in an old Chevy truck that Carolyn’s father had. In the process, I had to put a new engine in it. I drove all night a time or two, which apparently lowered my resistance. Not long after we moved to Arizona, I helped Carolyn’s cousin move and again worked hard loading furniture, driving all night, and unloading the next day.
I got a bad cold and soon had a terrible sore throat with a fever. I went to see Dr. Stump, an Adventist doctor in Sedona. I don’t recall the medications he gave me, but he would say, “If the fever does not go down, come back tomorrow.” It did not, I did. Each day he would give me a different diagnosis. Each day I was getting worse. Finally, he said he thought I had diphtheria and recommended Carolyn rush me to a hospital in Phoenix. She drove about 90 mph the whole way. I was having a hard time breathing and was very sick. The hospital would not admit me as it did not have a contagious disease ward. Instead, they quarantined me in a motel room where two doctors came by to see me. I had a high fever and was exhausted. Every time I would drop off to sleep, I would choke and wake up gasping for air. After about two days of this, I realized I was at death’s door.
Suddenly, I had to face the probability of death as never before. Instinctively, I knew I was not ready to die. I had paid my tithe, studied my Sabbath school lesson—usually seven times each week. I had always attended church. I had never had sex outside of marriage. I did not smoke (with the exception of a hand-made cigarette with pencil sharpener shavings, once or twice in North Carolina). I did not drink— not even coffee, and only very seldom had a cola drink. I had never attended a movie theater, danced, gone to a professional sporting event, been to a pool hall, circus or rodeo. I did not eat meat (except for a very few times in North Carolina—and that was clean meat). I had lied a time or two but had confessed this. I had never stolen anything. I had “lost my temper” a number of times when younger, but that was many years ago. I had never played real cards or chess—I had played a few games of checkers. However, despite my outward obedience to the laws of Adventism, I knew that I was not ready to die. Even though I had a high fever, I could still think. I was in a desperate situation. Seeking some kind of escape from the terror of looking the Grim Reaper in the face, I began to repeat some of the key texts and memory verses I had learned.10 1 John 1:9 came to mind.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
As I repeated this text, suddenly, for the first time in my life, I realized that if I were to be righteous and clean from sin, it would have to be God’s work, not mine. My part was simply to admit that I was a sinner. He would do the forgiving and cleansing. Wow! At that moment, I experienced a peace that I had never known before. Now I was no longer afraid to die. I had peace with God, and the peace of God filled my heart to overflowing. That moment, for the first time, I totally trusted God for my salvation. This was my Jabbok experience. As Jacob left the brook limping and helpless, depending upon God alone, I, too, was brought to the point of complete helplessness. Like Jacob, my encounter with God was to change the direction of my life.
Before that encounter, even though I loved the Lord, my security was based on how good I was doing, not on His righteousness. I was alone (with God) when this took place. I told God I was now ready to die, but I felt an obligation to provide for my beloved Carolyn and our two wonderful boys, Bruce and Mike. So I made a covenant with the Lord that day11. I told Him that I wanted to take care of my family, and if He let me live, I would live each new day as a gift from Him. I covenanted with the Lord that if He clearly told me what He wanted me to do, I would do it—little did I know the far-reaching results of that commitment. I told God that I knew I was not good at discerning His will, so He would have to show it to me in ways I could understand. Also, I told Him I was not good at doing some things, but I would do my best, which might not be good enough. Then I made the big one, I said, “Lord, even if you want me to go back to school12 and study to become a pastor, I will do it.” At the time, going back to school to study theology was the furthermost thing from what I wanted to do. I knew I would have to face that “D” in Western Arts, and I did not want to retake that class— never! Now, however, my future was in His hands. I did not have to worry. Now I was a child of God under His care.
Endnotes
8. And it did create in me a love of good classical music, which I had never had before that time.
9. Ellen G. White, Counsels to Teachers, p. 383.
10. The importance of memorizing Scripture cannot be overemphasized. One never knows how the Holy Spirit will use what is stored in our memory.
11. Perhaps, more theologically correct, God, working through the Holy Spirit, made a covenant with me.
12. I envisioned going back to Pacific Union College.
Next Week: “Follow Me”
Truth Led Me Out. Copyright © 2008 by Dale Ratzlaff. Second printing 2015, E-mail version 2020. All Scripture quotations—except where otherwise noted—are from The New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1979, 1994 by the Lockman Foundation, used by permission. Texts credited to Clear Word are from The Clear Word, copyright © 1994, 2000, 2003, 2004 by Review and Herald Publishing Association. All rights reserved. Life Assurance Ministries, Inc.
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