Rescued! How God Went Deep For Me

STANLEY ROUHE | Christ-Follower and Neurosurgeon (1943–2011)

This is a story about salvation—a deep-water rescue. For years I believed that salvation and the judgment were to be determined by behavior. First God made salvation possible; then, by our attitudes and actions, we proved our worthiness or unworthiness. In effect, salvation was somewhat of a balancing of His “good” and my “bad”. I knew God was perfect and that He would not allow imperfection to be in His presence. I understood that after God considered my best effort, Christ’s righteousness “made up the difference” between my attempts at perfection and God’s standard for me. 

I was born to Adventist parents who demonstrated their devotion and sincerity by serving the heathen in the darkest of Africa. My father was a graduate of the College of Medical Evangelists (later Loma Linda University School of Medicine) and determined as a teenager, when God saved him from a nearly fatal injury in a sawmill accident, that he would be a doctor who saved others’ lives. 

Over the years he recognized many signs of God’s leading. His family converted to Adventism in Finland when missionaries from America showed pictures of the beasts of Daniel and explained how a remnant of true commandment-keeping believers would survive the frightening end-time prophecies. To my father, a poor boy from Finland, God seemed to lead in later making it possible for him to be accepted into the Adventist medical school. 

My mother’s family experienced a similar conversion when she was a small girl. When she grew older she attended nursing school at the White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles. She was dating a good but “worldly” man and was very much in love with him. Her conscience and her mother’s persuasion, however, put an end to the relationship. Soon afterward she met and subsequently married my father. 

A couple of years after my dad graduated from medical school, he and my mother answered a call to the Belgian Congo. The official language there was French, and the government required all doctors to take a tropical medicine course in Belgium before practicing in the Congo. Because of various circumstances, my dad started the class late and spoke no French. Further, one of his most important classes, including a lab, was on Sabbath. My dad, however, refused to break the Sabbath.

Dad spent evenings and Sundays studying, and even though he never attended that Sabbath class or lab, he passed the final exam. After he wrote the final test, he met the professor who told him he was the first student who had passed that class without ever attending it.

…I knew that the key to the kingdom was the Sabbath. It was the Holy Grail. We Adventists were a small but special people; “many are called, but few are chosen.”

This accomplishment was only one of the many “Sabbath” stories I heard growing up, and I knew that the key to the kingdom was the Sabbath. It was the Holy Grail. We Adventists were a small but special people; “many are called, but few are chosen.”

My father spent twenty-five years in the mission field. He operated on hundreds of cases, preached and baptized, made bricks and built buildings, and cared for over 300 lepers. When he was 94 years old, I asked him if he was saved and if he would be in heaven with me. He said, “I certainly hope so; after all, I have been a good Adventist and have spent my whole life in missions.”

I replied that salvation is not about what you have done; it’s all about Christ. He gives it; we don’t earn it. My answer did not sound like good news to my father; he wanted his good works to count for something.

Beginnings

I was born in the Belgian Congo, the third of five children, and we returned to the United States when I was eight years old. I knew we were different. We were not part of the “worldly world”; we kept the Sabbath, and my parents sacrificed so I could be with “our people” in Adventist schools. I was always very religious in spite—or perhaps, because of—the fact that I knew I was deeply sinful. I planned to be a minister even though I was very self-conscious and always felt, in public, that my sinful life was exposed. 

I avoided the “world”, spurning secular literature in favor of the Bible and Ellen G. White’s books (my favorite was Steps to Christ), and often spent many hours praying that I would be a better Christian following the Steps to Christ model. I felt great pressure to be worthy to be a preacher.

During my third year of theology at Southern College (Now Southern Adventist University), I received the assignment to preach at a small church in Georgia. My sermon was based on the metaphor of the vine and the branches found in John 15, but the life it described was not my experience. I largely lifted the sermon from Ellen White’s commentary in The Desire of Ages, and as I looked at that small congregation, I felt like a fraud. I really didn’t want to preach anymore.

My girlfriend, who later became my wife, commented that I had approached the subject from a somewhat scientific point of view and suggested that if I wanted to do something other than ministry, I could be a doctor and still serve the Lord. I agreed. With great relief I completed my pre-med courses and was accepted into Loma Linda Medical School. 

I was busy in my career, and I gradually drifted away from the church. The peculiarities of Adventism seemed increasingly negative to me, and I often found non-Adventists to be more interesting and nicer people than the Adventists I knew. My parents worried about my worldliness, but my mother relied on the promise that a child rightly trained would return to the Lord. Caught up in managing my time and making money, I gave little thought to my final fate. 

Death Sentence

Alarms should have gone off in my head eight years ago when I was diagnosed with cancer and given less than five years to live, but in spite of surgery and radiation, I continued to work just as hard.

Then, four years ago, my brother Lyndon came to live with me for a time. Lyndon had Downs syndrome and had been in foster care and extended care facilities most of his life. During the time he lived in our home, he wanted to go to church. I took him to Riverside Community (Adventist) Church, and as I sat next to him during the services, I realized that Lyndon would be in heaven. A great desire came over me to be with him in heaven so I could see him fully restored in mind and body.

I believed in the Sabbath, and this time I was serious about salvation. I had to get my religious life in order; after all, I had the threat of cancer hanging over me.

I believed in the Sabbath, and this time I was serious about salvation. I had to get my religious life in order; after all, I had the threat of cancer hanging over me. As I listened to the sermons, they usually sounded pretty good, but sometimes I heard something jarring. They seemed to teach both Christ’s righteousness and the need for our own character perfection. 

I began reading the Bible. I purchased an interlinear Greek and Hebrew Bible and a Strong’s concordance and began hanging out at the Berean Christian stores. More and more questions about the church’s doctrines and practices began to surface.

One of the radiology technologists I worked with had an Adventist background. As I voiced more and more of my questions around him, he finally asked one day, “Why don’t you go to the Former Adventist Fellowship* which meets each Friday at Trinity Church?”

The leadership at the Adventist church I was attending had heard of this Friday evening Bible study, so I offered to go on their behalf and visit the group.

The leadership at the Adventist church I was attending had heard of this Friday evening Bible study, so I offered to go on their behalf and visit the group. Any dissent, I believed, should occur within the church. That group should be meeting at our church instead of at a Sunday church. 

Confidently I went one Friday night as an ambassador to bring back the straying ones. They were very friendly, and when the Bible study was over, I suggested that they should hold their meetings at our church instead. Besides, I asked, why was Ellen White such a problem? Even though she copied material, it was the truth!

The group was very polite as I made my suggestions, but then they suggested that I read Sabbath in Crisis (now reprinted as Sabbath in Christ) by Dale Ratzlaff. 

The next day—Sabbath—I read the book, and for the first time in my life I understood the plan of salvation. I accepted the Lord as my Savior and entered true Sabbath rest.

Gift of Life

Now I realize that I can rest physically on the seventh day, but that isn’t the rest God wants me to enter. My salvation through Christ who did all the work and now rests at the right hand of the Father means that I can enter His rest. The work I do now is because of salvation, not for salvation. 

The joy and the peace I have now are beyond expression. Do I get upset with myself when I do something unpleasing to the Lord? Yes. Do I worry about my salvation? No!

I had to be broken before I understood that salvation is all about Jesus and nothing at all about me. None of my efforts to do the right thing brought me one step closer to eternal security. Conversely, since I met Jesus and was born from above, I realize that my failings do not snatch me out of His hand. I am secure for one reason: Jesus died for me and rose again. He keeps me; His righteousness covers me. It’s not about me; it’s all about Him.

“Being born again of the Spirit is an unmistakable work of God, as mysterious as the wind, as surprising as God Himself. We do not know where it begins; it is hidden away in the depths of our personal life. Being born again from above is a perennial, perpetual and eternal beginning; a freshness all the time in thinking and in talking and in living, the continual surprise of the life of God.” —My Utmost For His Highest, January 20, Oswald Chambers

It was really only after entering that rest—rest from my works to be worthy—that I truly began to understand how much I needed a Savior. A drowning man gasping and flailing against the deep, I finally quit struggling with my Rescuer and allowed Him to bring me to shore. †

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Stanley Rouhe was born and raised in an Adventist family and educated in Adventists schools including Loma Linda University School of Medicine. He practiced neurosurgery for 30 years in Southern California until his retirement. He and his wife, Anne Louise (who also grew up Adventist), have an adult daughter, Helena, who is a practicing clinical psychologist and family counselor. Missions projects through Trinity Evangelical Free Church in Redlands, California, occupied much of Stanley’s time after retirement. Stanley went to be with Jesus on June 25, 2011 (See 2 Corinthians 5:1–9).

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Former Adventist Fellowship now meets in person and through Zoom online. Email “formeradventist@gmail.com” for time, location, and link for online attendance.