The Pat Darnell Story

Part One - "Shug"

One day Mama Miles drove over from Smackover with news for Mother. "There's a tent meeting right near our house," she announced. "The man is preaching straight from the Bible. I think you'll like it." That did it for Mother. She had been teaching Sunday School classes since her early teens, and worshipped the Lord with great fear and trembling. Joy was not part of the religious experience in any of the churches of my childhood and youth. Works were important. One studied to discover something else to do, which he may have missed before.

So off to Smackover, night after night, we went. Daddy went when he wasn't working.

A big sign, BIBLE CHAUTAUQUA, hung over the entrance, and wood shavings covered the ground under the tent. I well remember sitting and playing in that sawdust during the lectures. I hated the way it felt on my backside and when it got in my shoes. I still do. The huge monsters from the books of Daniel and Revelation were frightening to a four- year-old. And not me only. I heard a little black lady say, "Ooo, me! That's a WHOMPUSCAT!" when she saw the chart of the nondescript beast. And that was to be the end of life as I had known it.

* * * * * "We believe the writings of Ellen G. White to be inspired," the evangelist said near the end of the meetings. That didn't mean much to Mother, as many great writers and poets were labeled "inspired". However, in this case, inspiration comes from direct visions given by God, or is brought personally by His angel! As is common practice, the Seventh-day Adventists had not identified themselves with their BIBLE CHAUTAUQUA. They nearly always go incognito.

"You have to use guile, Sister," the evangelist later explained with a twinkle.

The "inspired" writings of Ellen White were the foundational doctrines of the church. By the close of the Chautauqua, Mother had discovered that Saturday is the true Sabbath, the "keeping" of which is the distinguishing sign of God's true church.6 The last great conflict on earth is to be a confrontation between the Roman Catholics who, according to Seventh-day Adventist beliefs, changed the Sabbath to Sunday, and God's little "remnant" of Sabbath-keepers.7 The Catholic Church, she learned, is the woman of Revelation 17, clothed in purple and scarlet, glittering with gold; the "great whore", the "Mother of harlots" who had committed fornication with the kings of the earth." The Protestant churches who still "keep" Sunday are her daughters, the prostitutes.8 The Sabbath "truth" was simple, or, should I say, simplistic: God made the world in six days and rested the seventh, making it holy; the commandment to rest on the seventh day was given to the Israelites in the wilderness; those who didn't revere the day were to be put to death, and Isaiah said one should not only refrain from work on that day, but should not do one's own pleasure or speak one's own words. Revelation 12:17 in the King James Version indicates to the Seventh-day Adventist that the remnant, the last small church of time, would keep the commandments - which to them is mainly the fourth commandment - and that they would have a special gift of prophecy, someone especially anointed to predict the future. So important to the church is the keeping of the fourth commandment that their prophetess had a "vision" of the stones on which God wrote the ten commandments in Heaven where she saw a special light shining around the fourth.9 Her interpretation of various prophecies set the stage for a unique paranoia in the church. A national, then international Sunday law will be promulgated by a combination of Church and State, and God's little group of Sabbath keepers will be persecuted by the entire Christian Church, and with government support, yet. They are taught to prepare for possible martyrdom as a result of following "The Truth", as they call their dogma.

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