Adonai gave me a new mission
Most Christians celebrate Sunday as Sabbath and some Christians such as Adventists celebrate Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. I had not found clear Bible guidance as to which would be right and I think both cannot be right.
I prayed for guidance as follows: "My dear Savior Jesus Christ. I do not know which of those two days of rest is right, but you probably have many long-time disciples in Finland whom you have already taught about this, so send one of them to guide me while showing it from the Bible. Thank you! Amen."
A couple of days before the beginning of January, I visited Jesus' House, in Vartiokylä, Helsinki. There was an old man named Antti Hartikka. We had never met before. We introduced ourselves to each other. He came near me and whispered in my ear, "Hi Leif. I got it in my heart to tell you about a Bible truth that most people here are not yet ready to accept. Can I come to you one day to discuss it?"
I said it was fine and he came on the last day of the year when I had to move out of my apartment. He began the conversation by saying, "Some Christians wonder what day is the right day of rest: Sunday or Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. I have been instructed by the Lord to guide you in this matter."
He said that he wanted to show from the Bible which of those two is correct, and that he don't not teach any doctrinal thing except through the Bible. I replied to him that he had now come under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to teach me.
I told him that I had just prayed for this and made it a condition that the person the Lord sends to teach me in this matter must be able to show it purely from the Bible. He began to teach me from the beginning of the Bible, and from there we continued to the end of the New Covenant Scriptures.
It became clear to me that the Jewish Sabbath was not abrogated, but was even confirmed, for example, in Matthew. 5: 17-20. There is nothing in the Bible that would support Sunday as the day of rest.
However, the Sabbath or celebration of it does not save anyone. The only basis for salvation is faith in the redemption that Yeshua HaMashiach performed for us when he died on Cross on the Calvary and rose from the dead three days later.
Still, celebrating a true Sabbath is a welcome one for Yehowah, and we should strive to please him. The Sabbath begins with a Friday evening sunset and ends with a Saturday evening sunset. It is since that time I have tried to spend the Sabbath as a day of rest and experienced great blessings as a result.
As a writer with a missionary
I told Antti that I had to move out of my apartment that evening and he asked me to travel with him in his car to Paattinen, in Turku. He rented us an upstairs, in detached house in the countryside owned by family called Rantala. There we wrote a booklet manuscript on the book of Revelation: "Who is the Beast of the Book of Revelation?"
We studied the Bible together and I worked as a scribe and texted 112 pages with pencil on A4 size sheets. It took 2 months. Antti had been studying that theme of the Bible for about 4 years. He took 50 copies of it from the University of Turku for free distribution. I was left with one of it, and I copied it completely to the margins of the preacher's Bible.
After that I spent a few days upstairs in Hartikka's private house, in Kyrö Karinainen. There I prayed for more guidance in my life. After praying alone one morning, I experienced a prayer going through the heavens and told it to Antti and his wife.
I asked Antti to take me to the train station. I said goodbye to Hartikka's wife and Antti took me there at noon and I traveled to Helsinki.
A suitable apartment
It was a cold winter. I arrived in Helsinki and went to the Siion Church evening meeting. As I sat there in the second last row, a young man asked, "Where have you been when you haven't been here in a long time?" I said, "I was in Turku and came here today."
He asked, 'Where are you going to stay?" I replied, "I don't know, but Adonai has probably searched a place that suits me." Then I felt as if an electric force field was spinning around my head. After a little thought, the man asked, "Would you like to come to me at Tuomarila in Espoo?"
I replied that it was fine proposal and so after the meeting we traveled by local train to Tuomarila in Espoo. On the way he told me that his roommate had just got mentally ill and had been taken in the mental hospital, so his bed was now free for me.
It rental apartment was a neat two rooms apartment right next to the train station. I noticed that there were dark brown stripes in the sinks and toilet bowl. The guy said it was due to tap water with too much iron.
That man was unknown for me before. He had noticed me at meetings and I had sometimes been the chair of a meeting. That was reason he offered me an apartment with him.
You see, it was a cold winter and I would definitely have been ill if I had spent the night outside. The man worked as a mailman in the mornings. After only two nights there, on the third day, I went into the woods under a tree to pray for Adonai to get a new guidance and got the words in my heart:
"Go in faith to search for an apartment in Helsinki, through the Believers' Housing Agency, so that I can heal the mentally ill man and bring him to the home where you now are living."
Adonai helped me left that apartment
I left the apartment and asked Adonai to heal the sick man so he could return home to his apartment. I then understood the reason for getting that apartment, and while he was at work, I wrote him a note telling him the reason to move out of there. I put a FIM 50 bank note next to it and thanked him for the accommodation.
I left the apartment while he was away and I received a sub-tenant apartment at Fredrikinkatu 30 in Helsinki, from an elderly Jewish widow in a large apartment. She wondered that nobody had cared for that clean apartment and it was already 4 March 1976. I told her it was because the apartment was reserved for me. She wondered at my answer.
The rent was FIM 360 per month, which is average, considering that the room was furnished and had its own toilet. I learned to like that nice widow named Braine Berlin. I saw the Torah, the five books of Moses in Hebrew, on the bookshelf in my room. So I asked Braine if she was Jewish.
Braine invited me to her living room and told of her life stages how she and her husband had fled from Germany. Because they had been persecuted, they did not want to have children in such a bad time of the world. So they were childless.
She liked me as her son when I told her I would spend the Sabbath on Saturdays. She used to bring me 4 sandwiches on the Sabbath, a big cup of tea and a silver sugar bowl with silver holders for taking the sugar cubes. She brought those all, placed nicely on a small table, to my room. Table had wheels under it's feet.
Sometimes she offered them to me in her living room. I sometimes told her about my life. Once, when I had told her on Saturday afternoon about a miracle the Holy One of Israel had done to me, just at the end of my speech, the wall clock struck exactly 5 pm.
She said, "It has to be true, because the clock struck evenly at the end of it."
A job as a deputy teacher
I got a job as a metal and woodworking deputy teacher in Tapiola, Espoo. There I taught the 7th and 8th grade boys not only those subjects but also machine drawing.
The rector was a 2-meter-tall man, from Ostrobothnian. He had prayed to have someone as teacher's post of deputy, who was Christian man, and he was delighted to learn that I was a prayer answer.
I also organized once a short prayer moment for so called morning's opening. Especially the girl pupils liked it because I ended the worship playing a good song by The Aaltos band, "Oh Saul, are you still searching...".
The rector belonged to a Christian revival movement called The Praying People and I was once in his home meeting praying. It was a fun trip. I had bought shoes from the Salvation Army' Second hand shop. The shoe soles were only glued. It rained that evening. I wondered how it was so easy to walk home, until I noticed at home that the soles of the shoe had fallen on the street as I walked.
Once at school, there was a mistake that the rector forgot to transfer salaries to teachers' accounts. One female teacher said big aloud so that all heard, she would not come to work unless her salary is the next day in her account. The principal apologized and promised to do so. For that reason, I wasn't either able to pay my rent on the first day next month.
I told Braine the reason and said I would ask the school principal the next day for an advance on my salary so I could pay the rent. She agreed. So did the rector too.
He gave me FIM 500 in cash from his wallet, so I was able to pay my rent, bus tickets and buy some food. On school days, I got free food in the school dining room. My salary came into my account 3 days later.
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