by Ramone Romero
In the fall of 2000, during a time when I was studying about the events of 1888 in Adventism, some friends of mine came across Hazel's dream on the internet and told me about it. With no intention of taking the dream seriously, I sat down to skim over it but quickly got distracted instead. I ended up browsing to a website where I read an investigative report about Ellen White which shattered my faith in her. I had been taught that Ellen White’s writings and beliefs were Biblical, and that believing in the Bible rightly led to believing in Ellen White and Adventism. So when my faith in Ellen White fell, my faith in "God" started to fall along with her. I went outside and seriously thought of wandering away into the wilderness and never returning. I had given my life to God, spent a year as a missionary and wanted to become a pastor, and now it seemed that God didn’t exist at all. I could barely even pray at that point, but my heart uttered some kind of "Help me?" to God—if He was indeed out there. I went back inside to the computer as if on “auto-pilot,” feeling empty and nearly dead, and then began to read Hazel's dream.
At first I read cautiously. A little girl was trying to keep up with highly-disciplined adults, and though the girl noticed lions crouching in the bushes, the adults told her to keep quiet. Cover-ups, denials, blindness and fear of admitting problems were all pictured. My heart began to pound as I continued reading. I began to see my own experience in Adventism from a new perspective—God's perspective—and He had seen the same things I had seen! When I was growing up in the church, I noticed many things inside the church and institution that didn't seem right, but wasn't allowed to talk about them. I was told, "No church is perfect" and "It's wrong to criticize God's church." Now suddenly I began to learn for the first time that God cares about His children and doesn’t want them to shut up! He loves us and knows all the things we go through, and He does not tell us to pretend that problems don't exist! And not only that, but He is even angry about how His children have been treated, and He will not allow it to go on for much longer!
I stayed up all night reading what Hazel had written, and in the following days was able to get in touch with Hazel and discover—to both of our surprise—that she lived only five minutes away. Still cautious, I prepared to test her about the most important question, the seventh-day Sabbath—the one thing I believed was our place of safety in the end times. In response, Hazel simply spoke the gospel: "If we're saved by keeping Sabbath in the end-times, then we're saved by our good works and not by faith in Christ." Suddenly the truth of righteousness by faith I knew from the New Testament broke through the end-times scenario I had been taught ever since I could remember. Yes, faith in Christ is the center; He is the only safe place in the end, not the Sabbath day!
As you read this new edition of Hazel’s dream, perhaps you are just as skeptical, cautious and frightened as I was. Perhaps you have just heard information that shakes everything you thought you knew about Ellen White and Adventism. Maybe you, too, doubt whether God exists at all because Adventism has fallen apart in front of you. If this is the case, I pray that He brings to you the same comfort that He brought to me when I read this dream. I pray that you will find yourself swept up on a journey of discovering the passion of His heart, the completeness of His work for us on the Cross, and the unfathomable magnitude of rest that He wants us all to know!
Bless you in His love!
Resting in Him alone,
Ramone Romero
January 4, 2012
Osaka, Japan
___________________________________________________________________________
Next: Introduction or THE DREAM
In the fall of 2000, during a time when I was studying about the events of 1888 in Adventism, some friends of mine came across Hazel's dream on the internet and told me about it. With no intention of taking the dream seriously, I sat down to skim over it but quickly got distracted instead. I ended up browsing to a website where I read an investigative report about Ellen White which shattered my faith in her. I had been taught that Ellen White’s writings and beliefs were Biblical, and that believing in the Bible rightly led to believing in Ellen White and Adventism. So when my faith in Ellen White fell, my faith in "God" started to fall along with her. I went outside and seriously thought of wandering away into the wilderness and never returning. I had given my life to God, spent a year as a missionary and wanted to become a pastor, and now it seemed that God didn’t exist at all. I could barely even pray at that point, but my heart uttered some kind of "Help me?" to God—if He was indeed out there. I went back inside to the computer as if on “auto-pilot,” feeling empty and nearly dead, and then began to read Hazel's dream.
At first I read cautiously. A little girl was trying to keep up with highly-disciplined adults, and though the girl noticed lions crouching in the bushes, the adults told her to keep quiet. Cover-ups, denials, blindness and fear of admitting problems were all pictured. My heart began to pound as I continued reading. I began to see my own experience in Adventism from a new perspective—God's perspective—and He had seen the same things I had seen! When I was growing up in the church, I noticed many things inside the church and institution that didn't seem right, but wasn't allowed to talk about them. I was told, "No church is perfect" and "It's wrong to criticize God's church." Now suddenly I began to learn for the first time that God cares about His children and doesn’t want them to shut up! He loves us and knows all the things we go through, and He does not tell us to pretend that problems don't exist! And not only that, but He is even angry about how His children have been treated, and He will not allow it to go on for much longer!
I stayed up all night reading what Hazel had written, and in the following days was able to get in touch with Hazel and discover—to both of our surprise—that she lived only five minutes away. Still cautious, I prepared to test her about the most important question, the seventh-day Sabbath—the one thing I believed was our place of safety in the end times. In response, Hazel simply spoke the gospel: "If we're saved by keeping Sabbath in the end-times, then we're saved by our good works and not by faith in Christ." Suddenly the truth of righteousness by faith I knew from the New Testament broke through the end-times scenario I had been taught ever since I could remember. Yes, faith in Christ is the center; He is the only safe place in the end, not the Sabbath day!
As you read this new edition of Hazel’s dream, perhaps you are just as skeptical, cautious and frightened as I was. Perhaps you have just heard information that shakes everything you thought you knew about Ellen White and Adventism. Maybe you, too, doubt whether God exists at all because Adventism has fallen apart in front of you. If this is the case, I pray that He brings to you the same comfort that He brought to me when I read this dream. I pray that you will find yourself swept up on a journey of discovering the passion of His heart, the completeness of His work for us on the Cross, and the unfathomable magnitude of rest that He wants us all to know!
Bless you in His love!
Resting in Him alone,
Ramone Romero
January 4, 2012
Osaka, Japan
___________________________________________________________________________
Next: Introduction or THE DREAM
