Alan Adams - Return to Simple Church

ANNIVERSARY WAS QUITE A CELEBRATION

Sunday, April 22, 2007 proved in the goodness of God to be a beautiful day.  The weather was delightful: warm and dry.  The expected guests all arrived safely. The morning church service was a blessing.  The Renewal of our Marriage Vows, conducted by Bishop Keith Elford, and witnessed by my two eldest – Elaine Maxwell and Tom Adams – was a happy experience.  And our meal and informal program at Stockdale’s Station 1802 was absolutely fantastic!

There were a number of cameras clicking pictures throughout, both at the church and at Station 1802.  Gena McMullan, a professional photographer who attends the Frankford Free Methodist Church, kindly took some family portraits and donated them to us. We also received a disc of pictures from both Dr. Dan Marshall and Lloyd Crowder.

Our Silver Wedding Anniversary was a wonderfiul experience, with many friends, our six children and all eleven grandchildren present. 

 We are now anticipating our long-awaited trip to Ireland, if the Lord will, from May 2 to May 18.

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GOD’S ABUNDANT GRACE

This poem was composed yesterday for one of our church ladies who is undergoing chemotherapy.

My friend and sister in the Lord

Your fellow Christians are in accord

We want you well

So you can tell

God’s many graces you’ve explored

There’s saving grace, so rich and free

Made possible through Calvary

And keeping grace

Which you can trace

Throughout your life’s diversity

But you’re also finding special grace

That gives you strenth so you’ll embrace

Weakness or loss

Your current cross

And thus let faith all fear displace

Sufficient grace, God’s promise true

Is always there when days are blue

It can’t run out

So never doubt

Take heart, thank God, He’s still with you

Transforming grace, ah, that’s the aim

That you might all God’s best attain

Christ’s likeness wearing

His blessings sharing

And then His “Well done!” finally gaining

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EXCITING QUARTER CENTURY ANNIV

Sunday, April 22, 2007  – Twenty-five years ago on this date, Jeannette and I were  married in Sarnia, Ontario.  Would you believe that exactly 26 years ago, to the day, Jeannette and met for the first time?

Well, to celebrate we have invited many of our family members and close friends to join us in Frankford on April 22nd to witness the renewal of our vows (officiated by Free Methodist Bishop Keith Elford) at the close of our morning worship service and to enjoy an anniversary dinner together at Station 1802.  There will be songs and recitals and speeches, along with a scrumpcious meal.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007 – If the Lord will, Jeannette and I will fly to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to begin an exciting anniversary vacation trip we have talked about ever since we were married.  We intend to pick up a rented car and immediately travel north to see the famous Giants’ Causeway. The next day we will head south into the Republic of Ireland where we have booked Bed and Breakfast accommodations in Donegal, Galway, Kilkee, Dingle, Ballinskelligs and Kildare.  Our vacation is scheduled to end with two nights at a B&B five minutes from Gatwick Airport so we can take the train into London and spend one whole day seeing the sights of the city – Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, St, Paul’s Cathedral, Piccadilly Circus, 10 Downing Street, etc.  By God’s grace we intend to be back home in Frankford Friday, May 18, in the evening.

God has been very good to me, allowing me to spend these past 25 years with Jeannette.  I thank God for her.  She has been to me all that a Christian wife and intimate friend could be.  To God be the glory!

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Text of my Message at my Dad’s Funeral

Delivered February 10, 2007

SCRIPTURE TO BE READ: John 11:14-15, 20-44

I remember hearing Dad read and preach from this passage one evening in Cuba when I was about 15. His focus, “Lazarus is dead…and I am glad…” from which he gave a stirring, comforting message about trusting the Providence of God.

A few months ago Andrew and I received a letter from Dad, asking us to be responsible for his funeral service. As I read it, my mind went to this Scripture. I believe it encapsulates the three great, eternal realities he espoused throughout his life’s ministry, realities he bequeathed to me as his son, and to so many other believers to whom he ministered.

1st, The Greatness of the Sovereign God;
2nd, The Glory of our Saviour, Christ Jesus; and
3rd, The Importance of the Word of the Lord.

He wanted me to unreservedly believe each of these grand realities, and to live in the good of them. He wanted each of you to unreservedly believe them and live in the good of them. And I can affirm without hesitation that Arnold Adams unreservedly believed these three realities and lived in the good of them. Our Dad was a believer, a man of faith – unabashed confidence – faith in God and His Sovereignty, in Jesus and His saving grace, in the infallible authority and trustworthiness of the Bible.

According to John chapter 11, Jesus wanted his disciples to believe: “…for your sakes I am glad,” he stated, “so that you may believe.” He stated emphatically, “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Then he asked Martha, “Do you believe this?” Later at the tomb, when Martha attempted to interrupt what the Lord was doing, she heard his challenge, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

“Lazarus is dead…and I am glad.” I have to be honest and confess I cannot say, Arnold Adams is dead and I am glad…but Andrew will attest to my reaction when he called me Tuesday with the news of Dad’s home call: my first words were, “Thank the Lord!” You see, we have learned from our Dad, from the Scriptures and from personal experience, that it’s impossible for an all-wise God to make a mistake. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”

Whether Lazarus is alive, sick or dead…we can trust the Lord. Whether we live and die, or never die, the key to assurance is that we believe. Whether our Dad is alive or is sick or has departed to be with Christ, which is far better, our privilege today is to trust this great, sovereign and unerring God.

Did you never hear Arnold Adams quote Psalm 145? “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, his greatness is unsearchable.” My Dad served an awesome God! He trusted a God whose greatness cannot be measured, estimated or imagined.

From the Spring of 1941 when He was commended by the brethren of the Pape Avenue Gospel Hall to the grace and care of God for full-time ministry, until he and Mother were assisted very recently to access the Canada Pension Plan, to the best of my knowledge, Dad never had a regular pay cheque, never sent out appeal or circular letters, never had anyone underwriting him…he simply trusted God. He traveled back and forth to the mission field, raised a family, built four houses, paid cash for his cars. The Lord provided for his and his family’s needs. Did you read the little verse on the back page of the hymn folder?*** (By the way, it says Author Unknown…but since printing the folder, we have learned that these lines are credited to a J.J. Lynch.) Dad simply trusted his cares to an unfailing, Omnipotent God.

He told us that back in the Winter of 1940-41, he and Mother were praying about the possibility of being missionaries in Cuba, pondering the overwhelming problems that prevailed during war time. As they were doing their consecutive, daily Bible reading together, they stumbled on Matthew 28:18 and 19: “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore….” That Word of the Lord assured them of divine supervision and care, and the rest is history.

And it was with that same, simple confidence in the unvarnished word of the Lord that Dad preached the Gospel and taught his fellow Christians. That’s the reality he bequeathed to us: faith in the Scriptures. He himself acknowledged that whenever he veered away from the plain, unequivocal Word of the Lord, he ended up in confusion.

Not long after Jeannette and I had begun living in Hamilton, and meeting with Christians outside of the “assemblies”, Dad and I were conversing on the phone when he surprised me with the question, “What are the people you are moving among saying about the Lord’s Coming?” It took me a little while to unpack the question in all it meant. I became aware his extra-biblical reading had led him to some date setting. But that was not the bent of his life!

One fact is sure: Dad had a life-long, undiminished and passionate love for the Lord Jesus Christ. He never went askew on that! Never! If anything, his love for his Saviour only grew more and more as his faith grew. And it was a sound, biblical and evangelistic appreciation for the One who died and rose again for him. It was an appreciation for the Lord Jesus which he proclaimed in the Gospel and invited others to enter into. I remember a Gospel message he preached based on the parable of The Good Samaritan in which his persistent question was, “So what do you have against Jesus?”

I can assure you, we his sons who learned all about this wonderful Lord and Saviour at his feet, have nothing against Jesus. We love the Lord Jesus. We believe in the Name of the Son of God and know that we have eternal life. Last Saturday when Jeannette and I visited with Dad for the last time at Elim Homes, I said to him, “Your sons are still preaching the same Gospel you’ve preached all these years.” His response, in his very weak condition, was a faint smile and an upraised thumb.

Friends, family members, brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we stare physical death in the face and say our temporary farewells to Arnold Adams, we celebrate the Holy One who proved his claim to be The Resurrection and the Life, who sealed His role as the Giver of eternal life, by submitting to the death of crucifixion and rising victoriously from among the dead on the third day.

Mother, your husband of nearly 69 years has been taken from you. Weep, but don’t despair. It’s only a little while. The Lord you and Dad served faithfully together, the Lord who cared for you and him together, will not fail you now. You can face tomorrow, I can face tomorrow, because Jesus lives.

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Biographical Sketch of ARNOLD ADAMS (my Dad)

Published and made available at his funeral – February 10, 2007 

November 30, 1913 – born in Toronto to Frank and May Adams; as he often stated, he was born in Grace Hospital (on a Lord’s Day) and spent the rest of his life in the Grace hospital.
1929 – at the age of 15, being the eldest in a family of five, he left school, having completed Grade 9 at Eastern Tech, and began working at the old Hydro Building on University Avenue, where he remained employed until 1941 when he left the first time for Cuba.
May 20, 1930 – was always a red-letter day in his life: that evening after a Gospel meeting in the Pape Avenue Gospel Hall, with Mr. James Marshall’s Bible open at Romans 10:9 sitting on his lap, and while some of the elder brethren knelt in prayer at the back of the hall, he trusted Christ as his Saviour and began a life of faith from which he never retreated.

Imagine – saved nearly 77 years before his home-call!

May 12, 1938 – he and Kay Simmons were married following a seven-year courtship, and through all the ups and downs of missionary and family life in a strange culture, plus many years of lengthy separations due to an itinerant ministry, they remained very committed and faithful to each other.

Imagine – married to his first wife for nearly 69 years!

April 20, 1940 – their firstborn son Alan was born in Toronto.
March 22, 1941 – received his commendation to the work of the Lord from the assembly that met in the Pape Avenue Gospel Hall. At his passing, he still had in his possession the original letter of commendation from that assembly which is no longer in existence.
May 20, 1941 – exactly 11 years to the day from the day he was saved, he arrived by ship with his wife and 13-month old child in Havana, Cuba, and launched into language studies so he could preach the Gospel in Spanish, teach the Scriptures to the new converts, and plant assemblies of Christians gathered alone in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Late 1944 – after a brief, first furlough in Canada, he spread his wings and moved his little family to the western, Cuban provincial capital of Pinar del Rio, where he began an entirely new Gospel outreach on his own, distributing tracts, preaching in the parks and over the local radio station, conducting classes for young men, and holding house meetings for children and adults.

July 6, 1945 – their second son Andrew was born in Cuba.
March 1946 – brother David Adams, along with his wife Agnes, arrived in Pinar del Rio to join in the work, and the two brothers laboured together until 1954. During those eight years a beautiful Gospel Hall was built, an assembly begun, cottage meetings held in various towns and country areas. The brothers also took part in an island-wide distribution of the Gospel of John, and started a printing ministry which, eventually, under brother David’s leadership, published many 1000’s of tracts sent throughout the Hispanic world. They also helped each other build homes for each of the two families.
Summer 1954 – he did the nearly unthinkable: he moved his wife and two boys, now 14 and 9 respectively, from the western city of Pinar del Rio to the eastern Sierra Maestra mountains, into an area accessible only on foot or by mule-back, four hours from the nearest village or post-office or doctor. God had been at work in that region and an assembly of believers had been started. He saw the need for teaching and further outreach, and believed God had called him to live there. From there he travelled on his trusty mule to some 60 different locations where he conducted cottage meetings, and in one of those places, in the foothills, a number of men and women were wonderfully saved, baptized, taught and gathered together in assembly fellowship.
Summer 1956 – he and his sons dismantled the wood house in the mountains, transported the materials by mule-train to the outskirts of the nearest town, and built another home in a place from which he would find it easier to reach the areas where God seemed to be working. One feature of this new home, which was very different from the original one in the mountains, was the plate glass window in the main room. While on furlough in Canada a couple of years later, he learned that as a result of the revolutionary battle fought between Castro’s and Batista’s forces on that property, the house was razed to the ground. When he and Kay and Andrew went to see the damage, upon return to Cuba in 1959, all that remained of that beautiful plate glass window was a mound of coke-bottle-like glass on the ground.
October 1960 – having settled in the city of Bayamo after furlough, he built another house, welcomed son Alan as a ministry apprentice; but then, due to the increasing hostilities by the Castro regime, took the whole family back to Toronto for what was meant as a temporary evacuation; however, he never went back! While waiting for the US government to deal with the threat of Castro, he began a ministry of preaching and teaching across North America which lasted until almost his 93rd birthday.
August 1962 – aware that the Cuban situation was not about to change as soon as he had expected, he decided to move his family out of the big city. Russell and Ruth Harris’s home in Orillia was available for rent as the Harrises were serving the Lord actively in the Maritimes. Arrangements were made and they moved to 317 Mary Street. He made Orillia and the assembly there his home until in advancing years he and Kay moved to Elim Homes in Waubaushene.
Summer 1966 – as the Harrises were content to make their permanent home in the Maritimes, they decided to sell their house in Orillia; Arnold bought property and built his own home, with the help of many Christians, at 38 Fitton Heights. This served as his “home base” for the next thirty years as he criss-crossed the continent, preaching the gospel, seeing souls saved, and encouraging the saints with his God-centred, Christ-exalting, biblical ministry. During those years, he performed 94 marriages, including those of many children of couples he had married a generation before.
February 1997 – with advancing years, reduced activity, and some encouragement from his children, he sold the home in Orillia and moved with his wife into Elim Homes. There he found a new sphere of labour and actively assisted in the Home where and as he could, helping in the Bible readings in the Home and ministering as opportunities arose in the nearby assemblies, especially in Midland and Waubaushene.
April 2006 – he attended the Easter Conference in Kapuskasing to help the assembly celebrate its 25th Anniversary. He had been there for the inaugural “Breaking of Bread” 25 years earlier at the formation of the assembly and was thrilled to speak at their Quarter Century celebrations!
November 2006 – now in the shadow of his 93rd birthday, he spoke for the last time at Waubaushene Gospel Hall; he told Andrew, just before he spoke, that he had enjoyed some fresh thoughts from John 3:16 on the three individuals there, and was going to share them with the saints the next Lord’s Day! He had sent Andrew some e-mails during 2006 which expressed sheer delight at the enjoyment of God and the revealing work of the Holy Spirit through the written Word. “Even to old age, I am He.”
January 2007 – weakening, losing weight and in some discomfort, he was seen by a doctor in Orillia who referred him to St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto for a series of abdominal procedures which took a severe toll on his ageing body. Up until then, he had only spent one night in hospital in his entire 93 years! February 1 he was brought back by ambulance in a waning condition to Elim Homes.
February 6, 2007 – he finally left his weary body behind and stepped on the shores of the heavenly country. Safe Home at last!

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