I was born on October 11, 1952, in Mobile, Alabama, U.S.A.

For the first 21 years of my life, I was trained by my parents and four retired general conference leaders for my future work in the Seventh-day Adventist church. I was raised in an SDA community; I was delivered by an Adventist doctor, attended Adventist schools, and was surrounded by faithful adherents of the church. I am related to the church’s founder and prophetess, Ellen G. White, through both my mother and my father. I am also related to 27 of the 28 founders of the church.

As a young man, I discovered the SDA church had changed major teachings, eliminated a foundational prophecy, and had begun a 40- to 50-year move away from Ellen G. White and her teachings, in particular, The Investigative Judgement. The church was becoming an organization entirely different from the institution in which I had been raised – it no longer promoted Ellen White as the inspired prophetess and founder. Because I believed in Ellen White’s teaching that there is no Trinity, only one God, and because I believed the Sabbath commandment applies only to Jews, I worked to change the misguided direction of the SDA church and return it to its foundational teachings.

When I was met with tremendous hostility, I left the church. A small group of church leaders supported litigation to punish me and make an example of what happens to someone who is groomed for a future in the church but instead defies church teachings and leadership.

My mother’s Jewish mother converted to the Adventist church before World War II. When I left the Adventist church as a young man, I returned to my mother’s Jewish heritage.