When Tom Wahl was born, there were serious complications for both mother and son. “My mom was paralyzed for several months, and I was also paralyzed on my right side for some time,” he says. “The Catholic nuns at the hospital were so sure I was going to die that they quickly called in a priest to baptize me. You see, my mom was Catholic, but my father was Lutheran, and their families didn’t get along. So when I got home and my grandmother found out that I’d been baptized by a Catholic priest, she had a Lutheran pastor baptize me again, just in case! I guess I got baptized one more time, too, this time by immersion, when I joined the Assemblies of God church later on.”
Tom says that he grew up next door to his paternal grandmother, who took him to church each week. “Grandpa never went to church, and my parents didn’t either, except to the lutefisk fish dinner once a year,” he says with a grin.
“Grandma made sure I went to Confirmation classes, but honestly, I came away with only two things from that experience. First, they taught me about The Ten Commandments, and second, they made us all pray out loud. Someone had to open with prayer every week, so it got us used to praying in groups. At the time, I hated it; but it turned out to be a good thing.”
Unfortunately, Tom came away from that experience with the understanding that in order to get to Heaven, he had to keep the Ten Commandments perfectly. “But I kept breaking the commandments until I just gave up,” he says. “And once I graduated from high school, I don’t remember going to church again, except when I served in the Navy, and we had to.”
Tom married Diane, who was raised Methodist, but didn’t go to church much anymore. However, several years later, her mother was invited to an Assemblies of God church. That day, she met Christ—the One who had died for her, the Savior she had never met before.
“After that, she was relentless,” Tom says. “For years, every time you saw her, she was talking about Jesus. Not just to me or my wife, but to all of her family. And because of her, most of us started looking for Jesus, too.
Changes
Tom had grown up in a family where alcohol was always present. “I’d come home from school, and often there was nobody home,” he says. “My baby brother was still in the crib when my dad started giving him beer to drink. My mother would holler at him about it, but in the end, both my brother and my parents were alcoholics. It just wasn’t a great place to grow up.”
By 2000, Tom’s mother had developed end-stage liver disease, so Tom and Diane took over her care. “By then, we had more or less quit going to church,” he recalls. “A new pastor had come, and I didn’t get along with him very well. The church where we’d raised our children would praise God for a good half hour before the service, but for some reason, this new pastor was different. Later, we learned that he suffered from a brain tumor, and that was probably why he acted like he did.”
A New TV Station
By 2005, Tom had retired, and one day, his daughter told him there was a new TV station called 3ABN. “She told me I might like it because they talked a lot about the book of Revelation, so I started watching,” he says. “I’d go downstairs before bed, and I’d listen to David Asscherick’s Discover program. But it wasn’t one episode after another, it was always different programs, so I began taping him and hitting the pause button so I could look up the Bible texts he mentioned!”
For three or four months, Tom watched 3ABN every night. “But not once did I hear anyone mention the Sabbath!” he says. “Then one night, Jac Colón came on, and all of the sudden, he mentioned something about the seventh-day Sabbath.”
“Aha! I thought. They have something up their sleeve! But everyone seemed to know what they were talking about in Revelation, so I just chose to ignore that. I listened to Pastor Stephen Bohr. It seemed like he quoted too much Scripture—but now he’s my favorite preacher! When he mentioned Ellen G. White, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. But then I thought, What’s the difference? If he quotes another commentator, it doesn’t bother me. So why does Ellen White bother me so much?
Tom says that he had difficulty keeping up with the TV schedule changes from month to month, so he visited 3ABN’s website and ordered the entire Discover series on DVD. “It was great, because now I could pause the program and look up all the Bible texts,” he says. “Then, I began to go to the Catholic websites and read the things the popes had written. After that, I checked the Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church, and a couple of books called Instructions in the Catechism of Faith and Bible Footlights that I must have gotten from my grandma. There I found questions and answers about how the Catholic Church changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. This was everything David Asscherick was talking about!”
Search for a New Church Home
With a renewed interest in spiritual things, Tom and Diane began looking for a new church. The door to one of the churches was locked, and another one had a preacher dressed in blue jeans, so they didn’t go there anymore.
“A whole year went by, and when the Bible says that God invites us, saying, ‘Come now, and let us reason together’ (Isaiah 1:18), I can relate. At the time, I was helping a friend build onto his cabin, but was it alright to work on the Sabbath? Diane and I never mentioned anything to anyone, but once I got those DVDs, we both watched them.
“One day I was in my workshop, and I don’t remember what program was on, but there was a panel discussion on 3ABN. And as I walked past it, it was like they were speaking to me! In fact, it was like God Himself was saying, We have discussed this long enough, are you going to do this or not?
“Immediately, I went upstairs, and said to my wife, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m going to start going to church on Sabbath,” and she said, ‘That’s a good idea!’”
“When we visited a Seventh-day Adventist church for the first time, I really liked the pastor, because he was both preaching and teaching,” Tom says. “We were invited to a Bible class on the Book of Hebrews, and since my wife and I had been looking at that not too long before, we listened eagerly. We were introduced to different people, and soon joined our new church family.
Both Tom and Diane were greeters at the church, and she helped pick up things after the service. But as her health began to fail and the COVID pandemic hit, they both stayed home and faithfully watched 3ABN’s Sabbath School Panel and Worship Hour every week.
Sadly, Diane never regained her health, but even though she’s now asleep in Jesus, Tom eagerly awaits that glorious day when they will be reunited for eternity.
Sharing Truth
One of Tom’s greatest thrills has been to tell others about what he’s learned about God. His brother-in-law from South Dakota caught a virus that destroyed a good part of his heart. “We’d go to breakfast,” Tom says, “and then we’d watch the tapes I recorded of David Asscherick. He watched them at night before he went to bed, too, and eventually, he began attending his local Seventh-day Adventist church. The pastor there studied the truths of the Bible with him and they became very good friends. I’m so grateful I got to share those messages with him. He fell in love with Jesus and came to the Lord before he passed away.”
Tom has no doubt that God brought him in contact with 3ABN, and he recalls the special time he and his wife had when they attended a Summer Camp Meeting on our campus. “Pastor Doug Batchelor was there, and we enjoyed him so much,” he says. “We also got to meet Hal and Mollie Steenson, as well as Greg and Jill Morikone. It was a real blessing.”
Today, Tom’s daughter drives him to church, where he continues teaching the very Bible study class he first attended. And to make it even more special, his daughter sits in that class, too!
Yes, it was a long journey for Tom, but now he walks each day with Jesus by his side. We are grateful for how the Holy Spirit draws the attention of those who are searching for truth, bringing them in contact with 3ABN’s ministry. Please pray for those who are watching or listening for the first time today.
