​Angel Credited With Sharing Sabbath Truth in 1880s Texas

The stranger appeared on the country road as farmer Notley Tidwell prayed about the Sabbath.

By Andrew McChesney, adventistmission.org

Not many people can say that they have spoken with an angel.

Notley Tidwell could — but he didn’t. Instead, he referred to the mysterious stranger as “the man.”

Notley was born in 1861, the year that the U.S. Civil War started, and traveled with his parents on a covered wagon to the U.S. state of Texas.

Growing up, he followed in his father’s footsteps and began farming in a northeast corner of Texas. He got married and became a father, eventually raising four boys and four girls. He also loved the fiddle, and he often played at barn dances.

One evening in the 1880s, the young farmer prayed as he trudged home, his fiddle in hand, from a barn dance. He was confused. He had been raised to worship on Sunday and everyone whom he knew worshipped on Sunday. 

But he had been studying the Bible, and the Fourth Commandment said clearly, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:8-11; KJV).

Try as he might, Notley couldn’t find any passage in the Bible that changed the holy day of worship from Saturday to Sunday.

So, he prayed as he walked on the dirt road.

“This really bothered him, and he started praying for guidance to find a church and people who kept the real Sabbath of the Bible,” said his granddaughter, Lorena Stigaullde, 94.

A Man Appears

As he prayed, a man suddenly appeared beside him. Notley knew everyone in the area, and he had never seen this man before. But he wasn’t startled. The stranger was very pleasant.

“He just appeared and started talking to him,” said Lorena, who heard her grandfather tell the story when she was a girl. “He didn’t feel afraid. He felt very comfortable.”

The conversation soon turned to the Sabbath, and Notley shared his growing conviction that God had set aside Saturday, not Sunday. He expressed bewilderment that he couldn’t find anyone who observed Saturday.

The stranger said he knew of a group of people who worshipped on Saturday, and he gave detailed directions to the place where they met.

Seeing the fiddle in Notley’s hand, he also advised Notley to stop performing at dances.

The two men conversed for a few more minutes as they walked on the country road. Notley glanced to the side as they spoke, and when he looked back, the man was gone.

“He was just there, and he turned, and he was gone,” said his great-granddaughter Reba Seifert, 68.

Returning home, Notley told his wife about the unusual meeting.

“He came home and said he had met this man,” said Reba, one of granddaughter Lorena’s four children. “Then he laid the fiddle down and never played again.”

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Following the Directions

Days later, Notley decided to follow the man’s directions. They led to a farmhouse where a small group of Seventh-day Adventists met every Sabbath.

Notley was baptized into the Adventist Church with his wife and their eight children. He later became a local church leader and planted the first local Adventist church, located between the towns of Linden and Marietta, Texas.

Although the church is now closed, others have sprung up in the area, including a church in Linden where Lorena attends with Reba and other relatives.

Notley’s legacy also lives on. His faithfulness to God spawned several generations of mission-minded Seventh-day Adventists who have served as Bible workers, literature evangelists, and special needs leaders in Texas and beyond.

“He became the first Adventist in a large family,” said Reba, a retired widow who cares for her mother and gives Bible studies in Linden.

Notley never identified the stranger as an angel, but the family believes that he was sent from heaven in answer to an earnest prayer.

“He just called him ‘the man,’ but he believed that God sent him,” Lorena said. “I believe he was an angel.”

Lorena remembers her grandfather as a kind, joyful man who loved bouncing his grandchildren on his knees while singing “Hallelujah! Thine the glory. Hallelujah! Amen. Hallelujah! Thine the glory. Revive us again.” Notley died after a stroke at the age of 77.

No one in the family knows what the stranger looked like. Details about the encounter are fading from memory as the story is passed down by word of mouth. It has never been recorded until now.

But Reba and her family said they will never forget that God answers the fervent prayers of those who sincerely seek truth.

“Great-grandpa never saw the man again,” Reba said. “It was like he came to tell him what he needed to know and that was it.”