by Grace W. OEI ’04

I had the pleasure of sitting down with John A. Scharffenberg ’48, a 2024 Honored Alumnus. He shared a story of God’s deliverance that happened a long time ago.

Scharffenberg is beloved for his approachable and engaging testimony. In this instance, he filled in the details of an event that I had known about for a long time, but at only a superficial level. The providential significance became clear to me only after our delightful chat. This is the story of how God’s hand guided Scharffenberg to speak to the very person he needed to persuade to save my father-in-law, Nathaniel Yen, from being imprisoned for life for keeping the Sabbath.

In the early 1950s, Floyd Wergeland ’32 an Army commander in DC, appointed Scharffenberg, an Army captain in DC, to go to Taiwan as a medical advisor to their Army and Air Force hospitals and health departments. One day, Pastor Jerry Christensen, an American missionary from the General Conference (GC), requested Scharffenberg’s urgent assistance to defend a young stranger named “Yen,” a Taiwanese citizen who was then imprisoned by the Taiwanese military. Christensen hoped to negotiate Yen’s release by leveraging Scharffenberg’s experience with United States and Taiwanese military policies.

Yen became a Seventh-day Adventist after taking the Bible correspondence course three times as he was serving a four-month military duty, which is mandated for all Taiwanese citizens. His captain learned of his faith and became very sympathetic, even proposing to assign him to a unit that was responsible for grocery shopping on Saturdays outside of camp. The captain suggested that Yen could peel off from the unit on shopping days and go worship until sundown, and the captain would make sure that the official daily log would indicate only that Yen was part of the group that went grocery shopping. Yen refused this approach, in keeping with his adherence to the Sabbath, and his captain had no choice but to abort the plan. Yen’s adherence to keeping the Sabbath led to his imprisonment, where he contracted Malaria. Even a GC representative thought Yen was too strict in keeping the Sabbath.

This is when God sent in Scharffenberg.

Christensen requested that Scharffenberg go to Tainan, Taiwan, to join him in meeting with the military prosecutor. En route to Tainan, where Yen was stationed, Scharffenberg took a detour to inspect a military hospital as part of his advisory duties. After a long day at the hospital, a hotel room was arranged for him to stay the night and head on to Tainan the next day as planned. However, Scharffenberg could not overcome the strong impression that he should instead travel that night to Tainan, against the advice of the hospital representatives.

The night was dark and cold as Scharffenberg boarded the train. There were around six passengers in his train car, and he chose a sit across from a man of small stature. Scharffenberg had decided before boarding that he would keep to himself and not speak any Chinese until his mission for Yen was accomplished. He wanted to focus and be able to hear and understand all that he could about Yen’s case to give his best advice and assistance. But the man across from Scharffenberg started a conversation, and the good doctor answered hesitatingly. Surely, giving this man a simple yes or no answer would be harmless, he thought. Little did Scharffenberg know when he hesitantly began to talk, that this unassuming man was the military attorney who was prosecuting Yen’s case.

Initially, they just exchanged pleasantries. But, seeing that Scharffenberg was a foreigner, the attorney asked where he was going to stay. When Scharffenberg said in the military area instead of a hotel or hospital, they discovered each other’s positions and intentions.

During the course of the train ride, the Army attorney opened up and told Scharffenberg that he was assigned to prosecute a man named Yen and that the plan was to imprison Yen for life. Scharffenberg shared that he was there to speak on Yen’s behalf. They got off the train agreeing to see each other the next morning, since they were going to the same place.

Miraculously, at the trial, “the Taiwanese Army found no fault in Yen,” Scharffenberg said. The military attorney had changed his mind between the train ride and the trial. The attorney required Yen to continue his four months of military duty as planned.

After the trial, the attorney paid Yen’s captain a visit. They agreed Yen was an exemplary soldier with a peculiar disease that flared up every Saturday, thus confirming in a very Chinese manner that Yen was able to keep the Sabbath for the rest of his military service.

Yen later married Lorraine Shum, who had graded his Bible lessons course. They went on to have a son and a daughter. I married Yen’s son, Nathan Hoa-Hsin Yen ’90.

Scharffenberg reconnected with my father-in-law in the mid-1990s, about 40 years after Yen’s release from military prison. At the time, my father-in-law was serving as president of the South China Island Union Mission. By then, Yen had earned a doctorate from Drew University with an emphasis in Near East Old Testament studies. He had led multiple archaeological trips to the Holy Land and had written a book about his trips. He had also mastered Japanese fluently, a notoriously difficult feat, and had served as senior pastor to a Japanese church and a Chinese church in Oahu in the early 1980s.

Scharffenberg was delighted to find that Yen had gone on to become “Dr. Nathaniel Yen—a scholar, a good pastor, and a lead evangelist.”

According to Scharffenberg, “This encounter was one of the most exciting things that has ever happened in my life: For I know that the Lord had His Hand in this whole matter.” This is impressive considering that Scharffenberg celebrated his 101st birthday last December. Taking a detour to inspect a military hospital, traveling in the night as opposed to the next day, and then choosing to sit in the same train car as and across from the very person whom he needed to persuade to succeed in his mission—these were not coincidences, but “providence.”