id you ever have something incredible happen, only to forget about it until, thinking about the incident later, you wonder why it didn't make more of an impression on you at the time?

Well, this is one of those experiences . . .

It was the late summer/early fall 1980. I was working with Hungarian Seventh-day Adventist wallpaper hangers in Switzerland (how I got involved with Hungarian Seventh-day Adventist wallpaper hangers in Switzerland is another story).

Less than a year earlier (at 23), my life had been turned upside down and inside out by having met Jesus Christ. Changing from a secular Jew to a born-again Seventh-day Adventist was a backbreaking transition. It was not easy having almost everything I believed, every first principle, every axiom, every assumption, shown to be wrong. I was still adjusting.

Each evening after work I would walk through the serene, staid streets of Zurich, which offered me space to muse and mull over all my new first premises.

Then the riots began. Suddenly my quiet, contemplative streets were filled with hundreds of young people who, night after night, battled police (I never did find out exactly what the fuss was all about). My first exposure began when I had inadvertently wandered around a corner where people were throwing rocks at the police. Because I was behind the police, the rocks that overshot them came toward me. I instantly took cover behind a statue, either of Ulrich Zwingli or of the Anabaptists (I don't remember which) whom he had killed for teaching adult immersion instead of infant baptism, a crime for which Zwingli had the offenders tied up, placed in boats, and drowned (whatever else you want to say about him, the man truly had a sense of irony). Whomever the statue was of, it proved a good defense.

Despite the riots I still took my evening walks. Though not exactly looking for the action, I didn't exactly avoid it either. With the exception of getting shot twice by rubber bullets, I came out pretty much unscathed.

There was, however, one close call. One night, when the rock-throwing and tear-gassing were about over, I walked past an alleyway where I saw three rioters-faces covered in masks-about to beat a man with pipes and clubs. Out of sheer desperation, I ran over and yelled, "Don't! Don't!" For my trouble one of the assailants threw me against the wall next to the impending victim. Oh, man, I thought, isn't this just dandy.

The one who first grabbed me then noticed something bulging under my coat. Perhaps thinking it was a weapon, he reached over and pulled it out. What he got was a large King James Bible. (Who else but a new believer would walk around with a humongous Bible under his coat, especially during a riot?) Seeing it, he started laughing hysterically. He then showed it to his two buddies, who, looking at the Bible, started laughing too. Reeking with hilarity, he handed me back the Bible. Lowering their clubs and pipes, all three turned around and walked away, splattering the darkness with shrill cackles and laughs.

With a dull, incomprehensible stare the remaining guy looked at me and said, "Who are you? Where are you from?"

Still somewhat dazed myself, all I uttered was "Hey, man, I just didn't want to see anyone get hurt, that's all." And then I just walked away (maybe I should have written that last sentence, "And then I left, riding tall in my saddle into the sunset").

For whatever reasons, I have rarely thought about the incident. Then earlier this year when I told it to Ulrich Frikart, president of the Euro-Africa Division (who is Swiss), he said, "Brother Goldstein-you should write this story up."

So I did (you just read it). The message? I'm not sure. Maybe it's about a lost opportunity. (Why didn't I witness to that guy?) Maybe it's about the power of the Word (it was, after all, the Bible that spared us from getting our heads bashed in). I don't know what to make of it all. I don't want to read more into it than is there; nor do I want to dismiss it as nothing.

Suggestions, anyone?

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Clifford Goldstein is editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide.