AdAgrA 2021: Hidden Treasure

Home Gardening

Forward to Zion: Ohio Camp Meeting 2015: For Such a Time as This

Morning Devotional

Plenary

Edwin de Kock

Paul Dysinger

Edwin Dysinger

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

02 The Backyard Garden Blueprint

Okay, we're going to be talking about soil health and this is something that's really exciting to me.

We are in a real learning phase ourselves on this topic and we're very excited about it.

Soil is something that it seems like it's an endless frontier.

Like there is so much that you can learn with soil.

So yeah, like Dad said, we're very excited.

Okay, we're going to talk about the basics Soil and plant nutrition basics and and then 6 soil health principles and we're in this session we're going to get into those 6 soil health principles but we're not going to finish them, we'll finish them the following session after that.

An ideal soil is going to be roughly half minerals and organic matter.

You don't normally think of air and water when you think of soil, right?

But for a good soil to function it needs air and water.

We're going to talk more about that coming up.

So each of these components plays a significant role.

So you know it's not like air and water are just kind of ancillary, they're just there, they're needed in the soil.

And soil health and fertility is a function of all of these components as well as a lot more.

And by the way this is kind of where conventional agriculture just kind of hones in and focuses on right?

Yes conventional agriculture tends to focus on the composition of soil and we're finding out that there's a lot more involved than just what the composition is.

So your minerals, and again I think traditional agriculture tends to focus on the mineral and maybe the organic content of the soil.

But in your, most all soils can be divided into 3 components.

You have clay, this is the smallest and finest component in soil.

You have to use an electron microscope to see a clay particle.

Silt is larger, but it's still fine particles.

So sand are the largest particles in a good soil.

Now your soil might have stuff that's bigger than sand.

Some people are blessed with gravel and rocks and boulders in their fields too.

Can I give a quick demonstration on the sizes?

Okay, so just to wrap our minds around the different sizes of the soil, so let's say that clay is the size of a beet seed, beet seed is pretty small.

So if clay is the size of a beet seed, get this.

So that's a pretty big difference there, right?

Another way to demonstrate it is if you take a teaspoon of sand and spread it out flat, 1 layer thick, it would be about the space of a silver dollar or a quarter.

I forget which 1, a quarter or I think it's a quarter.

Be about the size of a quarter, 1 layer thick.

If you spread a teaspoon of clay out 1 layer thick on the ground, guess how large of an area it would cover?

It would cover an entire tennis court, 1 layer thick of clay.

So it's just a fun little demonstration to see the different sizes that you're dealing with and you want to have a good balance and mix.

Yes, your ideal soil would have a nice mix of these 3 components.

If you're heavy on 1 component and not on another, your soil, you know, for example, if you have a heavy clay soil, you're going to have drainage issues.

It's just going to be harder to work with.

If you have a heavy sand soil, you have drainage issues in the opposite way.

I visited a farmer in Florida and he had drip lines in his garden, but it wasn't working because the water only wet just a small area around it, it wouldn't spread out and so he finally said I just got to change something, he added clay to his garden and he said that made a big difference.

But anyways, this is where your minerals and nutrients are, is in these components.

Your organic matter is composed of dead plant debris leaves sticks roots Etc It's also composed of dead soil creatures, including the microbes that have died.

Actually an amazing amount of your organic matter in your soil is microbial.

Organic matter is also composed of living plant material that may be in the soil, mostly roots and living creatures that are in the soil.

Again, mostly microbes, but that would also include, of course, things like earthworms.

We mentioned the importance of air and water.

It's really important that your soil have poor spaces.

These spaces are essential for the air and water to move through the soil.

And why do you think the air and water are important to soil?

Okay, someone's saying there are living creatures in the soil.

We have a lot of microbial life in the soil that is necessary for healthy soil and those microbes need air and water, right?

What creates these poor spaces in the soil?

If you have sand and gravel, you know, larger material in your soil, that tends to help create poor spaces.

Then you have the activity of creatures in your soil like earthworms and even larger creatures.

You know as they're moving around in the soil they open the soil up and keep it aerated.

But we're going to talk quite a bit about this aggregates.

Aggregates are soil, little soil clusters that are kind of glued together.

And those, if you have a soil that has good aggregates, you're going to have good pore spaces.

So think about it like this, you have like 1 or 2 sand pieces that are kind of glued together with a bunch of silt and kind of some clay tacked on there as well and that kind of organic material yeah an organic material mixed in.

And while that is clicking here's a fun little thing with the life in the soil.

If you, can anyone guess how much life is in a teaspoon of healthy soil?

If you were to put it under a microscope and count those microbes, if you were to count them 1 every second, so you just like 1234, and you, so you're looking them under the microscope and you're counting all these microbes in a teaspoon of soil.

Do you know how long it would take you to count them?

Well, first of all, let me tell you how many are in there.

There can be easily over a billion microbes in a teaspoon of soil.

I mean, that's hard to wrap our minds around, so that's why I do it with the illustration of counting.

It would take 31 years to count all of those microbes in just a teaspoon of soil, in healthy soil.

So You don't think about it usually, but when you're walking on the ground, you're walking on life.

So aggregates are minerals and organic matter bound together in clumps that vary in size and shape.

And soil aggregates are a key visible indicator of soil health.

Forward to Zion

The Latter Rain to Ripen the Harvest

The Lord impressed me to speak about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the second great outpouring described as the latter rain, the main purpose of which is to ripen the grain for the harvest before Jesus comes.

We must first look at the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost in the time of the apostles to understand more about the Holy Spirit and the concept of rain.

The Lord Jesus spoke of water as symbol of the Holy Spirit.

Now falling water or rain represents the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

At Pentecost, there were gifts given to people, gifts of tongues, gifts of prophecy, gifts of healing and many other things.

But the main purpose was to preach the gospel for which the individuals had to be prepared.

And there's very much to learn from looking at what happened there at Pentecost, because it will help us to understand the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as the latter rain.

There was to be, as prophesied even in the Old Testament, both an early and a latter reign.

Now when Peter stood up, he actually quoted from the Old Testament.

We read of the latter reign in the prophet Zechariah, that is the second last book in the Old Testament, where he said, ask the Lord for rain in the time of the latter rain, Zechariah 10 verse 1.

Before him the prophet Joel had rejoiced And that was in Joel 2 verses 23 and 24.

Be glad then you children of Zion and rejoice in the Lord your God for he has given you the former rain faithfully, and he will cause the rain to come down for you, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month.

The threshing floor shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil." You see, ripening it for the harvest.

Let us now consider the main events on the day of Pentecost as recorded in Acts, the second chapter.

The disciples had waited for the Holy Spirit because Jesus had told them to do so.

They searched their own souls and consciences.

There were things to put right between themselves and their brothers and sisters, and they did so.

And so, when the outpouring came, they were of 1 accord.

Now in that second chapter of Acts, we read how they were all together.

Then there was a sound from heaven, like a thunder clap, I imagine, because it caused people round about to run and see what was happening.

And then it was like a mighty rushing wind.

Before rain falls you sometimes have great wind.

Suddenly they heard this rushing sound and they saw tongues of fire descend upon each of them and they spoke in foreign languages.

They spoke in languages that they had never learned.

The language spoken in Palestine, in Jerusalem, and in that small country of Palestine, now known as Israel also, I was there.

That was the language of Jesus and the apostles.

The home language of Jesus was not Hebrew.

The Jews had given up their language while they were back in the Babylonian captivity.

So when they came back, They brought with them the Aramaic language which they spoke.

They brought back the Aramaic script and even wrote the Hebrew scriptures.

So when you see written Hebrew, it is Hebrew but written in an Aramaic script.

So those who lived in that area spoke Aramaic.

But there were also other people in Jerusalem.

Jews who did not speak Aramaic, some of them might have understood it, but These were sort of either visiting Jews coming for the festivals or let's call them immigrant Jews from the Diaspora.

And there they were and They spoke a lot of other languages.

They were from Egypt, Libya, Mesopotamia, Persia, Crete.

Arabia, and even Rome, which was a long distance away.

And to their amazement, they heard these Galileans speaking their language.

The Galileans also spoke their version of Aramaic, but here they were speaking these other languages.

Those Jews who lived over there in Rome, well, their language, their own language was perhaps Latin.

Many of them would have spoken Koine Greek, Koine meaning the common Greek.

It had been spread after the conquests of Alexander the Great and the various kingdoms that had been built up by the generals of Alexander and so on, Koine Greek, it was like the English of the ancient world.

Does everybody in the world know English?

How many people do you think in the world do not know English?

What percentage of the world's population does not understand or really understand any English?

How many languages are there in the world?

About 6, 000 and the Seventh-day Adventist Church has worked in more than a thousand.

Now some of them are spoken by small groups of people, admittedly, and sometimes if they spoke some language, they could understand 1 of the neighboring more widely known languages like Hindi, the official language of India, which is supposedly understood by more than a billion people, far more than the native speakers of English.

Written Mandarin written by all the dialect speakers of Chinese.

Oh, a billion 0.3 hundred, you know, 1300000000 people and we are to reach them all in their own languages to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.

They did not speak koine Greek, but the languages of those people for the purpose of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now we must be aware of the fact that we are not going to evangelize the work of the Lord and finish it with English language television.

Literature is perhaps in the long run a better thing, but we cannot print in so many languages because if you have small groups of people, it costs a lot of money to print books.

That is why the Lord enabled people to invent the Kindle, the Nook, and other little reading machines so that if text is produced, it can be read that way.

Now Peter had to explain what this was all about.

Some of the more ignorant people said, oh, they're drunk.

He said, well, it's only very early in the morning, 9 o'clock.

They would not have had the chance to become intoxicated.

And so he quoted from Joel, and what we read in the New Testament is translated from the Greek of the New Testament, and the Greek of the New Testament often quoted from the Septuagint, a translation from Hebrew into Greek made about 200 years or so before Christ.

Now I'm going to read some of this from Joel, but I'm going straight to the Old Testament, which may read a little differently from what Peter said.

And we have this in Joel 2, verse 28 to 32.

Joel 2 verse 28 to 32, and it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.

And also on my servants and on my maidservants I will pour out my spirit in those days.

And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke.

The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Your Bible may have a little different wording.

I have been quoting from the New King James Version.

Not all these prophecies were fulfilled at Pentecost.

Before Jesus ascended, the apostles had asked him, Lord, when will you be setting up your kingdom?

And he told them, it is not for you to know.

The day or the hour, not for you to know.

Three Angels Flying in the Midst of Heaven

I'm very happy to be here again and I want to tell you about a peculiar thing that Gus said to me.

I should not speak for such a short period of time again as I did last time.

You know, yesterday I boiled it down to half an hour and he says, no, I've got to keep on for longer.

Usually the complaint is whoever is the minister is talking way too long.

It is not really a sermon, whatever you want to call it.

But Stephen Boe last night sort of preempted a little of what I was going to say, and yet he and I prepared separately from each other, not knowing what the other person would speak about.

There's something peculiar happening in some places.

There are misguided people, even misguided pastors and professors who say, don't preach about the 3 angels' messages.

There are so-called progressive Seventh-day Adventists, liberals, who don't believe all this stuff anymore.

This morning I spoke to Stephen Emcee, who unfortunately can't come.

He helped to research the material that went into my book, The Truth about 666 and the Story of the Great Apostasy.

When he heard that, he said, remember the word progressive is a favorite word of the spiritualists.

Those so-called progressive Adventists who don't want to accept that we are the remnant church or that the 3 angels' messages are what we think they are, who reject the idea of the mark of the beast being Sunday keepers.

You know, progressive Adventists, regressive Adventists, I would say, a danger.

3 angels flying in the midst of heaven, Let's see about them.

Seventh-day Adventists have a four-fold relationship to the 3 angels' messages.

Second, we came into existence as a result of the prophecy of the 3 angels.

To begin with, there were the Millerites before us, and they preached, fear God and give glory to him for the hour of his judgment has come.

But Miller was right about the 2, 300 days representing years.

He was, however, wrong about the nature of the event, about the judgment.

You know, those people thought that this world was the sanctuary of God and that this world would be cleansed.

Well, it so happens There is a sanctuary and there is a judgment, but it's not on this earth.

The Millerites were absolutely crushed when Jesus didn't come on October 22nd, 1844.

So most of them gave up in 1 way or the other, but a small group, a remnant, a remainder, persevered.

And they found out, but yes, the judgment was real.

And then they also discovered the Sabbath, but the judgment, the investigative judgment would take place before the Lord's return.

And so we can say that the Seventh-day Administered Church is a result of this message, specifically of the sanctuary message, including the discovery of the Sabbath.

Third, the Good Book specifically identifies us by saying, Here are those who keep the commandments of God in the faith of Jesus.

And in a parallel passage back at the end of Revelation 12, it says that the dragon was enraged with a woman and he went to make war with a remnant of her seed, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus.

And another scripture says the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

So this would be a group of people who have the gift of prophecy, but they would be keeping the commandments of God, all the commandments of God, including the Sabbath commandment, and have the faith of Jesus.

There is no other church in the world that can claim all of that.

So there are 3 links that we have for this message.

But fourthly, the passage that comes at the end of Revelation 12, which speaks of the woman fleeing from Satan, the great dragon, would be nourished for 1260 day years.

And so this would be there at the end of the 1260 years, stretching from 538 to 1798, and this ties it up with historicism.

So we are tied in many ways, and I've mentioned 4.

Perhaps some clever person will discover some other links.

But in 4 ways, we are linked to the 3 angels' messages.

The first angel's message, as we observe it, says, then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation, tribe, tongue and people, saying with a great voice, Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.

And you find all of this, of course, there in Revelation 14.

But now, first, what is the everlasting gospel?

It's the good news of Jesus Christ who died for us, was resurrected for us, who intercedes for us so that we will be saved.

The good news of John 3.16, you know, whosoever believes on him will have eternal life.

Now the Millerites to some extent proclaim that.

Did you know that these presentations by William Miller and others were great occasions of revival?

To prepare for the coming of Christ, they had to get ready.

And this ties up with the Great Commission.

You remember what Jesus said just before he went up to heaven?

Back to Menu

Presenter

Edwin de Kock

4 Teachings

Recent

02 The Backyard Garden Blueprint

1h

The Latter Rain to Ripen the Harvest

1h 11m

Three Angels Flying in the Midst of Heaven

55m

Most Listened

The Latter Rain to Ripen the Harvest

1h 11m

The Lord is Coming. Are You Ready?

45m

Three Angels Flying in the Midst of Heaven

55m

Series

Series

Home Gardening

2 more

9 parts

Series

Plenary

3 more

12 parts

Series

Morning Devotional

2 parts

Also Appears In

Conference

Jan 13 – Mar 2, 2021

AdAgrA 2021: Hidden Treasure

16 series

Conference

Jun 3 – 6, 2015

Forward to Zion: Ohio Camp Meeting 2015: For Such a Time as This

2 series

Sound Doctrine