AMEN 2019: Christ in You

Breakout Session A

GYCSE 2018: Focused - When All Else is Blurred

Plenary

AMEN 2018: Call to Service

Breakout Session B

Chris Anderson

Preparing for the Crisis

South Bay SDA Church

06 Is This a Sickness Unto Death?

Okay, tonight's topic is, Is This a Sickness Unto Death?

And the particular focus of Psalms 91 that we're looking at this evening, there's 3 particular texts.

Verse 5, you shall not be afraid for the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day.

And then verse 11, for he shall give his angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways.

And verse 16, with long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation.

Now the few pictures I wanna show you of a place that is 1 of my favorite places on this planet.

All right, so this is the Delicate Arch in Moab, Utah.

An amazing feature that is there, remnants of the flood.

You'll see it when you drive through Arches National Park.

It is a magnificent arch that spans a long, long way.

And here's a view of the windows, a section of Arches Park with the La Salle Mountains there in the background.

Here's the Colorado River winding along through the cliffs and you can't really make it out, but the road that winds along the valley there goes up into Moab.

You drive right along the Colorado River there as well.

There's another kind of fun roads to drive on there that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

It's just an incredible playground with vehicles like Rusty's Jeep.

There are all kinds of four-wheelers that you can take to go zipping around.

They call it undulating, undulating back and forth.

And these can be very dangerous when a flash flood occurs.

A little bit of water will fill that up very quickly.

This is a picture of, you can barely see my brother there in the background, Scott.

It's just a canyon over in Blue John Canyon area.

So we nicknamed it the Antelope-ish Canyon because it's similar to Antelope Canyon.

Here's another picture of him a little bit further in.

And you can see some of the lines that are on this particular canyon, beautiful.

And a lot of rock climbing, rappelling goes on here.

Here's some other pictures of rappelling.

And my story today has to do with this general vicinity here.

In fact, on the far end of this picture, way away on those cliffs on the other end, is kind of where my story takes place.

I worked at a little school here in this valley, And 1 of the staff members decided he was going to take some students for a hike.

And they went up on the top of the cliffs that you see there.

It actually is like just a big desert on the top.

I mean, it looks flat, but it's very undulating up and down as well.

I mean, it's got a lot of trails and pinion pines and jack pines.

So he took some students, he went down the river, the river road a ways, and he cut up through a section, was hiking across with the students, but he didn't realize how far it actually was from where he parked to make it back down to the school on the other side.

The students were getting tired, they were getting hungry, they were getting thirsty, they didn't take enough food.

And some of the students started going 1 way and some started going another, which was unfortunate.

Now, prior to this time, I had been working with some of the students and we had been going out into nature 1 day a week and we were part of a day and we would go canyoneering and I taught them how to do rappelling.

We started off in the school barn and they climbed on top of the hay bales and then they rappelled off of the hay bales.

They learned how to do it on a low setting and then we started doing it in the canyons and the cliffs and they would rappel down the cliffs and they became pretty good at it.

Durson came to the campus and he started teaching high rope rescue, high angle rescue to some of the staff and some of the students.

We didn't know it then but that training was going to come into into very much need on this particular day.

As the staff member and students were walking along the top and getting tired and thirsty, they each decided to come down different ways.

1 particular young lady who was a Navajo young lady who had come up from Monument Valley area was with a group and she stumbled and fell on a very steep area.

And she rolled and tumbled and fell off a short cliff and damaged her leg.

Between her and the bottom of the valley where the school was, was a series of cliffs that was possible to navigate if you're walking, but certainly not with a potentially broken leg.

And So I didn't know any of this was happening until a student showed up at my door that looked haggard and dirty.

Anderson, there is some, Eureka is over here on the cliff and she's hurt her leg.

We think it's broken and we need some help.

So I gathered some of the staff that knew how to handle ropes and some of the students and we went over there and we climbed the cliffs and it was a very difficult route to get up to her and we found her and she was in a lot of pain.

So we splinted her leg and then we assessed what to do.

It was getting dark and in fact by the time we got down it was completely dark.

But It was at this time that we saw the training that we had put in place ahead of time came into place.

We secured her between different individuals.

We secured ropes all the way down and we lowered her from 1 cliff to the next until she reached the bottom.

She was home safe that evening and it turns out she just had a sprain in her leg, but it could have been far worse.

What enabled us to help her and get her down the cliff was preparation.

A preparation that took time and effort and energy.

But it was this preparation that enabled us to be of help when the crisis came.

I want us to look at several biblical passages this evening about preparation.

The most significant passage that came to my mind as I was thinking about this evening is in Jesus' relation to the disciples about the end of time.

He told them, your house is left to you desolate.

He and the disciples went down the steps and the disciples were marveling at them and they'd said to Jesus, look at these stones.

And Jesus said, not 1 stone will be left upon another.

And when they arrived at the top of Mount Olives, they began to ask Jesus, when will these things be?

And so Jesus in Matthew 24 began to explain what the end of time would be like.

After the end of Matthew 24, Jesus told a parable to emphasize the importance of preparation.

So we're gonna look at that parable together, and that is in Matthew chapter 25.

Then the kingdom of heaven will be likened to 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.

Now this parable, as with other parables, has symbols, and we need to rightly understand what those symbols are.

04 How to Have a Strong Immune System

Father in heaven, we need you in this world full of disease and sickness.

We pray that you would keep us safe, help us to understand rightly how we can be strong when others around us are falling.

I want to show a few pictures about the time when we lived in Africa.

Alina was about 2 and Johanna was about 1.

It's kind of a landlocked country in the heart of Africa.

And this is a typical picture of a rural village that we visited.

We would often visit out in the villages.

We go to church in some of the local churches.

It didn't look too much different than the hut there in the background.

Here's Alina holding up the Bible roll that was used for her Sabbath school class.

And the girls often didn't like Sabbath school because the locals thought that their long hair was braided in and that it wasn't real.

And so they were curious to know if it was a wig and so they would pull it.

And So when they would go to Sabbath school class, they would come back and their head would be hurting because they would be pulling their hair.

Often in the rural areas, they did not have an interpreter for all the classes.

And so typically the translator would translate for me when I would speak, but then we just sat, we didn't understand the Tonga language.

So it was definitely a need of interpreter.

We saw the wisdom in Paul's advice, whenever there's a foreign language, there should be an interpreter.

Here's the girls, we were walking, this is the road along the Riverside Farm Institute where we worked and there was maize growing in the background.

And my story today begins with this house.

This is where we lived and these steps here actually.

The girls were likely eating shima and see only 1 of them is using a fork.

But 1 day, this was about the time of Faith and my anniversary, some of our friends had arranged a special getaway escape for our anniversary and they had somebody who came and watched our kids for us and they blindfolded us and they put us in a van and drove us across the campus.

We didn't know where they were taking us but they were bouncing around and they took us up to the lifestyle center, which is up on the hill and it overlooks the river below.

So they had a special meal for us there and we ate together and we had just a really nice time, but I started not feeling real well.

They also had arranged for us to get a massage, each of us, Faith and I, we went to different rooms.

Anyway, I won't go into that here, but as I was laying there, I started getting this heavy sensation in my hands.

They just felt like I had 50 pound weights on each hand and my head was getting dizzy and I just wasn't feeling well.

And this young man, Anthony, was getting a massage.

It's really nice of you because he was doing it just to be nice to us.

I said, really nice of you, I just don't feel well.

So I went out and sat in a chair and waited for Faith to be, of course, she came out ready, and she loves massages.

So we, I said, Faith, you know, this is really nice.

I just don't feel good." They brought the evening to a conclusion and took us home.

We went into the house up those stairs right here and I went in in the door.

That was the last time I would come out that door for a while.

I went in the house and I just wasn't feeling good that night.

The next day I went to the clinic at Riverside and they says, Chris you probably have malaria.

Now the way the test for malaria works is that if you test positive you have malaria.

If you test negative, you likely have malaria.

What they do is if anyone is exhibiting symptoms, then they will, after a day or so, they'll give them malaria medicine.

The next day, I took some malaria medicine, and I just got more and more sick.

So they gave me a stronger medicine the next day and I still got weaker and weaker.

And I don't know how long, I don't remember at this moment how long I laid there in the bed, but it was days.

And there was 2 men from the Adventist church there on campus that came in the house and they laid their hands on me and they prayed for me that I would get better, but I didn't, I got worse.

And we decided I need to go into the hospital in town.

So Faith helped me walk down these stairs.

And I remember getting into the Land Cruiser and we went to the hospital.

And they took me into the hospital, Faith and I, and they put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me back into some room.

And they had a curtain around it, put me in this bed, and they put this curtain around me.

And I remember hearing my wife weeping just outside the curtain.

And the doctor told her, woman, get a hold of yourself.

And I remember laying on that bed, looking at the wall, wondering, is this it?

Not all of us have come face to face with that.

I'm sure many others here also have come face to face with what they felt like could be death and wondered, is this it?

I began to think about my life and what I had done with my life.

And I still felt there was 1 thing in my heart I wanted to see.

I wanted to see my brother have a loving relationship with God.

But I wanted my brother to have this walk with God.

Well, I'll tell you the rest of that story when we come to the end.

So I want to talk about the immune system.

Now Psalms 91 verse 7 says, a thousand may fall at your side, 10000 at your right hand, but It will not come near you.

This is the text we wanna talk about here.

02 Self Quarantine: Stay at Home

Well, I want to tell you about an individual named Jose, Jose Salvador Alvarenga.

He was 35 years old at the time, and it was November 18.

He and his friend, Cordoba, who had a nickname of Piñata, and you can guess they were from Mexico.

They were out fishing off of the coast of Mexico and they've been fishing for 2 days and they caught a lot of fish.

They caught shark, they caught lots of different kinds of fish.

They were using tuna to catch them and they had fishing lines and buoys that they would hook out have out there that would help catch the fish and they would go back and collect the fish off the buoys.

But been fishing for 2 days, they had 1200 pounds of fish and they were headed in.

It was a significant day in Jose's life because things changed dramatically.

A storm began to build, the waves began to get larger and larger, they were crashing over the boat, beginning to fill the boat.

This was the first time for Pinata to be out, and he was very nervous.

He started screaming and yelling, and he was using buckets to throw the...

And this wasn't the first storm that Jose had been in.

In fact, he had been in many other storms.

But this storm, something was due to happen that changed his life dramatically.

As he was going along, his motor quit, absolutely quit.

There was nothing he could do to get it started.

And he fired up his radio and he began to call his boss and he said, hey boss, my motor has quit.

And his boss said, no problem, we'll come get you.

I said, what do you mean the GPS is not working?

I knew it wasn't working when I came out, but I didn't know I'd be running into problems.

So his boss said, okay, well, we'll come looking for you.

So they kept bailing and kept doing the best they could to keep the boat uprighted in the waves.

And eventually they tried to get back on the radio, but the radio had died.

After 5 days, they threw the radio overboard.

Jose picked up a big club that they used to kill the fish and he started beating the engine just to vent his frustration.

The next few days turned to weeks and then months as they floated on the water.

Jose learned how to submerge the upper part of his body in the water and watch for fish to go by and he would grab them with his bare hands and pull them in.

They had a few knives so they were able to cut the fish up in little strips and put them out in the sun to eat.

They were eating raw fish and they were starting to get thirsty.

Now, José had figured out a little system and it channeled all the water into some buckets and they were just overjoyed as they were in drinking this water.

As the two-month time turned around, 60 days floating on the water, wondering, is anyone going to see us?

His friend, Penata, said, I'm not going to make it.

He had been getting weaker and weaker and weaker and feeling despair and hopelessness.

He just could not overcome this isolation that they were in.

Jose just couldn't imagine being alone now on this ocean.

For 6 days he kept Pinata in the boat until he decided it was time and he pushed him over into the water.

Father in heaven, as we face life's challenges, sometimes we too feel like we are all alone.

As we go through this study tonight, may our hearts be encouraged to know that there is a place that we can be safe.

So the Bible tells us about another storm on a much smaller sea, the Sea of Galilee.

Jesus had been in doing ministry and he told the disciples, let's go to the other side.

And so they got into their boat and other little boats came along with them and they began going across.

He was tired from doing ministry And he laid down in the bow of the boat with his head on a pillow.

Now he was with a group of fishermen who knew how to fish.

But that night a storm brew up that was the worst they had ever seen.

How Jesus was still sleeping, I have no idea.

But the disciples began to fear for their life.

And so we read, okay, let's see, we read here, ah, sorry, there's a picture of Jose right there.

I forgot I had a PowerPoint here for you.

And that's the actual boat that Jose was in.

And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship so that it was now full.

And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow.

And they awoke him and said unto him, Master, do you not care that we perish?

Jesus is asleep and they're fearing for their life.

You can't imagine 2 more polar opposite scenarios.

They are completely doing everything they can to save themselves.

He's asleep, not worrying in the slightest about what's going on around him.

The central part of what the disciples are fearing is that Jesus doesn't even care that they die.

He arose and he rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace be still and the wind ceased and there was a great calm.

Presenter

Chris Anderson

7 Teachings

Recent

06 Is This a Sickness Unto Death?

48m

04 How to Have a Strong Immune System

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02 Self Quarantine: Stay at Home

34m

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