GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

Answering the Angels

Kameron DeVasher

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

03 Why Didn’t Satan Die at Calvary, Too?

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this gorgeous day.

Thank you for these good friends and church family we get to fellowship with.

Thank you for what it reveals to us about who you are and your plans for us and our part in your universe.

Bless us now as we revisit these themes, go deeper into your word and trust in advance that you will bless us greatly for we pray it in Jesus name.

Now, just to review where we've gone so far, we started in Matthew chapter 13, and we looked at the parable of the wheat and the tares.

And we noted that Jesus, per request of his disciples, broke down every element of that and explained how the world was the field.

The good seeds of the righteous, the wicked are the bad seeds, the tears.

The harvest is the end of the age and the reapers are the angels.

And those were the angels who are asking the questions about, Sir, how is it possible that you said you sowed good seed, but we see that there's bad seed?

And we laid the premise from the Bible that it is not disloyalty to have questions for God.

In fact, he's the 1 who invites us, come let us reason together.

We should be able to give a reason for the hope that's in us.

So it's a reasonable thing to have questions because this is a big topic.

The existence of sin, God's response to it, how he's going to end it, and where do we fit into all of that?

So we looked at the first presentation about the enemy.

Of course, it's Lucifer, and God did not create the devil.

He created a perfect being who chose to rebel.

And we notice how God's response was not to destroy him instantly, though he could have, and he would have been just in doing it, but it would not have solved the problem because there was an on-looking universe of people who were evaluating all of these things and trying to wrestle and understand what the deal was.

So the Lord, instead of blotting him out of existence, cast him out of his position in heaven, out of the heavenly realms and to the earth.

So, the man who God had put here on the earth, Adam, to be the ruler of this world, given dominion over creation, as long as he was loyal to God, would hold that rulership position.

But, as Satan accurately recounted in Luke chapter 4 that this authority was given to him when Satan rebelled against God.

So now Christ comes not only to give an answer to the obfuscations and the deceptions and the falses of Satan, but to be the answer to them.

That God needed to not only declare the truth, he needed to demonstrate the truth.

And thus Jesus could say, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father, that my righteousness is to be revealed in the person of Jesus.

And of course, that revelation came to a climax at Calvary.

When Jesus bowed his head and died, but never once for a moment did he give in to Satan, did he sell out in any way, did he rebel against God, he died faithful and he could declare in all honesty, it is finished.

And at that moment of Calvary, The onlooking universe saw for the very first time 2 very critical things.

Number 1, they saw the truth about who God was in the person of Jesus.

They had witnessed his sacrificial life and his ministry, his love and belovedness, and now his self-sacrifice on the cross.

And they realized that everything God had claimed about himself was true, because they could see it in Jesus.

At the same time, everything that God had said about Satan was true too, that he is indeed a liar and or a murderer and we noted that the last link of sympathy between Satan and the heavenly world was broken when they witnessed Calvary and how that power of Christ's sacrifice will be a guarantee that there won't be another rebellion amongst the heavenly universe.

Anyway, that brings us essentially up to speed in our first 2 presentations, but now we go to the next question, which is this.

He said, Now is the judgment of this world.

Now the ruler of this world will be cast out.

The last link of sympathy has been broken, and Jesus is victorious, and all God's people said, Amen.

Well, that leaves us with a question, though.

Why is He still going 2, 000 years later?

He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning.'" And notice that the devil didn't just sin, he was the beginning of sin.

Iniquity was found in you, Scripture says.

So, for this purpose, the Son of God was manifested, right?

That is, to be made tangible, to appear here, the Incarnation, why Jesus was sent.

For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might do what?

Okay, So he came here to be the answer to all of Satan's argumentations and slanders and falsehood, to reveal the character of God, to end Satan, and he was successful.

Okay, so we beg the question, if that's why Jesus came, and that's what Jesus accomplished, why is Satan still alive now?

Because as we had talked about, the on-looking universe, the loyal angels and those sons of God in the heavenly realm, apparently for 4, 000 years had some level of sympathy for Satan.

But just like the sons of God and Job, let's hear him out.

But at Calvary, there's nothing more to say.

So, couldn't you, if you were the God the Father, turn to those angelic hosts and say, now do you see Why he can't just be quarantined, he needs to be killed.

Right, this is not a negotiation, we're not gonna have an arbitration, we need an elimination.

I'm guessing all the angel hosts would be like, we see it now, we knew him, but now we're done.

As we already mentioned, Christ's life revealed the character of God, and Christ's death revealed the character of Satan.

Because God had more than 1 purpose in coming to this earth.

Jesus Himself explains in Luke 19, verse 10, 10 For the Son of Man has come to do what?

So did Jesus come to destroy the works of the devil?

He had a phase 2, a secondary purpose, another side of the coin, where not only eliminating evil, but also redeeming, saving what was lost.

Praise the Lord, we don't colloquially refer to this as the plan of destruction.

So in order for the plan to be accomplished, it would be insufficient to merely kill Satan and sinners.

By the way, if God said at Calvary, OK, all the questions have been answered, all Satan and his followers are done, Is that good news?

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Religious Liberty Teetering on the Edge

Joe Reeves

03 How Not to Debate a Christian Nationalist?

In 1997, Rosaria Butterfield was a tenured professor at Syracuse University.

A committed lesbian and a vocal activist for LGBTQ rights.

She was researching the religious right for a book she intended to write, viewing Christians as anti-intellectual and hateful.

After publishing a critique of the Christian men's group Promise Keepers in the local newspaper, Her inbox flooded with hate mail and angry diatribes from Christians confirming her bias that they were her enemies But 1 letter stood out It came from Ken Smith a local Reformed Presbyterian pastor.

He simply asked Genuine questions about how she had arrived at her conclusions and how she defined her worldview The letter ended with an invitation to dinner Rosaria initially discarded it but later retrieved it compelled by its challenge to her presuppositions.

She published a book, which you can see on the screen, with her story, and she has a website which you can explore with her story as well.

Her book is called The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, an English professor's journey into Christian faith.

She accepted the invitation to dinner by Pastor Ken Smith.

She arrived with her researcher's eye ready to dissect his bigotry, But at the Smith home there was no trap, there was no sermon, there was just a warm meal and a couple who seemed genuinely interested in her life.

They asked her questions and they actually listened to her answers.

He didn't share the gospel with me, she writes, that night.

Rosaria, or he didn't invite me to church.

Over time, Ken and his wife, Floyd, became true friends.

They entered her world, met her friends, exchanged books, discussed sexuality and politics openly without judgment.

Ken's prayers during meals were intimate and vulnerable, revealing a God who was holy yet merciful.

For those 2 years, Ken and Floyd practiced the art of inquiry.

They created a safe space where Rosaria could belong before she believed.

By taking the time to diagnose her heart, understanding her deep desire for community and truth, they earned the right to speak into her life.

Eventually, Rosaria began reading the Bible to critique it.

"'I read the way a glutton devours, ' she wrote, but the text began to dismantle her defenses The crisis point came in her own kitchen when a transgender friend Jay warned her this Bible reading is changing you with tremors Rosaria whispered back Jay what if it is true?

What if Jesus is real and the risen Lord?

The result was a total collapse of her previous worldview leading to her conversion in 1999.

The voice of God she continued saying, a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world.

The radical activist who once marched in pride parades eventually became a pastor's wife, a homeschooling mother, and a conservative author.

Years later, she noted that It wasn't a debate that changed her mind.

It was a pastor who was willing to listen long enough for her to hear the voice of God.

So whether it's a MAGA Republican or whether it's a transgender activist, How to debate?

And that's why Ellen White would write things such as this.

And I have been seeing people comment on these quotes by Ellen White lately.

There's more debate coming into the American culture lately, right?

And so time and place, whatever, people are really dismissing this counsel.

But this is what Ellen White wrote in a number of places, Evangelism 163, the spirit of debate, of controversy, is a device of Satan to stir up combativeness and thus eclipse the truth as it is in Jesus.

Many have thus been repulsed instead of being 1 to Christ." So where debate will never win, listening, inquiring, sharing, friendship, belonging, those things can set the stage first.

So Ellen White writes 3 chapters on religious liberty that are found in Testimonies for the Church Volume 9.

And if you go to Section 7, there's 3 chapters on religious liberty.

And there's there's just amazing, amazing counsel in there about religious liberty.

She talks about things you might be surprised.

She mentions in connection with religious liberty, but check them out for sure.

And in there, she says on page 239, Let everyone bear in mind that in no case we are in no case to invite what?

Persecution so we can debate and we can engage in a way that invites persecution.

But don't worry, Adventists would never do that.

We are not to use harsh and cutting words.

Let the Word of God do the cutting, the rebuking.

Let finite men hide and abide in Jesus Christ.

And that's counsel given in connection to religious liberty.

If you're going to be involved in religious liberty you have to check yourself and your attitude constantly because there's a lot of things in religious liberty that get you stirred up real fast.

Testimonies for the Church, volume 6, page 396 says, the Lord's agent should have a sanctified zeal a zeal that is wholly under his control stormy times will come rapidly enough upon us and we should take no course of our own that will hasten them." So this was a theme or a concern that was on her mind a lot.

She writes about it repeatedly that Adventists would check ourselves and not bring persecution upon ourselves by the way that we engage those that we disagree with.

In the chapter on the time of trouble from the great controversy she writes about, Ellen G.

White writes about Jacob's time of trouble.

This story is from the book of Genesis and Jacob is returning to his homeland but he's greatly endangered because of his brother Esau.

He fears that he's going to die that night, that Esau is going to confront him And he's not going to be able to withstand his strong brother because he had wronged him 27 years before.

In the middle of the night he's wrestling with a stranger, which turns out to be God.

And Jacob is in turmoil because he realizes that it is, to a large degree, his own sin that has brought this time of trouble upon him.

White applies that to the time of trouble that God's people go through at the end.

Do you think that there's any chance that when Adventists experience some time of trouble in the future that we realized that to some degree we brought it upon ourselves.

That's why what we do now, how we speak now, what we publish now, what we record now, put on YouTube, everything else needs to be greatly filtered because we don't we don't always filter ourselves very well check out what she says about Jacob's time trouble and to the burden of anxiety and fear was added the crushing weight of self-reproach it was his own fault For it was his own sin that had brought this danger.

So should the followers of Christ, as they approach the time of trouble, make every exertion to place themselves in a proper light before the people, to disarm prejudice and to avert the danger which threatens liberty of conscience.

Now this is talking about right now if you believe we're in the time when we're approaching the time of trouble.

In that time when there's still liberty we are to do everything possible to disarm prejudice and put ourselves in the right light before the people.

So it's not just what we say, it's how we say it and it's how we represent ourselves.

PR is a big deal, public relations, because if you don't have credibility you don't have much and perceptions is everything.

So how does the world perceive Seventh-day Adventists?

Of course there were a lot of false accusations against Jesus and there will be against us too, but let's not enhance those by giving them good reasons.

Selected Messages, Volume 2, page 379 says, Let us as a people, as far as possible, and here she's talking about Jacob's time of trouble, as far as possible, cleanse the camp of moral defilement and aggravating sins.

So when she's talking about Jacob's time of trouble, why would she use this word aggravating sins?

Because during this time, just like Jacob experienced, God's people are going to realize that they have committed aggravating sins.

They have aggravated the people of the world.

They have stirred them up and triggered, in some cases, persecution.

So as our nation, our world becomes more polarized as we examine this morning, Adventists really need to know how to restrain ourselves and to have discernment and be filled with the Spirit of Christ so that we don't bring persecution on ourselves as Jacob did.

So how to debate a Christian nationalist?

But for the rest of my presentation I'm going to go through the top 8 arguments that I've heard from Christian nationalists that believe that Christians now, you heard them this morning from the clips if you were here, Christians that believe America or Christians need to rise up in America and take political power and control and they believe that the Bible has commissioned us to take political power and control and that we make America a Christian nation.

And there's a lot of very sincere people that believe this.

By the way, Paul, before he was Paul, he was Saul.

Okay, and there's a lot of people like that today.

And he was persecuting the Christians and he realized he was making a mistake and he was converted.

The War for Your Mind

Scott Mayer

03 Digital Evangelism

02 How Can an Honest God Defeat a Lying Devil?

This is Answering the Angels, now session 2.

How can an honest God defeat a lying devil?

He was cast the earth that serpent of old called the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world.

But before we do anything, let's start with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, again, we thank you so much for the opportunity to be here in Orlando.

Thank you for this great controversy theme that we can dive into and for your word giving us the answers we need.

Bless us now as we seek to understand it and apply it in our lives.

Very brief summary from our last presentation.

How can there be bad in God's good universe, essentially?

And we noticed that God did not create the devil.

And from that then God had to respond somehow.

I mean, he could have just not responded and let the whole thing go crazy, but no, he did respond by casting him out.

The central passage we looked at, by the way, if you ever want to do this Bible study with anyone, it's actually a very simple study.

You start with Matthew 13 and go through the parable.

You got Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, look behind the scenes.

You can see Revelation chapter 12 verses 7 through 9 where he casts him out of heaven.

And then you go to the, you add some great controversy in there, a little, I mean not great controversy, but just a little bit of spirit prophecy, but really not much.

It's just, I really want people to see that this concept of the great controversy and God's response to it is not like a few words from the Bible and then books and books from Ellen White where she made it.

This is a Biblical concept that simply Ellen White comments on helps clarify, but it's deeply rooted squarely on scripture.

So let's be clear about that Anyway, so our topic now is how can an honest God defeat a lying devil?

Well, let's go back to Ezekiel 28 verse 16 Let me ask this question.

What was the thing that got Satan thrown out?

Did he, I mean, and I've heard people spiritualize, well, in a sense, he broke all the commitments.

Like, okay, okay, but I mean, just logistically, what did he actually do?

We can all have guesses, and they might have some level of veracity to them, but let's see what the text says.

By the abundance of your trading, you became filled with violence within, and you sinned.'" By the abundance of your trading, what did he say?

It's like a commercial term, it's traffic.

In fact, in the King James, you'll see that word, T-R-A-F-F-I-C-K.

It's the only time it's used in the Bible, traffic.

By the abundance of your trading, you became filled with violence within, and you sinned.

Therefore, because of that, I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God.

I destroyed you a covering cherub from the midst of this fiery stone." So the question is, was Lucifer cast out of heaven for selling something?

In Job chapter 1, Job chapter 1, verses 1 through 5, is a great thing for Job.

He's a righteous man, he's got children and a household, he's got wealth and influence, yet it hasn't ruined his character.

I mean, he's just a really good guy, Job.

And it says in verse 5, I'm sorry, verse 3, so this man was the greatest of all the people of the East.

And if Job only was 5 verses long, good for Job.

And if you notice, it's a sharp juxtaposition from down here on earth where Job is living this life, all of a sudden verse 6 comes along, "'Now there was a day when the sons of God "'came to present themselves before the Lord, "'and Satan also came among them.' There was a day.

Now notice it's not, it starts with Job here on earth and where he lives there in the east with his household and his family, but this is completely disconnected from that.

This meeting takes place in the presence of God in heaven, right?

Because notice, they came to present themselves before the Lord.

The Lord is calling people in and He hosts a meeting there.

There was a day when the sons of God, which should put a question in our minds, who are these sons of God?

And we'll come back to that in just a second.

But There was a day when the sons of God, which should put a question in our minds, who are these sons of God?

But there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord.

So apparently a meeting was called and they come from other places to assemble before the Lord.

And it adds, and Satan also came among them.

Now this seems to have a problem with what we had just studied in our first 1.

Didn't Satan used to live in heavenly places right there at the right hand of God?

Yes, but as we saw last time, what has happened?

He was cast to the earth and his angels were cast out with him.

But now, There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them.

There are several questions in this simple sentence, right?

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All Teachings

03 Why Didn’t Satan Die at Calvary, Too?

55m

03 How Not to Debate a Christian Nationalist?

57m

03 Digital Evangelism

48m

02 How Can an Honest God Defeat a Lying Devil?

53m

02 Are Adventists Wrong about Revelation 13?

55m

02 How to Avoid Deception

47m

06 Confidence Only in Christ

23m

06 Jesus and Buddhism

29m

01 Why Is There Evil in the Universe?

56m

01 What Will Cause the Next Civil War?

57m

01 The Real Cost of Social Media

49m

The Hero

28m

Sound Doctrine