ASI 2009: By Knowing Him

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ASI 2009 Seminar: Exploring End Time Issues

Rick Jaeger

New Spirituality and the Emerging Church: Innovative Outreach to the Post Modern World or Mystical Path to “Deep Ecumenism?”

Hey, I hope this is going to be useful for you all.

I want you to know going in, there's some uncomfortable things to talk about.

Being part of the remnant church has certain obligations that go with it.

I enjoyed very much Sean Boonstra's talk the other morning to the youth at YFJ and we'll refer to that a little bit as we go on.

But our message today is about the emerging church.

I'm just curious who's heard about the emerging church?

By the way, does it make you wonder why Justin mentioned last night that this is happening at 2?

You know, 1 of the joys of being an Adventist, other than having that promise that someday the eastern skies will light up, as Herb would say, in a way that we've never seen before, is we also have this eschatological framework in our minds, don't we?

There are certain things that trigger our attention.

How many remember maybe 9 years, 10 years ago, maybe it was more than that, when evangelicals and Catholics came together, Charles Colson, Richard John Newhouse.

How many of you kind of perked up when you saw that?

Some years later, Pope John Paul has this thing called, oh don't tell me, yeah, has his letter Deis Domini, the day of the Lord, you remember that?

Several weeks ago while all the world was wondering after Michael Jackson, Pope Benedict came out with his third encyclical.

And in that encyclical, he talks about the need for a 1 world authority.

A couple weeks ago we were visiting here from I was down here with my wife and J kids for the weekend and Wes Vi who was the Thunderbird site coordinator had the sermon And he mentioned this and he said, I wonder if those teeth are steel or iron Where did he get that?

We have this in our minds of things to look for don't we?

When we think about time of the end that this is not something new to us Disciples ask what will be the signs of your coming?

When you think about deception, who do you think is gonna be deceived?

Is it difficult to deceive people who don't know anything?

Who are the most difficult ones to deceive?

It's hard to trick somebody that knows what's going on.

Who knows a lot about what's going on about the in time events?

I mean isn't that what we have in our minds?

We've got this list of things that we're looking out for and probably more besides.

We want to talk a bit about some of these things today, particularly the ecumenism, spiritualism, but mostly this deception.

God has 1 tool in the toolbox, and that's truth.

Satan has a whole host of tools in his toolbox, all the way from rank error to things that are almost true.

We're all familiar with this, through the 2 great errors, the immortality of the soul and Sonny's sacredness, Satan will bring people under his deceptions.

While the former lays the foundation of spiritualism, The latter creates a bond of sympathy with Rome will either of these heirs deceive you No, not not even close.

He has the power to bring for men the appearance of their departed friends.

Many are comforted with the assurance of their loved ones they are enjoying the bliss of heaven and so on.

How many of you, what would you do if your old departed Uncle Joe shows up 1 day and starts talking, you'd run like your hair's on fire, wouldn't you?

Great Controversy 604, a belief in spiritual manifestations open the door to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils and thus the influences of angels will be felt, evil angels, will be felt in the churches.

Does that include our church, by the way?

What I'd like you to do as we go through this today, I'd like you to keep 2 thoughts in mind as the backdrop.

1 is spiritual manifestations, 1 is deception.

So with every slide, kind of put that in your mind and we'll go from there.

We're going to look at the emerging church.

We're going to briefly go over the history and formation, the postmodern mindset, theology, eschatology, new spirituality, and so on.

We're going to look at the intersection with Adventism because we have a history here.

And it's important and interesting to see how that's happening.

I spent a lot of time with Herb Douglas, who many of you know, and he kept telling me, you gotta cut out slides, 30 slides.

You ever played those card games where the only way you can win is have about 30 cards in your hand?

You sort of need enough pictures to make this thing look decent so we're going to cover a lot of stuff really quickly.

The emerging church by the way is a difficult thing to define and by its own definition no 1 really knows where it's going.

Conversation's kind of an interesting term.

If there's another, is there a dentist in the room?

I know there's a dentist in the room, I just saw him.

If I were to have a conversation with another dentist, what would we talk about?

We'd have things to share together, right?

And he'd have experiences of materials and all sorts of things, things that worked, things that didn't work, and we could have a conversation because both of us would have something to say.

If I wanted to learn something about banking, I'd get a little pad of paper and I'd get a pen and I'd ask Justin and he would give me a list of propositional truths which would help me understand banking.

I'd have nothing to say except maybe questions, right?

Conversation is a very formative term in the emerging church.

In the late 1990s, a group called Leadership Network organized a team of young pastors and thinkers to begin a conversation about how to reach postmodern culture, and they included these people.

We'll hear from many of those in a few minutes.

There's no way to understand the postmodern mindset.

And by the way, tomorrow, Sean Booster will be giving a thing on, I think all day long, both morning and afternoon on the postmodern mindset.

You can't understand the emerging church without understanding the postmodern mindset.

You can't understand 9-11 or post 9-11 without the term 9-11, they're relational terms.

You really can't understand postmodernism without briefly understanding modernism.

Modernity rose out of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, rationalism.

From that we got all sorts of truth that was opened up to folks and their whole life opened up and they saw things completely different.

Following the lead of science, which is increasingly able to explain how the world worked.

You understand, as science began to explain why when I pick this up and let go of it, it falls, It began to give society tools with which to understand how their world works.

These truths that they were learning were propositional in that they were always consistent.

The nice thing about propositional truth is that it holds up every place you take it.

This thing, this computer bag will fall to the ground whether I do it here in Phoenix or whether I do it in Sacramento or any place else.

Because you have those sorts of propositional truths that are working in society, and science began to uncover more and more in these things, the world became a place where people could design their own future.

If I knew what bricks were going to do when I added certain things to it, I could do that anywhere and everywhere, and I could depend on it, I could manufacture it, I could predict my future.

It brought a lot of, It's like a really bad spot here.

Modernity, I think we've talked about absolute propositional truth.

Don Mackintosh

The Upside of the Downside

Father in heaven, we're thankful today that we can come, we can spend a few moments, and we ask that your spirit would be with us in this time, and that you would speak to us individually, and we thank you, we come in Christ's name, amen.

I'm going to talk today about the economy.

And I know that many of you are business people and probably know a lot more about any business section I'll talk about than I do and I'm glad that you're here and feel free to correct me afterward and so we can all grow.

But I'm also going to be low tech today because I wanted to have the lights on instead of off.

So They recently did a poll, New York Times and CBS, actually July 24th to 28th, so a recent poll.

And in that poll they discovered that Americans are concerned about 2 things.

I checked it out this morning by talking to some people not from ASI that didn't have their badges on like the UPS store and other places downtown here and I found out the poll is correct.

What is the largest concern of Americans today?

And as I heard that, I recognized that these were Jesus' largest concerns as well.

In the Gospels, he wrote more about finance, if you study it, than almost anything else, more than heaven or hell.

So, he recognized that people's number 1 concern would be the economy and finances.

Secondly, he did more healing than he did preaching.

So, it seems as though Jesus is right up to date.

Seems like he could have something to say to us today.

Now I want to talk today, I'll tell you what I want to tell you and then hopefully we'll tell you more of what I said I would tell you.

I want to talk today about, you know, the downside.

Why are people concerned about the economy, what's happened and how did it happen?

You may know more about it than I do and that may be just a review for you.

And then the upside, are there positive things that could come out of this situation, opportunities?

And not being a real buff on everything economy-wise when they asked me to do this, I took courage Because really what I'm giving you is a part of a sermon, it's an expanded sermon that I gave on audio verse at Advent Hope, the Sabbath school class at Loma Linda.

And I gave this talk, I'm about to give you, I'm gonna embellish it a little more today.

Gave the talk and I thought, you know, it's a Sabbath school talk and it's about the economy.

But I quoted an economist in the talk and this economist then listened to my message somehow got a hold of it, not a Seventh Day Adventist economist from Texas, not that there aren't Adventists and textbists, but he doesn't have to be 1.

And he listened to it and a guy from the New York Times called him.

This man from the New York Times called him, his name was Paul Viletto, he's in charge of the religion section of the New York Times, and he talked to that man, and the man said, you should listen to this guy's presentation on AudioVerse.

How many think AudioVerse is pretty important?

So this economist from the New York Times goes to AudioVerse and he listens to my message.

And then he listens to 5 more of my sermons.

And then he listens to a bunch of sermons on AudioVerse and he calls me up from the New York Times.

It's like this number that was like, it was like slashes across my phone.

I don't know how they do that from the New York Times, but it was no number.

It was just like, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

And he says, this is Paul Voletto from the New York Times.

I said, you listened to my sermon on AudioVerse?

Like, is this the Time Zone or the magazine or the newspaper?

He goes, actually, I was very interested in what you had to say.

And that led to an article that came out in the end of 2008 in the New York Times.

I didn't know it had come out, but some people started calling me up.

Hey, we saw you're quoted in the New York Times.

The power of the Adventist message, amen, New York Times.

I think Donna McNeil is somebody who was reading the New York Times.

Because, you know, they wouldn't listen to me ordinarily, but I guess because the New York Times has, you know, she says, would you do this thing?

It's not because of any ability, it's because of Audioverse on the New York Times.

So and then I got kind of stressed out, you know.

I felt a little ulcerative colitis or something coming on.

I realized that I really didn't know so much.

So I bought this book by someone from Harvard, you know.

And it's been a couple of generations since we'd have a graduate in my family from Harvard.

The last was my great uncle, and he didn't do so well.

So I bought this book, The Ascent of Money, by Harvard professor Neil Ferguson.

How many of you have ever read this book?

And so there was this book by Neil Ferguson, and I said, this is fascinating, The Ascent of Money, and it starts in Babylon, and it gives a history of money.

So I'm going through this thing and I'm fascinated by it.

And then, you know, just a little snippet.

It's not a nippet, it's a snippet from the book.

It says that 1 out of every $13 that is paid out, Dr.

Douglas, 2 people in America is paid to someone who's working in the financial services.

It appears that more people when they graduate or when they go to college, they say, we want to go into business because that's where you make the money.

And so 1 out of $13 and there is an increase of people going into business degrees and I'm thankful for people in business and I'm thankful for that.

And these people are definitely front line individuals.

Now when that class, the business class of 2007 graduated, 2007, You don't mind if I walk around, do you?

It seemed as if nothing could halt global finance.

Not terrorist attacks on New York or London, not a raging war in the Middle East.

Lewis Walton

Analysis of the Economy: How We Got to Where We Are Now

Just after World War II in the late 40s, a warship was underway in Chesapeake Bay in the evening, and a young junior lieutenant was standing watch, and the captain had retired to his underway stateroom, leaving the young man in command of the ship.

And everything was going pretty well until there was that sudden, just awful, heart-stopping, career-ending moment when the ship quit moving.

It just stopped, rocked a little bit as the bow dug in.

And the young man was just opening his mouth to say something when the captain burst onto the bridge and began giving orders.

Messenger, pipe damage control to the bridge on the double and quartermaster get me a round of bearings.

Midships, engines back 1, DC to the bridge, round of bearings, sir.

Well, out on the bridge wings, alligators began to swing to line up with a church steeple and a lighthouse and some other shore side object illuminated in the evening lights.

And those lines of bearing were brought in and laid down on the chart, and bingo, there you had it, a perfect three-line cross right over that notation on the chart that said, Danger, Show Water.

And the captain turned to the young officer and he said, Mister, Having ruined your career and probably mine, I have a question for you.

And he said, well, then I have another question.

Now, a few months ago at Dan Houghton's church in Southern California, I did a weekend series on the economy and I told that story, and I haven't seen the DVD yet.

So if perchance you've seen that DVD, you'll recognize that I've told that story before.

I told it again for a very simple reason.

At Dan Houghton's church, and by the way, thank the Lord for Dan Houghton and his family.

The good they have done for ASI and for the Adventist Church is just incalculable.

And I think the highest praise we could pay to them is that they've raised 2 wonderful sons who are faithful to the Advent message.

Well in any event, at his church I told this story, but I didn't tell it all because I had to save something for ASI.

So here I'm going to finish the story by asking the $64 billion question.

He had a chart, he had a compass, he had a seaman apprentice at the helm following orders.

Well, let me explain it to you, because the mistake he made is 1 we could make, both spiritually and prophetically.

Very insidious, very dangerous, very easy to make.

And it's a nautical problem that's defined by a very simple word called set, S-E-T.

You want to get to that dock on the shore.

You lay down a compass course direct for that dock.

And theoretically, you're going to get there, correct?

Except that in the medium in which you float, there is a sideways current due to an ebbing tide or a flood tide or just a perennial equatorial current, wherever it might be, so that as you steer a perfect compass course toward the object which you want to reach, your vessel very gradually and imperceptibly does this.

And now let's change colors just for the high drama of the moment.

Right here was the spot on the chart marked danger shoal water.

This can happen, happened to on a vessel I was stationed on.

The XO, a full commander, had failed to take into consideration an ebbing tide and as we pulled in to dock, we used a wooden minesweeper as a fender.

We were a full steam-powered warship with five-inch guns mounted.

And when we brushed up against that little piece of United States Navy property called a minesweeper, you could hear crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch as the timbers began caving in.

The captain of the minesweeper was running down the dock before we had the first line aboard.

There are forces deep in the medium that carries us, be it water or human events, that suddenly subtly move us in a direction we don't perceive until it's too late.

We think perhaps we have the end time all figured out.

Ignoring to factor into the equation, Lucifer is not stupid.

He knows them at least as well as we do, and just maybe better.

And Lucifer is capable of engineering deep currents that move us off course, even when we think we know where we are and where we're headed.

At a time of unparalleled world complexity where it is very obvious Congress doesn't understand what's going on, very obvious the White House is struggling with it, very obvious that the Kremlin doesn't have a clue, nor does the Politburo in Beijing.

How do we relate to the world we live in?

Let me give you a very simple, perhaps facially naive answer that we might want to think about and take seriously.

We need implicit faith in prophetic guidance, even when we can't see the reason for it.

In recent years, it's been popular among folk who style themselves as progressive thinkers, whatever that may mean, to relegate Ellen White to harmless oblivion, either from the need for career preservation or just political necessity.

It's often done by condemning her with faint praise.

She wrote some wonderful devotional literature, but after all, we are moving into the 21st century.

And in so saying, we set ourselves up for that imperceptible sideways drift toward problems and obstacles we cannot foresee, and None of us could expect but a prophet could see because in holy vision, they foresaw the problem.

Long ago, Ellen White gave some advice, hard to understand.

I mean, it seems even counterintuitive to what she had said heretofore.

She said, with respect to labor unions, brethren, stay out of them.

I mean, back in the era when she said that, huge fortunes were being made and spent by a very few wealthy families.

Great business trusts were combining to put in the hands of a very few people control over enormous quota of our economic output in this country.

And the workers who enabled all of that wealth were underpaid, uncared for, living in grinding poverty.

You see, America was just recovering from the nightmare of slavery, and when you let a demon like that loose in your society, you, into your collective national life, you also set in motion forces where sooner or later everybody is imperiled and everybody is capable of suffering.

And so it was in the era of big business combining and the worker suffering very badly in America.

Adventism has always been very stoutly aware of and concerned about civil and constitutional rights?

Are you aware that the early Adventist pioneers, the Millerites, almost to a person were ardent abolitionists?

We recognize that when anybody in our society suffers, the Constitution is in peril because the Constitution's function is what?

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ASI 2009 Seminar: Exploring End Time Issues

New Spirituality and the Emerging Church: Innovative Outreach to the Post Modern World or Mystical Path to “Deep Ecumenism?”

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