Michigan Camp Meeting 2016: The Harvest is Great

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Pioneers and the Trinity

Daniel Scarone

Pioneers and the Trinity- Part 1

Father, we thank you for a fresh new morning at the camp meeting here.

And we pray for your Holy Spirit to guide us, grant us wisdom, make us students sitting at your feet.

We want to understand the scriptures, truth, the God we worship, and we need your help.

Grant us your grace, mercy, and forgiveness as well this morning for blank, blue page in our life.

Pray for all the sinners, the speakers, the facilitators, and the mastery of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The topic of the Trinity, We are going to do something like this maybe.

I'm not an optometrist, but I think the contrast is better here.

Now, the topic of the Trinity is a kind of revival issue nowadays.

So my idea is this with you, in order to start working together upon this.

I prepared this work that is on the Trinity, essentially.

The title is the God we worship because every single moment in which we are worshiping the Lord, we are singing songs regarding God, regarding Jesus, and regarding the Holy Spirit, you know.

And finally, it's the God we worship, and that's the reason and the rationale for the title of the book.

However, in the book you are going to find out, and please Track the references based upon first the Bible, because I am trying in the book, or I try in the book to work out the foundation of this small book based upon a simple text coming from the Bible.

Old and New Testament, basically, that is the rationale.

White, I pulled them, all of them, in the back of the book.

Because if this is going to be shunned in the hands of some Pentecostals, Evangelicals, or somebody else, They're going to say, well, Seventh-day Adventists are based only in LNG White writing.

And I'm going to say, no, that is not true.

What we are going to be based is upon the Bible and we are going to examine some of the information coming from the Bible.

So in the presentation in the morning, What we are going to do is I am giving this to you to read and evaluate and if you have questions we're going to open a moment in the afternoon to do that.

Today I'm going to start with a question I already received for the topic regarding the Trinity and the Godhead.

And we are going to evaluate what is the foundation of the topic in the pioneers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

There is a kind of revival today, and this is not an evangelical revival, but it's a kind of revive of the topic of the questioning regarding the topic of the Godhead in the church.

And that is a reason why here at the beginning I'm going to review with you, and I've been telling Ingo when I began to this, say, Ingo, this is not a theology class, this is for lay people.

If I'm going to do my presentation in the church, I'm going to do it this way.

If you go into the internet and you ask yourself what the Seventh-day Adventist Church believes, okay, these are our beliefs.

And this is what we call the 28 fundamental beliefs.

First is the Holy Scriptures, the second is the Trinity, with that name.

And we are going to explore, by the way, about the word Trinity and what is our belief in regarding our position together with Catholicism.

Because some people say Trinity is a Catholic word.

And then we are copying into the Seventh-day Adventist Church something coming from Catholicism.

And there is a section of questions and answers, and there is an answer for that.

But we are going to detail about that and you are going to see.

We believe in the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit.

So when you are, or somebody is denying the Trinity, in a certain sense, they are impacting the concept of holy scriptures, is impacting our second point of belief, and or the 4 of the fifth, and sometimes all together.

So that is part of the problem that we are having here.

By the way, there are sectors in the church in which there are people questioning the creation also.

Years ago, when I was in California, I was with 1 of the evangelists of the General Conference in 1 place in which there were several Seventh-day Adventist churches, and he says to me, Daniel, you look around here, there are several, several Seventh-day Adventist churches, but I don't know how many of them believe 28 fundamental beliefs.

So when thinking In that, I began to say, well, maybe we need to review about that.

So the nature of humanity, the great controversy is the 8, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, experience of salvation, growing in Christ.

By the way, this is probably the last 1 of the fundamental beliefs.

It comes into the set of the 28 fundamental beliefs in St.

And the charge is the 12th, remnant and its mission, unity in the body of Christ, is the 14th, and the 15th is baptism, the Lord's Supper is the 16th, and spiritual gifts and ministries, and 18 is the gift of prophecy, and the law of God, Sabbath is the 20th, and the 21st is to worship, and 22nd is Christian behavior, mourning, and marriage and family 23rd and 24th is Christ's ministry in heavenly sanctuary and the second coming of Christ, the death and resurrection, millennium, and the end of sin and new earth is the 28th.

This is our beliefs, and you go to the website of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the internet, you are going to find that point.

It's important maybe to review those things and to see that, but we need to remember something.

These fundamental beliefs that we call today fundamental beliefs were known and accepted by all the pioneers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church?

Because when we go to the pioneers, what we are going to see is that During the time of the pioneers, the pioneers is this.

Pioneers has been and is a generic name to identify the group of former Seventh-day Adventists that began to give the first elemental steps in what we know today as Seventh-day Adventists.

By the way, the pioneers didn't know that they were pioneers.

Just they were starting a new movement and sometimes they call movement.

Even they didn't use the word church at the beginning.

And remember something, at the beginning there was a fight big big regarding the name you remember that so when you go to to history books of the Seventh-day Adventist Church what you are going to perceive is that thing.

The pioneers have a multi-denominational background behind.

That they were coming, like every 1 of us, from different backgrounds.

My wife, for example, she's with, what I will say, Switzerland, Argentinian, Italian background.

So she's served 4 generations of 7 Day Adventists.

And probably if I began to ask questions here, you're going to begin to say, well, my background is Lutheran, my background is Catholic, my background is Evangelical, my background is, you know, a diversity of background.

So the pioneers were coming from a different sort of backgrounds and you are going to see that here Christian connection, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and so on.

Majority of them were Christian connection.

And Christian connection was an independent movement and 1 of the characteristics of Christian connection is that they do not believe in the Trinity.

Here is reference about the Christian connection.

It's not that they didn't believe, it's that they allowed the individual to decide whether they believed in the Trinity or the Paradise.

Christian connection or Christian connection with Ix was a Christian movement in USA that developed in several places during the 19th century.

By the way, it's disappeared, not any longer, Christian Connection.

I cannot tell you, go to Boston, Massachusetts, you are going to find out Christian connection based upon them.

It was made up of secessions from several different religious denominations.

It was influenced by settling the frontier as well as the formation of the new United States is separation from Great Britain.

The Christian Connection claims to have no creed, instead professing to rely strictly on the Bible.

So that you have here the picture of the Christian connection.

And when you think here Christian connection, we didn't put names, but there are a lot of pioneers connected with that.

Reyes Smith, James White, you know, it's some of them.

So when we are given those names, probably you are going to see those names very well represented in the Revue and Herald and articles and thinking.

So that kind of thing is quite interesting.

And I'm not going to bring some complexities here, but remember something.

White was not Christian connection background.

So remember also that there was another thing in the pioneers that they didn't have.

We today, we do have fundamental beliefs, okay?

There was not at the beginning a fundamental beliefs in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And you are going to sometimes, when you visit places, you discover things.

Pioneers and the Trinity- Part 3

Today is, I guess, my last presentation regarding the topic.

And I'm going to make a review, a general review, of the basic elements of the doctrine that we call Trinity.

I mentioned at the beginning that I prefer to call Godhead and because in my understanding it's more Biblical, you know.

From the beginning, let me share with you that I am a Seventh-day Adventist.

So I guess that we are going to communicate and understand better under that thing.

If you have a different point of view regarding that, you might have it for yourself, but probably this is not the best place to search for fighting.

I am going to be teaching people that is in the church and want to know more about the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist church.

So, basically what I'm going to base my presentation on today is in the Bible.

I'm going to say to you what is the foundation of the view regarding the Bible, because when I began to listen to some things, I was wondering how in the world it's possible to have people that are denying this teaching that biblically is so very clear in the view of the Scriptures.

So let's have a word of prayer and we are going to start because this is a very important topic that is dealing with the Lord of the universe and we need to be maybe to take our shoes and with humbleness of our heart, I study the topic.

Pastor Ingo Sorkin, would you lead us in the word of prayer?

Oh, Father, we thank you for the love you've poured out for us and for our hearts.

We want to thank you for you sit together and study and the rest of it.

Just use your spoken word and we'll pray for your blessing.

We also want to pray for your blessing on the Spelomies as they travel, grant them a safe trip, good movement.

We want to pray for the rest of the campaign that shall be missed.

When we go to the Scriptures, In the presentation, former days, we were talking and mentioning about some plural elements in the Old Testament.

And we were reading and sharing and comparing and searching about Genesis chapter 1, verses 26, 27, 28.

And I already mentioned about the Shema, Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4, and we cover also Isaiah, the book of Isaiah.

So I'm going to enter now with a, not any longer with a view of the pioneers, because we shift into that.

And by the way, you can find over the internet some good articles from Marilyn Bart, for example, or Dr.

Sherry Moon, or Edwin Gain, regarding there is an entire chapter, I guess it's chapter 4 of Edwin Gain in the internet regarding the anti-Trinitarians and the point of view of L.H.E.

And you are going to find out a lot of material over the internet regarding the topic.

What I'm going to review with you, some of the things in the New Testament.

And Plurality and triunity of God in the New Testament is the topic I'm going to be dealing with.

The Bible says there, "...go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." This is a biblical teaching.

There are people denying or questioning Matthew 28, saying this is not in the originals.

I've been showing a couple of times here somebody yesterday brought another argument that I never heard, that this was questioned in the Seventh-day Adventist Bible commentary.

And you see those set of volumes over there?

And what we did was to pick up that, share that and see the topic.

By the way, you can reach and read about that.

That is not the commentary without information, by the way.

There are some Catholic versions of the Catholic Encyclopedia that say that.

However, let me share with you something.

If you go to the Bible versions of the Catholic chart, you are going to find out Matthew 28 verse 19 over there, like it is here.

And I brought the Greek version with all the critical apparatus.

And when I am telling apparatus means that in the section of the footnote it is beginning to say this is based upon papyrus 145, papyrus 180, manuscript 48, something like that, you know.

So when there is a variance or when there is something that is a change or a deviation, it is going to be there.

So there is, according to the version that is based from the Bible societies, international, from which is working, you know, kinship versions and so on, you are going to deal with that.

I don't know too much, and I'm going to be very up the front with you, about English versions, but I know a lot regarding Spanish versions.

Because I've been discussing and I've been delegating from my church on the, from the local conference to the biblical societies in South America.

And I've been in touch with the head editor and translator of the versions in Spanish.

And we have our concerns, by the way, and I'm going to share with you, I can say a lot of them, because our church present to the biblical society in South America some kind of work like this, 700 pages, in which we were suggesting changes in the version, in the Hispanic version.

So normally, General Conference, North American Division, and several others are working in the same kind of style to be aware that we are here, and we are reading, and we need some changes.

Because when you are working with electronic versions of the Bible, you are going to see this abbreviation you see Kingshave versions is KJV okay new Kingshave version is NKJV okay so when you see Reina Valera is the name of this version in Spanish, is RV60.

And that is, Yushin Naida, by the way, was the head translator of that.

He was honored by the church in 1980 for the American guy, 7 languages.

He died already and he was a very good translator.

But we were questioning some words and several things regarding critical topics that were in those versions.

Sometimes when we read something, we need to compare the Bible to see what is in the text.

And it's right, But when there is no foundation, please, we need to stop that.

Because if the Bible says, in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, And you are going to find out that there is no question with the originals and you are going to be or see that this statement is supported by very old manuscripts of the Greek language.

And also, you are going to find out that it's supported by early parallel non-biblical versions of books that were in the knowledge of the early church, you are going to say, hey, here is something that is important.

The Didache mentioned several times Matthew with quotations.

You know, you're saying that, but when you go and read the accounts of all the baptisms that take place, it's always in Jesus name.

And when you're reading through scripture, it's always, Jesus is always instructing his disciples to do everything in his name and that I can list you know the different accounts of baptism that's always in Jesus' name.

Now and this is after Christ went back to heaven, so the disciples would know what Jesus instructed them and would have done according to what he instructed them.

Even when you think that way, you need to accept that it's in the Bible and it is in the original.

I don't remember if it's Erasmus or Eusebius because 1 is involved with 1 John 5, 7, the other with this verse here.

He was the church historian for Caesarea.

And he quotes from Matthew, which they believe is either the very original writing of Matthew or the first copy, and he does not use that in there.

Let me share with you some things that are going to give you a little bit of light upon the topic, if I can.

First of all here, this is a title that is very important in the Bible, Father.

And there is nothing, what I would say, suspicious regarding the name Father.

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Pioneers and the Trinity

Pioneers and the Trinity- Part 1

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Pioneers and the Trinity- Part 1

58m

Pioneers and the Trinity- Part 3

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