Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

A Light Was Kindled

C. Raymond Holmes

A Light Was Kindled- Part 1

Well, in the course of this seminar, I'm going to share with you the story of how Luther helped me to become a Seventh-day Adventist.

I've been thinking about this seminar for a long time.

When I realized that this year was the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, I was eager to do a seminar on that.

And so I started a year ago getting ready for this, doing a lot of reading, thinking, praying, and I actually turned some of this into sermons and preached them in the church there.

But I have to confess I have mixed feelings this morning as we get started, because it's such a vast subject.

The Reformation actually covered more than 2 centuries, although it began in 1517, it was more of an advancement of truth, a progression of truth, than an event.

And I was so happy to discover, as I was preparing for this, this statement by Ellen White in the great controversy, because since I became acquainted with the spirit of prophecy, I'm always amazed at how Ellen White was able to find the words that captured the spiritual essence, not just the theology or the truth, but the spiritual essence.

And she certainly did it in this statement.

Listen, at Wittenberg a light was kindled whose rays should extend to the uttermost parts of the earth, and which was to increase in rightness to the close of time.

The reason this is so significant a statement is because there are people saying today that the Reformation is over.

And not only that, that it was a mistake.

And by the way, I would recommend highly this book, The Reformation and the Advent Movement by W.L.

It's published PO Box 449, Ukiah, California 95482.

Heavenly Father, as we begin our study this morning of the Reformation and its meaning for our time, we pray for the presence and the ministry of your Holy Spirit.

Lord, give us the kind of enthusiasm that the early reformers had so that we can finish the work and the mission that you have given to the remnant church.

I want to read a quote from here, just to get started.

The author says, by the middle of the 18th century, the New World had received representatives not only of the major Reformation churches, Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican, but had also been seeded with all the rediscovered truths brought by the evangelicals seeking freedom of worship that had been denied them in Britain and on the continent.

At the time America became independent, says A.M.

Schlesinger in his book, The Birth of the Nation, quote, America presented the greatest diversity of beliefs of any land on Earth.

The reason, he said, was not far to seek.

From the beginning of the 16th century to the middle of the 17th, the old world had been rent with theological dissension and the vast transatlantic continent offered a natural refuge for the persecuted minorities.

To the careful student of the ongoing Reformation, that single thread is discernible in the fact that while many tears were sown among the wheat, All the great Bible truths of the faith which was once delivered to the saints, including many neglected or suppressed by the compromising Protestant state churches of Europe, were able to find good ground in the American wilderness.

There they could germinate, grow, and mature, awaiting the appointed time when they would be brought together in the final phase of the everlasting gospel, God's last message of mercy to a perishing world.

Of all the providences in the rise and development of the United States, this surely was the greatest in the grand design." started on page 177 and went to 178.

God set it up because he knew what was going to happen, And he brought the Seventh-day Adventist movement into existence in the middle of the 19th century in preparation for today.

All right, I want to dedicate this seminar to the late Dr.

Kukkonen, Lutheran and my spiritual mentor and friend.

He was my Elihu, who said to Job in Job 33 verse In Job 33 verse 8 and 34 verse 3, Elihu said to Job, Surely you have spoken in my ears, and I have heard the sound of your words.

And also he said, the ear tests words as the palate tastes food.

When I was in the midst of my spiritual crisis back in the late 60s, he had been my Lutheran seminary professor, and I needed some spiritual counseling and help.

So I called him up and I briefly explained what was happening, and he said, come on down and visit.

And so I drove down to Homewood, Illinois, which is right near Chicago.

And I spent 2 days with him explaining to him what was happening.

My wife had become a Seventh-day Adventist.

He didn't say a word, and his eyes never left my face.

When I was finished, I had nothing more to say.

I expected this Lutheran theologian to tell me, watch out for those people, they're a bunch of heretics.

Finally he said, Ray, you need to ask God what he's trying to say to you.

He didn't respond to my dilemma on the intellectual level.

He responded on the spiritual level, on the level of the heart.

He was a true spiritual friend and continued to be my friend until he died just a couple of years ago.

Because of those words of his, that's why I said he was like my Elihu.

I got in my car and instead of driving back home to Bessemer, Michigan, I drove to Berrien Springs.

I had a Volkswagen camper that I was driving at that time and I parked in the seminary parking lot.

I went in, and I just wanted to meet some people and get kind of a flavor.

I spent a day there, talked to a few of the seminary professors, and I drove home and the story began to unfold.

I'll share bits and pieces as we go along, but I want to dedicate this to Dr.

Because without his words, which I believe God gave him to say to me, He spoke on the level where my need was the greatest.

And those words of his, in effect, gave me the freedom, virtually the permission, because he was my respected professor, to pursue this and find out what's really going on.

And as the whole process developed, I began to realize that, because I wouldn't listen to my wife, I had to do this on my own.

And I knew that eventually, you know, people would say, oh, he just became an Adventist because his wife did it, see.

But he opened the way, And I thank God for it.

And when my last conversation with him 2 years ago was over the phone, I called him.

He was living in Minneapolis by that time.

I called him to see how he was doing, and we had a long conversation.

And at the end of the conversation, he said, Ray, I have concluded that this—he was speaking of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that he was a part of—I have concluded that this is a Christ-less church.

And we hung up, and can you imagine how I was thinking?

I've got to go down to Minneapolis and sit at his feet again and find out what he meant by that.

I called him on a Sunday the following Thursday morning early.

His son called me and he said, my dad died this morning.

And he said, he told me he wants you to preach at his funeral.

I had 2 days to prepare, and my wife and I drove down to DeKalb, Illinois for his funeral here in a big church, Lutheran church.

I had a congregation of Lutheran people, Seventh-day Adventist preacher, And I told him what he had said over the phone.

And I suggested that you might want to think about that, try to figure out what he meant.

Well if the church that he was a part of, which was the tradition of the Reformation, Was in that kind of a situation.

The reason it has happened is because sola scriptura has been abandoned by a lot of Protestantism.

A Light Was Kindled- Part 2

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this new day, and for your grace and mercy that are new every day.

We pray that you would Send your Holy Spirit to be with us this morning and throughout this day, and bless us by means of your word and your personal care.

I especially ask for your anointing this morning as we continue our discussion of the Reformation and its meaning for our time.

Bless everyone that's here according to their need.

Well, I guess I've reached that stage in life When it's easier to sit down while I'm talking than stand, but who knows?

When we ended our session yesterday, I asked a couple of questions.

Why did God choose the period in world history known as the Middle Ages, or sometimes the Dark Ages or sometimes the Medieval period.

Why did he choose that time for the great event of the Reformation to begin?

And why did he choose the man by the name of Mark Luther to light the spark?

So we're going to talk about that a little bit.

But The title of today's presentation is The Times.

It's hard to imagine what the what the world was like and what life for the average person was like 500 years ago.

That's 1 reason why I was looking forward to doing the research for this seminar, to expose myself to what things were like back then.

So that's what we're going to start with this morning.

What was it about that time, that period, that in God's timing made what we call the Reformation not only necessary, but inevitable and possible?

There is so much historical material as you can imagine.

So we can only summarize and mention a few highlights to help you get a picture in your mind of what life was like in those days.

You and I live at a time when the world has been getting smaller and smaller, at least in our perception.

For example, you can leave the airport in Ironwood, Michigan, near where I live, early in the morning, and you can land in Manila in the Philippines by nightfall.

And if you do that, I could send an email message to you on my iPad that would get there in an instant, long before you would even arrive in Manila.

500 years ago, the world was a great unknown to most people.

She was with a group of ladies, and somebody had mentioned a fig tree.

And she said, I don't even know what a fig tree looks like.

And 1 of the ladies took out her smartphone, here, there's a fig tree.

Well, way back then, people had little contact beyond their immediate neighbors.

From where I live, it's 500 miles to this campground, exactly.

It takes us 6 hours to drive from our house to the bridge.

And another 4 hours from the bridge to Edmore.

So a hundred miles was a long way in those days, especially when you had to travel by foot or on horseback.

When Luther was living in a monastery, he made a pilgrimage from Saxony in Germany in the year 1511 to the city of Rome in Italy.

That was much further than a hundred miles.

Did he take a train or a jet passenger airplane?

Those kind of things weren't even dreamed of in those days.

You want to go to Rome, you have to take an airplane, and it's a long trip.

That was a long way, right through the Alps, yes.

1 reason that time was called the Middle Ages is because a new age was dawning.

Looking back, historians looking back, they gave it the title of the Middle Ages.

Ages, was a transitional period, came in the middle of paganism and quote, civilization.

So a new age was dawning, and it's also called the Renaissance.

In 1492, Columbus sailed west and discovered the New World.

Interesting, how it's referred to as the new world.

And that, of course, was a major event in world history.

Every child in school learns about Columbus and the discovery of the new world.

And people began to realize, hey, the world is much larger than we ever imagined.

For example, the invention of the telescope changed the whole conception of the universe for people.

And a man by the name of Copernicus, using that instrument, came up with the idea that the Earth was no longer believed to be the center of the universe.

It was a planet that moved around the sun.

The sun is the center of the known universe, not the earth.

The invention of gunpowder changed the whole method of warfare.

And the impact of that, just the invention of gunpowder, can be compared with the invention of atomic weapons in the 20th century.

Also, old certainties began to be doubted.

People began to question things, spiritual things as well as physical things.

And along with that, there was a search for beauty and truth that began.

And that produced people like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, great Medieval artists.

You can still see some of their works in some of the great museums, like the Louvre in Paris.

I was thrilled to go there and stand in front of the Mona Lisa.

Michelangelo's Statue of David, marvelous.

A study of the ancient Greek classics began.

People began, the intellectuals began to look into the past.

And out of that a spirit of criticism began to emerge that could not be contained.

And then there was the invention of paper.

You know, we take that so much for granted today.

Up until then it was scrolls, made out of sometimes animal skins.

And that was followed by 1 of the greatest inventions ever known, movable type and printing.

In 1456, Just a century before the, almost a century before the Reformation, John Gutenberg printed the first Bible in Latin.

Because now for the first time, the average person had access to the Word of God.

And a lot of folks didn't know how to read, and they desperately wanted to read the scriptures, so they had to learn to read.

So the Bible was not only a great spiritual instrument, but an intellectual 1.

They could read it and interpret it for themselves.

And that, by the way, was a bother to the church, troublesome.

A Light Was Kindled- Part 3

We're so thankful to be a part of this church.

We're so thankful for your grace and mercy and for your healing power.

And we pray that your Holy Spirit would be here this morning to bless us and to help us understand and see your truth.

When we ended yesterday, I was mentioning that attempts are being made today by ecumenical zealots to reverse the course Protestant history and actually undo the past 500 years, rather than continue to shine that light that was lit in Wittenberg in 1517, and as Ellen White said, was intended to increase in brightness to the close of time.

I was so thrilled to read that statement by Mrs.

White because I have believed for a long time that the Reformation is not over.

Because the issue is the same today, than it was 500 years ago.

God's people and the world need to hear again Luther's great ringing testimony when he said, my conscience is captive to the word of God.

And by the way, there are some historical revisionists that even doubt whether he said that.

And the reason they doubt it is because they wish he hadn't said it.

But fortunately there were a number of people present at the time that wrote down his words.

On that great declaration, my conscience is captive to the word of God, rested the Protestant faith.

Ellen White says, referring to Luther, 1 man opposed to the mightiest powers on earth.

When she refers to the mightiest powers on earth, she's referring to both secular and ecclesiastic power.

By the way, when you read in detail the history of the Reformation, it wasn't all pleasant on the Protestant side either.

I mean, there were people that were being executed by the Roman Catholic authorities for their faith And there were also people executed among the Protestants, by Protestants, for their faith.

The radical reformers, or some of them were called evangelicals.

So it wasn't a very pleasant time either.

Anyway, October 31, 1517 is the date when the light was kindled.

Almost 3 years later, on June 15, 1520, Pope Leo X issued his condemnation of Luther.

It was entitled in Latin, Exsurge Domini, arise O Lord and judge thy cause.

And Luther was given 60 days by the Pope to submit to papal authority and chant or he would be declared anathema, cursed and excommunicated from the church.

And in a letter to the elector Frederick of Saxony, a secular authority, Saxony was the province where the University of Wittenberg was located, The Pope referred to Luther as a son of iniquity and a scabby sheep, and ordered the elector that if Luther persists, the Pope says, in his madness to, quote, take him captive.

Notice, the Pope the secular authority, the elector of Saxony, to take him captive.

So summoned by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was the major secular authority, to appear at the Diet of Worms on September 7, 1521, that simple monk, the son of a miner, peasant miner, stood.

Stood before the emperor and the representatives of the papacy, and he stood there all alone to answer for his faith, with nothing to sustain him but the Word of God.

It was 1 of those divine moments in history.

And Luther was not intimidated by the fact that he stood before the emperor and the papal representatives, but he was overwhelmed by the truth that he and the emperor were both answerable to God.

And he defended himself admirably, answering every charge with reference to the scriptures.

But it wasn't enough, because Emperor Charles V was descended from a long line of Catholic monarchs.

And furthermore, politically, he needed the goodwill of the Pope.

And so the Emperor's edict was this, quote, Luther is to be regarded as a convicted heretic.

When the time is up, 21 days, no 1 is to harbor him.

His books are to be eradicated from the memory of man." Unquote.

Now what was it that brought down upon that lone man the full ecclesiastical power of the papacy, as well as the temporal power of the emperor.

Well, it all began in the Augustinian cloister at Wittenberg with Luther's personal search for forgiveness and his discovery of the gospel that had been buried under centuries of ecclesiastical tradition.

And when he found the good news, the inevitable consequence was the peeling away from all of those traditions like you peel away the layers of an onion.

He had become a professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, but his theology did not begin with books or with reflection on the reflections of others, but with his own personal search for peace with God.

He had a very sensitive conscience and he felt that he couldn't satisfy God's standards of righteousness, Even though he was outwardly busy and productive, preparing lectures and teaching classes, inwardly he was experiencing a turmoil of guilt.

And he tried every resource that was available by church tradition in order to find relief from that turmoil.

He tried good work and he discovered that he could never do enough to make himself worthy.

He sought the merits of the so-called saints, and he ended with doubt that they could help him at all.

He tried penance, going so far as to scourge himself with a whip.

And penance required that the sinner confess all wrongdoing and seek absolution from a priest.

So he confessed frequently, sometimes many times a day he went to a day he went to the priest to confess.

Sometimes he confessed to the priest for up to 6 hours.

You see, every sin, in order to be absolved, had to be confessed.

So the soul must be searched, memory ransacked, motives probed, and sometimes when he was in confession he would review his whole life and then fearing that he had forgotten something important, he would start all over again.

And his problem was not whether his sins were big or small, but whether they had been adequately confessed.

He worried that he had not remembered them all, and that because he hadn't remembered them, they were unconfessed.

And so he thought, those sins are still condemning me.

And he was deathly afraid that his memory protected his ego.

He was frightened because even after 6 hours of confession, he could still think of something that had escaped his memory.

Can you imagine the mental torture he went through?

The church had taught him that in order for sins to be forgiven, every 1 of them must be diligently confessed.

In order to be confessed, the sins must be recognized and remembered.

If they're not recognized and remembered they cannot be confessed.

Series

A Light Was Kindled

A Light Was Kindled- Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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A Life-Changing Classroom

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Plenary

Personal Testimony

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Evangelism and the Great Controversy

Empowered but Powerless

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