Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

The Inspired Word

Louis Torres

The Inspired Word- Part 1

All right, let's pray together so we can begin.

Our loving God, thank you so much for the privilege we have to study your precious Word.

We pray for your guidance, and we thank you in Jesus' name.

The whole week is titled Inspiration, and the reason why is because with all that has taken place around us, most people do not realize that the real issue underlining this whole controversy is whether or not you can trust the Bible.

It may have the title of Women's Ordination, it may have whatever other name, but the real underlining attack is whether or not you can actually trust the Bible.

And you may think, well, that's strange for Christians to question whether or not you can trust the Bible.

But it should not be strange because we know that we are in a great controversy.

And because we are in a great controversy, if you want to steer people in the wrong direction, given the wrong compass.

There was a flight that had just finished bombing Germany, and they were on their way back to their base.

However, when they noticed the instruments, The instrument was telling them that they had overpassed where they were supposed to be landing.

The problem was that they knew they were not supposed to be at that point by a certain time.

So what they did was they concluded that somehow the enemy had affected their compass and they decided not to pay attention to it until they actually reached the time that they knew was supposed to take to reach their base.

However, they ran out of gas and landed in the desert in Africa.

When they finally located the plane, they found that 1 of the airmen had walked over 200 miles, because the desert is so large that even 200 miles is not sufficient.

And when they took all the instruments on the airplane, they found that all the instruments were working perfectly.

And what happened was simply that their compass was working correctly.

And what actually took place was that there was a tailwind that drove them faster.

And because they didn't understand that the tailwind had driven them faster than they were supposed to reach their point of destination, they assumed that the compass was wrong.

And so, if you believe that the Bible is your compass, never assume—what did I say?—never assume that the compass is wrong.

The problem may simply be that other factors may be confusing you, but the compass never goes wrong.

Jesus used the Scriptures, if you look at chapter Matthew 4 through 7, we're not going to read it right now, but most of you are acquainted with what is called the Beatitudes.

And the Beatitudes basically is Christ expounding upon the principles of heaven and what those principles are and how they are to impact the lives of those who would be believers.

So in the chapter 4 through 7, he uses scriptures to correct wrongs or ideologies or cultural or otherwise to establish a truth or to encourage faithfulness and obedience.

So the Scriptures was a main focal point of direction, And any time that Christ wanted to establish the truth, he always pointed to the Scriptures.

Whether he was dealing with a cultural issue or a principle, he always turned to the Scriptures.

He also pronounced the Word as the only source of power over temptation.

And unequivocally stated Matthew 4, verses 1-10, and unequivocally stated that it was that which proceeded out of the mouth of God.

He said to the devil, man shall not live by, breath alone but by, every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God." And when he said, every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God, he was quoting Moses.

And so Jesus simply established the Bible as the authority for every issue in life, and that through it man can find salvation.

I was just teaching a class via Skype to my class over in Oregon.

My wife and I still run the School of Evangelism.

We've compressed it to 40 days as opposed to 3 and 1⁄2 months.

And so we have the students right now over there.

And because I'm over here, the only way I can teach is by Skype until I get over there.

So I was just teaching this principle, and I want to share it with you.

If you take the first 2 chapters of the Bible, and you take the last 2 chapters of the Bible, their mirror image, In other words, the first 2 chapters, Genesis 1 and 2, speak about Eden being created, man being created, a perfect home, perfect diet, perfect face-to-face communion between man and God, perfect harmony between man and man, and that there was no death, there was no sorrow, there was no pain, there was no cry.

If you go to the last 2 chapters, you find the same thing—face-to-face communion, a perfect home, the tree of life.

The Bible, then, is to tell you how to get from point A to point Z, from Eden lost to Eden restored.

Those first 2 chapters, the last 2 chapters are God's ideal for His people, what it was and what it shall be again.

And any doctrine that does not fit within that scope, there's something wrong with it.

Any doctrine that does not fit within that scope, there's something wrong with it.

I have worked on now for many years on 28 presentations showing every doctrine from Eden to Eden, how you can trace all of our teachings from Eden to Eden.

And so, Christ then came to reinforce that which he had taught his people that they can count on, and that was the Word of God.

Because God is the source of the Word and the source of life, Jesus confirms that the words which I speak unto you, they are what?

Then you have to accept that which God says gives life.

It is through the exceeding great and precious promises found, of course, in 2 Peter 1, verse 4, of the word that we might be partakers of the divine nature and escape the corruption of the sin the world threw at us.

In other words, through the Bible, there are over 3, 000 plus promises that are written there for the specific purpose of you becoming a partaker of the divine nature.

Now that may seem a little strange, because you would assume that God is the only 1 that has divine nature.

But apparently from what the promise says, God wants to recreate in each 1 of you his image, and the way he does it is through the exceeding great and precious promises.

So that through the promises, as you partake of them, it is like eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

The more you partake of the Word of God, the more you behold his character, the more you become like Him.

And that's why it says, as you behold, you become changed.

So if you want to become Christ-like, then you behold Christ.

If you want to become like anything else, then you behold that.

And so, in order for you and I to escape the corruption that's in the world through lust, we need then to have in us that which can effectively nullify or destroy that which can change us into a corruptible thing.

We need to become incorruptible, and the only way to do that is through the incorruptible Word of Christ, through His Word.

Now, it is by taking heed to that Word that a young man can cleanse his way, Psalms 119, and not sin against thee.

And by hearing it, faith awakens, Romans chapter 10, of course, verse 17.

Therefore, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

He never made his words subject to dissecting.

On the contrary, it was to be the dissector.

And so Here's the statement, for the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any torch sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow.

It's a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

So the Lord intended for his word not just to be a book like any other book.

He intended that book to actually have within it the element that energizes and enables you to accomplish that which otherwise you could not accomplish in your own strength.

Now if you're wondering why I'm trying to move ahead fast, it's because I have a lot to cover.

Having such an element as this at our reach, I would certainly be afraid of any attempts to cut out any part as what?

And I'm referring to the new hermeneutics, which is called the principal historical hermeneutics that has just been introduced as a new way to interpret the scriptures by some in our division and so He intended that the word be maintained intact because the scriptures are filled with many, many cultural situations such as, for example, the cultural aspect of in those days, you didn't have a child, you can get your husband to have a child with some other, a concubine of something.

But in those days, it was culturally acceptable.

So there were many cultural things that were there in the Scriptures.

In fact, the Scriptures is saturated with a lot of things that have occurred throughout history in the biblical times that were obviously quite culturally acceptable.

However, the Bible's writers never gave in to the intimation that you could do away with any portion of God's inspired writing because of some cultural issue.

In fact, none of the Bibles is written from a cultural perspective.

And I'm making a statement that some will challenge me at, but any time that God inspired something, even though it might seem to be cultural, he inspired it because it was the right thing.

There were circumstances that demanded God to give certain counsel, and sometimes it's not understood correctly, so people think it's a situation ethics matter.

The Inspired Word- Part 2

Loving God, as we spend time with Your Word, we pray for Your Spirit to guide and direct our hearts and minds.

First of all, I should tell you this, that the Bible is thought by many people in academia and in scientific communities to be kind of a hocus-pocus book that people with not too many brain cells believe in.

The truth of the matter is that they do not really know that the Bible is actually accurate and truthful, And the reason they don't know is because they really don't study it, and they just simply glance through it, find some things they could find fault with, and that establishes a premise.

But when you consider the Scriptures and what it teaches you, And if you understand something about science, you will understand that it is indeed a scientific book.

For example, the Bible uses simple language.

It does not use complicated language, as I was saying yesterday, because God's intent is that even the child should be able to comprehend how to be saved.

And therefore, God does not use complex language.

For example, in the beginning, the first anesthesia, and I'm using the big word, is recorded in the Scriptures.

But it simply says, if you open up your Bible, you'll see in Genesis 2, you'll see then that it says that God put Adam into a deep sleep.

And then it says he opened up the side thereof, pulled out a bone.

We call that surgery, and pulling out the bone, we call that extraction.

And just so that you know, I was trained as a medic in the Army, so I do know a little bit about medicine.

So then it says that he closed up the side thereof, we call that suturing, and from the bone then God made something called a clone.

But a clone, not the way that man makes it.

A clone the way that God only can make it, a perfect woman.

He says, God put Adam into a deep sleep, opened up the side, pulled out a bone, and closed the side of the earth, and from that he made Eve.

The first irrigation system is found in the Scriptures.

It says that the earth was watered with a vapor that came up out of the earth.

Those of you who have gardens or you have homes with lawns, you put little tubes in the lawns, and at the right time, right now, for example, in my home, we have blueberry bushes that we want to keep watered and flowers that we want to keep watered.

We're not there, so we got a little gadget that is programmed, and it turns on the water a certain time and turns it off.

Well, God had already made that throughout the earth.

And the fact that you can drill down into the earth and tap into 1 of those tubes demonstrates and proves the reality that God indeed had an irrigation system going.

It's just that it got broken up at the time of the flood.

But it's still partially there because what you call a well is simply tapping into 1 of those places where water is flowing.

There are many, many things in the Scriptures that are like that.

For example, the speed of light, travel at the speed of light.

God says that the angels in the book of Ezekiel travel at the flash of lightning.

God speaks about a strong man called Samson, and people think that that's a fairy tale.

Well, when I was a little boy growing up in New York City, a man drove up with a weird-looking truck that had like a house in the back and portals for windows, and we were attracted by it.

We came to see this weird vehicle, And it was 1 of those old vehicles that was run by chains in the back.

How many of you remember any of those trucks?

Yeah, the first trucks actually were chain driven.

They didn't have what we call transmissions.

And so he drove up and parked on my street, and we thought he looked weird, so we went to make fun of him.

And it turned out when he came out, he had bushy white hair, bushy beard, and we started calling him Moses.

So he jumped out of the truck to chase after us.

We thought, silly old man, what makes him think he can keep up with us?

Well, it turned out he could run faster than we could.

Well, he stopped, he turned back, went back to the store, to the back of his truck, opened up the back of his truck and said, boys, come over here, I want to show you something.

The old nails that were driven into the telephone poles so that people can climb up the telephone poles.

Okay, so he pulled out a spike, wrapped a handkerchief around the spike, put it in his mouth and bent it in half.

Then he took the bent side, put it in his mouth, and shut it like a bobby pin.

We threw it on the ground, sure enough, it was metal.

It turned out that he was a mighty atom, A-T-O-M.

And you can actually Google the mighty atom, and you go to YouTube, and you'll see actually some clips of the mighty atom in action.

He could take horseshoes and bend them in half.

He was able to take a bar, a metal bar in his mouth, hold it while 2 ladies would swing while he held the metal bar in his mouth.

With his hair, ladies, listen to this, with his hair he could hold back a plane from taking off, and with his hair he could pull a truck full of people in it.

I have the pictures of it on my computer, but I'm not going to show it to you, because I've got to rush into the topic I really want to teach you about.

But today, his son is still alive, 1 of his boys is still alive, and if you Google it, you'll see this old man, 93 years old, he can take his teeth, grab onto a piece that is tied to a rope that is tied to a car, and with his brother and wife and his girlfriend sitting in the car, he actually with his teeth can pull the car.

Now how many of you would like to have those kind of teeth?

Wouldn't you like to have that kind of hair?

And you can just pull anything you want with your hair?

So, it is true that there are people who are strong enough, and by the way, it turns out that this man is Jewish.

So there are people in the world who are very, very, very strong.

If you see his picture, you'll see that he is not muscular at all.

He looks like a typical man without big muscles, but with his arms he can take and bend steel and he can do a lot of things.

So The reality is that there are people who are strong.

Tall people, people think that that's a fairy tale with Goliath.

But in Illinois, there was a young man who was born, and by the time he was 6 years old, how old?

By the time he was 21, he was 8.7 feet tall.

The Inspired Word- Part 3

Lord, we thank you so much for the privilege we have of studying your Word, and we ask for your Spirit to please guide and direct our thoughts.

Do you have any questions on yesterday's presentation?

Those of you who are here, give us an opportunity to answer some questions before I begin the next presentation.

The star Arcticus, is that what you're naming it?

It relates to Orion in this sense, that there are 3 questions that are asked, 4 questions.

1 is, can you guide Arcturus with his sons?

So the 3 questions are astronomical questions that were being asked of Job.

Of course, God has registered those questions for our benefit, because it says that these things were written for who?

And so there are many things in the scriptures that are there and actually advance of science, but science doesn't know that because science doesn't read the Bible.

But the scientists that do read the Bible recognize that there's something in the Scriptures that must be beyond just human wisdom because of that.

There are in the Bible over 1, 800 prophecies.

I think there are 1, 817 prophecies in the Bible.

And all the other sacred writings that are considered sacred writings, for example, the Koran, Hindu writings, Confucius writings, the writings of Buddha, writings, the writings of Buddha, all of these writings are actually younger than the Bible.

The Bible is the oldest sacred writings found concerning all these other, which means then that everybody that wrote after took something from the Bible and put it in their writings, either by concept, you know, They may not want to plagiarize, but they certainly took the concepts that are there in the Bible.

So, there are many, many, many things that are in the other writings.

The other writings do not have prophecies.

And another thing I should tell you, that there are 333 prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the Messiah.

333 prophecies, which means then that God made sure that no mere human could appear as the Messiah except the true 1.

It is because in order for 1 person to fulfill 8 prophecies is 10 to the 57th power.

That means that you have to take the number 10 and add 57 zeros.

In order for 1 to fulfill 48 prophecies, would be 1 chance in 10 to the 157th power.

That means that you would have to add 157 zeros after it.

So Christ, the true Christ, had to fulfill all those prophecies in order for Him to be the true Christ.

So what are the chances 1 person can satisfy that?

It's the same, and I'm talking about 330 prophecies.

Usually I go over 8 prophecies when I do a Revelation Seminar or a Prophecy Seminar.

But the 10 to the 157th power, which is 157 zeros after 10, is the same as if you take the state of Texas and you were to fill the state of Texas with silver coins 2 feet deep.

So all the state of Texas is filled with 2 feet deep of silver coins and you mark 1 and you throw it someplace in that whole territory and then you blindfold somebody and ask them with 1 pick to find it.

Okay, the chances are not only slim, the chances are almost nil.

Right now, there are several people who claim to be the Christ as we speak.

He's disqualified because the Messiah had to be born in Bethlehem.

Just the place of birth of the Messiah had to be fulfilled.

So the Indian fellow in India who claims to be the Christ is disqualified.

The Puerto Rican in Miami who claims to be the Christ is disqualified because he's born in the wrong place.

So God then protected the only Messiah that you and I should trust in.

So you can put your trust in the right person, and that's Christ.

Several years ago, this man made a statement.

He is Stephen Hawkins, the astrophysicist who holds the Isaac Newton Chair of Mathematics.

Stephen Hawkins said the following, I fear that since the evolutionary process has worked through the dialectic with determinism and aggression.

In other words, I fear because we're animals.

Evolutionary process has worked through the dialectic of determinism.

That means the survival of the fittest, okay?

And aggression, because we are animals, we are aggressive.

If we can keep from destroying each other for the next, how long?

100 years, sufficient technology will have been developed to distribute humanity to various planets.

No 1 tragedy or atrocity will eradicate us all at the same time.

The scientists recognize that we do not have much time on the earth.

If you know that the scientists believe in evolution, they do not count time in hundreds of years.

They count the time in millions of years, right?

Millions and millions and millions of years.

I mean, they throw out a hundred million at a drop of a coin, right?

That's how they'll find that coin covering Texas.

If you give it long enough time, they'll find it.

So, This man then, later on, in fact not too long ago, in 2015, in April, he appeared being transmitted from England via technology so that his form actually appeared on the stage of the Sydney Opera House in the shape of a what you call a hologem, okay?

So he then at that time it says just predicted the end of the world, but proposes an optimistic solution.

So he's saying again, the world will what?

Now there's no question in his mind that the world will end.

Series

The Inspired Word

The Inspired Word- Part 3

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Unlocking Prophecy

14- Facing Death Unafraid

1h 1m

Which Way, America?

09 Spiritualism in America

58m

Prophecies of Hope

11. The Mysteries of the Mummies

51m

Hope in the Future

Hope in the Future- Part 1

53m

Apologetics

The State of the Dead

58m

Living Today

Mainstream Spiritualism: The Rise of the Occult

1h 5m

Joseph

The Ultimate Family Reunion

39m

A Tale of Two Journeys

45m

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

19 Our High Priest’s Victory Over Death

52m

Plenary

A True Knowledge of God

42m

The Characteristics and Titles of Jesus

Jesus: The Promise Keeper

45m

Convincing Evidence

44m

Sound Doctrine