GYC 2018: To The End

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Every Wind of Doctrine

Norman McNulty

1. The Everlasting Son

This message was presented at the GYC to the end in Houston, Texas.

For other resources like this, visit us online at GYCweb.org.

And It's good to see you here at this seminar on Every Wind of Doctrine.

I'm a neurologist practicing in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, And I've been asked by the GYC team to do a seminar on various doctrinal issues and heresies that are affecting the Seventh-day Adventist Church right now.

So, just to give you a bit of a road map for where this seminar is headed, we have 2 seminars today and 4 tomorrow.

So for the 2 today, the 2 this morning are going to be on the issue of the Godhead or the Trinity.

And the first 1 we're going to spend time talking about Christ, the everlasting Son.

The second 1 is going to be on the Holy Spirit, or the third person of the Godhead.

And then tomorrow we are going to deal with various areas of confusion about prophecy, date setting, 25-20, things of that nature.

The second seminar tomorrow, which will be the fourth of the series, is going to deal with the issue of confusion on authority in the church.

What authority does the general conference and session have and should that be followed?

And why are certain entities of the church not following it?

Then the last 2 are going to deal more with the gospel and sanctuary issues.

We're going to deal with the book Questions on Doctrine and some of the theological shifts that came into Adventism as a result of that, most notably Desmond Ford's attack on the sanctuary message and we'll finally wrap up with a look at the false gospel versus the true gospel.

So that's kind of where we're headed with this seminar.

So I'm gonna have a word of prayer and then we're going to get started with our presentation for this morning.

Father in heaven we thank you for bringing us here to GYC.

And Lord, we desire to see this work to the end.

As this theme of the conference is this year, we desire to be alive at the end of the world.

And we want to be part of this closing work.

So Lord, I pray that we would have understanding of doctrinal truths in scripture that will help us to stay on the straight and narrow pathway and not be confused by various ideas that could lead us off the path.

So I pray that you would speak through me now and help this presentation to be clear and to be a blessing to those who are listening.

So the title for the presentation this morning is The Everlasting Son.

Now this first slide I'm going to point out is a book by a pastor in Australia.

It's a book entitled The Trinity, What Has God Revealed?

I have found this book to be very helpful on this entire issue, and I'm going to make mention of this again at the end of the seminar for those of you who may be interested in getting a copy of this book.

It's available at the AudioVerse booth if you'd like a copy, but some of my ideas, not all of them, but some of my ideas came from reading through this book.

Now I'm going to read a statement from Testimonies, Volume 5, page 707.

God will arouse his people if other means fail.

Heresies will come in among them, which will sift them, separating the chaff from the wheat." You know, the reality is that we are the Laodicean church.

We are lukewarm, we've fallen asleep, we're the 10 virgins, we're 5 are wise and 5 are foolish, but there's this sleeping state in the church.

And so sometimes God has to allow heresies to come into the church to wake the church up.

It's unfortunate, but that's the purpose of heresies.

The Lord calls upon all who believe his word to awake out of sleep.

Precious light has come, appropriate for this time.

It is Bible truth, showing the perils that are right upon us.

This light should lead us to a diligent study of the Scriptures and a most critical examination of the positions which we hold." So I'm certainly not afraid to examine our positions from the Bible, but we also want to rightly examine and come to the correct conclusion.

Now, I want you to go to Galatians chapter 5 because sometimes I hear people say, you know, why are you so hard on people that believe in a different view than what the Seventh-day Adventist Church teaches on the Trinity when we have people teaching evolution and we have people promoting LGBT stuff in the church and obviously I'm opposed to all of that, but heresy is heresy, whichever way it may be.

And notice what the Bible says about heresy.

So heresy is not harmless, in case you're wondering.

Galatians chapter 5, starting in verse 19, says, now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these?

Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions.

You realize that heresies or false doctrine are a manifestation of the carnal mind.

Now, let me give you an illustration or a scenario that you may have seen played out in your local church, and if you've seen it once, you'll see it a hundred times around the world field.

Someone comes to your church and says, I have new light that our church doesn't understand.

And we're going to talk about a number of these issues.

It might be their viewpoint on the Godhead, or it could be their viewpoint on the 2520, or it may be on feast keeping, or it might be on any other number of issues, and they'll say this is the present truth for Adventists that is not being accepted in the church right now, and in order for us to experience righteousness by faith and to receive the seal of God, we need to accept this, because what the church is teaching is wrong.

And because a lot of our people haven't studied, and this person comes into the church and they have reams of spirit of prophecy quotes and Bible verses that seem to support what they're saying but if you dig through it is basically a bunch of stuff that doesn't prove what they're saying Then at the end of the day you get a split in the church because some people are like, oh wow, this is the new truth, we need to accept it.

And if you've seen it once, you've seen it a hundred times, and people say, how could you disfellowship this brother from the church?

He's using the Bible and the spirit of prophecy, but the reality is that when you push false doctrine in the church, and the church says, no, we've taken a stand on this, and we're gonna talk about this, General Conference and Session has highest authority in the world church, but even at your local church, the local church has a say over your church membership, and God has delegated that authority to the local church.

When a local church says, this is what we believe, you cannot teach this false doctrine in our church, and the person says, I'm going to teach it anyway because this is the truth, that's an evidence of a carnal mind.

Now we're not talking about variant views on finer points of prophecy that there isn't an official position in the church on.

We're talking about things that the church has a clearly defined viewpoint on and yet people are still pushing it.

You know, 1 of the issues about truth versus error is that those who promote error make plain statements seem complicated.

So, you know, we're going to look at some of these verses where Jesus is clearly defined as being God and the anti-Trinitarian movement says no, but that doesn't really mean that.

Well, actually it does, but it doesn't fit within your construct of what you believe it should mean, and so then we get into a lot of issues.

So, and I've seen this especially with the 2520 movement where they would have like 50 Ellen White statements to try to lead you to at the very end, that therefore proves that the 2520 is a true prophecy, yet there's not a single statement on all of Ellen White's writings where she even references the 2520s specifically by name.

So when you have to use reams of quotes to prove 1 point, that should raise some red flags.

Now I'm going to read to you briefly The seventh Adventist belief on the Trinity, this is fundamental belief number 2.

There is 1 God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of 3 co-eternal persons.

God is immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing, above all, and ever-present.

He is infinite and beyond human comprehension, yet known through his self-revelation.

God who has love is forever worthy of worship, adoration, and service by the whole creation." And you can see the Bible verses that are in the Fundamental Belief book that support that view.

Now, the next fundamental belief is specifically about the Father.

This is fundamental belief number 3, God the eternal Father is the creator, source, sustainer, and sovereign of all creation.

He is just and holy, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

And you can read on the qualities and powers exhibited in the Son and the Holy Spirit are also those of the Father.

There's some more verses that point that out.

Now, this is where we're going to specifically get into our topic about Jesus being the everlasting Son.

This is Fundamental Belief number 4, God the Eternal Son became incarnate in Jesus Christ.

Through Him all things were created, the character of God is revealed, the salvation of humanity is accomplished, and the world is judged.

Forever truly God, He became also truly human, Jesus the Christ.

He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

He lived and experienced temptation as a human being, but perfectly exemplified the righteousness and love of God.

His miracles, he manifested God's power and was attested as God's promised Messiah.

And you can go on and read the rest of that, I'm not going to read the whole thing.

Now I'm going to share with you a viewpoint from the anti-Trinitarians.

Now again, I have friends that believe this, so I don't dislike these people, I'm just saying these are their viewpoint and I want to make sure that I'm accurately reflecting what they say.

So this is actually a statement from an individual who believes in a different viewpoint than what the Seventh Adventist church believes about Christ.

They say Jesus is referred to as God in Hebrews 1, 8 and John 1 also, all things were created by him.

This absolutely establishes his divinity and his pre-existence, but the terms God and son of God establishes the relationship between 2 beings.

Now so far you're thinking, well that doesn't sound so bad.

Now notice how they continue here, they say the best way to understand the usage of the term God is by the name Adam.

When taken in the strictest sense, Adam is the name of a single individual.

2. The Third Person of the Godhead

And we are going to start our second presentation of the series.

So I invite you to bow your heads with me for prayer.

Father in heaven, we thank you for being with us during our first presentation.

I pray that you will guide us as we go through our second presentation on this very important topic of the third person of the Godhead.

I pray that the presentation will be clear and that we will have a clear understanding of who the Holy Spirit is.

So we thank you and we pray this in Jesus name, Amen.

So this is the second part of the series and the first 2 really kind of go together and then we're going to shift us into some different areas starting tomorrow.

So we dealt with the everlasting Son in our first presentation, we showed that He is God, that when Jesus comes back we are going to say this is our God, we have waited for Him, He will save us.

We see that He has existed through all eternity.

The statement was clear that God always has been.

That's connected to Hebrews 13 and 8, Jesus Christ is same yesterday, today, and forever.

We saw from desire of ages that in Christ is life original, unborrowed, underrived.

And we saw several statements that He is the pre-existent, self-existent Son of God.

He does not require the existence of the Father to exist Himself.

And so because of that, He is God in the fullest sense, and He is the God who came to save us and we can place our full and complete trust in Him.

So what about the third person of the Godhead?

Now again I want to point out this book, The Trinity, What Has God Revealed?

I have some coupons at the end if you're interested and you can come up and get these from me.

They'll be at the Audioverse booth, But if you want to do some further study on this topic, that's an excellent resource.

Now I'm going to go through in this next slide the current fundamental belief of the Seventh Theadmonist Church on the Holy Spirit.

This is what This belief says, God the eternal spirit was active with the Father and the Son in creation, incarnation, and redemption.

He is as much a person as are the Father and the Son.

In those who respond, He renews and transforms into the image of God.

Sent by the Father and the Son to be always with his children.

He extends spiritual gifts to the church, empowers it to bear witness to Christ, and in harmony with the Scriptures leads it into all truth." And then you can see a variety of Bible verses that are used, and you can find this in the Fundamental Beliefs book, but these are some of the Bible verses that are used to support the statement that is on the screen.

Now, I'm going to share with you, just in a bit of a summary, some of the views out there on the Holy Spirit from anti-Trinitarians, and there is again a bit of variation among anti-Trinitarians, so they're not a homogenous group of beliefs, but there's some similarities, and so at least some within these groups will believe the things that I'm mentioning here.

So they believe that the Father and the Son are distinct beings, while the Holy Spirit is not a being.

They believe that the Holy Spirit is a force or a power or an influence, but not a being itself, that it's the spirit of God coming from either God the Father or the Son.

So, and this is where things get a little bit confusing because of Ellen White's statements about 3 living persons of the heavenly trio which we're going to look at later.

So what they say is that there's 3 persons or personalities but only 2 beings.

Now that's a little bit hard to wrap your mind around but that's what the way they try to explain that statement.

So now some of them believe that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit that exists between the Father and the Son.

Others believe that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ who is limited in bodily form.

Now they have a statement that we're going to look at to support that viewpoint.

So again, some think that the Spirit of God is their Holy Spirit that exists between the Father and the Son.

Others believe that the Holy Spirit is just the spirit form of Jesus Christ who is limited in bodily form.

They also believe that the current view in the Seventh-day Adventist Church on the Holy Spirit and the Trinity is Roman Catholic and unbiblical.

They point out that Ellen White warned that Dr.

John Harvey Kellogg's teachings in the book Living Temple contain the Alpha of heresies, and that's very true.

She does say that, and we definitely as a church believe that Dr.

Kellogg's teachings in that book did contain the Alpha of heresies.

They believe that the current view in the SDA church on the Holy Spirit is the Omega of apostasy and they urge a return to the pioneer view of the Godhead.

So, and again, many of the pioneers believed in this viewpoint that they are promoting now.

Now, some of What I'm going to share next comes from this article on Advindicate.com written by an individual named Lemuel Sapien, written July 30, 2017.

So I'm summarizing some of his ideas from this article that was written.

So just a bit of history on the Trinity and the Seventh-day Adventist movement.

Now William Miller was a Baptist, and he was the lead preacher in the Second Advent movement leading up until 1844, and William Miller was very clearly a Trinitarian, as the Baptist Church is, but the preaching of the soon return of Jesus and of the second advent of Christ attracted not just Baptists, but Christians of many different denominations, And 1 of the denominations that was very much interested in the preaching of the Second Advent was the Christian connection.

This formed a very prominent part of the Millerite movement, and 1 of the key theological teachings in the Christian connection was an anti-Trinitarian understanding where they had this semi-Aryan view of Christ and this view that the Holy Spirit is an influence or a power but not a person and you had 100 Christian connection churches that joined the Millerite movement.

So this anti-Trinitarian philosophy became a significant part of the Millerite movement.

However, the lead preacher himself, William Miller, was Trinitarian, but because they were preaching the soon coming of Jesus, they weren't a bunch of anti-Trinitarians saying in order to be ready for the coming of Jesus, you need to be anti-Trinitarians.

The Christian connection joined the movement not because they supported anti-Trinitarianism, but because they supported the teaching of the soon coming of Jesus.

And so anti-Trinitarianism wasn't at the forefront or prominent in what they were teaching.

Now if you ask them what they thought about that teaching, they would share that with you.

But their present truth was not anti-Trinitarianism.

Their present truth was the second coming of Jesus.

And so they had that belief, but that wasn't their present truth.

Their present truth was the coming of Jesus.

Now some of the key figures of the Christian connection that joined the Advent movement were Joshua Himes, James White, and Joseph Bates.

Joshua Himes never became a Seventh-day Adventist.

He did seem to show some acceptance for it towards the very end of his life as he came to the Battle Creek Sanitarium, but he viewed the Seventh-day Adventist Church as 1 of the splinter factions off of the Millerite movement and never joined it, but he was basically the general manager of the Millerite movement for William Miller.

He helped to organize William Miller so that he could be a more effective preacher in New England because William Miller was just accepting preaching invitations to every small little church that asked him to come and William Miller said no, it's time to go to the big cities and let's get you into the big churches.

And so Joshua Himes really was an effective agent for William Miller during that time and Joshua Himes was anti-Trinitarian and William Miller was Trinitarian.

But again, that wasn't a prominent part of their preaching during those years.

James White was also anti-Trinitarian along with Joseph Bates and then I don't have all the other names up here, but J.N.

Loughborough was also, Uriah Smith was as well as far as being anti-Trinitarian.

So, you know, that's where some of this origin of anti-Trinitarianism comes from.

It wasn't something that was discovered de novo, the way the Adonis put together the Sabbath and the sanctuary and the state of the dead and the spirit of prophecy and the key S doctrines, this was something that came in from the Christian connection.

So this was not a core foundational pillar of the faith, it just happened to be something that some of the pioneers believed during the early part of the Seventh-day Adventist movement.

And I'm willing to stand to be corrected on this, but if I understand correctly, I think James White probably died an anti-Trinitarian in 1881 and Ellen White didn't start making clear statements on some of these ideas until the 1890s and early 1900s because that wasn't really their present truth.

Their present truth was the Sabbath and the sanctuary and the second coming.

They weren't making anti-Trinitarianism a prominent testing truth.

So now we're going to look at this idea that John Harvey Kellogg paved the way for panentheism and then the omega of apostasy.

Now this is quoting from a letter that A.G.

Daniels wrote to Willie White on October 29, 1903, and this is A.G.

John Harvey Kellogg, and this is a statement that many anti-Trinitarians use to prove that what Kellogg taught was Trinitarianism ultimately and then it led to the Alpha of Apostasy which leads to the Omega of Apostasy.

He then stated that his former views regarding the Trinity, that the Trinity is a false doctrine, had stood in the way of making a clear and absolutely correct statement.

So in other words, now that I'm Trinitarian, I can understand things more clearly, this is what he's saying.

But that within a short time he had come to believe in the Trinity and could now see pretty clearly where all the difficulty was and believed that he could clear the matter up satisfactorily.

He told me that he now believed in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, and his view was that it was God the Holy Ghost and not God the Father that filled all space and every living thing.

He said that if he had believed this before writing the book, he could have expressed his views without giving the wrong impression the book now gives.

Now here's the interesting thing to consider.

He's saying that the Holy Ghost fills all space and every living thing.

And I'm going to have a direct statement from Dr.

3. Confusion on Prophecy

This message was presented at the GYC To The End in Houston, Texas.

We thank you that you have given us a more sure word of prophecy.

I pray that we would give heed to the light that shines from prophecy into the dark place of this world but may we not be led into confusion by a false understanding of prophecy.

So be with us and guide us through this presentation I pray in Jesus name, Amen.

You know we are a prophetic people and prophecy is really 1 of the key elements that drives the engine of Adventism.

The Seventh-day Adventist movement was started based on an understanding of prophecy.

And so obviously the study of prophecy continues to ignite widespread interest for study among Seventh-day Adventists And I encourage you to continue to study prophecy, but what I'm going to share with you in the next few moments are some areas that have led to confusion.

And some recent date setting trends have emerged in the last few months and even years.

Although I will have to say as someone who's now 41 that I've seen date setting for most of my Adventist life.

And as can be expected, these dates come and go, and the date setters move on to the next prediction.

Well, 1 of the latest predictions that's come around is that sometime around March or April of 2019 a national Sunday law is going to be passed which obviously that raises the antenna of all Seventh-day Adventists because we know that once the national Sunday law comes that's the trigger for the end of all things.

So others are claiming that probation is going to close for Seventh-day Adventists on November 9, 2019.

I'm going to get into who are saying these things as we go along here, and these are all a violation of the plainest statements from Ellen White on time setting.

We are not to be time setters of Seventh-day Adventists.

So other issues include the so-called 2520 prophecy, I've put it in quotation marks because it's not really a prophecy.

There's advocacy of feast keeping on Lunar Sabbath, there's been reapplication of the 7 trumpets which have been fulfilled in the past into the future.

Some are saying that the end of Daniel 11 is somehow a Middle East conflict that will lead to the close of probation.

So these are some of the things that we are going to look at, that's where we're headed in our presentation today.

Now, as respect to current confusion, on October 17, 2018, David Gates, who is a missionary pilot in South America, lives here in the United States but often goes down to South America and around the world, released a video on YouTube entitled Even at the Door.

Now David Gates is a well-known person of influence within certain circles of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and to date this video has over 220, 000 views.

Now I certainly believe that Brother Gates is sincere in what he is saying but I believe he's sincerely wrong and I'm going to show you why.

So I'm not questioning his integrity, I'm just saying that I believe that he is deceived in what he is saying.

He points out that at the 2015 general conference session in San Antonio, the Seventh-day Adventist church voted a change in its belief about the writings of Ellen G.

White that constitutes a rejection of her writings, and he says that the general conference, quote, at least considers her writings not to be inspired anymore.

So David Gates is saying that the general conference in session considers the spirit of prophecy to not be inspired anymore.

And on that basis he promotes the idea of 3 and a half years from the rejection of the testimony of Jesus to something momentous happening after that.

Series

Every Wind of Doctrine

4. Confusion on Ecclesiology and Church Authority

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Neophyte and the Great Controversy

01-The Mystery

40m

Colossians: A Church at the Cross

6. The People of the Church

46m

So…What Would it Take?

5. To Be a 21st Century Medical Missionary?

1h 1m

1 John: The Church of the Last Hour

03 Studies in 1 John: The Church of the Last Hour

1h

Contra Mundum

Still: When Speaking Truth to Power

45m

Sanctuary Under Siege

6. The Omega Apostasy

1h

Plenary Sessions

Six Keys for the Western Adventist Church

1h 8m

Ignite Your Local Church for Mission

Q and A and Final Charge

1h

GYC 2012 Seminar: Unleashing the Power - A Practical Guide for Finishing God's Work

Tools for Transforming Your Local Church

56m

WYC 2013 Seminar: Always Ready for Family

Prepared to Stand

1h

GYC 2013 Seminar: Daniel: Defining Adventism's Role in the Great Controversy

03-Daniel 8 & 9: The Shadow and the Cross

1h

GYC 2013 Seminar: Making Friends for Eternity

01-Making Friends for Eternity, Part 1

1h

Sound Doctrine