OYC 2010: Awakened Hope

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Oregon Youth for Christ

Boris Jovinov: The Surety of a Prophet

Boris Jovinov

The Surety of a Prophet, Session 1 (Part 1)

Our Heavenly Gracious Father, we thank you so much for today.

We thank you so much that we can be present here to learn more about this gift that you have given us.

So often this gift is misunderstood, misrepresented, And I just pray that through today's class or workshop that we may get a better picture of what a prophet actually is and why you have given us this gift.

Lord, I pray that the presence of the Holy Spirit be here, that He may illuminate our minds, that the teaching element may guide us and truly teach us things which we do not know.

All right, let me just hand out some Outlines.

We're just going to be going through these pretty much.

A reason why I choose to go with outlines rather than PowerPoint is because you usually can't take my PowerPoint home with you.

And so with this I'm going to do my very best to put stuff in your hands so that you can use it for yourself and when teaching others about the Spirit of Prophecy.

Today's title of this part of the session is called, What is it anyway?

You know, often we talk about prophets and the prophetic gift or the testimony of Jesus, the spirit of prophecy, many different titles, but we don't really know what a prophet is.

And so I think it's super important to establish what a prophet is in the first place.

I was brought up a Seventh-day Adventist.

I was brought up a Seventh-day Adventist in Australia and I grew up not knowing that the Seventh-day Adventist Church claims to have a prophet.

I never really believed or grasped the message that my parents, or this group that my parents were a part of.

I had established good friendships there, and that's kind of the extent of church for me.

Are you staying here or going to another class?

All right, let me give you some outlines.

Yes, so I didn't really know and then in the fall, oh no, sorry in the spring here of 2007 the Lord was able to actually grab my heart and convert me, and so I was like, well, I got to put everything to the test and see what this, because for the first time Randy Skeet was preaching, he's quoting this Ellen White person.

And I'd go to a lot of defenses of Ellen White.

I'd go to the ABC and just kind of stock up on all these Ellen White, you know, books and...

He's 1 of these, antagonists, if we can put it that way, against the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

He was a minister, really got derailed in the Ford movement, tried to stick around a bit, but now he's got this magazine out there called Proclamation, and the essence is he's proclaiming the true gospel rather than a Seventh-day Adventist gospel, and he's 1 of these big Ellen White antagonists, and he has a statement in 1 of his, proclamation magazines, I think it was the April of last year, where he says, Seventh-day Adventists have realized how unbiblical Ellen White is.

So they've tried to depict her in this lovely grandmother.

They've given her transformation as this lovely little grandmother, and that's how they...

And unfortunately, This is often all too true.

Like, as I was picking up these defenses and reading these books, no 1 was going, I thus say to the Lord, look, let's see, can we verify?

It's like, well, she was just a person, but she was a lovely, she had a sense of humor, she was this and that.

And don't get me wrong, I truly do believe from reading her testimonies and testimonies of others who were associated with her, that she really was a godly lady.

That she really was a godly Christian lady.

Can I ask you to pass that out to the rose that just come behind?

She really was, but we never see in Scripture...

Alright, yeah, come on through, come on through.

Yeah, we never see in Scripture God saying to Israel, you know what?

Accept Jeremiah because well, he's a nice guy.

You know, you never see a test in Scripture where God's like, no, you need to accept this person as a true prophet because they're really a lovely caring person.

Now don't get me wrong, Ellen White was these things.

However, we need not to be afraid to test things from the Scripture, yeah?

I was talking with a couple of people last night and something that I'm very proud of when it comes to the Seventh-day Adventist Church is that I don't know anyone who questions the Seventh-day Adventist faith more than Seventh-day Adventists.

Because we actually have people who genuinely want to know what this this book this Bible actually teaches we're not down with just getting the church manual and studying that we're not down with just getting the 28 fundamental book and just starting that let's see whether it really complies with the rest of Scripture you know I want to know that I'm in truth I quite frankly don't care about organizations I do but the point is I need to make sure that I myself am in the place where the Lord desires me to be.

And I think the same for all of us, yeah?

And so I teach here at Mission College now, and I teach the prophetic guidance class.

Something that really kind of provoked me was we really need to be presenting firm biblical, biblical reasons why the prophetic gift.

Now let's see it from the Bible because the reality is this.

But if we ourself don't understand it from the perspective of the Bible, we end up getting derailed.

Through the Ford movement in Australia, 160 ministers alone in Australia left the Adventist Church.

And we'll be getting on later on in this class, how does this whole denying Ella White turn into becoming an atheist?

It's not that if you deny her you deny you know that you're ever a Christian, things like that, but we will get into that.

So it's important for us to be firmly grounded in the Word alone, So that if someone comes up with an accusation, we can be like, oh hold up, well what about this?

You know, is so-and-so a false prophet because of the same situation?

"...the church that is presented as God's final, the church that is referred to as the remnant, the sole survivor of the true apostolic church, which is...

The church that is to carry the God's final message to the entire world is identified by 2 particular characteristics.

In Revelation 12 verse 17, let's turn there.

We're going to be going through the Bible a fair bit And hopefully through this class, we'll get a little faster at flicking through the Bible and getting to know where things are, because we'll be here, there and everywhere just making sure we have a firm biblical foundation.

This is where The Bible describes God's true people.

From the beginning to the end, it is following God's true people.

From Israel, all the way through to the Dark Ages, to the end of time.

And the very last verse, it depicts God's last people, and it gives them 2 characteristics which they will have.

It says in verse 17, pardon me, and the dragon, and by the way who's the dragon?

Wrath, or some translations say enraged, some say furious.

Now this is kind of the throughing and he's just angry.

Now in Bible prophecy what does a woman represent?

And so here we have this picture straight away that the devil is furious.

The Surety of a Prophet, Session 1 (Part 2)

Heavenly Father, once again we thank you that the sun is coming out.

We thank you for this time where we can get together and see from the Scripture if what we believe truly is biblical.

I pray that the teaching element of the Holy Spirit may truly be here with us to guide us into all truth, protect us from being deceived, quicken our minds that we may be able to grasp truth.

And as we go through the rest of this class, I just, I pray that your name may be glorified in Jesus name.

When it comes to modes of operation, what seems to be God's preferred way?

Who remembers the hierarchy of how the message actually comes to the Prophet?

It goes from to to goes from to to to to the church.

Why would the Bible refer to the prophetic ministry as the testimony of Jesus.

Because it is the testimony of Jesus, right?

D, the prophetic gift was employed with what?

Knowing this first, that no prophecy of what is of any private interpretation for prophecy never came by the will of man but by holy men of what spoke as they were moved with what?

This word moved in the Greek, I haven't taken Greek theology or something like that, I'm kind of just a layman doing something, trying to seek from the authority and the word is pharaoh, pero, something like that and it truly, the true meaning is driven.

So these men, it says were driven by the Holy Ghost.

Acts chapter 27 and we'll be reading verse 17 and 27.

When they had taken it on board, they used cables to undergird the ship, the ship, and fearing lest they should run around the Cyrtis, sands, they struck sail and were what?

How many of you ever been sailing before?

I've gone once but not on 1 of these big fancy ones.

When I was Bible working in Sydney, the evangelist, local evangelist over there in Sydney, he's got this little sailboat, I'm not kidding, maybe it's like this long and it's got this big sail thing.

So I'm literally sitting in there like kind of like this, you know, and I have no idea what I'm doing.

So there's these 2 pretty big guys cramming this little thing And we're like out there and we're trying to look for wind, we can't get it, so he's doing his thing.

I'm just, how does he know what he's doing?

He's just pulling a bunch of different ropes and we're actually going somewhere, you know, it's kind of cool.

And he's doing it, he's doing it, and suddenly this wind just comes.

That thing picked up so much speed and there's nothing we could do and then suddenly we just started leaning a little too much.

And we tip over and there's nothing we could do.

You know when the wind kind of pushes something?

You have to play within the rules of the wind.

When that wind drove us, kind of flipped us over, I was like, oh, okay, well, let's swim back to shore.

So somehow we got it back up and then I swam to shore.

This word driven, being driven by the wind, is the exact same Greek word as was used in 1st Peter.

For moved, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Just for us to get a concept of how they were driven, go to verse 27 real quick.

Fourteenth night had come, as we were what?

About midnight the sailors sensed that they were drawn near some land.

How many of you have ever been deep-sea fishing or just gone out deep-sea and hit some swell?

You know, I love being in the boat around the Bay Area, doing what you got to do.

But when you get out there and you just got this motion, there's nothing you can do.

The Bible says it drove them up and down, up and...

Doesn't matter how much weight you put in that boat, you're going up.

That word driven up and down, that's the exact same word in the Greek that was used for moved.

So the way that these prophets were inspired to write these things, it says the Holy Spirit moved them, it drove them.

It is important to note, actually I'm jumping ahead of myself, the Spirit moved or drove, this is under A, Yet men spoke.

When I hear testimonies of men who are prophets, okay?

We're going to read the 2 verses we just read, but let's get it in context now, okay?

The Surety of a Prophet, Session 2

Heavenly Father, once again we invite your presence.

I pray that you clear our minds from all distractions and may we truly grasp what we're about to endeavor to learn.

Alright, I am gonna have to borrow someone's outline again.

Just from the last class, I don't have extras, but we'll go through it verbally.

I don't want to stop you from doing that.

However, all right, the roles and functions of a prophet.

Last time we met, we discussed what a prophet actually is.

You know, because often when we think of prophets, what's the natural thought?

But we saw that it's not always prophecy, right?

And so here are some roles and functions of the prophetic gift.

For example, in Ephesians 2 20, it tells us 1 of their roles and functions is to lay the foundation of the church.

And there's a lot of antagonists or critics of the Seventh-day Adventist church saying, oh well, you know, your prophet set your church up and you can only do whatever she says, because she set the church up in trying to discredit us that the prophetic gift was used to found the church.

However, if there was a true prophet and they did not want to help set up the church, would they be doing what the Bible says their role ought to be doing?

If the Bible says this gift is given for that reason, if the prophet chose not to do that, then we have to be suspicious.

Not if they're actually doing what the Bible says they ought to be doing.

If the Bible says this gift is given for that reason, if the prophet chose not to do that, then we have to be suspicious, not if they're actually doing what the Bible says they ought to be doing.

And you'll see as we get into some of these accusations, a lot of the accusations are solely based on not wanting the prophet to be a biblical 1.

I forgot how it is to deal with school students where they ask if they can leave the room.

You know, when people grow up, they don't ask, they just start walking, like, where are you going?

Another, another function or role that God gave prophets to do.

If you have your Scriptures, turn to Ephesians chapter 4.

We'll spend a little bit of time in Ephesians chapter 4 because this is 1 of the most crucial pieces of Scripture.

This is like 1 of the most important places in Scripture to actually understand, because it describes what the prophetic gift is.

It says, "...and He Himself, " and who's this speaking of?

However, in the triune God, or the triunity God, if we can put it that way, which God is this speaking of?

The Holy Spirit, because these are the gifts of the Spirit.

So it says, He Himself, and once again, when it comes to the Holy Spirit's not a person, this is 1 of the key texts that we can use, because it totally refers to Him as what kind of person?

It says, and He Himself gave some to be what?

Some evangelists and some pastors and some teachers.

This is just 1 place where the gifts are mentioned, okay?

And it's mentioned apostles, prophets, evangelists, and teachers.

But now the Bible goes on here to tell us why, like why on earth has God even given us this, okay?

1 of the functions and the role that God has given us the prophetic gift is to equip us for what kind of work?

Does that mean that the spirit of prophecy is only given for pastors?

That every single 1 of us ought to be involved with the work of what?

And so the Spirit of Prophecy, 1 of its functions, or the prophetic ministry, 1 of its roles and functions is to equip The laity, the church, for the work of what?

Now, listen to some more things here that it's for.

What does Scripture tell us the body of Christ is?

So not only is the prophetic ministry, the prophetic gift for teaching us how to be able to minister to others, for equipping us to minister to others, it is to edify the church.

To lift up, to encourage, to almost provoke unto better things.

Series

Boris Jovinov: The Surety of a Prophet

The Surety of a Prophet, Session 2

Transcript

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