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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Kyle Allen

The Parable of the Talents

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the opportunity today to open your word and to, Father, consider what the times that we're living in and what you're calling us each to do with the gifts and talents you've given us for your work.

Lord, I pray that you would bless this worship hour and may your spirit be here.

May you be our honored guest, Lord, even as though we're not in person together, we're joined together in our hearts and through technology and we thank you for that blessing.

Well, as you all know, we have been living in truly unprecedented times these past several months.

Since the pandemic started, we now, I just looked at the count, over 16 million people around the world have contracted COVID-19.

In the United States alone, 4 million people have gotten the virus and over 148, 000 have lost their lives.

Who could have ever imagined, I don't know where if you remember where you were on New Year's of 2020, who could have imagined that this year would have turned out like this.

Lockdowns put us all in our homes early in March, preventing us from going out to the store, going to church even, unprecedented that we couldn't even go to church for so long.

And here we are in July, still meeting virtually.

And every day, if you open your news app or your social media, sometimes you just need a break from social media I'll be honest, but whatever it may be we're bombarded with the latest social, with the latest news and stories of how our world has just really been in turmoil.

I'm sure some of you have, even though times have been hard and things have been really different, I'm sure some of you have seen God work blessings through this time.

Being able to maybe be at home with your family more, not travel so much, spend more time with God.

I know for me that's been a blessing, being able to not travel so much and just kind of be in 1 time zone has been a blessing.

So God works good out of the bad for sure.

And you know, 1 thing we have seen in AWR is that God has taken this pandemic time and worked incredible good out of it that we never would have imagined if you had asked us in January, what would this year look like?

We could never have imagined what would happen.

So in the midst of all the craziness of COVID-19, God is working.

You know, that verse of Romans 8, 28, my favorite verse, 1 of my favorite verses in all the Bible that says, and we know that God works all things together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose.

And I believe we've seen that work out even during COVID-19.

Now we're told that times like this would come.

Matthew 24 tells us in verse 7, for nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be what famines, pestilences, of which this is 1 of them, and earthquakes in various places.

So we know that Times like this are expected before the end of time.

The spirit of prophecy tells us that times like this would come.

But in the midst of all the bad news there in Matthew 24, I mean, it is kind of scary when you read Matthew 24, there is the hope, that great hope that Jesus is coming.

And in verse 14, a verse you all are familiar with, the Bible says, and this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world, say it with me wherever you are at home, as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.

We'll be preached to all the world, and then the end will come.

So the good news is that Jesus is coming.

So in spite of all the badness that we're going through, and that will continue to happen in our world, we have that great hope that Jesus is coming, that the gospel is going to all the world.

And, you know, in light of that, Jesus tells us in verse 42, he says, watch therefore for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.

Now today in just a little bit, after Cammie and Karen share, we're gonna also go to Matthew 25.

That's gonna be this, we're gonna look at the parable of the talents because you see Jesus tells us all of these predictions at the end of the time, at the end of times, and then he tells us how to watch and prepare for Jesus' coming.

So we're going to look at that in just a minute.

Whatever talent God has given you, whatever ability he's given you, he asks you to use it for his glory as we watch for the soon coming of our Lord.

He asks all of us to do our part to share the gospel with the world.

And that leads me to introduce my colleague, my friend, Cami Oatman.

Now Cami is a vice president for Adventist World Radio.

She's our vice president for development.

You've probably seen her face on many videos about AWR on YouTube or Facebook.

Cammie does an excellent job with our videos, travels the world to tell the story of AWR.

But Cammie never expected this year in 2020, and she's smiling, and she said, Cammie, you never expected that God was going to use you in a way you had never dreamed.

Tell us, Cammie, what God did in your life through Unlocking Bible Prophecies.

It is a real blessing to be with Advent Hope the Sabbath, and I appreciate you asking me to join you for a few minutes to share about Unlocking Bible Prophecies.

Adventist World Radio wanted to do a worldwide evangelistic effort during these unprecedented times like Kyle said, and it has been an incredible blessing.

As of a few days ago, over 2 million people have been, 2 million views have occurred of these videos of which I'd like to show you a sample, an introduction to Unlocking Bible Prophecy so you can see exactly what I'm speaking of and then I will go into more detail.

So if you would please roll the clip, I would appreciate it.

Increasingly destructive natural disasters.

Bushfires in Australia are a warning of what may be to come around the world.

Join international speaker Cammie Udman on a journey for answers in Unlocking Bible Prophecies.

In her travels around the world, she's come face to face with real life struggles, but in the midst of them, she's found miracles of hope.

The rise of an rise of an international pandemic polarizing global politics mismanagement and corruption increasingly destructive natural disasters Bushfires in Australia are a warning of what may be to come around the world.

If I can continue on, if the video isn't going to play for now, no worries.

So basically, It was an endeavor that included 14 Bible topics that I actually filmed out of my living room.

When Kyle was just talking about how you never know what God's going to ask of you, I am a layman.

So to preach an evangelistic series maybe 6, 7 years ago would have blown my mind.

But you know, when we start dedicating our lives and our time and our purpose to be used by the Lord, it's incredible what He will have us do.

And so this particular series, Unlocking Bible Prophecies, aired from May 31st to June 13th.

And we aired something new for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, we decided to air the Prophecy Series in every single time zone around the world at 7 p.m.

So it didn't matter what country you lived in, you could click in at 7 p.m.

And watch a Bible prophecy topic, and it has been amazing.

And we're so grateful that the General Conference Communication Department with Sam Nevis joined in these efforts to make this actually so far the largest digital campaign in Seventh-day Adventist history.

Now friends, I believe this is just the beginning.

I think much bigger things are coming even for the Adventist churches.

We all stand up and use our talents like Kyle will be talking about.

I think this is just a glimpse at what God can do through each of us.

So the Bible Prophecy Series, basically the theme was, if it's in the Bible, I believe it.

If it disagrees with the Bible, then it's not for me.

And this seemed to really resonate with the average viewer.

And right now we are growing at about 25, 000 to 32, 000 views a day.

And over 30, 000 people originally registered online at awr.org forward slash Bible and we we know that we couldn't have done it actually without our youth our digital missionaries that we had we made we made a plea online to have 5, 000 in 5 days because we were about to start the series.

I didn't know only a few weeks beforehand was I given the call to do this and accept it.

And so we put it out there online and I tell you what, our Seventh-day Adventist youth, they want to do something.

They want to be involved because this is so awesome.

We had 10, 652 digital missionaries when we began the series.

So if you want to be a part of that, we also have a slide showing how you can be a part of that and join in future efforts with the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

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The Parable of the Talents

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