Mandates, conspiracies, controversies, and politics have been prominent in recent times - but have they helped God’s people come closer to faith in God? “Conformation or Transformation?” investigates current societal trends, examines Bible prophecy, and assesses the challenges and opportunities before the last-days church.

ASI 2022 Convention: Revived to Witness

<p>Mandates, conspiracies, controversies, and politics have been prominent in recent times - but have they helped God’s people come closer to faith in God? “Conformation or Transformation?” investigates current societal trends, examines Bible prophecy, and assesses the challenges and opportunities before the last-days church.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Transformed

John Bradshaw

Conformation or Transformation?

We have about a little less than an hour and 15 minutes.

If you have questions along the way, please make them.

If you fear your question might be on some way slightly provocative, that's okay.

I'm not saying I'm necessarily going and walking on that ground, but I'm just saying please don't feel like you need to sit there silent and if there's something, some point that you feel like you want to make or a question that you have, then that'll be okay.

But you know when I teach Sabbath school, when we have a combined Sabbath school lesson, I do say if you have a comment, make it worthwhile and don't take too long and I'll decide if you've taken too long or not.

Oh, before the beginning, let's have an announcement.

You received a blue form as you walked in.

Now there are 2 ways you can fill it out.

You can fill out the form or you can go online and fill the form out there.

I don't know where online, don't know if the form says so, but you can, huh?

The organizers would prefer it if you fill the form out online, but it's okay if you don't.

Please fill it out if you need to do it online, if you can do it online, grand, if you just fill out the form, leave it on your seat when you're done, that's okay too.

I think what we're talking about is somewhat important.

I think it's the crux of the Christian experience as a matter of fact.

So how we do it justice, who knows, but we'll endeavor to do so and hope that we don't leave out too many important aspects of this because this frankly is an all-encompassing subject.

Let us pray and expect that God will speak to us.

Our Father in heaven, we come to you in a very real way.

We're discussing something of eternal importance and we are merely human your thoughts are as high above ours as the heaven the heavens are above the earth so would you be especially merciful to us lead us by your spirit minister to our hearts bless the Speaker that he might represent your will and I pray we'll all be blessed in Jesus name, Amen.

Were you in the main auditorium last night?

You complained, because your complaints have been heard.

I was walking in our neighborhood, I don't know, a couple of months ago maybe, close to our house.

We live at the end of a little cul-de-sac.

And I was walking to our house, this neighbor here, that neighbor there, and us.

And as I was by this neighbor's house, walking up the street, I heard a thud on the ground next to me.

Ordinarily, it's the sort of thing you would not notice or hear and not care about.

It wasn't an explosion, it wasn't a bang, it wasn't a clatter, nothing smashed or crashed, it was a little thud.

But being a curious fellow, and I am, I stopped and I thought, what was that?

Now next to me over here was a very large tree, very large tall tree.

So I looked down and you know the streets are typically black and not hard to notice something, not hard to see something unless it stands out if it's the right color.

But I looked down and saw an odd-looking thing.

It wasn't a bug, but it was a bug kind of thing of some kind.

I looked down and it was standing upwards even though it did not have legs, at least not that were discernible.

It had a head of some kind, an ending of some kind, and on it as though they had been drawn or painted 2 eyes.

They weren't eyes, but they were eye-looking things on this bug-looking thing.

It had suddenly a couple of orange antenna sticking up and I got close to it and it started to rock backwards and forwards side to side.

It's a little brown thing, a little fat little thing about this, kind of like the size of my thumb, on the end, eyes, not real eyes, but I like things, antenna, and it was rocking backwards and forwards like this.

And then the rocking stopped, and then I dared to touch it not knowing what it was.

And then it rocked again and so I got my phone out and took a photograph and I thought my wife Melissa would be fascinated by this.

And so I videoed it for a while, maybe about 40 seconds, this odd looking thing on the road rocking backwards and forwards.

And I went close to home and so I went home and I put my phone out and I said, Hey, honey, look at this.

And Melissa says, Wow, that is a fascinating thing.

She said, it looks like, you know, a caterpillar kind of a thing that might turn into something.

And she said, I wonder if it's a lunar moth, having seen these big eyes on it.

So she dashed out there and it was not there.

Maybe a bird got it or something, I don't know.

But then we turned around and about 15 or 20 feet away, this little guy was shuffling along kind of like an inchworm might, but quite quickly, across the street, I don't know where he was going or if it knew he, she, where it was going, I don't know, it was going somewhere and it seemed to be quite intent on getting there.

So Melissa seeing it, figured out that this was some little creature in a developmental stage She ran back to the house grabbed a plastic container of some kind ran out and scooped it up What we're going to do next with this thing I have no idea in the world Melissa left it to 1 side she did some research and she figured out that this was an eastern tiger swallowtail, but in thumb form, you know.

It was a caterpillar, even though it didn't have legs as such, and it was brown, meaning it was like in the...

It was getting along there in the stages of development.

Next step, we learned later, it would become a chrysalis, a pupa.

So we found an old fish tank that hadn't been used in forever and Melissa went out searching and harvesting weeds.

Queen Anne's lace, evidently this is what it likes, Queen Anne's lace attracts ticks like nobody's business.

When my son walked in he said, oh who's trying to attract ticks into the house?

It was Melissa who was stuffing stuff in this terrarium looking thing to make a home for the wee creature.

So in it went, It attached itself to a little branch type thing, crawled up there and then stopped.

And we honestly didn't think too much about it.

I guess once or twice we walked by and looked and it didn't look good.

And Melissa even said to me a week or 2, I don't know, later.

I think it, I think the jump out of the tree might have had something to do with it and...

Until, until I was away speaking at a camp meeting or something and I get a text you'll never you'll never believe this take a look at this and there was a video what had happened was out they came into the kitchen that morning and in the terrarium was no longer a chrysalis but a beautiful yellow swallowtail butterfly with his arms outstretched I guess getting ready to go and so they Shannon my daughter and Melissa took the container outside and She said, I don't want to touch it.

David Shin

Conformed. Reformed. Transformed.

My name is David Shin and I have the privilege of working at Ouachita Hills College and it's a privilege to be here at ASI in 2022.

So it's 3.31 and I value your time So let's bow our heads together as we pray.

Father in heaven, thank you for this opportunity to explore the topic of imagination and transformation.

We pray that you would bless us in this seminar this afternoon as we reflect, as we ponder, as we think about spiritual themes, we pray for the Holy Spirit that inspires would also be the Spirit that instructs.

This is a seminar, it's not a sermon, but I would be amiss to not begin the presentation with some theological background for the topic of our discussion.

Our topic is using our imagination for transformation.

And the passage that I wanted to begin This afternoon is a familiar 1.

But we all with unveiled faces, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

The preamble to this passage is found in verse 13, and maybe this 1 isn't as familiar.

We are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not stare at the end of what was fading away.

And so then he says, but we all with unveiled face.

So The pretext to this passage is this encounter that Moses has with God, and he asks God, can I see your face?

And God says, you can't see my face and live.

And then he says, look, I'll do something for you.

So he puts him in the cleft of the rock and as God passes by he puts his hand in the cleft of the rock and then Moses peers out and sees not the face of God but the back of God.

After this he comes down from the mountain and you know the story, This is the best picture I can find on Google.

His face was lit up, and it was so bright that the children of Israel had to put a veil over his face.

Now, that veil eventually did fade away, and then Paul goes into this famous passage afterwards in verse 18, but we all with unveiled face contrasting to Moses whose face was veiled, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

So this is the preamble or the introduction to our topic this afternoon.

And the best way I thought of illustrating this was from a man that I used to listen to all the time.

Charles Bradford, former North American Division President.

How many of you have heard Charles Bradford preach?

My dad had a tape, some of you don't know what that is, but a tape that was in a series from the GC Ministerial Association and every several weeks or so they would mail out a tape of a great preacher and 1 of them was of C.E.

And I had that tape and I would listen to it on a regular basis and especially it was my freshman year in college.

I was a theology student and I was to give a terrifying presentation to my peers in front of the whole school, and then afterwards they would give an assessment.

I was nervous, I was not apt in public speaking, and the way that I prepared for this was by listening to this tape by C.E.

I listened to it morning, noon, and night.

And then when I got up to give the presentation, I thought it went well.

Afterwards, 1 of my African American friends came to me and said, David, you preach like a brother.

I wish I had the language of angels to be able to give that type of elocution.

And when that brother of mine said, you preach like a brother, I was like, what do you mean?

And then I sat down back in the days of VHS with my instructor, put in the VHS tape, and I watched myself preach.

And it was surreal, because I was watching an Asian man preach like a black man.

This is the way that we work and function and this is from Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California and a bodybuilder, very famous.

This is what he said, it is the same process I used in bodybuilding.

What you do is create a vision of who you want to be and then live that picture as if it were already true.

And he talks about how he was in the army in Austria and he would have these pictures of muscle men plastered all over his wall and Mr.

All of us have in our brains a mental picture.

And today I want to talk about mental images that we have in our brain that are very critical to our transformation.

Seasoned athletes used vivid, highly detailed internal images and run-throughs of the entire performance, engaging all their senses in their mental rehearsal and they combine their knowledge of the sports venue with mental rehearsal.

World champion golfer Jack Nicklaus has said, I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very in focus picture of it in my head.

Athletes go through in vivid detail in their mind, In the case of golf, the shot before it takes place.

Divers go through the turns and the spins of their dive prior to it in their mental, in their minds, and I do it for public speaking too.

For this presentation, I went through in my mind a mental picture of what I wanted my presentation to be like.

This is from Lindsay Vaughan, the skier, gold medalist.

I always visualize the run before I do it.

By the time I get to the start gate, I've run that race a hundred times already in my head, picturing how I'll take the turns.

All of us have an imagination, powerful thing, and we have the ability to visualize something before it takes place.

The impact of running through something in your head ahead of time has a powerful effect.

Mental images impacts many cognitive processes in brain, in the brain.

Motor control, attention, perception, planning, and memory.

So the brain is getting trained for actual performance during visualization.

It can be found that mental practices can enhance motivation, increase confidence and self-efficacy, improve motor performance, prime your brain for success, and increases states of flow.

Have you ever visualized something in your head?

The studies have shown that that visualization is very, very close to the very act of doing it.

And that's why Jesus says if you commit adultery in your mind, you're guilty of the act of adultery.

Now, this is from the Cambridge Dictionary about visualization.

Visualization is creating a mental picture in your mind.

And just in case you're wondering where this is all going, this is a biblical study, not some New Age thing on visualization.

But, but there is some biblical and spirit of prophecy justification for this idea.

And here it is from Desire of Ages, page 83, familiar quote.

It would be well for us to spend a thoughtful hour each day in contemplation of the life of Christ.

We should take it point by point and let the, what did she say?

David Machado

Conformers or Transformers

Our Father which art in heaven, I want to thank you so much for your amazing grace.

I want to ask that you would please speak and bless in this seminar presentation in Jesus name.

I am married to this wonderful woman right here.

She's Romanian, so I call her my Romanian Rose and 14 months ago God blessed us with our first child.

There he is right there and so they are back home in Arkansas taking it easy I guess.

Yeah, they're back home and I'm just so thankful that my son is healthy and my wife is as well.

It marks our 10-year anniversary of doing evangelism, evangelistic work.

In the last 10 years of me doing public evangelism, We've seen over a thousand people make decisions for baptism.

So we just want to praise the Lord for his amazing grace and what he's been doing.

In 2012 my first evangelistic series was in Mentone, California.

I am a native of Loma Linda, That's where I was born and raised and my first evangelistic series was in 2012 right there in Mento, California And I had no idea what I was doing.

Anybody no, okay Well, the actual this is spot I think size 24 When I first started it was size 12 and so I started my first evangelistic series 10 years ago and I couldn't even read what was on the slides.

And so when I say I literally didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know what I was doing and God has been blessing ever since that time.

In 2017, I went over and did an evangelistic series in Yucaipa, California and I met this man right here.

His name is Kenneth Cox or you know the late Kenneth Cox and I asked him if he could critique all my messages since I was never formally trained on how to do evangelism and he graciously accepted and after the Evangelistic Series was over he invited my wife and I to come to his house and he said, we've been praying for someone for a very long time to join our ministry with the purpose of keeping it going.

And so since 2018, we've been working with Kenneth Cox Ministries.

He helped establish Revelation of Love Ministries.

From there, we got our Bible study guide sets out.

We've gotten over 60, 000 of these Bible study sets, Bible study guides all around the United States.

Many people have made decisions for baptism.

I've done about 10 years of canvassing out in Southern California in the summertime and a program called Youth Rush and for about 10 years also we did Bible working and just had a phenomenal experience.

Now why in the world am I telling you all of this?

You didn't even come to hear some of this stuff.

Last year, God blessed us with an incredible miracle.

And when I say miracle, it's literally a miracle.

We were looking for property where we could place our new headquarters at and 1 night it's December of 2020 I'm praying with my wife and I'm answering some messages on Facebook and I see this property out in Arkansas and it was basically a school setting ministry setting perfect place to have a school And we saw the price of this thing was up for sale and it was way out of our price range.

My wife said, well if it's God's will, he could provide for it.

2 hours later, we get a call from someone that supported our ministry and he said, hey David are you sitting down?

I'm like, no I'm sleeping, it's like 11 o'clock at night.

And he's like, well is your wife there with you?

I said yes and he said, all right well I need to tell you something.

Long story short, apparently him and a partner saw this property and they felt impressed to donate it to Revelation of Love Ministries.

And so this was last year and God answers prayers is absolutely incredible but the reason why I shared you all this preliminary information was because next summer we are planning on launching a brand new evangelism school, a school of evangelism that emphasizes in health, and it's going to happen next summer.

So if you're interested in learning about health evangelism, public evangelism, personal evangelism, literature evangelism, you're definitely going to want to come and just check it out.

Ellen White had something to say about it.

She says the Bible Institute should be held in some place where medical missionary workers and ministers may meet together to study the scriptures.

There's 2 main focuses that we want to focus on in this school and here's 1 of them, the education, what should it be?

There should be companies organized and educated most thoroughly to work as nurses, evangelists, ministers, canvassers, and as gospel students.

And so that's kind of the goal is in evangelism we want we don't just want Bible workers who know how to study the Bible we want Bible workers to be able to know how to help people with their health.

The type of education we've been told is right here.

The cause is the need of hundreds of workers who have received a practical and thorough education in medical lines and who are also prepared to labor from house to house as teachers, Bible workers, and co-porters.

And so we kind of got our marching orders.

This is what we're trying to do so you can at least keep us in prayer.

You probably received a handout, some kind of brochure like this.

We're doing a drawing also for an iPad at on Saturday night at 10 p.m.

And so if you want to sign up for our newsletter go into our website that will allow you to basically sign up for that grand prize drawing for that iPad on Saturday night at 10 p.m.

All right, well that's enough about that.

Let's talk about 1 of the most important things I think we could discuss.

We're going to be talking about the difference between being conformed and transformed.

Did you know that the devil and God are both interested in transforming us?

Now this is going to be a very deep study so I pray that you brought your thinking caps on and that by God's grace we're ready to study.

So in essence, what I'm going to be saying throughout the course of this seminar is something like this.

Conformers are people whose lives are persuaded by pressure from without, while transformers are people who are basically people who are persuaded by a power from within.

So today I want to talk about the difference and we're going to dig deep into the Word of God.

I'm Hispanic, I'm half Puerto Rican, half Mexican, and so whenever my mother had 12 brothers and sisters, so whenever it's quiet that basically means somebody is in trouble.

And so I love interaction, so I'm gonna ask a lot of questions throughout the course of this message, and I hope that we could get some responses.

Listen to our opening text, it's found in Romans chapter 12.

You've seen this text probably plenty of times in the course of your time here, but I want to see something interesting.

The Bible says in Romans 12 verse 1 and 2, I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice Holy acceptable unto God which is a reasonable service.

Now here's the text verse 2 listen to this be not what everybody conform to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of what.

All right so what does this word right here, you should know this, what does this word transform literally mean?

Literally in the Greek it means metamorphosis.

Now, where do we have an analogy of what that means?

Literally, the butterfly completely changes, it transforms from the inside out.

Used to be a nasty old little bug, slug, whatever you call it, and now it's something absolutely gorgeous and beautiful, a complete transformation from within.

That word transform means the essential nature of something has been changed.

It says, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Series

Transformed

Conformation or Transformation?

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Seminar: Lift Him Up

Lift Him Up: Evangelism’s Last and Only Hope

1h 20m

Plenary

A Thousand Shall Run

1h 44m

Acts: First Generation Lessons for Last Generation Believers

2. Discipline

1h

Plenary Sessions

Abundant Abiding: From Fruitless Anxiety to Fruitful Peace in Residency

54m

Plenary

Our Greatest Need

1h 30m

Being Adventist

Born Adventist or Born Again?

1h 2m

Personal Evangelism

New! Balanced Living and Fit & Free!- Transforming Health Programming Into Soul-Winning

1h 17m

ASI 2012 Seminar: It's Time

Stand Firm

1h 22m

ASI 2013 Seminar: Prophecy

“We the People” and Christ’s Counter-Revolution

1h 32m

The Inevitability

53m

Transformed

Only by His Spirit

1h 17m

Why Christ Hasn’t Come - The First and Last Delay

50m

Sound Doctrine