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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jeff Horn Weekend

Jeff Horn

01 Cause for Confusion

Dear God, I'm thankful that you brought me here safely, and thank you for this opportunity.

Just speak through me that it wouldn't be my words, but yours, in your name we pray, amen.

So tonight, this is a two-part series, and tonight is a little bit more of, I'll say, a presentation or a lecture type format.

We will consider some scripture, but tomorrow will be more of probably what you think of of a sermon type format, but they do, we need the background of tonight to appreciate tomorrow better.

So that's just a little bit of a forewarning.

And what we're going to cover, before we jump into that, I want to start with a few questions that you may have considered either subconsciously or maybe more than that.

Have you wondered why there's such a variance in practice in different Adventist churches?

You can walk in the doors of an Adventist church in different states, in different countries, sometimes even just a few miles away from each other, and have a totally different experience and atmosphere there during your time.

Have you seen confusion around what Adventists believe?

Or at least maybe what the important beliefs are.

Maybe you've heard this question, is this a salvational issue?

Why is there so much confusion within Adventism in our beliefs and practice?

If you think about it, we're a pretty new denomination.

And when we came onto the scene, we were all basically unified.

You know, we came out of the different groups that we came out of.

God brought us together and we had a starting ground and now here we are some 175, 180 years later and it's not that way anymore.

Well, what I'm going to try to do, what we're gonna try to do together, is talk through, and I understand, you know, when you talk about big periods of time and millions of people, things are complicated.

Obviously, we're not going to be able to cover all of those nuances.

We're going to try to talk about some of the main people and key events that I think have shaped the landscape of where we find ourselves today.

So we're going to start by talking about the 1888 General Conference.

I'm sure you all have heard at least some about that.

And some key players there, obviously Jones and Wagner being 2 of them.

We're going to then move into a little bit about ML Andreassen, okay, and his impact on all of this.

From there we'll talk about the book Questions on Doctrine, and that will lead us into some discussion on a guy that some of you may not have heard of, but a significant player nonetheless in all of this.

The 1888 General Conference took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

And what sort of developed, it was a couple of years in the making at least, but you had a couple of young, new arrivals on the scene, if you will, A.T.

And they were bringing what was at the time very offensive material to church leadership and you might say the old guard.

2 of the most notable names in opposition to Jones and Wagner were G.I.

Butler, who was the conference president at the time, and Uriah Smith, who was, of course, the longtime editor of the Review and Herald.

Now, Supposedly, the main issue at that conference was to be the law in Galatians.

And was it the moral law or the ceremonial law?

And so at first glance, you're kind of like, how much do we really care about that?

What law is being talked about in Galatians?

So the traditional view of the church of leadership had been that the ceremonial law was the topic that was being discussed in Galatians.

Jones and Wagner said, no, actually the moral law is what's being talked about here.

Well, really the debate on the law in Galatians, really what it was all about was righteousness by faith.

And we're gonna see that clearly explained.

By the way, as far as whether the law was the moral or the ceremonial, Ellen White would later say that it was both.

And so neither side was completely right, but really the moral law probably was the more important part of that.

So that being said, righteousness by faith.

Just after, this is in 1890, so shortly after the 1888 General Conference, Ellen White famously wrote, "'Several have written to me inquiring "'if the message of justification by faith "'is the third angel's message.

"'And I have answered, "'it is the third angel's message in verity.'" So understand that what we're dealing with at the 1888 conference, that's where this question arose from, was things stemming from 1888.

What was being dealt with there was the heart of the gospel, it was righteousness by faith, and it was the core of Adventism.

It was absolutely huge what was being dealt with in 1888.

All right, so we're talking about righteousness by faith.

Here's just for an idea of what Jones and Wagner's view was on that topic.

Jones, taken from his book called The Consecrated Way.

He says, sanctification is the true keeping of all the commandments of God.

The will of God concerning man is that his will shall be perfectly fulfilled in man.

God's law is perfect and perfection of character is the perfect expression of this law in the life of the worshiper of God.

In his coming in the flesh, having been made in all things like unto us and having been tempted in all points like as we are, he has identified himself with every human soul, just where that soul is.

Perfection, perfection of character is the Christian goal.

Perfection attained in human flesh in this world.

Christ attained it in human flesh in this world and thus made and consecrated a way by which in him every believer can attain it.

Jones that talks about a lot of the subtopics that go into righteousness by faith, just for a picture.

Now, Ellen White, what did she say about this message that Jones and Wagner put forward in 1888 and the years that followed?

She said, and this is of course a famous quote that you've heard, "'The Lord in his great mercy sent a most precious message to his people through elders Wagoner and Jones.

This message was to bring more prominently before the world the uplifted Savior, the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

It presented justification through faith and the surety.

It invited the people to receive the righteousness of Christ, which is made manifest in obedience to all the commandments of God." And then I like this last part.

"'This is the third angel's message.'" So again, she's tying this in all again with the 3 angels' messages, which is to be proclaimed with a loud voice and attended with the outpouring of his spirit in a large measure.

Now this is very briefly, obviously on 1888, there's entire books and series on this.

The Return of the Latter Rain by Ron Duffield is 1 I would recommend if you want to hear many, many more details about this.

But I want you to understand that Ellen White was supportive and continued to be supportive of the message that Jones and Wagner put forward.

So there was some significant fallout from 1888 when you have people of the status of G.I.

Butler and Uriah Smith in stark opposition to this.

You know, there's going to be tensions, obviously.

Well, Ellen White supported Jones and Wagner, as we read.

There was a resistance by administration.

There was conflict about where Jones and Wagner would be able to work, where they would be able to speak, et cetera.

Ellen White, this is, if you remember, she had a period of her ministry where she went to Australia, and this is the reason why.

Church administration said, we don't like what you're sharing, we don't agree with it, and so we're going to send you to Australia.

Just a little side note on this, because I think it can speak to us today.

She was told, Ellen White was told by the Lord that the way that she was being treated by the brethren was not correct in them asking her to go or telling her to go to Australia.

And she had every right to not accept that, to be upset with it.

But what she did was she submitted to their decision, and she went to Australia anyway.

And while she was there, she was blessed personally.

She totally kick-started and expanded the work in Australia.

I mean, It's probably our best book on righteousness by faith now, and has spread the message more than she ever could have done on that topic if she would have stayed here in the US for those years.

So God told her, hey, submit to it even though it's not right, and look at the ways that he blessed in that.

Okay, so 1888, some accepted the message, but many either rejected it outright or they accepted it in theory.

They said, yeah, okay, maybe that makes sense, but they didn't.

This is a message that has to reach our hearts.

And so some people said, okay, it makes sense, but they didn't really allow it into their lives.

And of course, there was also just the outright opposition as well.

02 From Confusion to Clarity

Last night, the message that we talked about was called, Cause for Confusion.

And so we talked about why we find ourselves sometimes in a confusing place in the Adventist church today.

But today we're gonna focus on how do we move from a place of confusion and how do we move forward with clarity.

So we're going to do, before we get to that, we'll do maybe a little bit by way of recap for those that weren't there last night because the foundation of this is important to understand where we are today.

Of course this should be available on AudioVerse so if you didn't hear part 1, you can go back later and do that.

We started off with a timeline, and these are the key people and events that we talked about last night.

So just briefly, we talked about the 1888 General Conference which took place in Minneapolis.

You have there Jones and Wagner, probably names that you're mostly familiar with.

There was a major debate that took place at that general conference and the topic really was righteousness by faith.

Jones and Wagner, their message of righteousness by faith was endorsed and supported by Ellen White, but this was resisted by church administration and that debate kind of raged on for years.

Some people accepted it, many did not, the message that was given there.

We moved ahead into the 1930s and we spent some time talking about M.L.

Andreasen, specifically 1 book that he wrote which is called The Sanctuary Service, where he deals with the issue of the atonement.

And the feeling of Adventism at large during that time was what Andreasen had done, had taken these pieces, the understanding that The church had had for a long time on things such as the sanctuary, the nature of Christ, and kind of put it in a package and said, this is how this is going to play out in the last days.

And largely the church was like, yeah, that makes sense.

So then we came into the 1950s and we talked about the book Questions on Doctrine.

This was a time during which the evangelicals, some evangelical leaders, posed some questions to Adventists because they were deciding, should we call Adventists a cult or not in our new book that we're going to put out?

And so they talked to the Adventists and there was a guy by the name of Leroy Froom, along with a few others, but Leroy Froom was the primary voice that answered these questions that the evangelicals had.

Now, Leroy Froom understandably did not want to end up in this book where Adventists would be called a cult, but because of that he compromised in some of the answers that he gave.

And we went through how he compromised on answers especially related to the atonement and to the nature of Christ.

This ignited a huge controversy and the fallout from that, but What it did is it started something in the Adventist church where the evangelical gospel, the gospel that the evangelicals were promoting that talked to the Adventists, that started to gain a foothold in Adventism that it really didn't have until that time.

We talked about Edward Hepenstall, who took that gospel and promoted those ideas and influenced actually you see on the timeline here in 1985 there was a survey in North America where North American lecturers were like this is the guy who has influenced us the absolute most.

You're probably familiar with Desmond Ford's sanctuary rebellion and rejection.

What you might not be familiar with is the reason that Ford made those conclusions was because of the gospel he believed in.

He believed in the evangelical gospel that we would be sinning all the way until the second coming and the investigative judgment really doesn't make sense if you're always going to be sinning anyway.

The whole concept doesn't make sense and that's where Ford came from with all of that.

So, that being said, that brings us to today.

And this is 1 slide that we shared kind of in conclusion last night.

The everlasting gospel found in the 3 angels' messages is our foundation.

The evangelical gospel is a challenge to this because it offers salvation in sin.

Both versions live within Adventism today, which is the root cause of much of the confusion and many of the tensions that we experience.

The infiltration of the evangelical gospel has led to assimilation with the popular churches in the world.

Preaching a watered-down, diluted gospel strips Adventism of its power.

Okay, so that's a little bit of just brief background on the confusion.

But thankfully, and we know this, does God desire us to be confused?

God desires clarity and unity among his believers.

1st Corinthians 14 33 says, for God is not the author of confusion but of peace.

Revelation 18 4, and I heard another voice from heaven saying, come out of her which is Babylon, and Babylon means confusion.

Come out of confusion my people, lest you share in her sins and lest you receive of her plagues.

And then Ephesians 4.13 says, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine." Alright, so how do we move into a place of clarity?

How do we move regarding our beliefs and practice and ultimately our mission, how do we move to a place of clarity?

It's a little bit rhetorical and I want to do something that's a little bit cheating here and answer that question with another question.

So that question that I want to pose is, why did God raise up this movement?

And does anybody have, there's a lot of answers that are not necessarily wrong.

If you were asked this question, why did God raise up the Seventh-day Adventist movement, Simply put, what would you say?

Prepare the world for Christ's second coming.

Maybe that we have the truth about the state of the dead or even an important 1, why we're here this morning.

These are all fairly distinctive things that are part of our message, but I want to say, and the answers that were given were absolutely on the right track, this is not an inspired answer, this is just how I would summarize what I think God raised up our movement for, to share the everlasting gospel by proclamation and demonstration.

That's the simplest way that I know how to put it.

The way that I want to talk about it today is what I'm going to call Adventism's metanarrative.

So let me put up a definition there from the dictionary.

Metanarrative is an overarching account or interpretation of events and circumstances that provides a pattern or structure for people's beliefs and gives meaning to their experiences.

So it's kind of these big structures that we use to view everything else through, to kind of do our theology and learn about God.

And there's 2 primary ones that come to my mind when I think about Adventism's metanarratives.

And I wanna talk about both of those today.

Those are the great controversy and the sanctuary.

So there's many things that we learn as sub points to both of these meta narratives that they teach us, but I want to talk specifically in relation to this whole issue about gospel confusion and some key points here.

So under the great controversy, we're gonna see that, and we know this, God stands accused.

Satan has made accusations against God and God's name needs to be cleared in front of all of the onlooking universe.

In the sanctuary, we deal with the removal of sin, the whole process in the sanctuary, right, was we have this sin problem that's separating us from God, God wants to be with us, and what can we do about that?

How can we remove this barrier that is keeping us from God?

And so ultimately, the sanctuary is teaching us about the plan of salvation.

All right, so let's drill in on the great controversy a little bit.

God stands accused in the great controversy.

Desire of Ages says, In the opening of the great controversy, Satan had declared that the law of God could not be obeyed.

Here's a little bit more specific from the signs of the times.

Satan declared that it was impossible for the sons and daughters of Adam to keep the law of God and thus charged upon God a lack of wisdom and love.

If they could not keep the law, then there was fault with the lawgiver.

Men who are under the control of Satan repeat these accusations against God in asserting that men cannot keep the law of God.

That last sentence there is pretty powerful because we hear that message.

You know you've heard it and you will hear it.

There's no way, you know, we have a fallen nature.

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Jeff Horn Weekend

01 Cause for Confusion

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01 Cause for Confusion

51m

02 From Confusion to Clarity

34m

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