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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Karl Tsatalbasidis

Vatican II: Cultural Worship Invades Adventism

And there was at least 1 person that walked in that was here when I was here 8 years ago.

But they're not a student anymore, so you're not going to be here forever.

Those of you, some of you are going to graduate, but it is a privilege to be here with you this evening and this weekend.

The title of our message tonight is Vatican II, Cultural Worship Invades Adventism.

So I'm hoping that you're going to find this a very informative and enlightening presentation.

When I was in my doctoral studies I was told that I needed to get some bibliographic material on all the things that we had published as far as doctoral dissertations.

And I discovered that the outside world, Catholics and other evangelicals, had done a lot of homework on Vatican II, and I came up with peanuts as far as Adventism was concerned.

And so as I began to read their documents, I began to be quite amazed and shocked.

So I hope to really inform and enlighten in this presentation because what the Catholics have done is like absolutely unbelievable, unbelievable.

And so if you've ever had the idea that you're kind of dealing with idol worshiping people and they don't know much, nothing could be further from the truth.

And so I would just ask that you bow your heads as I just pray 1 more time.

Our Father in heaven, Lord, We look forward to the day when we can worship you around the throne.

We ask that you would send your Holy Spirit because we want to worship you in spirit and in truth.

And so tonight I ask for a double portion of your Holy Spirit.

Help us to understand where we are and then where we need to be.

So if you have your Bibles tonight, the title again is Vatican II Cultural Worship Invades Adventism and so in order to get a picture on what I mean by cultural, I'm going to take you to 1 Kings chapter 12 and we're going to begin in verse 25.

So that's 1 Kings chapter 12 and then we will be at verse 25.

The kingdom is now split and the 10 tribes go to Jeroboam and the context here is that there was kind of a civil war that was looming in the background and so we pick it up in verse 25 and it says, Then Jeroboam built Shechem and Mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein, and went out from thence, and built Penuel.

And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David.

If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their Lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah." So I'm just going to stop there for a moment.

He's kind of sizing up the situation and he takes advantage of the circumstance that he finds himself to be in, and that is 1 that's very uncertain.

The Southern Kingdom wanted to take them back by force.

And so, like any good politician who never lets a crisis go to waste, he used worship in order to advantage himself politically.

And he realized that 3 times a year God's people would go to Jerusalem in order for them to Become acquainted with the plan of salvation as it was revealed in the sanctuary there And he knew that if they went there their loyalties would be not to him But to Rehoboam and so he thought how can I steal the loyalties of these people and get them back to me?

Well since they were a religious people he would use worship in order to do that.

Notice what begins to happen in verse 28.

It says, Whereupon the king took counsel and made 2 calves of gold and said unto them, it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem behold thy gods of Israel which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt so it says that the king took counsel and made 2 calves of gold that means he didn't get his counsel from the Bible because that's idolatry so when he took counsel he got his counsel from human philosophy and culture.

That's where he got his counsel from, because biblical theology is incompatible with reducing the divine presence to the creation.

So he said it's too much for you to go up to Jerusalem.

Well the temple is at Jerusalem and God's people were to assemble there to hear the Word of God as the priests would enact that and become more familiar with the plan of salvation and other things that were revealed therein.

Actually, before I get to verse 29, he says, Behold, thy gods of Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

Like in Exodus chapter 32 at the golden calf?

You know, the thing we learn from history sometimes is that we really don't learn a whole lot.

And so, this had been done before, and now he's going over the same ground again and unfortunately it's not going to go well.

So in verse 29 it says, He set the 1 in Bethel and the other put he in Dan.

And this thing became a sin for the people went to worship before the 1, even unto Dan." And then something else begins to happen.

It says, "...he made a house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Lebi." And then he begins to do something else in verse 32.

"...Jeroboam ordained to feast in the eighth month on the 15th day of the month like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he offered upon the altar, so did he in Bethel sacrificing unto the calves that he had made, and he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made.

So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the 15th day of the 8th month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart, and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel.

And he offered upon the altar and burnt incense." You notice how many times the word he was mentioned there in verses 32 and 33?

That's because there's a transference of authority from Scripture to Jeroboam.

So Jeroboam, as the conference president here, is the 1 who is calling the shots and changing the prescribed order of worship.

And so the Bible is basically saying he is the 1 that is the authority.

So in this kind of worship, the authority of Scripture has been replaced by the authority of the church at this point.

So if you're looking up on the screen, when you have philosophy and science and culture as the foundation but not scripture, then the sanctuary loses its systematic role.

If you'll remember, he wanted to prevent them from going to Jerusalem, and at Jerusalem was where the sanctuary was, and that's where the plan of salvation would be revealed.

That's how you learn how to worship, that's how you formulate your ethics, and so forth and so on.

And so when philosophy and science and culture are the driving forces in theology, then the sanctuary loses its grounding role.

Church authority is based on local culture and God begins to be understood in a pantheistic or panentheistic way.

You know, these be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

So the divine presence is now reduced to the creation.

And then when the divine presence is reduced to the creation, it affects how we understand salvation, it affects how we understand ministerial practice, and it affects how we understand worship.

So this is like a whole series of dominoes that is beginning to drop.

To summarize, Jesus used the analogy of a good tree can only bear good fruit and a bad tree can only bear bad fruit.

A bad tree cannot bear good fruit and a good tree does not bear bad fruit.

So he rejected the good tree, scripture and the sanctuary.

Then he chose the bad tree of human philosophy and culture.

This caused the following interpretations.

God is confused with nature and is revealed everywhere.

Now don't get that confused with God is everywhere.

Yes, God is everywhere, but he doesn't reveal himself everywhere.

He chooses the time and the place in which he reveals himself, okay?

But now God is actually revealing himself everywhere, and what is it that makes anything holy?

It's the presence of God, so all nature is holy.

Since the divine presence is revealed everywhere and all things are now holy, it means that everyone has the presence of God and thus everyone is holy.

If everyone has the divine presence and everyone is holy, then anyone can serve as a priest, irrespective of all the genders that exist.

There's no need to restrict the priesthood to Aaron and his sons because adherence to biblical principles does not make anyone any more holy or any less Because you're already intrinsically holy because the divine presence is in you.

Now don't confuse that with the power of God is operating in you.

The power of God is not synonymous with the presence of God.

Since the divine presence is revealed everywhere, worship is no longer restricted to the sanctuary in Jerusalem.

Now you can go anywhere because he reveals himself everywhere.

Since the divine presence is revealed in all places and at all times, the Sabbath becomes irrelevant.

It doesn't become a special day anymore because he's constantly revealing himself all the time.

What the Bible says on the Sabbath, he reveals himself in an extra special way, unlike what he does on all the other days.

Since the divine presence is revealed everywhere, God is automatically revealed in all of the worship practices in all cultures.

We're not talking about cosmetic changes here.

We're talking about something incredibly foundational here.

So this is what This story is referring to as cultural, okay?

So culture is being used, if we look up at the screen here, in the middle, you find all the components of worship.

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Vatican II: Cultural Worship Invades Adventism

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