SWYC 2006: Let it Rain!

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GYC Southwest

SWYC 2006 Breakout Sessions

Eugene Prewitt

The Latter Rain and Intercession, Part 1

Does anyone remember anything from the talk in Laodicea this morning?

Who remembers something they just mentioned?

The wealth of Christianity is faith and love and they work together.

Someone else remember anything from this morning?

A sister after the meeting challenged me, saying that that word least might mean not 1 grain instead of not the smallest grain.

So I tried to look it up in my Hebrew lexicon between then and now and well it's ambiguous.

It could either mean the smallest 1 or not 1.

But you know if not 1 that means also not the...

Is there anything else from this morning?

Sentiment is something that humans are given.

We have more or less of it, but it never differentiates Christians from non-Christians.

That just means it only occurred 1 other place in the Bible.

Those are 2 of the many hundreds of words that only occur twice in Greek.

That bear is such a metaphor for us, how God treats people that reject or treat with disrespect his prophet.

Alright, the faith and love, and what is faith?

I mean, a working definition I gave you to experiment with anyway in your Bible study?

Faith is living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

And that is what we are meeting about today.

I mean that's a big part of what we are going to talk about in the next 45 minutes.

That Spirit is the 1 who makes that robe of righteousness apparent to other people.

Just a mildest recollection of the wretched of Romans 7.

In Revelation 3 it's interesting that the people of Egypt that are in Romans 7, they just have a normal Christian experience, but in Revelation 3 they don't realize that they are wretched.

It's very clear, at least in Revelation 3, that wretched and naked, those words can apply to the same people.

And I think they wouldn't be so confused about the word naked.

Do you remember anything else from this morning?

I appreciate what Brother Ophiel was saying about the wisdom of experience.

The prophets had experience, they had experience, a prophetic 1.

Real quickly, how did you come up with a lot of those verses and link them together?

You're in a question like, how do you say the Bible?

Yeah, it was, the way you linked it together, it all made sense and it was architectural and really well put together.

Let me give a 40 second answer to that and then if there's time later, maybe a 15 minute answer to it.

The 40 second answer is that if you go to Great Controversy, you'll find there that 1 of the men who helped Brother Luther out of his dungeon experience was Stoppets.

Stoppets helped give the gospel to Martin Luther.

Martin Luther learned and grew and passed beyond Stoppets in many ways.

And there came a point when Stoppets asked Martin Luther, how do you study the Bible?

I think it might be someone who's writing Great Controversy, Luther's answer.

He said, you can ask, I'm summarizing in my own words, but He said, you can ask me a lot of things, and I'll tell you, but this 1 thing I can't help you with.

He said that the summary of his answer was that God is the 1 who helps us find the truth here.

I'm starting to confound it in my head with something that Tyndale said that was related.

Anyway, later maybe some more information on this.

I sure did, and I didn't give enough proof for the idea that our part is to just hold on.

What I proved to you is that God's part is to finish the work.

How many of you have pen and paper with the intention to take notes at this meeting?

Okay, for the benefit of those who did, if you'll get out your pen and paper, I'm just going to give you a list of scriptures right now that We're not going to look up.

I'm going to tell you what they teach and we're going to go on to something else.

Pen and paper, here come the list of scriptures.

There are a lot of pens there on the floor.

So for those that might listen to this recording later, the pause is that we're waiting for people to collect pens and papers.

And it's a good time for you to make sure you have pen and paper.

So again, this list of verses, what they teach together, is that they're proving the idea that the responsibility on us is to hold on.

Hebrews chapter 10, verses 35 through 39.

2 Peter 2, verses 19-21, Hebrews 10, verses 35-39, Hebrews 3, verse 6.

The Latter Rain and Intercession, Part 2

Our Father in Heaven, we're bowing our heads as a symbol of the fact that we are dependent on You.

I ask for Your own sake that You would teach us the meaning of Your Holy Bible, that you would weaken the influence of anything I say that is faulty, and that you would strengthen the power of anything I share that truly represents this book.

I ask for these gifts in the name of Jesus.

I'd like you to turn with me in your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 5.

Proverbs Chapter 5 has 1 of the most interesting passages in all of Scripture.

It describes the thoughts of someone while they are burning in the lake of fire.

And I would think we could gain some benefit by seeing those thoughts before we might have an opportunity to think them.

Proverbs 5 and looking particularly at verse 11.

It says, And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, how have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof, and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me.

I was almost in all evil in the midst of the church, the congregation and the assembly.

I don't know who it will be, but someone's thoughts are going to be very much up and down these lines, I suppose it will be the thoughts of many people.

Are they going to realize that they're responsible for where they are?

Are they going to realize that God worked hard to win them?

And what evidence does this person give, what ways did he understand God was working to save him?

God was doing it through instruction, through his teachers, through the church, and through all these things, yet he wasn't paying attention, he wasn't changing his life, and we don't want to be thinking those thoughts.

The Bible describes some other thoughts in Jeremiah chapter 5.

Turn with me there to Jeremiah chapter 5.

Jeremiah 5 describes some thoughts that God would like us to be thinking.

In fact, He faults us for the fact that these thoughts are not part of our repertoire of thoughts?

Jeremiah chapter 5 and looking at verse 23.

But this people has a revolting and a rebellious heart.

Neither say they in their heart, let us now fear the Lord our God." Is there something God would like us to be saying in our heart?

This is an appropriate time to relate to Him with that awe and respect that he is worthy of.

Fear God for the hour of his judgment has come?

This is a special time when our thoughts ought to be on this topic.

It says, Let us now fear the Lord our God that gives rain, both the former and the latter, in his season.

Should we be Thinking about the early and the latter rain?

Do we live in the time of the latter rain?

And do the early and latter rain come both in the last generation?

We looked in Joel 2, we didn't read verse 23, but if we had, we would have saw it.

There are things that ought to be occupied in our mind.

He reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.

Should we be thinking about the fact that we're at the end of the world?

And more than that, we ought to be thinking about the fact that we're in the time of harvest.

If anything, this is a time to quickly get whatever seed is going out because we're in the time of the harvest.

We should be feeling privileged to be living in the generation that's going to see the harvest.

If I could summarize what we've looked at in Jeremiah 5 so far, when God speaks about His people and faults them in this passage, he faults them for things that they are not thinking.

They're not thinking about the fact that it's time to fear God, that it's the time of the latter rain.

They're not thinking about the fact that God has reserved for us the appointed weeks of the harvest.

Now these are precious things, the end of the world and the early and latter rain.

Notice the next verse, your iniquities have turned away these things and your sins have withholding good things from you.

The early and the latter rain and the appointed weeks of the harvest.

Is there any implication about why we haven't dealt with our iniquities?

We weren't giving sufficient attention to the fact that we were in the time when we should be fearing God.

In other words, God gave a message that would do the work that we need done in us, but we haven't been giving it sufficient attention.

I feel like preaching on that more, but I need to finish this first.

Verse 26, For among my people are found wicked men.

The call out of Babylon in Revelation 18 talks about a cage of unclean and hateful birds.

And somewhere in your life, you're going to meet someone who's going to show you a quote in Testimonies to Ministers where Ellen White uses a phrase from Revelation 18 right there about the unclean and hateful birds and applies it to the Seventh-day Adventist church.

How many of you already met someone that did that?

Or noticed it yourself in Testimonies to Ministers?

I think it'll happen to you in the future.

So when it does, I'd like you not to be overwhelmed.

I'd like to explain something to you and then show it to you.

And that is that Babylon is not the only organization that has unclean and hateful birds and wicked men.

The same organization to whom God has reserved, there's an organization he calls his people.

That's what it said in the beginning of verse 22.

It's talking about my, excuse me, verse 24.

Well that's verse 26, it says, from among my people.

The same organization to whom God says they're my people that have wicked men, it says they lay wait as he that seteth snares, they set a trap, they catch men.

As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit.

Is this metaphor used also of God's church as well as of Babylon?

And so I'm not surprised that Ellen White's going to use it to refer to both organizations myself.

We're talking this section about the latter rain.

And the first thought I've shown you in Jeremiah 5 is that the early letter rain are withholding for a couple reasons.

1 is a lack of attention to thoughts we ought to be thinking, And the other is because of the sins and the iniquities that we haven't put away.

And then maybe as a causative factor there, it's because we have false teachers.

And God doesn't really let you off the hook for believing false teachers.

But he does admit in this passage that they do have something to do with what's going on.

My mind is branching to a lot of different things that relate to what I've been saying, and I don't know which way to go first.

But let me just go to Romans 16 and show you this thought.

We're talking right now about these wicked teachers that are found among my people in Jeremiah 5, about how to relate to them for example.

Romans 16 and verse 17, Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you have learned, and avoid them.

I think I spoke about this passage when I spoke to Advent Hope a few months ago.

I remember thinking, I'm saying this in a dangerous place to say it.

The Bible commands you to mark teachers that cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine that God is teaching to His people.

And what does it say to do regarding those kind of people?

I don't know how you can get around a command that simple.

Verse 18, for they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly, that is their desires, and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.

Another thought I want to talk to you is about when ideas affect you.

Like the idea that we live in the time of the latter rain is 1 that maybe you can learn in 5 minutes and know it for 5 years.

But it mostly affects you during the 5 minutes you're learning it.

Richard O'Ffill

The Secret of Answered Prayer

I thought I would give you an extra, just a little extra something for your ticket.

So you'll feel like you're getting your money's worth.

And you know, we have a dentist over here on the second row, and I just told him that I want to be his poster boy.

Because at 65, I had 1 little cavity on the side of 1 tooth.

And he's the 1, by the way, in fact I may have mentioned this before, because there's several dentists here, I'm hoping that he's going to, on Monday, be putting a plaque on his office wall in the waiting room, you know what it would say, don't you?

Be true to your teeth or they'll be false to you.

Do you know I'm going to give you a health talk, just a real little short health talk, because we've had lunch and everything.

Now I know that a lot of you are medical people and you say, who are you, who do you think you are, what's your qualifications, and I didn't see you down at the medical school, and everything.

Now watch this now, this is really short and sweet.

And I don't like the idea, when I was about 20 years old, the doctor remarked that I had an irregular beat.

I have atrial fib and I didn't do anything about it.

You know, some people with atrial fib, they can feel it, you know, and I can't feel anything.

I took Inderol for a while, you know, as a beta blocker.

Now, I don't like the idea of taking rat poison every day, but listen to me.

The day that I have a stroke, and maybe I have a 1% chance a year of having a stroke, but the day that I have a stroke, whose life was just ruined?

See, she has to pick me up off the floor, right?

She picks me up off the floor, she feeds me, bathes me, and all the rest.

We owe it to those we love and who love us to live healthy.

Now the first reason to live a healthy life is whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we do it to the glory of God.

The second reason is for the sake of those who love us and those we love.

The third reason is, You know, there's this, she's going to be a family practice doctor or something, right?

The third reason, Doc, is with a little luck, we drop dead.

You know, modern medical science has taken away all the easy ways to die.

Now they got to, you know, you're 85 and they got to resuscitate you and just keep cutting off a dog's tail piece at a time.

So really another motive for healthful living is to reduce the time of our disability.

You know I saw a lady yesterday at the Ontario airport and she was smoking a cigarette, bless her heart, and I thought, you know, to be smoking cigarettes these days is really gross.

Now if she wants to have the disease that comes from smoking, have it, but have it out in the desert someplace where her family doesn't have to bury it.

Bury it, because it's her family that gets messed up, isn't it?

It's so selfish to live an unhealthy life.

Now having said that, you see I can talk to you this way because I'm your grandpa and I know that if I was younger you'd get really mad.

Now I know you get mad at me sometimes with some of the things I say because some of you got mad at me this morning.

But listen to what Grandpa's telling you.

Anyway, you know, another thing, and I'm talking to medical people, some of your medical people, I think what we call the 10 natural remedies, you know in Spanish, ¿Alguno de ustedes saben hablar español?

Un remedio, un remedio is kind of like a medicine or a cure, right?

These 10 natural remedios, wow, these 10 natural, these what they call the 10 natural remedies are really not remedies.

Because when certain diseases set in, they set in and you can drink all the water you want and they're still there.

And another thing that I also learned, and I must be out of my mind to talk to medical people this way, but I say this because I'm a minister.

You know, in my trade, there's faith healers.

Do you know, I was talking with a doctor yesterday, do you know there's 30% we have a 30% factor that's called the placebo effect.

And when I heard that I thought to myself, that's what keeps the faith healer alive.

Because for some reason that we don't understand, at least us laymen, and I don't think you doctors do either, that diseases will suddenly go into remission and nobody knows why.

And they can say it's because I drank 20 gallons of water a day.

But that didn't have anything to do with it.

There are diseases, I'm sure that you understand, for which we can, what should I say, prevent them to a certain degree, right?

Some of us, I was talking to the dentist, I said, you know a lot of us are more genetically inclined than we would like to admit.

There's cancer that runs in families, isn't there?

There's heart disease and all that runs in families.

So we do have, genetically, propensities and we live a healthful lifestyle to play that down, to kinda hold it back.

But I'm just not comfortable really, and I think that we need to be careful, when somebody comes along and says, for example, and I know this will maybe bother some people, says, you know there's a cure for cancer but they're keeping it secret.

And you know I just can't understand the ethic to that.

You have heard that before maybe, if they're keeping it secret so they can make money and I'm thinking you just help.

You mean to say the doctors whose children are dying of cancer are keeping it secret?

You mean to say all of these people, they're keeping it secret so they can watch their...

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