Michigan Camp Meeting 2024: As For Me and My House

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Are We Ready for the Storm Ahead

Paul Ratsara Sr.

01 Ready or Not

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2024 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to serve you and to be here this afternoon.

We want you, Lord, to work on our hearts and our lives, that this camp meeting will not be just a routine, but a camp meeting of life, where lives will be transformed.

And we would like to be ready for your coming.

I must say that I am excited about this series.

I was praying, I was asking God, what is really what we need right now as your people?

And I'm totally convinced that what we need is that we must be ready for his coming, and you must help people as well to be ready.

By the way, I would like to ask if you can come forward a little bit, if that is okay, for those of you a little bit far, so that we can be together here.

So we would like you to continue to follow the series because it is built upon each other.

Yeah, this place reminds me of many things.

I remember I spent time here speaking for camp meeting for Michigan and also for seminar and now I'm back here.

As maybe you have noticed, my 2 sons are pastoring in Michigan.

So Michigan has a special place for me and any time Michigan asks me to do something, I said okay, I will do my best.

I've been busy with Wima University in leadership and also teaching, but the Lord is good, and here we are.

We can have this opportunity to be together.

What do we need to be, to do for us to be ready?

So throughout this series, we are going to work through the steps for us to be ready, and for us to be able to share what we know with other people, so that not only we are ready, but our neighbors, our friends, and the other people, they will be ready for His coming.

We would like us to be ready, and we would like Jesus to come soon.

I had a friend, he traveled from Washington, D.C., to Chicago on a plane, and he is a pastor.

So he sat next to this gentleman, and the gentleman was there, quiet, and his eyes were open, And then my friend started to start a conversation with him, but his eyes were open, but he would not react.

And then my friend said, well, he does not want to talk.

So for politeness, he just left him alone.

And then after a few minutes, He was the 1 who started the conversation.

When I talked to you a few minutes ago, you did not respond.

And he said, no, I was praying, I'm sorry, I was praying.

It is noon now, a few minutes after noon.

Us, at noon, we drop everything and we pray in our denomination.

He said, have you noticed that it was 12?

And for us, in our organization, in our denomination, everything must drop when it is 12.

Oh, my friend said, so you are a religious person.

He said, yes, I'm too, I'm a religious person, my friend said.

If it is okay, can you tell me what is your faith?

Every day at 12, we stop everything we do and we pray to Satan.

I said right now We focus our prayers on destroying Christian families.

We pray that their marriage will be destroyed.

We pray that their children will rebel against them.

And especially, he said, we pray especially against pastors.

And my friend is a pastor, he said, oh so he was praying against me when I tried to talk to him.

And as a matter of fact, he said, I'm traveling now, I'm going to Chicago, we will have a convention of satanists from different places, and right there, we are going to pray together to destroy Christians.

So the question is, this is what the devil is doing.

You see, the challenge we have is that we think that things will be just simple, but there will be a storm.

There will be a storm, and in this seminar I would like to encourage you to bring your Bibles.

I'm not against the digitized Bible, but I would encourage you to, if you have, to bring your hard copy Bible.

In my class when I teach up there in my university, I encourage these people, those graduate students, I said, okay, in this class we would like you to bring your Bibles.

We can use the electronic version, but we need to prepare.

Time will come that we will not be able to use the electronic version.

During persecution, we'll not have any data, we'll not have any power at some point, then we just look at our phones.

We are somehow kind of enslaved by the phone at some point, but we need to be free from that.

So I would like to encourage you as well, tomorrow, when you come for the seminar, I would like you to bring your hard copy Bibles, and we are going to read the Bible.

In this seminar, we are going to read the Bible.

Actually, I will give you the references, And then you are going to read, we are going to read it together.

I try to minimize putting the version, the Bible, Bible verses on the screen so that it can be part of our training.

Many times we kind of, we bring the Bible, but we cannot even use it because all the verses are on the screen.

I'm not criticizing, but I think once in a while we need to go back to where we were.

I have the electronic versions, many of them, but deliberately I like to use this Bible.

The same thing with the Spirit of prophecy.

You can have the electronic version, but have also the hard copies.

Don't throw them away, don't sell them, or don't give them away as if you don't need it.

When time of trouble comes, you need your Bible, you need your spirit of prophecy.

You put them in your bags, and then you go, until they will remove them from you.

Time will come when you are caught, then they will remove also the physical Bible, the physical spirit of prophecy, and they left what remains is in you, what is in your mind, what is in your hearts.

That is a way for us to be ready already.

We need to prepare, we need to store the Word of God, the Word of God.

02 We Are in a Battle

Heavenly Father, we give all the glory to you because we know that you are the 1 who chose us and gave us the opportunity to be here this afternoon.

This is a topic about him, exposing him, because we know that he wants to deceive us.

And that's why we need to know what he's planning to do so that we can be ready.

Be with us now and may this time be the time of refreshing, time of revigorating.

Oh Lord, inspire us and fill us with the Holy Spirit and may this place be filled by your presence.

Just a little bit of a recap that we for the day before yesterday, we are talking about being ready.

We need to be ready And we are talking about the situation of the world.

The devil is trying to do everything to destroy us, to take captive this world, and he finds his way even to go into the church.

And if we are not careful, we will not be ready.

And it is said in the spirit of prophecy that there will be few.

If there is no change, there will be few only that will be ready.

And that's why we are here, so that we will not be contributing to that few numbers become even few, because we would like to be part of that number, we like to be ready, we want Jesus to come, but if he comes that we are not ready, it is not good news for us.

But if he comes and we are ready, then you say, Lord, thank you so much, And now is the time for us to be ready.

And that's why I've chosen, I mean God has inspired me to choose this topic.

There are many topics, but somehow it was a burden in my heart.

Preparation for the hard time ahead, for the storm that we have to face.

Because yes, Jesus is coming, but before he comes we need to pass through tribulations, the time of troubles, the persecution, and we need not to ignore that.

Sometimes it's a little bit painful, a bit scary, a little bit, and trying to avoid to talk about it, but that is not right.

It is better to get ready and face it with the power of God, with the way God wants us to face it.

The good thing, my brothers and my sisters, is that it is not us, it's Jesus.

As long as we are with Jesus, we have nothing to fear.

So the danger is that we are not with Jesus.

But when it comes to attack of the devils, when it comes to the deception and all of this, once we are with Jesus, we have nothing to fear.

But we need to know so that we can be ready.

This is what we talked about the day before yesterday, And today we would like us to talk about a paradigm shift, a paradigm shift, a change.

Need to know yesterday we talked about the, not yesterday, the day before yesterday we talked about the few, few people will be ready if there's no change.

If there is no change, that means that number is not fixed.

That's why we need revival and reformation so that God wants all of us to be saved.

God does not say, well I would like it to be to be so few.

So those of us who are ready to be saved, God will do everything for us to spend eternity with him.

This is what we want, and that's why we are here.

But we need to know first the tactics of the devil so that we can avoid it.

So today I would like us to talk about a paradigm shift, a reality check, to know what is going on, what is going on around us.

So, you know, part of my work, especially in the past, is traveling.

I kind of traveling the globe, the 5 continents, preaching the gospel.

And it is quite interesting to know the different continents, different countries, and the different airports, and the different cities.

Some of the cities, they are very dangerous.

And even here in United States, I live in the West Coast and in a place at Weimar, and they say, you know, here we don't lock the door at night.

We don't lock the door, and there was no use of that.

You know, I was missionary in Congo and in Africa, and you have to lock everything.

And for me to sleep in a place that the door is not locked, it is something I have to adjust myself.

I tried it, you know, to begin with, I was not comfortable.

I said, what if Someone will come and attack and all of this.

But I said, no, here we don't need to lock the door.

You go out, you don't need to lock the door.

But if you go to a certain place, I remember very well the first time I went to downtown Washington, D.C.

Careful when I look around, I said, wow, I have to watch everything because I know there's a danger here.

Let's say if I am in a place, a dangerous place, And I behave like it is not dangerous.

I just leave my stuff there, my computer, I just leave it out there and I just move like 100 yards, just leave it there.

Or okay, my mobile phone, just leave it on the counter, just going around, what will happen after 5 minutes?

We need to know what is going on around us.

And the devil is trying to deceive us, thinking that it is safe and we are not watching.

We are not watching and then he takes advantage of that.

That's why we need to have a paradigm shift.

We need to know what is around us, what is going on.

So the first 1 is, we talk about this great danger.

As I told you the day before yesterday, I would like you to bring your what?

I would like to challenge all of you, please, it's not obligatory, but it's a request.

It's a request that if you can bring your Bible so that we can read the hard copy we are getting.

When the persecution comes, we'll not have data, we'll not have the contract and all of this, then we cannot use the mobile phone.

But this 1, you don't need any charger, and it is there all the time, and then you can read it, and you can use it, can use it until they snatch it from you.

A time will come as well when we will not have our Bible.

In our mind, that's why we need to store the verses of the Bibles and the very important statements of the spirit of prophecy so that when that time comes we will have our Bibles and the Holy Spirit will remind us.

The Holy Spirit will use that to encourage us or to guide us.

So I want to encourage you, my brothers and my sisters, let's get used to going back to our Bible.

We are not going to condemn those who are using the digitized version, but in this seminar I would like us to practice that.

Let's open our Bibles in Matthew chapter 7 and verse 21 to 23.

If we have a mic, a mic to go around, I would like you to read.

03 Learning How to Count

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful time that you have given us.

And now as we continue this series, We pray that you just be with us and guide and direct.

We thank you, Lord, because we know that you are the 1 who give us life, give us salvation, and the opportunity to be closer to you.

Our topic is about being ready for the coming of Jesus.

And you have noticed that we have been talking about, by talking about the mindset.

Yesterday, we talked about the paradigm shift.

And Just to recap for those of us, those of you who could not make it and you are back today, that the paradigm shift is that we need to believe, and it is true, that we are in a war.

And then we said we are in a jungle where the lions are trying to get us.

So all of this tell us that we need to be alert.

And yesterday, we talked about the danger, the most dangerous thing is self – what?

If someone else deceives you, well, that is bad.

But to be deceived by ourselves, that is even more dangerous than simple deception.

So today we are going to talk about another mindset of those who are going to be able to face the future by the power of God, and that is learning how to count.

You know, counting is something very, very common.

Some people, they may not be able to write.

But I've never seen an adult who could not count.

Have you seen an adult that could not count?

You have seen an adult who could not write, could not read, but I've never seen an adult that could not count.

So counting is very important in life, and our children, our grandchildren, They are so proud when they know how to count.

But today, we are going to learn how to count.

That means there's something that we don't know how to count properly.

But if we don't count That properly, then that will affect our preparation for the coming of Jesus.

That will affect our spirituality, our readiness for the storm ahead of us.

And that's why the title, as you can see, I revamped it a little bit because of the skipping of 1 day, but we will cover this subject.

That's why the title, Learning How to Count, key to revival and reformation.

Well, a very familiar text, Psalm 90 and verse 12, "'So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

That means we need to learn how to count our days.

That means there is 1 way of counting wrongly our days and counting rightly our days.

So today, my brothers and my sisters, we are going to talk about this counting.

And what is the impact of that When it comes to our preparation for the coming of Jesus, for the days ahead of us, this is what we are going to study today.

So the psalmist says, count, teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

1 day's funeral, we use this text, but it is more than a text for funeral.

It is a text actually for our walk with God.

When I studied this and I understand it, and I said, wow, this is a powerful text that will help me to be ready for Jesus to ready for Jesus to come.

So it is said, so teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

And then in verse 10 to 12, you give the context of it.

He said, the days of our lives are 70 years, and If by reason of strength, that are 80 years.

And it is said that their boast yet, their boast is only labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we will fly away." Say, counting wrongly is, I can already say that, counting wrongly is to count that our days are long.

So that is the counting wrongly, thinking that, well, we have a lot of time on this earth.

I have a lot of time, so that affects my way of life.

So counting, thinking that I have a lot of time.

And Proverbs chapter 27 and verse 1 says, it's a very familiar text, it is said, do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.

We may think that, well, tomorrow I will do this, tomorrow I will do this, tomorrow I will do this.

But 1 thing is sure, we are not sure that if we're still alive, we'll still be alive tomorrow.

Even in the afternoon, tonight, we don't know.

There was this young man came to my office by the name of Saleman, strong, young, clever.

He finished his law degree, and then you wanted to continue his law degree.

And then we talked about his life, about his future.

You were so excited about his future, and I was excited about his future too.

That was during the time, as I told you, the civil war in Congo.

He was killed about 1 hour or so after our conversation.

And I have never seen him because I think we have not even found his body.

We attended the General Conference in Europe, Utrecht, and then when the General Conference session was finished, He drove with his wife and with his daughter, about 4 years old.

And then in the middle of the driving, my friend said, oh, I'm really thirsty.

And then his wife said, oh, yes, you look tired.

04 You Will Receive Power

Heavenly Father, thank you so much that you have given us this time to be here to study your Word, to be ready for the storm ahead.

We know that the devil is not happy, the devil is after us, but you are more powerful than him.

What we need to do is to be ready to allow you to work through us.

And be with us now, in the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.

Definitely, all of us, we know how to count, but there is a 1 way.

Series

Are We Ready for the Storm Ahead

04 You Will Receive Power

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Battle for Purity

1h

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies Part 1

40m

The Three Angels' Message

06 The Third Angel’s Message

56m

Established in the Present Truth

Sound Doctrine

58m

Evening Plenary

02 The Power of One

1h 7m

Plenary

Seven Times Washed

1h 11m

Preparing Your Church for Evangelism

03 What are the Challenges?, Part 01

1h

The Key to Finishing the Work

Taste and See

1h 8m

The Marvelous Work of the Holy Spirit

57m

Strength Through the Storm – Better Brain, Better Habits, Better Life!

01 Food, Mood, Cravings, and Immune Health

1h 3m

Prophetic Preaching and Persuasive Appeals for Decision

03 When to Preach Persuasive Appeals for Decision

58m

Prophetic Preaching and Persuasive Appeals for Decision

04 Where to Preach Powerful Biblical Appeals

55m

Sound Doctrine