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Wildwood Lifestyle Center

James Hartley

God’s Church in the Last Days

Glad to be with you as the Sabbath approaches.

This evening I decided to talk on a subject, God's Church in the Last Days.

I just noticed recently there's quite a lot of maybe unhappiness about God's organized church.

There's some suggestions about, you know, setting up systems to kind of punish God's church financially and so forth.

And I know it's been an ongoing issue, but I feel like as we get closer to the end of time that this subject is gonna be really important in order for us to stay organized.

So I just thought I'd bring this subject and did a little study on how we should reflect on some of these questions.

Is the church just a body of faithful believers or is there a need for an organized structure?

Or is it okay that we just all have our own experience?

What will the church look like through times of persecution?

How do we respond if we see apostasy in the church?

What's the right response if we notice that there's some apostasy somewhere in God's church?

Will there be a time when God will set aside the organized church and just work through a body of faithful believers?

Will there be a time for that and when will that be a time?

You're starting to wonder how long is this message going to be.

I'm not going to answer completely all of these questions, but I think through some of the counsel that we've been given, it will get us in the right direction.

I'm gonna try to answer as many of them as we can, but it might require more time.

How do we deal with it when we don't agree with decisions that are made by church leaders?

And I think the principles that we talk about there will apply.

What if you don't agree with the decisions in maybe the ministry you work at or the job that you're in or the family that you're in?

You know, these are all very serious questions and probably 1 that many of us have related to in some level.

So let's jump into this and just look briefly at a little overview of God's church.

The descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of course, were enslaved in Egypt, and God brought them out of Egypt and got them organized.

Organization was always really important from that time forward, especially for Israel, a band of misfits, in a way.

I mean, there was the mixed multitude, and the Israelites had backslid in many ways and they needed to get organized and God directed them to get organized.

And upon entering Canaan through the book of Joshua, we see how there was a lot of organization there, dividing the land, the whole sanctuary service, organization of cleanliness, order, the position for the tabernacle, and the annual feasts.

Everything had a lot of organization to it.

No, but there was organization And they were God's people.

There were warnings by the prophets for the church to turn from her ways.

There was warnings of impending judgment which finally as a consequence of their stiff neckness and their lack of being willing to turn from their ways, Jerusalem was destroyed ultimately by the Babylonians.

Israel was then given a 70-week probation, you might say, or those were prophetic weeks, 490 years to turn from their sins and their rebellion.

They were still God's church and of course there was a mix.

After the 69 weeks the Messiah was cut off by the by the church themselves who instigated it And then after 3 and a half more years, the stoning of Stephen probationally finally closed on Israel and they ceased to be God's special church on earth.

Nobody could look at God and say He dealt with Israel unfairly or in a quick way.

He dealt very long and patiently with them.

Interestingly, 1 of the statements I read in preparing for this really pointed out that God's remnant church today, as we get close to the second coming of Jesus, mirrors in many ways what the church looked like before the first coming of Jesus.

It's very easy for us at Seventh-day Adventists to look at the Jewish church in the days of Christ and think what a mess they were and how bad they were, but we don't like to look at ourselves.

Well, that's exactly 1 of our symptoms of being the Laodicean church.

We don't like to look at ourselves and our own problems.

We like to look at other people's problems.

Or maybe within the church we like to look at, you know, somebody, it's not my problem, it's somebody else's problem in the church.

Or it's the church's problem, it's the leader's problem, it's not our problem.

So things shifted to the early church and things began to get organized.

The Lord added to the church daily in Acts chapter 2, as such should be saved.

We can see clearly the need for structure.

There was need for distribution of food and clothing, especially helping widows.

There needed to be administrative decisions made.

There was tithe that was being collected to support the ordained ministers.

In Acts 5, verse 11, we can see the physical presence of the church with Ananias and Sapphira, the judgment that came upon them.

In verse 11 it says, And great fear came upon all the church and upon as many as heard these things.

When the New Testament talks about the church, it's not talking about just the spiritual, faithful believers that are loyal to God.

It's talking about those that have been baptized and are members of the church.

And not all are perfect by any means, but that's the best that we can do.

In 1 Timothy, Paul wrote, chapter 3, verse 5, some more detail about the care of the church.

There were to be bishops appointed that would lead the church, and they should be 1, he says, that would rule his own house while having his children in subjection with all dignity.

For a man that knows not how to rule his own house, how shall he care for the church of God?

So there's this parallel between the family and children and the church.

I don't know of any families that are perfect, right?

So these people need to be used to dealing with stubbornness.

Well, in the church, there's going to be a lot of that, too, and so there needs to be some experience and spiritual people that know how to handle situations and lead out in God's church.

And there was great care for that there would not be divisions in the church.

So 1 of the biggest dangers for God's church is that there would be divisions.

Many verses that we could look at about the councils of the need to be in unity.

Paul especially addressed the Corinth, the church in Corinth in his first letter, in the first chapter in verse 10, dealing with the different divisions that they were dealing with there.

He says, now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

That's God's ideal for his church that we don't have divisions.

There's going to have to be a lot of humility for us.

There's going to have to be a lot of listening to 1 another, to really be in unity, because we may not always agree on everything.

And they were not agreeing there in Corinth.

Remember, there were those that were saying they were of Paul, others of Peter, and others of Christ even, which were basically not willing to go under any kind of leadership.

So the ones that said they were under Christ were actually the most disorganized.

He wants us to strive to be in the unity of the faith.

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God’s Church in the Last Days

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