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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Chester Clark

Earth’s Final Call: Why the Three Angels’ Messages are Relevant Now

You know, the devil has a plan, don't you think so?

Do you believe that we're involved in a great controversy?

Do you believe there's a conflict between good and evil?

And I wanna underscore something when I talk about that great controversy.

It's very important for us to remember that that great controversy is between good and evil, and specifically, if we want to get individual or personal about it, it's between Christ and Satan, is it not?

Sometimes we're tempted to think that the great controversy is between different ideologies or different people.

And I'm not saying there's not truth in there.

But the great controversy has never been between you and me.

The devil would have us make it that way, right?

The devil would have us make others the enemy.

And the world we live in, this is the MO, right?

We live in a world with rage, rage-baiting, and we are almost instructed or encouraged to hate people who disagree with us.

And that is absolutely contrary to our understanding of the great controversy.

In fact, what Paul would tell, I believe it was in the writing of Timothy, you would see meekness opposing those who oppose themselves, instructing those who oppose themselves, right?

It's not, when people are arguing with us, If they're holding on to error, it's not that they're opposing us, they're opposing themselves.

We ought to have compassion on those who are in disagreement with us.

But I do believe, and I think it's important for us to recognize, I do believe that we are living in a world where there is conflict.

And that conflict, I believe, is because there is such a thing as truth, and there is such a thing as error.

I believe, and I'm just going to confess this, I believe that historically, the Adventists have held this worldview, that there is such a thing as objective truth, and it comes, it is defined by something outside of us, by an external source.

Yes, there's truth to our own experience.

There's an element of truth to that, I suppose.

But truth is something that is defined by something outside of ourselves by God Himself.

And ultimately, God has chosen as the standard of truth, God has chosen to communicate His truth through His Word.

And because we believe that, because we believe in an external source of truth, not just following what I think in my heart, being true to myself, and all of those things which are important, but only in that perspective.

Because we believe that, we believe that there's also error, and there's falsehood, and the devil is going to try to discourage us, to try to deceive us.

See, the devil, I think, would want to do 1 of 2 things.

Would either want us to believe that there's really not an important message for the end times, the time that's now, right?

We're just, you know, Adventism is just 1 of many denominations.

We're just 1 perspective, 1 angle on God among all the world religions.

That's 1 deception I believe the devil would have us.

But if we don't fall for that and we believe that in fact there is an end time message that's relevant for this hour, this day in earth's history, he would want to make us too ashamed to share it very vigorously.

I know you're busy, but you need to come out to that meeting Monday night and upcoming meetings, right?

Because 1 of the ways God, the devil, uses to discourage us is simply by keeping us too busy.

Another way he discourages us is by making us feel a little bit ashamed to act as if we have a message that's important.

I mean this idea that, okay, maybe we should reach the unchurched, right?

Have you ever heard those kinds of ideas?

The devil would want us to either believe we don't have a message or feel uncomfortable sharing the message.

I remember I was doing an evangelistic series in Russia, and in this particular part, it was actually a town in Siberia, in this place there had never been a Christian or, yeah, Christian Protestant denomination hold an evangelistic campaign.

Obviously, there were some Orthodox there.

And even though this was after the fall of communism, this was probably about 2000 or 2001, there were still, in this particular town, the Communist Party was still very much in control.

And the Orthodox Church was there, there were a few Pentecostals, there was a small Adventist group of about, I don't know, there might have been about 8 or 10 members and a young pastor who was like 22 years old.

He was taking correspondence studies from Zalsky, the seminary in Russia, and his monthly pay was about $30 a month.

And very earnest, very sincere, man of prayer, maybe not the most honest in his advertising of our series because he thought that, I think he thought that I was going to be John Carter and I was gonna be an expert on archaeology.

So he had this all these archaeology advertisements which didn't quite as describe me but nevertheless the devil was working.

Because there had never been a public evangelistic series in this town we and I could tell you stories probably all morning just on this trip, but I'll try to keep it concise.

Because there had never been an Evangelistic series like this, the town came out, and particularly the young people in town.

We were holding our meetings in a theater that sat about, I don't remember, 6 to 800.

And twice a day at 04:00, 03:00, 04:00, and at 06:00, it would be filled to capacity, many of them young people.

And I had a group of young people with me.

I was then teaching at Washington Hills Academy.

And these teachers, particularly English, any English teacher in the town, wanted us to come to their classes because we were native English speakers.

And the English teachers really couldn't speak English.

And so so all of my students knew how to do a presentation on Daniel chapter 2 and they would do a presentation on Daniel chapter 2 and I think over the course of the first week or so we held we We did a Daniel 2 presentation in just about every classroom in the elementary schools, high school, and the university that was there in town.

I mean, we just, we, and after we had pretty much done them all, they started asking us to go back to the same ones we'd already been to.

Well, about that time, about that time, we got a message from the FSB, that's the successor of the KGB, and they said we know what you're doing.

You're going to these classrooms And your visas don't allow you to do that.

The ironic thing was that this was the morning after the 5 o'clock news had done a big program with cameras following the students into the classrooms, and it had been on the evening news.

And I'm thinking, yeah, you know what we're doing because you watch the news.

You're not exactly the greatest gumshoes.

We'd already been...and the hall would just be packed every evening.

About 3 nights in...well, let me back up a little bit.

When we first arrived at the town, I was called to the city offices where the Minister of Cultural Affairs, religion fits under that category.

He wanted to talk to me about our plans, what we were going to be doing there in that town.

And 1 of the things that he said to me is, he says, I don't want you to cause any trouble in our city.

I don't want you to cause any controversy or conflict.

I don't want you to represent your religion as being better than other religions.

And I'm sitting there thinking in my mind, now sir, if you thought atheism was the inferior worldview, Is that why you chose it?

I mean, you know, that's sort of, so all I could say was, you know, I'm not going to, I only want to explain why I believe what I believe.

So he threatened me, he warned me, and he left, we left, and I went on my way.

About the third night, I had only preached a couple sermons.

1 of them had been on Cain and Abel, and the, you know, Abel sacrifice, Cain sacrifice, and sort of the beginning of this God says but I think.

The 2 streams of religion that have come to us all the way from our first parents.

I mean I was laying a foundation, Yes, but I certainly said nothing against the Orthodox Church.

Some of those people were pretty smart in that town.

They could already deduce where I was going.

The third day, this police officer comes down, and there's a high platform.

He stands down on the floor right in front of me as I'm preaching the early afternoon service.

My translators kept translating so I kept preaching.

Afterwards he said you're coming with me.

So we went to the city city offices and I'll never forget this this Minister of Cultural Affairs he was angry.

He was red-faced and of course, you know, through translation he said, I warned you.

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Earth’s Final Call: Why the Three Angels’ Messages are Relevant Now

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