GYC 2012 Acts: The Revolution Continues

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2012 Seminar: Stories for the End of Time - Forgotten Episodes of Adventist History

Dave Fiedler

The Big Question

This message was presented at the GYC 2012 conference in Seattle, Washington.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

Okay, we're going to start off looking at the big question.

And the first thing to grasp about the real big question is it's not all about us.

Except for the fact that there is 1 step that depends entirely on us.

When you think of the big question, what is the, what's the deepest question that you think of that we wrestle with as Christians?

I'm a teacher, by the way, not a preacher.

So yes, you can raise your hand or even blurt things out unceremoniously if you need to.

Why is there so much evil if God is good and is all-powerful?

What an excellent, you've wrapped it up nicely.

That's the question, that's the 1 that troubles everybody.

Especially, you know, when something bad happens.

You know, It's easy to kind of gloss over questions like that, but if I get in a car wreck tomorrow and I end up paralyzed from the eyebrows down, that question is going to occur to me.

You know, the whole chapter, first chapter, Patriarchs and Prophets, deals with that.

That's actually the chapter title, Why Was Sin Permitted?

She comes at it again in Great Controversy, and it seems like there are other places along the way.

That's what we think is the big question.

But as important as that question is, it's not the big question in everybody else's mind.

Now, when I'm talking about everybody else, I'm not talking about non-Adventists.

I'm not talking about non-Christians, or Catholics, or Buddhists.

The rest of the universe has a different perspective.

Their big question is more along these lines.

Lucifer, the covering cherub, desired to be first in heaven.

He sought to gain control of heavenly beings to draw them away from their creator to win their homage to himself.

That's coming from the perspective of 1 loyal to God.

If we wanted to just simply report the facts without taking a position on this, we would have to say, therefore he represented.

And not decide whether he's, you know, not taking a position as to whether he was representing accurately or not.

But from the angel's point of view, Lucifer represented something.

He was promoting a perspective, let's put it that way.

He misrepresented God, attributing to himself the desire for self-exaltation.

With his own evil characteristics, he, that's Lucifer, sought to invest, or to paint, the loving Creator.

Thus he deceived angels, thus he deceived men.

There have been a couple of references already in the presentations.

Adam made a comment, I think Wes did too if I remember right, about the whole concept of the representation of the character of God.

That is the big issue in the minds of the universe.

Cuz the universe is left trying to figure this whole thing out, okay?

For the rest of the universe, The original big question was, this is past tense, because they've moved past this now, but the original big question was, which government is best?

Because The great controversy at its heart is essentially a political campaign.

Lucifer effectively said, I have a better plan of how to run the operation.

I could do a better job on the government around here.

And then there was a big meeting in heaven.

And the Lord presented his side, and about 20% of them came back onto the right side.

Right, so it dropped from almost half, it dropped down to a third of the angels who stayed with Lucifer.

The question of which government is best.

That question was answered and the angels have that all figured out there.

They're not dealing with that question anymore.

So we'll see why that is as we move along, let's put it that way, okay?

So we're gonna go to the beginning of the story because beginnings are good places to start.

This is not the beginning of time or the beginning of Genesis 1, but it's still the beginning.

Jesus is talking here and he says, you are of your father the devil and the desires of your father you want to do.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

When he speaks a lie he speaks from his own resources for he is a liar and the father of it.

The moment Lucifer deviated from God's plan, he accepted a principle, he invented a principle, which we'll discuss in a moment.

He invented a concept, A mode of operation that probably unbeknownst to himself made him at that very moment a liar and a murderer from the beginning.

There are some things that will always be mysterious about it.

We can't give a reason for why 1 created perfect in a perfect environment should become evil.

Otherwise, if we could give a reason for it, it would justify it.

Victory!

For the sake of the recording, let's just do a quick, this is Sunday morning, the 30th of December, 2012.

The title of the Presentation is The Path to Victory, and this is the 9.45 meeting, give or take.

Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer and we'll get started.

Father, we ask your blessing today, we pray that you'll be with us.

We want to understand enough that we can participate more intelligently in your work.

So we pray that you'll be with us and direct our thoughts and our considerations today.

The path to victory, and I put a subtitle on it, making sense of the process.

You know, there are times and places where the Lord says, just trust me.

But there are also times and places where God says, I really wish you would care enough to understand.

I want to understand what there is to understand.

There are things that are beyond us, beyond me at least.

Maybe you can figure out things that I can't, praise the Lord.

But in the meantime, let's try to understand as best we can.

And this is my effort to make sense out of the plan of salvation?

Does it make sense or is it just some sort of a weird thing?

Okay, almost all of you were here when we looked at this just a moment ago, so we won't spend a lot of time on this, but this is what we talked about yesterday, is the four-step process.

Now, Ellen White describes this under the heading of Satan falling like lightning from heaven.

Probably the summation statement that was used yesterday comes from Desire of Ages, where when the 70 disciples came back from their missionary tour, they said, Lord, even the demons, the demons, devils, even the devils are subject to us in your name.

Jesus' first comment was, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

But Ellen White goes ahead and she expands that.

She says, scenes of the past and the future were open to the mind of Christ.

And you'll find it right there in Desire of Ages.

He saw, first of all, when Satan was originally kicked out of heaven 6, 000 years ago, give or take, just shortly before the creation of Earth.

He looked forward a couple of weeks at that point to his own death on the cross.

He looked forward to the 144, 000 and the triumph of God's people in the time.

Then he looked all the way down to the final eradication of sin.

She doesn't use this exact phrase here, I don't know the four-step phrase, But this is the fall of Satan like lightning from heaven.

So the point to remember here, the key points we're building on are that, number 1, it's not a gradual process.

Now there's probably a few of you who are older than I am and most of you are probably younger than I am.

There comes a point in life where you start saying, I wonder if it'll happen, what?

But I want to make very sure that if it doesn't happen in my lifetime, when I lay down for the last time, I will have done something that at least kicked the can down the road and moved the process along, okay?

I can be a little cog in the big wheel, and that's fine.

I'd love to, but I have to do something to make it happen.

Oh, and the other thought, and I mentioned this already, was that it happens in steps and chunks and pieces like that, and it requires demonstration.

Every step of the way is a demonstration.

Of course, number 1 didn't require demonstration because you're dealing with 3 individuals who are omniscient.

God cannot pronounce His way out of this problem.

Okay, so, start off with some basic points.

This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations, then the end will come." So here's my question.

You're used to that verse, you've heard that verse, and you are familiar with and you're used to that sequence.

The gospel goes to the world and then the end comes.

Why does the gospel have to go to all the world?

But does God just say things for the fun of it or does He have a reason?

It's kind of like looking, you lift the lid on the, lift the hood on your car and you look in and somebody points at something and says, what's that there for?

But would the whole thing work if we took it out?

Is there a reason for this stuff that we see when we look under the hood.

Now there are a few of those little vacuum valves, vacuum tubes, you wonder about it, you pull them off and it doesn't do anything.

But if you pull a carburetor out, or the fuel injector out, yeah, it doesn't run so well.

Is there a reason that the gospel goes to all the world before the end?

Here's a hint, and I don't mean to be rude in saying this.

In case you're thinking this, don't be offended.

It's not so everybody has a chance to be saved.

How many billions of people have already died without ever hearing the gospel?

Zechariah, Paul in Romans talks about the Gentiles who are a law unto themselves.

And they do by nature the things that the Spirit asks.

They're the ones that come to Jesus and say, I don't really understand the whole thing with the holes in the hands, could you explain that to me?

Let’s Be Practical

Okay, from here on out, what we're focusing on is what's the demonstration that remains to be made, and what can we learn from Adventist history?

In my personal experience, All the things that I think of as important have come from A, the groundwork of the Great Controversy, which is what we spent the last 2 meetings on, and B, the lessons of advanced history.

I love our history, and so that's where we're going next.

So let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Father, we invite your presence to be with us now.

We ask that you will direct in every word that is said.

I pray that you would help me to properly represent and forgive me for where I lapse into my common nature.

I pray that you will bless as we move forward now.

And Lord, above all else, we want to know what we need to do to cooperate with you.

And we praise you for not giving up on us thus far.

I'm going to guess that most of you are probably familiar with Ellen White's statement that the time of test is just before us because the loud cry has already begun in the revelation of the righteousness of Christ." How many people are familiar with that statement?

1892, November 27, 1892, Review and Herald.

I don't know, I'm sure I've got that statement someplace coming up here, but anyhow, that has been a huge question in Adventist history.

Now some of you, if you've studied into this, I hear some people seem to be pretty quick on that date, so that's good.

If you've read any of the materials from the 1888 Message Study Committee, they've got some great historical materials documenting some of this stuff.

Ron Duffield recently wrote Volume 1, I'm eagerly awaiting Volume 2, of a book, Was it The Return of the Ladder Reign or Return of the Loud Cry?

And what it's focusing on is this basic question of, what happened?

The loud cry had begun, but what happened?

Okay, well, that's where we're going with this.

But let's get some background setting to start off with.

October 10 through November 5, 1888 was the Ministerial Institute and General Conference session held at Minneapolis.

This is the famous 1888 General Conference, Jones, Wagner, Righteousness by Faith, Law and Galatians, Uriah Smith, George Butler, all that mix.

If you're not, don't worry about it too much.

Just remember that it's a very important occasion.

And out of that came the movement that eventually was credited with starting the loud cry, which is a good thing.

1 aspect of the 1888 message, or 1888 General Conference is often overlooked, and it's very, very important for our purposes right now, and that is, after the meeting at Minneapolis, Dr.

We could see the converting power of God working in his heart and life.

I mean, how many people can say, I was converted in 1888 at Minneapolis by the preaching of Jones and Wagner?

That's kind of a cool thing to be able to say.

Now, in order to, again, we need some setting on this.

Kellogg had been the medical director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium since 1876.

So he'd already been there for 12 years, but now he was a converted man.

We could see the power of God in his life.

Did he pay a bunch of back tithe that he'd been withholding?

What is this, the converting power of God that they could see in his heart and life?

Well, skipping over a whole bunch of other fascinating details, it turns out that The difference was that Dr.

And in particular, It led him to have an interest in orphans, widows, and the aged." Old folks.

You ever go looking through the Old Testament and find out how many times The powers that be in Israel were condemned for the way they treated orphans and widows?

Well, In the summer of 1890, just about a year and a half after his conversion to Battle Creek, Dr.

And Ellen White was there, and he kind of buttonholed her off to 1 side.

And he said, Sister White, what would you think about starting an orphanage?

We're years behind in that kind of thing.

Kellogg had his marching order, so to speak.

The next February, 1891, you're going to have to kind of follow the chronology along with me now on this.

February of 1891 was the general conference session of 1891, okay?

And Kellogg went to the session and he made a motion that the church start an orphanage.

He shepherded that thing through and he got it passed.

Committee was set up and they started raising money to run an orphanage, or at least they tried.

A year later, February 1892, It had become apparent that the church just wasn't that excited about an orphanage.

They'd been making appeals to the review all year long.

The second quarter of 1892, the Sabbath school offerings went towards the orphanage.

It's about $7, 000, which admittedly was a lot more than $7, 000 would be today, but it wasn't enough to do an orphanage.

So a year after they'd started the project, the committee got together and they said, what are we going to do?

They had a problem on their hands because they'd announced that they were going to start an orphanage in Battle Creek.

Nobody was really interested with 1 major exception.

What category of people would be interested in the orphanage at Battle Creek?

They didn't have an orphanage, But they had orphans.

Kellogg took the orphans and he got a little cabin out behind the sanatorium, and he took a couple of nurses from the sanatorium.

He says, ''Excuse me ladies, but we need you out here.

Please look after these kids.'' So the sanatorium became the de facto orphanage when they didn't have an orphanage, but they did have orphans.

February of 92, they took the money they had and they bought a piece of property.

Diverging Paths

It's kind of like that when you get there.

If you can stay out of chemistry, more power to you.

But anyhow, There are distinct steps that have to happen.

And then, yesterday in our third meeting, we started on the Adventist history.

Kellogg was converted in 1888 at Minneapolis, under preaching at Jones and Wagner.

When he was converted, it's not that he stopped going to the bar, cuz he hadn't been going to the bar.

And he started within 1 year's time, well, a little bit more than a year.

But you know, from the summer of 1890 to 1892, through 1892, he started the orphanage in Battle Creek.

We had over 500 Adventist orphans who were not being cared for at that time, in the United States alone.

He started the visiting nurses program that went down to Chicago.

Both of those were funded by non-adventists.

We have 500 orphans kicking around the country and we hadn't done a thing for them.

And they tried for a year to raise funds and they got just enough to buy some property but not enough to build an orphanage.

And along came a non-adventist lady, gave $30, 000 and established a big, beautiful orphanage.

Very similar in its concept to, say, international children's care, for instance.

You remember, those of you who were here, you saw that big building, okay?

It was divided up inside into like, what was it, 9 or 10 different living areas.

And it functioned as individual families.

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