GYC Europe 2012: The Hour Has Come

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Distinct Advent Message- A1

Alan Hush

The Everlasting Gospel: The Good News Amidst the Judgement, Babylon, and the Mark of the Beast- Part 1

This message was presented through a partnership between GYC and GYC Europe at the 2012 conference in Linz, Austria.

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

And you're here because you're scared of the judgment.

We're going to be looking at the everlasting gospel in the context of the judgment.

And a little bit about the Mark of the Beast and about the issue of Babylon as well.

But it's mainly the everlasting gospel in the context of the judgment.

We'll probably have 2 45-minute sections with a break in between.

Okay, 10-minute, 50-minute break in between.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this opportunity to be here at GYC, for the workshops that are now beginning.

I ask for every workshop speaker to be endued with your spirit, so that we can all be clear, especially for myself.

We ask that you'll bless us, be with us in this room, help us in every way, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

I'm from England, I'm the youth director for the North English Conference of the British Union.

The North England Conference is fully, fully supportive of GYC Europe and GYC.

And I'm so happy that GYC has come to Europe.

I think it's, it's, it's, I think it's God ordained.

It's really God ordained and I'm so happy that we're here today.

So they've given me the brief of looking at the judgment.

I'm a fourth-generation Adventist, and I remember when I was a kid, I was terrified of the judgment.

I'd heard preachers preach, And I didn't understand it, but I knew there was a judgment, and I was somehow terrified with the fact that 1 day my number would be up in heaven.

My name would come up before God in heaven, and He would make a decision on me.

And that would be the end of me if I wasn't good enough.

Very simplistic, very infantile, but that's what I believe.

But when we study it, when we look at Revelation and we look at the entire Bible picture of the judgment, It is something that gives you peace, not something that gives you fear.

The judgment is for you, it's not against you.

That all depends on which side you want to stand on though.

So we're going to look at this and unpack it in the book of Revelation with a few verses here and there in the scripture.

So then, we're going to be looking at some issues.

And take your pens and your paper and write these things down if you want to take notes.

If you have these little zip drives, the memory stick, I can give you a copy of the presentation.

If you want, if you've got little memory sticks, I can give you the presentation.

Looking at 3 things here, We're going to be exploring the 3 angels' message, 3 angels' messages, in relation to the everlasting gospel.

That's the first thing we're going to be doing.

The second thing I will be doing is this, to show how each message has been integral to the gospel in every age.

So the first angel's message, the second angel's message, and the third angel's message have elements that have been relevant in every age of Christian and pre-christian, Old Testament and New Testament.

Elements of the 3 angels have been relevant in every generation since the fall, the fall of man.

And the last thing we're going to look at here is to see the love of God shining through each of the 3 angels' messages.

We'll see how time allows us to get through them, But I really want to focus on the first angel's message, the everlasting gospel.

What does it mean to fear God, to give glory to Him, to worship Him?

Because the hour of his judgment is come.

I want to focus on that and if we have time we'll go to the second and third in far more detail.

So just a brief outline of the book of Revelation, alright, a brief outline of the book of Revelation before we focus on 1 chapter and then a few verses.

Before chapter 14, there are 3 major sevens in the Book of Revelation.

There's the 7 churches, there's the 7 seals, and there's the 7 trumpets.

The 7 churches ends with an appeal to the church because the church is in a bad way.

The 7 seals, including in them, are the 4 horses.

The 4 horses of the apocalypse, they are generally negative.

So before chapter 14, generally, the message is negative.

After chapter 14, there's another 3 major sevens.

The 7 plagues, the 7 vials, and the 7 heads.

Also negative, but there's a different emphasis in this negativity.

Before chapter 14, it's bad news for God's people.

There's a lot of persecution taking place.

The negativity is against God's people before chapter 14.

So from 1 to 13, it's bad news for God's people.

There's the dragon, there's the beast, there's the false prophet, and they are persecuting God's people.

Why is John on the island of Patmos writing the book of Revelation?

It's all bad news for God's church before chapter 14.

But then after chapter 14, it's good news for God's people.

So from 15 to the rest, the rest of the book of Revelation, it's good news for God's people, and it's bad news for the beast, the false prophet, and the dragon.

It's good news for God's people after 14 and it's bad news for the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet.

Before 14, it's bad news for God's people.

After 14, it's good news for God's people and it's bad news for the devil, for the dragon, the beast and the false prophet.

So something happens in chapter 14 that makes all the difference in the great controversy between good and evil for the minds of men.

Chapter 14 is critical for us to understand because something happens in chapter 14 that changes the emphasis in the great controversy and in the judgment.

Judgment of everybody, good and evil, the bad and the good.

Something in chapter 14 is so special, so critical, it changes human, natural and supernatural history in the great controversy.

So there's something in 14 that we must understand and we must experience as Adventist youth.

This is a principle of Bible interpretation.

Look for themes that repeat themselves in the Bible.

And in chapter 1 to chapter 13 in the book of Revelation, there's a repetition, there's a theme, and it's persecution.

Tiago Cunha

The Day That Divides- Part 1

Okay, before we start, of course, I hope you are sitting comfortably, but I want you please to stand up with me.

Alright, in order for us to start with a word of prayer.

Dear Father in heaven, once again we thank you and we praise you for the blessed opportunity that we have of being in this place, Lord.

The best place in the world where you have called us to be at this time, in this moment, Lord, for us to become the men and the women that you have called us to be Lord.

So at this moment bless us with your Holy Spirit.

May the message, what we are going to learn, be really inside our hearts and minds Lord, in such a way that others will see that we have been learning from you Lord.

Please bless my lips in order for the words that will come out from me Lord will be the ones that you want to speak to your people in this moment Lord.

So once again thank you so much for everything that you have done and thank you for what you are about to do.

Now this topic, even if it wasn't chosen by me, I was invited actually to talk about this topic.

And it's a topic that I actually have in my heart in a very special way for several reasons.

I'll have an opportunity to share a little bit my background probably in the second hour.

But already for you to know that in this first hour, we are going to see exactly how the Sabbath is being attacked, OK, and what it represents for us, OK?

We're going to try to see the Sabbath as an identity mark in a different perspective of the 1 that probably we are used to see.

And then in the second part, we're going to see what I believe there are 4 major attacks that the Sabbath is suffering today in our days and we're going to see a little bit some arguments for us to know how to answer and how to explain the value of the Sabbath in those same perspectives.

Before I became an Adventist, I was visiting a lot of churches.

And I remember just before actually coming to the Adventist church, I was going a lot to this Pentecostal, really charismatic church.

And they knew that I was struggling with some issues in the Bible, specifically the 10 Commandments and guess what?

And so in that Sunday, they invited me especially to come and so on.

There were friends that were actually really telling me to come and so on.

And when I arrived there, actually I understood why, because the preacher had chosen as a topic, not Sabbath nor Friday, but Sunday.

And so for 1 hour, for 1 hour, this charismatic preacher, he was highlighting the value of Sunday in comparison with Sabbath.

Of course, it was a charismatic church, so you can imagine that from half of the sermon on, he started screaming, There was music, drums, and so on.

And what he actually was screaming was exactly this, the title of the sermon was, not on Friday, not on Saturday, but it was on Sunday when Jesus was risen.

And in the place where I was, I started praying really strongly.

And if you want me to go, Lord, You really have to show me that it is your will.

The problem is that I was studying the Bible.

You understand why that is a problem in this context.

I was studying the Bible and I said, Lord, you really have to give me a sign.

What really is it that you want me to do?

I saw people coming to the front and all that.

The preacher was still screaming, always the same thing.

It was not on Friday, it was not on Saturday, it was on Sunday that Jesus was risen.

You can imagine a little bit the picture.

And then he was touching them in the forehead, and people were falling apart.

And actually, I remember very well, very vividly, there was a lady around 70 years old.

She was jumping, but really jumping, really, really jumping just beside me.

And then she went also to the front and so on.

The interesting thing is that Pentecostals, most of them believe that the Holy Spirit is a force that actually can be passed out if you just touch the person.

So if they touch the person, the Holy Spirit will just connect to you.

And I remember that at that moment, because I was not going to the front.

There was a group of people, elders that came, surrounded me and so on and they started touching me and touching me and touching me stronger, you know, and they were asking me, can you feel it?

And I said, well, I can feel something, but I don't think it's the Holy Spirit, honestly.

So anyway, at that moment, I said, Lord, it's now or never.

I opened my Bible and it's amazing how the Lord actually works in specific ways the way we need the most.

And my Bible just opened by itself, you know.

And I started searching really for someone that was keeping the Sabbath accordingly to the Word of God.

I started this way for us to understand that the Sabbath can truly represent a struggle for a lot of people who cannot really understand the value of it.

And I believe that in a loving way, obviously, we have a lot to share about the single commandment that I believe is a powerful identifying mark of God's character.

Now, when we talk about the Sabbath, It's very difficult, I would say even more, it's impossible to separate it from the fact that God is a Creator.

And actually at that point I believe that's where we are going to find The greatest struggle.

Now God gave us some signs in His Word that show us clearly that He wants to know who we are.

And the Sabbath commandment clearly shows us, answers us, these same questions.

Please open your Bibles in Genesis chapter 1.

In our image, okay, after our likeness, and let him have dominion over the fish, and the sea, and over the fowl, and the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

Verse 27, and so God created man in his own image and in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.

Chad Kreuzer

Fadia Kreuzer

A Moment or A Millenium?

Alright, let's begin with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for this book that reveals to us life, eternal life.

It reveals to us the origin of the earth.

And Lord, we thank you that you have answers to the questions of the origins.

And not only that, that we can find answers to some of the objections that maybe the evolutionists would raise.

I pray that you would bless us now as we look into the subject of creation and evolution.

Now, 1 of the things, obviously, the generally accepted belief in regular secular society throughout Europe, North America, and really the world, is the theory of evolution.

And so some people may be thinking, can't we, you know you're in school and you have your biology course, and you're thinking, can't we somehow harmonize the teachings of evolution with our beliefs?

I mean, we look kind of strange believing that the earth is very young and not 4.6 billion years old.

Can't we harmonize evolution with the Bible?

The trouble is if we're going to really believe the scriptures, we can't harmonize the 2.

The reason is in the Bible in Romans chapter 5 and verse 12, the Bible says these words.

It says, wherefore, as by 1 man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so that death passed upon all men, for all have sinned." You say, Chad, what does that have to do with creation or evolution?

It says that by 1 man, sin came into the world.

And what came as a result of man coming into the world?

So Was there any death, according to the Bible, before sin?

Now, according to evolution, was there death before sin?

According to evolution, everything initially came from nothing, but once you had the earth, you had the amoeba, or the single-celled organism and that divided and it died and that divided and it died and then it slowly grew up into a sea creature and that died millions and millions of times and it slowly grew legs.

And it slowly grew out of the ocean and died and died and it grew and it changed over countless millennia and as a result we slowly come about with humanity today.

We had monkeys that slowly became extinct, and now humanity is here.

Now, according to that worldview, there was sin, not sin, there was death, and death actually was a part of the process that brought about man.

But according to the Bible, man's sin brought about the very first death.

So the point is we can't fit evolution and creation together.

If we're going to fit these 2 things together, we have to let go of some of the tenets of the Scripture.

We have to let go of some of the tenets of the scripture.

But we're going to see that there's no need to let go of the Bible.

Actually, we need to let go of our faith in evolution.

And we're going to discover that a belief in evolution is purely a faith-based practice, regardless of what the scientists would typically have us believe.

Some time ago, Time magazine had a cover, and the caption on the cover was these 3 words, Is God Dead?

The perspective is that we now live in a time where we no longer have a need to believe that there is this immortal God, this eternal God, and we have no reason to believe that he was the creator of all things because now we have an understanding that everything could have come about by random chance.

Bertrand Russell was a famous philosopher and mathematician.

He was a British philosopher and mathematician, and he was an astonished skeptic.

Now somebody once asked Bertrand Russell, they said, if you meet God after you die, now he didn't believe in God, but they said if you meet God after you die, what will you say to Him to justify your unbelief?

What will you say to Him to justify the fact that you didn't believe in Him?

And Bertrand Russell's answer was, I will tell Him that He did not give me enough what?

Bertrand Russell, this skeptic, said that God did not give him enough evidence to believe in the scriptures, or in his existence in general.

Not necessarily the scriptures, but just his existence.

Is there so much evidence to believe in evolution that we don't actually need to believe in God?

That evolution is a fact, you know, creation is just a cute story of history.

But before we actually look into evolution, we just want to ask a simple question, what is faith?

Now, let me ask you a question, is faith a Scientific or a religious word?

Is faith a scientific or a religious word?

Now, if it's a religious word, then we need to have a religious definition.

We need to get a religious definition since it is inherently a religious word.

The Bible actually gives a definition of faith in Hebrews 11, verse 1.

It says now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

We take this last part, and faith is believing you have evidence for something that you have never what?

So, If you believe in something that you have never ever seen before, according to the Bible, you have what?

So if you didn't see something, but you believe you have evidence for it, you are following that belief by, not by science, according to the definition of faith, you are following by faith.

This is a very interesting thought in the context of evolution.

Now there's a fallacy amongst evolutionists.

1 of the teachings of evolutionists many times is, or you'll meet, if you, have you ever talked with a skeptic?

And they say, you have faith, I live by science.

Have you ever heard someone say something like that?

They are living by science and we're living by faith.

I want to suggest to you that they're actually wrong.

That they have faith and we also have faith.

It's an issue of faith, not of actual hard scientific evidence.

So the question we're asking is, do scientists have faith?

Now remember, faith is believing in something that you have never what?

So if you believe you have evidence for something you've never seen that means you have faith right?

We're not trying to get I'm trying to make it as simple as possible.

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Distinct Advent Message- A1

Sanctuary, 1844 and Beyond- Part 1

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