East Coast Korean Camp Meeting

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Andrews Korean Church

Plenary

Chester Clark

The Need to Know

For me, I need to be reminded on a very regular basis of what Christ has done for me and how I can live for Him.

And, you know, we look back on times in our lives when we've had a conversion, maybe a reconversion experience, And we praise God for those experiences, but they really are daily experiences that we need to have, right?

And so for me, it's just a constant need to be reminded of what God has done.

So we're gonna start tonight with some pretty basic things.

But we're going to start and just see where this week takes us, I guess.

We're going to see some of the questions that come in.

We're going to spend some time tomorrow morning.

We're going to be looking at where we are in the stream of time right now, just in a very simple, practical way.

We're not going to be going deep into Bible prophecy, but just sort of, I think most of us have some idea of prophecy and end-time events, and just sort of take a look at where we're at, and if it's reasonable to conclude that we are living near the end of time, and if it is in fact reasonable to conclude that we are living near the end of time.

And if it is in fact reasonable to conclude that we are living near the end of time, then it's reasonable for us to be living in such a way that we're ready for Jesus to come.

And the Lord has given us a special message as a people intended to prepare a people to be ready for Jesus' coming.

And, you know, there are many Gospels out there, there's a lot of good news out there, and there's the basic elements of the cross and Christ that saves us, but Adventism is brought upon the scene of action at this time for the specific purpose of sharing an end-time message that will prepare people for Jesus' second coming.

And so we're going to be spending some time looking at that.

After tomorrow morning, I want to spend our mornings looking at the life of Abraham.

I've always been inspired when I study the lives of Bible characters and I see how they lived.

And I believe that, just to give you a little bit of a preview without going too far into the rest of the week tonight.

I believe that Abraham lived a life that was very unique.

He was called by God to live a life that nobody else could understand.

A singular experience on planet Earth is what Abraham had.

He had an amazing relationship, personal relationship with God.

And his life of faith was so impressive that Paul argues that he became not just the father of the Jewish nation and the father of many nations, but he came the father of all who would believe and the faithful of all ages.

And if it's true, if it's true, then it ought to teach us something about how we live in these last days.

So that's sort of what our plan is for the morning meetings.

Tonight we're going to be looking particularly at the topic of the need to know, just basic spirituality we're going to be covering tonight.

And I think that as we begin this, I'd just like to ask you to bow your heads with me for an additional word of prayer.

Father in heaven, I thank you that we have this time to gather together.

Lord, I know much prayer, much effort has gone into making this camp meeting a reality.

It's not just by chance that we're here tonight.

Your Holy Spirit has moved upon hearts, has spoken to us, has brought us here.

Your angels have guided and protected us as we've made our way here.

And Father, it's because you have a special plan for each 1 of us during these days together.

Tonight, we want to experience part of that plan.

We just want to ask that your Holy Spirit would not just fill this place, but it would be given room to fill each of our hearts, that we might be able to hear your voice speaking to us tonight.

As we open your word, still the voices, the busyness of our hearts, and may your voice be heard, we ask in Jesus' name.

Just to illustrate what we're going to be talking about tonight, I want to share with you a story.

Some of you may know about international reply coupons.

International reply coupons are, It's sort of like a form of currency in that it's designed to allow postage to be purchased in other countries for return mailing.

So let's say that I am going to mail you a letter in Italy, for example, and I don't have any way of sending a self-addressed stamp envelope for you to send it back because I can't buy Italian postage at the post office here.

So I will instead, if Italy's a participating country, I'll instead buy an international reply coupon that will allow you to go to the Italian post office and purchase the amount of postage required to send a letter back to the United States.

There's a fellow by the name of Carlo Pietro Giovanni, who began to realize that there was sometimes an exchange rate difference in this international postage, or the international reply coupons.

In other words, he might be able to buy these coupons in 1 country for less than the postage in the other country would cost.

So he could exchange the postage now for cash and earn an increase on his money.

And so this postage system was proposed as a way of investment.

Now this got people excited because you can only imagine If people were promised a 50% return rate, there's Carlo Pietro Giovanni there, they would see there was nothing, they would stop at nothing to be able to invest as much money as possible.

They began mortgaging their homes, investing their life savings.

A Boston financial writer wrote that this could not be accomplished legally, a 50% return on investment.

Carlos sued for libel and won $500, 000 in damages.

The Boston Post ran a favorable article about Carlo's company and the 50% return.

Below the article which the Boston Post ran was an advertisement for a savings account at a local bank which offered a 5% return on investment.

The next morning at Carlo's investment office and thousands of Bostonians waited in line to give him their money.

He collected $3 million just in that day.

That would be $34 million today he collected in cash on that 1 day.

The story spread like wildfire and people could not get their money to Carlo fast enough.

The problem was that Carlo wasn't buying international reply coupons at all.

For the amount of money invested, there would have had to have been some 160 million IRCs in circulation, but only 27, 000 existed.

Carlos was simply using the money of new investors to pay the exorbitant returns on the older ones.

And when the fraud was exposed and the company collapsed, investors lost $20 million.

And Carlos' name became synonymous with financial schemes that robbed Peter to pay Paul.

In fact, his full name was actually Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tobaldo Ponzi.

And today we know it simply as a Ponzi scheme.

Now what would have prevented these people from losing everything?

When I think of that, it's a tragic story.

People losing their homes, losing their investments, losing their retirement, their savings.

But there's nothing more sad than making poor investments spiritually, maybe even thinking that we're going to get a good return.

There are 2 things I think that people could have known to be able to keep them from the disappointment they experienced.

It was enriching Ponzi and paying off the new investors.

The second thing they needed to know was the character of the man that they trusted.

If they had known 1 or both of these things, they would have been spared the loss and spared the disappointment.

So tonight we're going to be talking about the need to know, because I think we need to know.

I think this is something that we can't just be haphazard about or half-hearted about.

I think we need to know a couple of things.

And I like to make, or to understand and to share the message in as simple a form as possible.

I remember as a kid and thinking about, you know, I grew up in an Adventist home and hearing about the last days and sometimes even being afraid of the last days.

I'm no longer afraid of the last days, but sometimes when I was a kid I had fear in my heart, and it wasn't just because there was gonna be persecution and I may be tortured or martyred or something like that.

I was afraid that the last days would come and I wouldn't know what I needed to know.

I mean of all the things there is to learn there's so much to learn in the Bible and how do you know what you don't know and what you need to know and if we're gonna be called before courts or called before rulers or judges or whatever and called to answer for our faith, how can we be prepared for that type of a thing?

And I've come to realize that there's only really a couple of things we need to know.

Now I'm not saying that we don't need to study our Bibles.

We'll get more into that as we go along this week.

But I'm convinced that God is going to prepare us for the things we need to know in our Bibles and the answers that we need to give are going to be given to us.

But there's a couple of things that we need to know.

Tonight we're going to be looking at 2 things.

Only 2 things that we need to know as we look at them tonight at least, 2 things that we need to know to be saved.

Who we really are is the first 1 and who our Savior really is, is the second 1.

And I am convinced that we can make it simple.

Giving Up All

Father in heaven, I thank you that you've given to us the opportunity to once again gather together to consider your Word.

Lord, as we have heard so much today, so much practical testimony of your power, of how we can live lives united with You, abiding in You.

I just pray that even tonight that Your Spirit would still speak to our hearts, that You would just give us clear minds and that you would show us something that would be useful and help us in our heavenward journey.

I kept thinking about this topic and there was part of me that said, you know, So much of this has already been talked about, you know, just sort of along the way when we talk about surrender and what that means through the personal testimonies that have been shared, we've already heard about it.

But you know, in some ways I think I have to allow the Holy Spirit to do its work and when the Holy Spirit has shared similar burdens with me and others I think I need to go ahead and follow that vein.

So I'm going to be talking tonight on what I call giving up and giving all.

We're going to make this shorter because we have a question and answer period to follow.

So I'm going to try to be as succinct as possible.

But it really, I like simplifying the Christian life.

I think sometimes, you know, as a kid I thought there's just so much for me to know and it was overwhelming at times.

And I find other people have a similar sensation of just, where do I start?

And So I just like to make it as simple as possible.

Last night we talked about 2 things we need to know in order to be saved, knowing yourself and knowing Jesus.

And I really do believe it's that simple.

Now I think that there's a lot along the way that He's going to teach us, but those are the 2 things that He needs to teach us so that we can make a good decision.

And when we know ourselves and when we know Jesus, there's a decision we have to make.

And if I could boil down our part of the Christian life to 1 word, and please don't, I'm not trying to oversimplify, I'm not trying to overgeneralize, but if I had to just say 1 word of what my part in the Christian walk is, I would use the word surrender.

So we're going to look at surrender from 2 perspectives tonight, giving up and giving all.

You know, the story is told of Lord Nelson, the famous British admiral.

And Lord Nelson had just won a splendid victory at sea, and the French admiral who he had overpowered was surrendering.

They were walking together to meet each other on the deck of the ship, and the admiral was, the French admiral was dressed in all of his regalia, and he approaches Nelson to surrender.

Now you understand those dress uniforms and how they are with the, well, they actually have a weapon too, don't they?

And as this French admiral approached Lord Nelson, his sword was swinging by his side and the admiral put out his hand to shake the hand of the British commander.

Lord Nelson stepped back and he said, your sword first, please.

You see, there are times when I think that we would like to be able to surrender on our own terms.

We want our own way, you know, we want the peace that forgiveness can bring, we want the relationship with God, but we really want it on our own terms.

We might even want it with as little humbling of ourselves as possible.

And just like the leper Naaman, who suggested he had alternate means to cure leprosy.

There were better rivers in Damascus, right?

And he didn't want to humble himself to the 1 way that God had provided for him to be cleansed.

We too have that same resistance to submitting to God's way of healing our leprosy, of cleansing our sin problems.

So there's some who believe that they can come to Jesus on their own terms.

They want a customized personal definition of surrender that allows them to retain that which they want and give up what they don't want.

And the French admiral had to realize he lost and he was not going to be trusted to shake Nelson's hand without first giving up his weapon, completely helpless, and given into the superior's hand.

So some people might say, just let me be religious.

I'll do this and so, but not such and such.

And I believe that surrender is a very, very important thing for us to understand.

And to be saved, I don't believe that we have to be intellectual or theological.

We only need to experience what is always within the reach of every single 1 of us.

And that's to surrender our lives to Jesus Christ.

There are a number of reasons why I think that this is confusing.

We'll look at, or at least we have a hard time doing it, We'll look at a number of those here in the few minutes we have together.

But Jeremiah chapter 29, 13 has come to take on new meaning to me as I have studied it.

I used to think that Jesus was playing some sort of celestial hide and seek.

That in order to find salvation, in order to find Jesus, we would have to look really, really hard.

It says, "...and you will seek me and find me when you do what?

So this is this game of hide and seek that God was playing with us.

We've got to look really, really hard to find Him.

But as I studied the Bible more and as I studied what God's plan is for me more, I see how Jesus says, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all unto me.

As I see that God is working in our lives before we even realize He's working there.

Even when we don't want Him to be working there, He's working in our lives.

As I understand that God who delivered up His own Son for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?

As I realize what God's investment is in this salvation process, it doesn't make sense to me that He's gonna make it hard for us, that He's gonna make it difficult for us to find it, you know?

That He's gonna be like, well, you know, find me if you can, I'm gonna be hiding out here somewhere.

This searching for me with all of your heart and then it dawned on me.

I hope I'm not twisting the scripture here, but this is how I've come to understand this passage.

The only way we find Him is when we're willing to surrender all of our heart.

That's the all of our heart that is going to bring about guaranteed a promise here.

You'll seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart.

In other words, I'm willing to put everything on the altar.

I'm willing to surrender everything to Jesus Christ.

All that is needed is an unreserved surrender.

Now My heart has been as thrilled as I've listened to what has been shared today about prayer and the study of God's Word.

I've been personally convicted I need to spend more intentional time in prayer and in praise and in study.

And I've been blessed by this time together.

I've also learned that if I'm not careful, I could start thinking that it's what I do that is going to give me a relationship with God.

If I'm not careful, I might start to look at it almost like a sacrament.

And That's going to give me a relationship with God.

And I've even caught myself, I've even caught myself, maybe you understand what I'm talking about.

Sometimes I just need to read the book of Romans and the book Steps to Christ all over again and remind myself because we naturally tend to try to earn our salvation.

And I catch myself doing something like this.

I've said something, I've disappointed, I've hurt, I've whatever.

I know that I've not been abiding in Christ.

I've caught myself subconsciously thinking, well, you know, tomorrow I'm going to have better devotions.

Tomorrow I'll start over and I'll make it right.

And my friends, I just want to say something that the Lord has taught me.

I believe tomorrow I need to do that, but I don't need to wait until tomorrow to be right with Jesus.

I don't need to wait until I have longer devotions or better prayer time to be right with Jesus.

Right now, I go to Him just as I am and I surrender my life and my sin and my heart again to Him.

You know we really don't have tomorrow promised to us, do we?

Today when we hear His voice speaking to us we should respond.

And so surrender has taken on a moment by moment, day by day importance for me in my walk with my Lord.

Where Are We

Today I thought as we start talking about living in the last days, I want to just spend some time talking about where are we.

And this isn't so much of a sermon as it is more of a discussion, so feel free to interject or ask questions.

But we're going to be looking at some concepts from prophecy and from the spirit of prophecy to help us to sort of just know where we're at in the stream of time.

Because I really think there's some foundational concepts that we want to be clear on or agreed upon as we talk about getting ready for Jesus coming, being ready for Jesus coming.

As Jane can undoubtedly attest, 1 of my major hobbies is really aviation.

For many years, even though I wasn't flying, I had a...

Some thought was a little bit of a weird habit of, I read every crash report of every plane crash and every accident.

And I remember I was sitting on a flight 1 time with, I was sitting next to the cargo manager for the Dallas Fort Worth Airport.

And we were talking about some recent plane crash.

And after I talked about it for a while, he said, you need to get a hobby.

But as a pilot, there's a couple of embarrassing things you can do.

1 is to land without putting your landing gear down.

That's 1 of the more embarrassing things.

Another is probably more serious, and that's running out of gas.

They say that's 1 thing that insurance companies never forgive.

Once you've done that, it's pretty bad news for you insurance-wise.

But getting lost ranks up pretty high there.

Last January, this is something that happens on a periodic basis, last January there was a Southwest Airlines flight 4103 that was headed to Branson, Missouri.

They were in contact with the controllers at the Branson Airport, which is a good sized airport with a control tower, over 7, 000 foot runway.

And the audio recordings released, They demonstrate there was some confusion going on.

The pilot said, I assume I'm not at your airport.

The controller said, 4103, have you landed?

And after a pause, the pilot returned, yeah.

And the controllers then started talking among themselves, called the center and said, did you watch 4103 land?

And the other controller said, you're kidding, right?

And the reality was that this Southwest Airlines flight had landed, you can see maybe on this section a little bit.

Series

Plenary

Where Are We

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Future of Adventism: Will Our Biblical Foundation Give Way to Culture?

3. The Future of Adventist Lifestyle

1h 20m

Every Wind of Doctrine

Every Wind of Doctrine - Part 5: From Questions on Doctrine to Desmond Ford

59m

ASI 2012 Seminar: Spiritual Growth

A Deeper Experience

1h 13m

Experiencing the Revival

1h 16m

ASI 2013 Seminar: Prophecy

“We the People” and Christ’s Counter-Revolution

1h 32m

Truth Triumphant

33m

Revival Now!

8. Choose Emptiness to Be Filled

49m

ASI 2012 Seminar: It's Time

Stand Firm

1h 22m

Experiencing Righteousness Through Faith in Christ

3. How the First Angel’s Message Prepares for the Second Advent

54m

The Oil Crisis

1h 28m

The Seventh Trumpet Is Sounding

43m

The Exodus & God Almighty

The Plagues in Egypt

47m

Sound Doctrine