ASI Southern Union 2013: For Such a Time...

ASI Southern Union 2013 Plenary Sessions

Frank Fournier

ASI Southern Union

Identity Crisis

I'd have you turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter 6.

I'd like to invite you to bow your heads with me and we're going to ask the Lord to give us a blessing this afternoon.

Heavenly Father, Lord, we're together, we're here, we've come to find inspiration in all that you have to say and all that you have to teach, we're asking you to come our way this afternoon.

Send your Holy Spirit, send your Holy Angels, communicate with our hearts.

This is our desire and we thank you for it in Jesus' name.

Young lady contacted me not so long ago and asked that I come here and share with you for 20 or 30 minutes asking that I bring a challenge to your hearts.

Well my challenge this afternoon of course is keeping you awake after lunch and if you'll live up to that challenge, then I hope that you'll hear the other challenge that I'm bringing to you.

I've got a question for you this morning.

And by the way, this evening rather, afternoon, whatever time it is, the title for this afternoon is Identity Crisis.

It's when you don't know who you are, and it's when you don't know what you're about or why you exist.

And obviously we're at ASI, and I'm here to bring that thought to our minds.

Could we answer that question if someone would ask us.

Do you know what the benefits are for belonging to ASI?

You know it would be interesting for me if I could spend a little time with you and to ask you that question personally because I would like to hear your response.

I believe with all my heart that ASI is an organization that God has produced, God has given to us, and for a very specific purpose.

But I have found in my travels that not everyone seemed to be able to answer these questions for themselves or for anyone else who would like to ask these questions.

And so if I may, and I'm not quite sure that I can, but this afternoon I really would like to clear that up.

You can pray with me that the Holy Spirit would inspire us this afternoon.

Do you think that Jesus had an identity crisis?

Do you think that Jesus knew why he existed?

Do you think that he knew why he came to this world and what exactly he wanted to do?

Now amazingly he came unto his own and his own were not quite sure they could identify with him because when he came unto his own they had formed some kind of expectations that he did not fulfill and it caused a little crisis both in the life of Jesus and in the life of these people that he came to save.

I have you turn to Deuteronomy chapter 6.

I understand that this is the Old Testament and this is a picture of God in the Old Testament.

Verse 4, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is 1 Lord.

Now there's a better translation of this.

Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is 1.

Now if you were to speak to a Jewish individual today, they would tell you there is 1 God based on this Bible verse.

If you were to speak to a Muslim today, they would say that there is 1 God and his name is Allah.

If you would speak to an anti-Trinitarian today, they would say that the word 1 here is singular and there's only 1 God, and then they go on to denigrate, I think, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, of course.

Now, it's interesting that when you move to the New Testament, you find Jesus in John chapter 10.

Now I'll have you turn to John chapter 10, even though I can recite 1 verse here, We're going to look at other verses.

In John chapter 10, Jesus says, I and my Father are 1.

Now if I add correctly, I think that's 2 people.

Now either Jesus doesn't know how to add or he is giving more, a deeper meaning to the word 1 here than we naturally will due to it.

Usually when we talk about oneness, we're usually talking about unity.

We're talking about having the same purposes and the same goals and the same vision.

But when Jesus said, I and my Father are 1, he wasn't talking about that specifically.

It includes that, but the people who he was talking to understood what he was saying.

They understood to the point that they were willing to stone him.

I had you turn there and I didn't turn there myself.

John chapter 10, we're looking at verse, beginning with verse 30.

The Jewish people who were listening to him knew exactly what he meant, and they picked up stones to stone him, verse 31.

Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.

Now why in the world would anyone want to stone anyone for saying, I and my father are united, I and my father are in agreement, we have the same purposes, we have the same goals, we are 1?

Well, that's no reason to stone anyone, but that's not what he was meaning.

And they understood what he was meaning, and it says so in verse 32, Jesus answering them and said, Many good works have I showed you from my Father, for which of those good works do you stone me?' And they answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, because thou, being a man, makest thyself what?

And I appreciate the preachers that went before me because at least 2 of them touched on this subject.

He knew it and the Jewish people that he was speaking to knew it and they didn't like him saying that because he wasn't meeting their expectations.

This is not the God they wanted but this is the Messiah that God sent.

Okay, and in a sense if you look at this situation here is a man, Jesus took on humanity by the way, a man shows up and he claims that he is God.

What would you do with a man who claimed that he was God today?

Well, you can understand that It's a wild claim in essence.

If I have you turn to John chapter 8, this is not far away.

Verse 53, the Jews are asking Jesus, are you greater than our father Abraham, which is dead?

And the prophets are dead, whom makest thou thyself to be?

And Jesus answered, if I honor myself my honor is nothing.

It is my father that honors me of whom ye say that he is your God.

Yet ye have not known him, but I know him.

And if I should say I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you.

And your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.

Then said the Jews to him, Thou art not yet 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham?

And Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I'm what?

And do you know that he's referring to Abraham?

Now I don't know how many thousand years before Abraham existed, before Jesus.

ASI Southern Union 2013 Seminars

Chester Clark

The Certainty of 1844

Adventism began as a movement that came from study of the scriptures.

And it became a movement of people known as people of the book.

And I think that we want to sort of recapture this morning a little bit of the certainty which the Millerites had and early Adventists had in their message.

Now, will it be a problem if I'm not standing behind the microphone?

Adventism is a Bible-based movement, a Bible-based message.

And, you know, as we think about especially 1844, and as we think about the message that is somewhat unique to Adventists, today we have questions that are raised.

And not only the message of the timing of 1844, but what happened in 1844 and why that's relevant today.

So in my 2 seminars today, we're going to be looking at the certainty of 1844.

First of all, just trying to capture in a brief period of time, as well as we can, trying to capture why the Millerites were so certain about their time in 1844 and what that certainty means for us today.

In the second seminar, we're going to be looking at how, what happened in 1844 and what is continuing to happen in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary is relevant to our daily lives today.

And so we're going to get started and just do a little bit of a review.

I know some of you, maybe all of you, are familiar with the basics of Bible prophecy, but sometimes we have to go back to the basics to really affirm the principles that give us the certainty when we get into some of the more involved portions.

I'd like to just start by pointing out the fact Millerites were careful Bible students.

The Millerites were ones who were individuals who very intently, very intensely studied the Bible.

And if you look at what they were, what the impact of their decisions would be, you can understand why they were so careful.

These were people who were making decisions that were very radical decisions.

By the time they expected Jesus to come in 1844, Many of them had sold their farms and were living with family or friends.

They had given all of their savings or retirement to the work of printing literature and spreading the message to the world.

So they had a vested interest in being careful Bible students.

This wasn't something that they could just flippantly engage in, because this was something that very clearly impacted their lives.

It's also interesting for us to note that not a single error in their calculations was discovered by their opponents.

Each time they revised their understandings of the prophecies or the scriptures, whether it was, you know, from the, between the spring of 1843 to the spring of 1844, they first thought that the Second Coming would happen to the fall of 1844 to further refining it to the 22nd of October 1844.

Each time they adjusted or changed their understandings, those adjustments or changes were not due to their critics pointing out the faults in their study, but actually themselves studying the matters more closely and coming to a closer understanding, a clearer understanding.

And so this is something that's very interesting as we look at their, at the history, as we look at their writings, we find that each time they introduced new ideas, it wasn't because they had been caught red-handed, you might say, with an error in their accounting.

Let's just go back, let's go back to the very beginning of Bible prophecy, end-time Bible prophecy, symbolic Bible prophecy, and that's Daniel 2.

And we're going to look at a number of things here, beginning with Daniel 2, And we're going to try to just go through an overview of Daniel chapter 2.

I know you're familiar with it, no doubt.

But I think it will help you as we look at some of the principles of biblical interpretation that the Millerites, William Miller and his followers were using.

We remember that Daniel 2 is the first, or Daniel, is the first book dedicated to end-time prophecy.

And I would suggest that it gives us a rubric or the principles of interpretation for understanding the rest.

You know, some people like to jump right into the book of Revelation.

And if you turn on your television today and scan some of the religious channels, you'll see that there are many different ideas about the Book of Revelation and some of those prophecies.

And the problem is that jumping right into the Book of Revelation, or even if we were to use this morning as an example, jumping right into Daniel 8 and 9, would sort of be like skipping your first few grades of elementary school math.

If you were to try to go right into algebra or right into calculus without having taken any of the prerequisite courses, How much sense do you think those algebraic problems or the calculus problems would make to you?

And so, Daniel 2 is, in a way, you could call it the ABCs of biblical interpretation.

It's like the first grade, and it tells us how we can understand prophecy.

And what you see is as we go through the book of Daniel, we're going to see that there's a progression in complexity in the prophecies.

There's also a progression in the amount of, or maybe I should say a regression in the amount of explanation given at times, until the point when you come to the book of Revelation, there's no more, no longer an interpretation given.

You just have the prophecies, and you're expected to learn the principles that were demonstrated in the book of Daniel in order to interpret it.

So here in the book of Daniel we are blessed with this 1 fact and that is that in each chapter the interpretive principles are right there with the prophecy so that we can, we don't have to do a lot of interpreting.

It's interpreted for us, but what we can do is we can learn the principles of interpretation by comparing the prophecy and the way the prophecy is given with the interpretation and the way the interpretation is given.

So we remember that this was a dream given to Nebuchadnezzar as well as to Daniel.

We can consider it the ABCs of interpretation.

And once again here we remember that Daniel is given the dream and the interpretation and given that to be able to explain it to Nebuchadnezzar and to be able to share with him the meaning of the dream.

In later prophecies it is assumed that we remember the principles and symbols taught.

And that's just the way Bible prophecy works.

Now I want to real briefly look at the 3 major schools of thought on prophetic interpretation, just so you have a little bit of a context of where we are coming from as Adventists and as Historicists.

As Adventists and as Historicists, we look at prophecy through the lens of what we call historicism.

These are the prophetic principles of interpretation which we use.

And I'm just going to highlight or contrast 2 or 3 of the qualities of these schools of thought and so you can see how they differ, especially as it relates to the way we interpret the book of Daniel.

So in historicism, the understanding of prophecy, the lens through which we look at prophecy, is that prophecy covers the entire period, approximately from the time of the prophet down to the time of the end.

And what this means is the prophet is writing, and instead of God simply giving him a vision or her a vision that begins at some unspecified date in the future, the vision of the prophet gets or receives or sees, the vision begins with approximately their time period.

A time that they can easily sort of relate with and begin to describe.

And so when we look at Daniel chapter 2, for example, what do we have?

We have the head of gold representing who?

He's speaking first person present tense to, I'm sorry, second person present tense to the king of Babylon who was living and contemporaneously alive with Daniel.

The vision or the dream in this case was beginning with the present time.

That means that no matter when we are living, obviously after the time of Daniel and before the Second Coming, no matter when we are living, we can find ourselves in that stream of time.

How do we find ourselves in that prophecy?

We simply look through the interpretations and we begin to figure out what's already been fulfilled.

And this is why, maybe 1 reason why it's called historicism is because it requires the study of history in order to understand where we are in the prophecy today.

It does not mean, historicism does not mean that all prophecy has already been fulfilled in the past.

That is a misunderstanding even among Adventists that I sometimes hear today.

And they say, well, you know, we believe there's still important prophecies for the future.

Historicism simply means that we have to study history to find where we are in this continuum of time that will extend all the way down to the Second Coming.

Another principle of historicism is the day-year principle, or I think that as our pioneers usually called it the year-day principle.

This is a principle that simply says that in symbolic Bible prophecies, a day is equal to a literal year.

This is a principle, we'll talk more about this in a little while.

It's a principle that is very important for our understanding and we could spend a whole hour simply looking at the evidence from scripture for the year day principle.

Now many of us today simply know 1 or 2 verses, but there's actually several in-depth studies that have been done by Avnist scholars that would show from dozens of different instances the day-year principle.

And it's a very important principle in the study of prophecy from historicism's perspective.

Another principle of historicism, another major tenet of historicism, is the Antichrist had its beginnings in Paul's day, we read in 2 Thessalonians, the man of sin is, or the spirit of iniquity is already at work, right?

And it's going to be destroyed the second coming, we read in 2 Thessalonians 2, 7, and 8.

And this is something that the early historicists, well, I guess the earliest historicists would be the early Christians or anyone who read the book of Daniel.

But in modern times, it's really the reformers who began to interpret Bible prophecy with the concept through the lens of historicism.

And this was obviously 1 of the clear conclusions they came to.

From their understanding of historicist prophecy, they concluded that the Antichrist was present in their day, and it was identifiable in their day.

And if it was, then they ought to find out what it was, and of course you know they concluded what they believed it was.

So if we were to graphically illustrate historicism, it would be something like this.

The prophecy is given as a unbroken timeline from approximately the time of the prophet down until the time of the end, Second Coming, or even after the Second Coming when we talk about the Book of Revelation.

And the day in which we're living is sometime in that stream of time.

We can find ourselves there by simply comparing history with the prophecy and deciding where in that stream of time we are.

Norman McNulty

Releasing the Four Winds and the Sealing of the 144,000

The first presentation is entitled The Holding of the 4 Winds and the sealing of the 144, 000.

And I'm going to start with a familiar passage, probably a couple of familiar passages from the pen of Ellen White.

The first 1 is from Testimonies, Volume 9, page 11.

The fast-fulfilling signs of the times declare that the coming of Christ is near at hand.

The days in which we live are solemn and important.

The Spirit of God is gradually but surely being withdrawn from the earth.

Plagues and judgments are already falling upon the despisers of the grace of God.

The calamities by land and sea, the unsettled state of society, the alarms of war are portentous.

They forecast approaching events of the greatest magnitude.

Continuing, the agencies of evil are combining their forces and consolidating.

They are strengthening for the last great crisis.

Great changes are soon to take place in our world and the final movements will be rapid ones.

You know, sometimes we have this mentality that, oh, you know, I've heard my whole life that Jesus is coming and let's have a theme about for such a time as this and we say it with our lips that we believe that Jesus is coming soon.

But if you're honest with yourself in your heart, do you really think that the final movements which will be rapid are just around the corner.

And the reason I ask you that question is because sometimes you can tell if you're living your life that way or if you're thinking that way in your mind based on how you live your life, based on the choices that you're making, where do you invest your resources, where do you invest your time, what is the most important thing for you in your life, are you living your life with the thought in mind that great changes are soon to take place in our world and the final movements will be rapid ones.

Another familiar statement from Testimonies, Volume 8, page 28.

Transgression has almost reached its limit.

Confusion fills the world and a great terror is soon to come upon human beings.

We who know the truth should be preparing for what is soon to break upon the world as an overwhelming surprise.

Who should be preparing for what is to break upon the world?

Now, I dare say that if the final movements were to kick in sometime soon, it might just come as an overwhelming surprise for many Seventh-day Adventists.

And you know, that should not be the case.

But here's the thing, if we as Seventh-day Adventists are not preparing, if we're not studying, if we don't understand what the end time roadmap looks like, we're going to be shocked out of our minds when that time comes.

Oh, I heard it in Bible class when I was growing up, but I never really thought it would happen in my lifetime.

Listen, we who know the truth should be preparing for what is soon to break upon the world as an overwhelming surprise.

And Ellen White says basically the same thing in Prophets and Kings, page 626.

Christians should be preparing for what is soon to break upon the world as an overwhelming surprise, and this preparation they should make by diligently studying the Word of God and striving to conform their lives to its precepts.

So how do we prepare for this overwhelming surprise?

Listen, it's too late in earth's history to be wasting our time worrying about what Hollywood is doing or what's happening in the entertainment world or anything else.

We should know what the Word of God says for this time.

Now, with those introductory comments from Ellen and I, I want to point out what the Bible says about the time that we are living in.

And as I said, what we are going to do in this first presentation is we are going to look at where we are in Earth's history based on what the seals say in Revelation chapter 6 and a little bit of chapter 7.

Now I'm assuming that those of you who are sitting here in the audience today are seasoned students of prophecy as long time Seventh-day Adventists, so I'm not going to take a significant amount of time to go through each of the seals.

I'm assuming that you already know this, so I'm just going to give you a brief rundown.

Now, I will say this, if you've never studied the seals and if you don't know what they're talking about, it's time to get into the Word of God and study that, amen?

Alright, now look, when you come to the seals, you start off with 4 horses, you have the white horse, the red horse, the black horse, and the pale horse.

Those are synonymous with the first 4 seals.

And we understand that historically the white horse represents the pure church, the apostolic church, which was from the time of the ascension of Christ from 31 AD to 100 AD.

Then we shift to the red horse by verse 4 of chapter 6, And this red horse describes the persecuted Christian church from about the time period of 100 AD to 313 AD and that culminated with a final 10 years of persecution under the Roman Emperor Diocletian.

After the red horse you have the black horse.

This is when corruption enters into the church and historically we place that between 313 to 538 AD.

This correlates with the third church in Revelation where you see the doctrine of Balaam entering into the church, you see the doctrine of the Nicolaitans coming into the church, you see that Satan's seat dwells there.

And then finally the fourth horse or the pale horse, sickly or blighted in color is what pale means, is the apostate Christian church from 538 to about 1374.

And the reason why I place it till about 1374 is that around 1374, That is when John Wycliffe, the great reformer, the morning star of the Reformation, comes along and brings light to a darkened world.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Identity Crisis

37m

The Certainty of 1844

1h 10m

Releasing the Four Winds and the Sealing of the 144,000

1h

When Men Have Labor Pains

44m

The Blessing of Uncertainty

51m

The Hebrew Mind

49m

Living Free: Freedom from Stress

55m

The Crisis

55m

Revelation’s End-Time Beatitudes

52m

How Can God Know? Always Ready for the End

1h 15m

Food for Thought

46m

Prepared to Heal

1h

Sound Doctrine