WYC 2010:  In His Image

Soul Thirst:  Going Deeper with God

Nicole Parker

GYC West

Sword or Sawdust

I am Nicole Parker and if you were here for the last seminar you saw the handsomest man in the world, my husband, Alan.

I am very blessed to be married to him and we're having fun racing back and forth here.

I told everybody, you never know which 1 of us you're going to see when you get there, but the 2 are 1, so it doesn't matter.

All right, let's start with a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we come into your presence now, asking that you will bring your word alive for us.

Lord, I am just a faulty human, but I know that you can bring a message, even through me, to every person here, and I pray that you will do that.

Help each 1 of us to come away blessed and able to see how your word can do so much more in our lives.

You know for me my journey with the Bible has been a complicated 1.

I grew up in an Adventist home, and we had worships every day and all of that sort of thing.

So I had a fairly solid foundation in biblical knowledge.

I can't remember when I learned the Bible stories, you know, David and Goliath and all those kinds of things.

And the Bible stories were interesting enough to me when I was little.

We used to listen to your story, our versions of everything, and hear all of the battles, the armies clashing, and all those great things.

But then when I got older and less in touch with God also, the Bible became just more and more boring.

And I would always be asking my mom, can we go rent a movie?

And she's like, well, you know, you could go and read, you know, we have all those beautiful red books, we have a Bible, you know.

I was like, Mom, you know, the Bible was boring to me.

I knew all those stories and just sitting down and reading it was like eating sawdust.

That's why I called it sword or sawdust because that's how I felt about reading the Bible.

I could do it and I was supposed to do it and when I listened to a sermon every now and then there would be something that was kind of like, wow, you know, that was kind of neat.

But to read the Bible myself personally just sounded like a really, really boring thing to do, especially because there were so many exciting novels to read and things like that, that that was what I really enjoyed.

And When I was 16, I went to Ouachita Hills Academy and I started studying the Bible there.

For a couple of years before that, I was at a school, a Christian school that made us have devotional time every morning.

We would sit for 10 minutes and read our Bibles or something.

So I think I highlighted Psalms and Proverbs or something like that.

And I started saying, well, you know, the Bible is kind of neat.

But the Bible was not really anything important to me.

It was boring still and hard to understand.

I knew there was some kind of something that happened in 1844 and it seemed like there was something that happened in 1888 and you know but the study in the Bible did not do anything for me.

Then when I gave my life to Christ somebody introduced me to this beautiful big thick book called Strong's Exhaustive Concordance.

How many of you have ever used 1 of those?

I'd find a verse and think, I wonder what that means.

And I'd look it up in that ponderous Greek volume and find out, wow, look at that, or the Hebrew word.

And I started getting things out of the Bible that I hadn't before.

Around that time, I decided I was going to spend an hour of devotional time every day with God.

And I felt terribly guilty if I didn't get my whole 60 minutes in.

As I started studying the Bible like that and studying the spirit of prophecy, it became more interesting.

I started getting into it a little bit more.

I started seeing, wow, you know, the Bible does have some neat stuff in it.

Started going to prophecy seminars and things like that and learning things from the Bible and seeing cool things in Bible stories that I'd always heard, but I never thought about, you know, what was it really like for Daniel to have been out in the desert all this time, so hungry, so thirsty, so miserable, and then he gets there and there's all this tremendous smelling food, you know, right out in front of him.

You know, starting to really think about the Bible stories.

That was interesting, it was refreshing, and the Bible became more interesting to me.

But then I kind of hit a phase for a while where I'd read the Bible a lot and I knew what it said.

All my Daniel section in the Bible was all marked up with all the little notes and I knew all these things about prophecy.

And I read the Bible regularly, but I can't say that it was really exciting to me.

I kind of hit this lull in my devotional time for a couple of years there, where I just didn't really get a whole lot out of the Bible.

Every now and then, I'd read a good book that mentioned something in the Bible, and it would bring out things.

But actually studying the Bible for myself didn't do a lot for me.

I would read through the book of Luke or read a couple of chapters a day or things like that.

Then, as I started studying the Bible more in a new way, the Bible started really coming alive to me.

And that's what I wanna share with you today about how devotional Bible study really changes our lives.

The first thing you've got to know about reading the Bible is it's not a novel.

I know that seems so basic, so duh, but for me growing up addicted to novels, I really had a hard time getting into the Bible.

You know, when you're reading a novel, even just most stories that you read nowadays, true stories, it tells you what the hero or the heroine looks like, and you know, the color of their eyes and how they are.

And there are all these intricate relationships that you're reading about.

The Bible, on the other hand, was written to cover thousands of years of history in a very brief space.

And just getting the essentials down, You don't know what anybody looks like in the stories in the Bible unless it's important to the story itself.

We know Rebecca was beautiful, we know that Bathsheba was beautiful, we know Queen Esther was beautiful.

We don't know what Ruth actually looked like.

Because it's not important to the story, right?

The things that are happening in the story are about character, about revealing God, and if that's not important, the details are left out.

It's hard for us in our current culture to really get into things like that.

But the Bible doesn't get into those things and if you're reading the Bible the same way you try to read a novel, which is what I used to do, you'll find the Bible dead boring.

It's condensing down all this history of things that happened over a huge period of time.

And remember, these people didn't have typewriters.

General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 59th Session

Yes, Creation!

Jacques Doukhan

General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Creation, the Heart of SDA Theology

Well, it will be a challenge to take you at the end of the day.

At the same time, it's a good time for me, because I have until tomorrow morning to have my presentation.

So we are supposed to be in the heart of Seventh-day Adventist theology, creation.

And you may question that title and that topic.

And perhaps I would like to start with a challenge.

Try to find in anything which constitutes your identity as a Seventh-day Adventist person which has nothing to do with creation.

I believe that everything which makes our identity Seventh-day Adventist people is essentially related to creation, is indebted to creation and this is what I would like to show to you this is the goal of my of my presentation this evening.

And then I will do it through a play playing on the name which makes our identity, and that is Seventh-day Adventist theology, Seventh-day Adventist, and I'm going to take those 2 ingredients of what makes our identity Seventh-day and Adventist and try to show to you that in both of these 2 ingredients, we have a direct, essential, important connection with creation.

Of course, yes, there is a reference to creation.

I mean the seventh day, not of course any other day.

Seventh day happens to be saying yes to this creation, this world, this time, this flesh, this matter.

And by doing that, we are by the way, Seventh-day Adventist people and Seventh-day Adventist movement, putting us outside of the traditional Christianity which had the tendency to despise the world, despise creation, saying that creation is bad, it's evil.

The contemptus mundi, which characterized Christianity throughout the centuries, saying that we need then to deliver us from this creation, which is bad, evil, flesh, the body, the matter.

And therefore, this is 1 of the reasons, for instance, that why the Sunday has been taken, because the Sunday is supposed to celebrate the deliverance from this matter, the deliverance from this body while the Saturday, the Sabbath is supposed to say yes to creation.

So in that sense we are really different than traditional Christianity and in a way coming closer to the history of Jewish people.

So that would be the first reason, the first point, showing the importance of the 7 day, of the yes to the value of this creation, to this world, to this life, to this matter, to this place, to this time.

And this, of course, this affirmation, this yes to creation, has affected anything which constitutes our field.

It affects, of course, first of all, our lifestyle.

We affirm creation the way we live, the way we eat, the way we drink.

And so we are a firm creation when we are talking about health.

Health is not just for us a way of becoming better and enjoying life, which is of course an element of answer but health is also religious duty.

It's like a commandment, it's a part of our religion to be healthy and the reason for that is because first of all it reminds the ideal of the creation story in Genesis 1 where we were all healthy, the shade, the death has not touched us yet and also because it affirms the value of life over death.

And also another part of our lifestyle, the choice of vegetarianism, for instance, where death is not, there is no death implied.

Not only it reminds the ideal of creation in Genesis 1 when there was no death and everyone was eating without killing, it reminds this Genesis 1, but also because not eating the dead flesh affirms the value of life over death, it affirms the sacredness of life.

By the way, there is also a connection with creation on another level, on a perhaps lower level, there is another connection with creation between the choice of clean meat and unclean meat.

Muscala, has written a whole dissertation about it, I recommend it for your reading, where he shows clearly that there is a connection between creation and the choice of this particular clean meat.

Also, of course, the fact that we don't eat, we are not supposed to eat blood because there is life in blood, because we affirm the sacredness of life.

So our lifestyle, the way we eat, we drink, also is a part of affirmation of creation.

Nature of man, our anthropology is an affirmation of this creation, of this body, because our body is also spiritual.

We don't have the spiritual separated from the body.

So this is why we affirm this creation, we affirm this flesh, because this flesh is all what we have.

It has something spiritual in it and when there is no more flesh you know what's happening we'll talk about that later.

So in the Bible there is nothing up when you study the Bible about this there is nothing about afterlife because after life it is after life There is no more life.

So just take other other element the tithe which we think it's just you know some people may think it's kind of a remnant from the Levitical thinking.

The tithe is also an affirmation of creation because it tells us that we take the possession, the wealth, the material, the matter seriously.

It's not something which is outside our religion.

We don't have that kind of spiritual idea so our material possessions here on earth is a part of our religion and when we give our tithe it's a way of expressing our faith in the God of creation who created in 10 words just play with that And then we have of course our ethics, the importance of the commandments to guide us in this life, the importance of laws of righteousness in every turn of life, from eating, drinking, sexual life, social life, Our rituals, the baptism, the Lord's Supper is also affirmation of creation.

The baptism reminds creation, the water, the word, the spirit.

It reminds the remembering, it reminds of course the miracle of creation.

And the Lord's Supper is also an affirmation of creation.

When we eat and we drink, we are saying something about the value of this body, the value of the matter, the value of food and drink.

And we also affirm God in flesh, the God who came down and was a part of this world.

It's also an affirmation of this creation and saying that God is with us, that he is Emmanuel.

Our relation with the world is also an affirmation of creation.

Our human concern, our humanitarian concern when we are promoting Adra, when we are promoting Dorcas is an affirmation of creation, is a way of saying that we are responsible for this world.

We are responsible for this creation which has been given to us and the same we are the same affirmation we are making when we are promoting religious liberty and we are trying to connect with the authorities when we are trying to connect also with the political life we are saying yes to this creation we are saying yes to this world, we are connected to the world we are not separated from the world our concern about ecology, about the environment is also, should be also an affirmation of creation.

We are responsible for this creation because this creation is a gift of God and we value this creation.

We don't belong to those who say contemptus mundi.

We're saying yes, God, you are our creator and we enjoy and we receive this creation.

Our worship is also an affirmation of creation because why are we worshiping?

Creation is related to worshiping and this is why we should worship with everything which is given to us by God from the mind to the body to our emotions.

So we have a number of points which are expressing our identity which are related to the seventh day a seventh day which is an affirmation of this creation of this world which is ours.

Now we have another aspect of our identity which is Adventist which is taking us on the other side, which is actually affirming something completely different.

Here we focus on the second coming of Christ, not on the first coming of Christ.

Here we focus on eschatology, on the future, on our hope.

Our vision of our heavenly apocalyptic kingdom is also indebted to creation.

We believe in resurrection, we believe in this miracle of God who is turning in dust, nothing into a human being who we are.

This implies our faith in creation, but this is in the future.

The belief also of new heavens and new earth, which is registered in Isaiah 65 in Revelation 21, affirming the belief that there will be new earth and new heaven.

That implies creation and he sees the language of creation which is taken by these 2 texts I was just referring to.

And of course, we have our theology of salvation which is almost unique among the believers, among the Christians, and which makes us sometimes suspect from Christians, they are thinking that we are not so Christians, because after all, we are believing in the day of atonement, we are believing in this strange theology of the day of atonement at the end of time, the judgment, and we ask what kind of Christian is that, and what we are affirming here, actually.

Talking about the cleansing of the sanctuary, We are also, among other truths, we are affirming the necessity of the cleansing of the world.

In order to be saved, the world should be saved.

Salvation is cosmic, or there is no salvation.

That's what we are affirming when we believe in that kind of creation.

So our Adventist theology of creation, or let's say our thinking of creation in connection to the Adventist, is also an affirmation of this particular truth, which makes us so different and therefore sometimes so suspect which makes at the same time necessary creation.

There is no not a new world there is no salvation that's what we believe.

Our rituals the baptism hope hope in a new creation this is what baptism is saying new creation in this life but also beyond this existence, a new creation that we belong, we believe in the future beyond this existence of a new creation.

That's what, that's also the meaning of, when we baptize, we also believe, we express this faith of a creation in the future.

In the Lord's Supper we also affirm our eschatological hope.

As you know this is a language which has been registered in 1 Corinthians 11 when the Apostle is talking about the Lord's Supper until he comes.

We are affirming also through the Lord's Supper we are affirming the new creation until he comes, until there is something new, until there is a new world, new world, new earth, and new heaven.

And so as we are realizing here is that we have a tension.

And maybe we should, yes, there is something else I want to affirm here.

This tension I'm talking about, which characterized Seventh-day Adventists, this affirmation of, on 1 hand, this world, and on the other hand, the belief in another world.

This particular tension is already registered at the very beginning of the scriptures.

When you enter the first pages of the Bible, The first 2 chapters are telling us something about this particular tension I'm suggesting.

Genesis 1 talks about God, creation, the universe, where everything is supernatural.

When everything is transcendent, God is far, we begin with that and then the second creation story, suddenly we have a God and this time God has changed his name, he's no longer the God of gods, the God of the universe, Elohim, he's the God of men, He's Yahweh, the God who is with, the God who is connected, the God who is close, the God who is near.

And suddenly, the perspective is different.

And you can see, as we enter the scriptures, we have a tension here between the far and the near, between the supernatural and the natural, between this world and the other world.

And what is interesting is that even when you read the first creation story, Genesis 1, you have that particular tension I'm talking about.

In Genesis 1, The text of Genesis 1, creation story, is written in the style of a genealogy.

That's the style, That's the genre, literary genre, which is the style of the text.

And you can see that when you study the style of the text.

And actually, at the end of the text, it says this is the genealogy of the.

Clifford Goldstein

Seventh-day Darwinians

Back in 2003, I wrote a column, I have a monthly column in the Adventist Review, and I wrote a column called Seventh Day Darwinians, in which I stated what I assumed and still assumed was a no-brainer.

And it was the simple point is that any, I wrote what I thought what any logical and reasonable person would assume, which is that Darwinism is completely incompatible with Seventh-day Adventism.

And contrary to the hype, because there was a lot of hype that followed, I never advocated throwing people to get out of the church over this issue.

What I simply advocated was for people to take their premises to their logical conclusions.

And I simply advocated, I think, for a little honesty.

I was asking people to at least believe the name they claim for themselves.

And anyone who, you know, we're seventh-day Adventists.

And anyone who knows anything at all about The history of Adventism, about our background, everything, understands that we were referring to the final day of a literal six-day creation.

And I believe it's only the most cynical misuse of language and disregard for Adventist history and theology could allow for it to mean anything else, especially some kind of neo-Darwinian synthesis of evolution taking billions of years.

Well, let's just say a small but vocal minority had somewhat of a hissy fit over this, and I was an object of scorn and ridicule and still am, though I will say that that was a small but very vocal minority and I believe that the vast majority of the Adventist Church agrees with that position because it's just obvious.

I mean, again, aside from the fact that the name, Seventh-day Adventist, everybody knows what that means and the background to it.

Besides that, I think there's the slight problem, there's a slight problem of the texts in Genesis themselves.

And let's pretend, let's pretend that the Genesis creation account was never meant to be taken literal, okay, because that's 1 of the arguments.

Let's assume it was meant to be a broad account, okay, not literal.

Okay, even the most broad account reading of Genesis, well, let's look at a few verses.

And God said, let there be light, And boom, there was light.

God said, let there be the waters, and gathered under the heaven, and there was a water.

When you read it, even the most broad reading, the most broad reading of it shows that everything was precise, planned, calculated.

There was no hint, no hint of any kind of randomness at all.

It would take a goddess interpretation of Genesis 1 to somehow derive randomness out of there.

Then number 2, Let's look at another point.

Again, we're taking a broad reading of it.

We're not locking ourselves into, I say locking our heart, into a literal reading.

You read Genesis, and it goes, and God created the whales and the waters after their kind, and the fowls of the air after their kind, and the beasts of, you know, after their kind, and each 1 after its own kind.

So what you see here, the text revealed unambiguously that each creature was made after its own kind.

So even from a non-literalist interpretation of Genesis, non-literalist, 2 points seem to stand out very, very clearly, which is that nothing was left to chance.

Nothing was left to chance and that there was no common ancestry for all the different creatures, all the different forms of life.

Okay, is that, I mean, is that, seems fair enough?

Nothing left to chance and not a common ancestry.

Well now, along comes Darwinian evolution in all its various incantations.

And even the broadest reading of any form of evolution that anything I've ever read fundamentally teach 2 things.

They teach, of course, randomness and they teach common ancestry.

So how then does 1 interpret Genesis through a theory that at its most basic level contradicts Genesis at its most basic level.

If evolution were true through, for thousands of years, the whole Israelite period, up through the early New Testament period, up through the Protestant Reformation, all the way up through the 19th century, the church was kept in darkness about origins until God raised up his man, Charles Darwin.

Basically an agnostic, basically a man who had some very wrong and false total misunderstandings about the nature of the world.

That's the 1 God used to suddenly straighten us all out after thousands of years on history.

I don't know, it just doesn't make sense to me.

It would seem the 1 who created language, it would seem God could have done a better job of communicating to us on creation than he did.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Sword or Sawdust

1h

Creation, the Heart of SDA Theology

23m

Seventh-day Darwinians

13m

Some scientific data that favors a recent creation

20m

The Biblical creation is central to the local church

17m

Faith and Science - My Story

1h

Them That Honor Me I Will Honor

58m

Gethsemane’s Cup

41m

The Midnight Cry and the Loud Cry

42m

Crystal Fountains and Slimy Cisterns

1h

How to Pray with Passion and Power

50m

The Valley of Achor

30m

Sound Doctrine