Anil Kanda

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

My name is Anil Kanda, I'm excited about being here.

I was born and raised in Orange County, I'm visiting my mom right now, and also have the privilege of being able to speak and share the message.

The message for today is called, How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse.

And This is a message, you know, I think it may throw some of us off initially, but I promise, hang tight and you'll be blessed, right?

It's very interesting, the Bible tells us about Paul when he came to preach.

He preached all night, And there was a young man by the name of Eutychus who got so sleepy during the middle part of the sermon, he fell down, right?

And the Bible says something very interesting.

And it says the church was not a little comforted.

In other words, when this young adult heard the preaching of God's word, he went through death, okay?

But he also had a resurrection, and the community around him was affected because of that experience.

Why don't we start with a word of prayer?

Let's invite the Holy Spirit to be here and then we'll jump right into this message this morning.

And Father, we just thank you so much again for Sabbath.

Thank you for the warmth of your presence.

God, thank you this is an opportunity for you to pour out your Holy Spirit, the latter rain upon us.

But God, most of all, we would want to sense the presence of Jesus.

Thank you so much, in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

The name of the sermon again is called How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse.

When Luke asked, you know, when I was talking to Luke throughout the week, I gave him the title, and then he messages me a couple days later, and he says, hey, the special music people are having a hard time trying to figure out what songs go with the zombie sermon.

And I wrote back and I said, I will never forget this text message.

So, you know, I grew up down in Southern California.

I grew up in a very secular area and environment.

And, you know, I grew up with this fascination of horror movies.

And I used to watch a lot of these horror movies and I just was, I feared the dark, at the same time I was thrilled by the darkness.

And I remember I used to watch movies about these like killer dolls.

And then attempting to go to sleep at night when there's my sister's doll in the room was something quite frightening.

But I remember I was also attracted to this genre movie that had to do with zombies, right?

This idea that somehow the undead will rise from the grave and they'll start trying to eat the brains and bodies of all those who are alive.

And in many of these movies, there's always this rag tag team of unlikely heroes who fortify themselves in a house or a warehouse, and they attempt to survive the night until the military shows up, or until the cure begins to take place.

And sometimes these movies would not end with any kind of, you know, a positive conclusion, be sometimes fatalistic.

It's very interesting, Hollywood has made lots and lots of money off zombie movies, right?

In fact, when there was a survey that was done about how people thought about, in which way they thought the world would end, there was actually a small percentage of people that began to believe the world might end through some kind of zombie apocalypse.

Whether or not they were, you know, making light of their savior survey or not.

Nonetheless, given the trajectory of all the weird things that have happened in the last 2 years, you can imagine why some people might say, wait, well that's not that actually shocking.

But imagine this, Okay, and I want you to imagine this hypothetically, okay?

Let's say, for example, the undead do rise up, and they start walking the streets, and everyone's terrified.

There are a few things you need to know for surviving the zombie apocalypse, okay?

Number 1, you got to make sure you have a place to get supplies, okay?

I'm gonna give you a Walmart, or a Costco.

Now, raise your hand and tell me really briefly why you think Costco or Walmart would be the best option to get your supplies.

Maybe you wanna make that your headquarters, maybe you wanna hole up in there, maybe you wanna just board up the windows, but why would you choose a Walmart over Costco or a Costco over a Walmart?

And you know those zombies won't be able to get in that Costco, right?

Because those Costco clerks, they do a good job, right?

Why would you choose a Costco over a Walmart or a Walmart over a Costco to get your supplies?

They do have a lot of generic brands, don't they?

Okay, I can't believe we're even having this discussion on Sabbath morning right now.

As I'm telling you this, I'm like, what is going on here?

You can buy in bulk, right, at a Costco, right?

Can you imagine trying to get things out on a pallet, right?

Why would you choose a Costco or maybe a Walmart?

I think Walmart has more locations everywhere.

I have never thought about that as well, right?

Walmart's there almost in every city, right?

Okay, say you got your location down, right?

You know a place where you're going to get your supplies, Okay?

In fact, my brother told me he recently played a game with a group of young adults, and the question was asked, if you were bit or someone in your friend group was bit, who would be the last person to tell everybody?

They'd eventually become like a Judas and then bite everybody else, right?

So you've got to make sure that the people you have on your team are going to help you survive the zombie apocalypse, right?

You don't want to be that person who gets bit also and doesn't tell anybody about it and then betrays the entire group at the end, right?

Here's the third thing you need to do when it comes to surviving the zombie apocalypse and that is this.

You want to make sure you have a good vehicle.

What kind of vehicle would you need to survive the zombie apocalypse?

Michigan Conference Campmeeting 2021: How Much More?

Emmanuel Core Workout

Jim Howard

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Standards Part 6a

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2021 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Father in heaven, thank you so much for the privilege we have of studying together this afternoon.

I pray that you will be with us and help us to understand the biblical basis for our faith.

So yesterday we talked about the sanctuary and I just wanted to say a little bit about how this sanctuary actually segues into this issue of Christian lifestyle.

You remember we talked yesterday about...

I was doing this all day yesterday, my little brother was like, you were like pointing at imaginary things while you were teaching.

I'll tell you why I was doing that is because I usually teach with a whiteboard, and I was telling Mark, I'm like, where is your whiteboard?

Like they've got the projector, but I don't have this all already set up on my projector.

I usually like, I almost think on the whiteboard.

So I'm thinking when I'm doing this, okay?

In the sanctuary, you know, these physical pieces, and we kind of walked through that and we started with the the altar of burnt offering where there was confession made, and then there was the ministry that happened the daily in the holy place which was a ministry of forgiveness, and then there was the yearly service which was the Day of Atonement which we're living in the anti-typical Day of Atonement, the cleansing of the sanctuary and that was where cleansing happened.

Remember we talked about 1st John 1 9 if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us.

So this is sort of just a little picture of the of the process.

Well this cleansing part is the part that many Christians do not spend time emphasizing.

If I could just get slightly controversial for just a moment, many Seventh-day Adventists are becoming increasingly uncomfortable focusing on this.

And there's this big push right now to get rid of the heresy of last-generation theology.

I don't know if you've heard this, and you'll see books sometimes now about last generation theology.

The problem that I have with that, I'm not in agreement with last generation theology as it is taught by those who critique last generation theology.

But there are elements of what they are attacking that are not wrong.

And 1 of those is that Jesus is preparing, through the cleansing of the sanctuary, He is preparing a people and their characters, He's preparing them in a special way that has not been able to be done previously because the truth that we have is so much beyond what previous generations had.

And he is preparing a people for his coming that will meet him in peace and that involves a wholehearted commitment and a character that reflects Jesus' character.

I mean we have clear biblical support for that and clear statements in the Spirit of Prophecy about that.

You know, we talked about how the cleansing of the sanctuary involves more than just cleansing us as God's people.

It involves also the bigger issues of the government of God.

But there isn't a strong element by which God is preparing a people and he is growing a people and developing a people for his coming and that involves growth in lifestyle and character more and more like Jesus.

That's what discipleship is all about, right?

Discipleship is about becoming like Jesus by spending time with Jesus.

And so you can't help but have a purer lifestyle as you spend time with Jesus.

So the idea of Christian standards is actually fairly closely connected to the sanctuary, because it is bringing us to the point where we're talking not just about our mental ascent to a set of beliefs, but it's bringing us to the point of our practical life that we live by faith, right?

And so I just wanted to make sure you kind of understood.

People view Christian lifestyle issues in different ways, but many people view them as unimportant, and I want to talk about that.

In fact, just before we dive in and maybe I could ask Cameron again, or yeah, while he's doing that I'll do just another shameless plug for this resource we published out of the GC but we first published it here out of Michigan and then we just made some minor edits to it.

There is a whole section in this book on Christian lifestyle.

The reason for that is because this book is for all Seventh-day Adventist church members, but in a special way.

It was intended to deeply ground and train new Seventh-day Adventists in what it means to be a Seventh-day Adventist, living at the end of time.

So it spends a lot of time on the devotional life.

It talks about the role of Ellen White and her place in our growth and development.

It talks about things like family worship and important aspects of personal growth.

But it also talks about lifestyle because so many times our new members get confused about that.

Do you know 1 of the reasons that our new members get so confused about Christian lifestyle?

It's because our existing members are confused about Christian lifestyle.

So we have almost in every case you have a new member, you know, the pastor or an elder or somebody is studying with them, they're sharing with them what the Bible teaches about Christian lifestyle, and then they make a decision and then they get around the existing members and they find out the existing members don't think that and that creates this problem.

So because of that being a common situation, we made sure we included a whole section about Christian lifestyle to further just ground them that this is a biblical thing, it's about following Jesus, not following the people in the pew.

So there is a chapter in here that introduces the Christian lifestyle section called Something Better.

So yeah, there is a Brown book called spread the word.

This is a different book, it's called the discipleship handbook.

There is a process, a disciple-making process, if you see this little chart here or whatever, the grow cycle where we talk about all the different phases of somebody developing into a disciple of Christ.

It starts by just building a relationship with someone and we call that preparing the soil.

And there will be resources that will have a blue strip that are currently being written on preparing the soil.

Preparing the soil is when you just minister to people's needs through health ministries.

We have a health ministry handbook that's being developed through community outreach.

And we have a community outreach guide that's being written.

After that, you need to start planting the seed of truth, sharing literature, sharing the gospel, sharing your testimony.

This is the planting, and that's what this is about.

And this is 1 of the most important in the whole series.

After that, you need to cultivate that interest.

You need to cultivate it with ongoing Bible studies.

So that's cultivating, that's the third phase.

After you study with them and they get a good in-depth knowledge of the truth, they need to make a decision.

So we have a little booklet that is for harvesting that helps them to make decisions preparatory to baptism and church membership.

That also happens, a lot of times appeals happen through public evangelism.

That's often talked about as harvesting or reaping.

So at some point we want to develop a public evangelism handbook that will have a gold strip, but we're not there yet.

But then after you're baptized, that harvest needs preserved.

You need trained, you need more practical grounding, and all those things, and that's what this is for.

So in this, we include this chapter on Lifestyle, or this section on Lifestyle, and the opening chapter is called Something Better.

Does anybody know why it's called Something Better?

She's speaking in broader terms than just food, but it certainly includes that, and she's talking about, remember that oftentimes we talk about lifestyle, people feel like what you're doing is taking something away.

And so what Elamite really is good at emphasizing is that ultimately what God gives in his Word is something better.

It's not taking away something that's good.

God will never take away something that's good, and any time that he does ask us to leave something off and out of our life, he has something better, okay?

And that is the real positive outlook on lifestyle that we need to have in our own life and that we need to teach when we're talking to other people.

But there's a section in here that talks about rules and relationship.

There are some people who get confused because they say immediately when we start talking about Christian lifestyle, they think that we're focusing on rules, and who in the Bible do we remember who focused on rules?

And boy, if you want to make sure that someone feels like less than a life-form, you just call them a Pharisee.

And so, oh, you know, I don't want to be labeled a Pharisee, so I suppose I won't talk about these lifestyle things.

People do get afraid to talk about them because they don't want to be labeled a Pharisee.

Well, the problem that people have is they're totally missing the point.

The reality is, if you really want to mess up a relationship, just make sure there are no rules in it.

A truly good relationship will have, and I say rules, but it will have principles, it'll have parameters, It will have those things.

You know, my wife likes that we have rules in our marriage, such as, I can't date, right?

Like, that's restricting, It's restricting, there's no question, but is it really restricting?

It is a parameter, there is a sense in which it is a restriction, but what's the purpose of the restriction is to have a healthier, fuller relationship that is not, that I don't run into complications and destruction and pain, right?

Standards Part 6b

The question in the Bible study is what popular body and soul destroying substance is the Bible forbid use of?

And it quotes from Proverbs 20, and verse from Proverbs 20 and verse 1.

This is just 1 passage on alcohol, and certainly it's a clear 1.

But undoubtedly, when you study the topic of alcohol, if you're talking to people who have been Christians, most denominations are just fine with a moderate use of alcohol.

And what do they point to, or what reasons would they give for a moderate use of alcohol?

Why would we not believe that that was reason enough to support moderate use of alcohol?

Okay, for 1, the consequences like, oh I don't want to do that, right, because of what happened.

But what do we know about how we read the Bible and how we interpret the Bible that should help us not to use that as a justification for drinking alcohol?

Not everything that the Bible describes does it prescribe.

So not every description is a prescription.

So the Bible is full of just the life lived by the people of God with all of its positives and negatives, all of its good deeds and wicked deeds.

And it often, often does not comment on it.

In other words, it does not comment on whether it was good or not, it just says what they did.

You cannot use what someone in a historical narrative did as support for doing it.

Otherwise, you know, we could look to polygamy, and we could look to David's transgressions, and all kinds of things, and start to justify ourselves through historical narratives.

You cannot use historical narratives to justify it.

So, the sister is bringing out the Apostle Paul, who told the young minister Timothy To do what?

Take a little wine for your stomach's sake.

There's nothing wrong with my stomach, so I don't need to do it.

Isaiah 65 verse 8 is a helpful verse when it comes to the topic of wine.

He says, Thus says the Lord, as the new wine is found in the cluster, and 1 says, Do not destroy it, for a blessing is in it, so will I do for my servants' sake that I may not destroy them all." Now, in the Bible, both the Hebrew and Greek, there is only 1 word for wine, whether fermented or unfermented, okay?

It's 1 of the best ways, because where is this wine?

So this is clearly not fermented wine, but it's calling it wine, right?

So now we know from Isaiah 65, 8, that the Bible refers to pure grape juice as wine.

And we have to then look at the context to be able to know if it's talking about fermented or unfermented.

Now, admittedly, okay, I'm not gonna stand up here and say this is just such an obvious issue.

Admittedly, this is not a totally black-and-white issue, and it does take some, you know, common sense and some interpretation, but the Bible is clear that wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whoever is fooled by it is not wise.

And there are other passages and proverbs that you have in your lesson that point to the dangers of drinking alcohol.

And the thing about it is, there are some explanations, and I'll share with you a couple.

They may not have a hundred percent, what do I want to say, positivity, okay, because I'll hear different scholars who have slightly different takes on it, But I've heard some pretty powerful positions put forward.

I know that back in the day, Bakayoki was a scholar who talked a lot about the fermentation process, and how he went back into the history, and how they preserved the juice so that it would not ferment, and a variety of different things.

So, that's what it takes, is people go back and they try to look at what they did back then.

I just was discussing this with another scholar who said that the real issue was, they had something back in antiquity where basically the issue was the water.

If you look in the Holy Land, the water was not like everywhere, okay?

It was very difficult to get pure, clean water.

So what they did, oftentimes, to purify water was what they called three-in-one.

And they would do that to actually purify the water.

You have to keep in mind they did not have what we have today.

So if somebody were to drink 3 parts water and 1 part wine and that were to remove the contaminants from the water, would that be somebody drinking for intoxication?

So the point is, even if they did drink a little bit because they had to use it to purify water, it's not a problem.

And this particular scholar I was talking to said that that is the explanation of Paul.

It's not that he was saying to take grape juice, which that's kind of always been my view, is that have a little wine for your stomach, he was talking about pure juice, because it has positive elements to it.

But what he was actually saying was to make sure that you decontaminate, purify the water.

You know, historically it's kind of hard to wrap your mind around which way it is, but I will say that we have enough very clear statements in Scripture against the drinking of wine for intoxication, if you will, that we know that it's forbidden by Scripture.

Exactly why there were certain times where they had to, or you know, in some cases as a painkiller before they're dying or something, I mean, that's a different use, okay?

It's not talking about recreational use of alcohol.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

51m

Standards Part 6a

37m

Standards Part 6b

33m

Standards Part 6c

58m

An Audience of One

1h 7m

Dealing with Sexual Addiction in the Marriage

58m

Reducing Financial Stress

55m

Understanding Your Spiritual Gifts

22m

Jacob’s Struggle

50m

How Keeping Your Vow Benefits Many Lives!

47m

Communication & Conflict Resolution

55m

Relationships: Not for the Faint of Heart

56m

Sound Doctrine