Gabriel Arruda

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

How God Saved Me from the Devil’s Workshop

I'd like to share a portion of my testimony I call Saved from the Devil's Workshop.

But before I get into it, I'd like to say an additional word of prayer.

Our Father in heaven, I just feel compelled to again ask for your mercies and ask for your spirit to please come to be our teacher and our instructor.

Teach us, help each and every 1 of us to walk away with that which you were hoping we would walk away with.

Help me, Lord, as the sower of the seed to be open to your working and your power and help us all as learners and listeners to be open and to allow that seed to enter into our hearts and to germinate and to bear up, bear fruit unto eternal life.

I grew up in a loving Seventh-day Adventist home.

Can anyone say praise the Lord for loving Seventh-day Adventist homes?

I was so happy to have the honor and privilege to have grown up in a wonderful, loving home like that.

And so after Academy, and after 2 years of junior college, I was really asking myself the question, what do I want to do with my life?

I was good at snowboarding, and I was good at art.

And at the age of 20, I almost cracked my skull open on a backflip gone bad on a snowboard trip.

And so I figured that's probably not the direction I'm going to head.

And so at the age of 21, I worked up the guts, and I signed up, and I shipped out, and I went to art school.

I decided to pursue my dream as an artist, and I enrolled in the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, which wasn't too far from where I grew up, in Sacramento area.

And my major was illustration, I was an illustration major, and my specific concentration within that major was to be a concept artist.

Now for those of you who don't know what a concept artist is, that's the person who gets hired by a big motion picture company or a big gaming company and draws all this amazing stuff that they just wanted to do since they were kids.

And they're the ones that actually design what the armor is going to look like, what the character is gonna look like, what the guns are gonna look like before they actually make it on the screen or they make it on the game or the comic or whatever it is.

And this was like the really cool thing to do in the illustration department as an illustrator because they threw gobs of money at you.

You got to work for some high profile company or motion picture company, and they paid you to draw amazing stuff, and you got to see your stuff in movies, and you got to go to premieres, and This was exactly what I wanted to do.

I was completely enamored and captivated with this goal in life.

As a matter of fact, at the school I went to, they had something at the end of the year called the Spring Show.

And it's when all of the artists you had to qualify to enter but all the artists especially the senior students would show their work and they would illustrate their work and companies would come and they would hire students on the spot and as a matter of fact they had a special room for George Lucas.

For those of you who don't know who he is, he's the Star Wars guy.

He's the director of ILM, Industrial Light and Magic.

And he would come and he would look at senior portfolios, and there were some kids that would get hired right on the spot to work for ILM.

And so, you know, I thought to myself, man, this is my chance.

You know, everyone's told me you'll never make money in art.

And you know, you're really gonna waste a lot of money going to that school.

And you know, I'm gonna prove them wrong.

I'm gonna go do it and it's gonna be awesome and I'm gonna get paid gobs of money to do what I love to do.

And so I was working really hard and I was on the fast track to becoming a concept artist working for some motion picture company, some gaming company perhaps, but little did I know at the time, God did not want me to work for the entertainment industry.

And he would make that very clear and he would radically intervene in my life.

You know, had God not done this, it's very likely that that's exactly where I would have ended up in the entertainment industry working somewhere, because that's where all of my old art school friends are today.

I roomed with this guy for a year, Mark Harris, and he is an animator at Pixar.

He worked on that movie there, Up, came out several years ago, and found a blog of his, and he's here talking on some animation website about this sequence he animated for some Pixar movie.

And he's talking about, I don't even know what movie this is, but he's got this blog where he's talking about this, how he pulled this off.

And good friend of mine, roomed together for a year.

Also, Tim Evatt, he was also an illustration major, really, really amazing concept artist, even as a student.

And He works as a concept artist for Pixar now as well.

But another friend who's another animator there, Nick.

And this guy here, he was actually a mentor of mine in art school and really helped hone my skills as an artist.

And now he's working for doing concept art for video games and he works for Cartoon Network, doing some projects for them.

Another friend of mine, we lived on the same dorm room level together, and we hung out with the same group of friends, Greg Towner, and he does special effects, and he actually got hired by ILM.

And his first project, he was working on King Kong, which came out in 2009, And the Academy of Art decided to do a write-up on him because, you know, it was a big success, a graduate getting hired by LLM and working with them.

And some of the more recent movies he worked on, Transformers 2, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, things that, you know, pretty much everyone knows about.

And, you know, so these guys, my old classmates, they're out there producing the movies that the mass millions are paying money to go watch.

And that's probably where I would have been.

But God did something absolutely amazing for me.

While living in 1 of the most liberal, wicked cities in the country, going to 1 of the most liberal, wicked schools in that city, I was converted.

God got a hold of me and radically changed my life.

Now that particular story is a whole different story and hopefully I'll get an opportunity to share how that all came about.

But God opened my eyes for the first time in my life and showed me what a wonderful person he was and what a terrible person I was.

And he helped me to see that everything good in my life was because of him.

Anything good that had ever happened in my life was directly because of him.

And he revealed to me through a series of painful but wonderful circumstances that Jesus was the best friend I could ever have.

Even my own parents would let me down, but never Jesus.

And despite this, however, I still had lots of junk in my head from decades of TV education.

And despite this conversion experience that I went through in San Francisco, I was still very determined to work as a concept artist.

And so God had to do something else very radical to get my attention in that area of my life.

In My third year of art school, well, let me back up.

The first 2 years I lived in downtown San Francisco, I mean, right in the middle of all those big buildings.

And I was really enamored at first, you know, this kid that came from the suburbs and all these bright lights.

But about the turn of my second year, I absolutely hated it.

It's just the craziness, the noise, the homeless people hitting you up constantly and it just I couldn't stand it anymore.

So I decided to get out of there and move to a more, I don't want to say rural because it was San Francisco, a more suburban area of the city out in the outer Richmond.

And my third year I moved to a corner place and this is actually it right here on a 40 49th and Fulton and a friend of mine at church had told me he lived in the bottom level of this place and the first level and he said you know the unit above me is available You ought to come and see if, you know, this lady will rent to you.

She was a really nice landlord and everything worked out perfect.

Sweet little old lady landlord, just wonderful woman.

And I moved in, signed the lease, and paid my first and last, and I moved in.

The Shaking, Why and How

Our Father in Heaven, Lord, thank you so much for this wonderful Sabbath afternoon that we could all get together and hear the Word of the Lord.

And I'm pleased, I'm happy to see those who have come out who could be doing many other things with their Sabbath afternoon, could be doing many other things with their time, but they came to hear the word of the Lord.

Please use me as your instrument, your mouthpiece, to preach your message as you would have it preached.

And I pray that the Holy Spirit would be our teacher and that we would leave here changed, a step closer to Jesus.

So, this afternoon, we're going to talk about the shaking.

And before I get into it, let me just give you a little mini definition of what the shaking is.

Many of you are probably familiar with this concept, but just so we all start on the same page, the shaking is a time period in which God allows his church to be mightily shaken before he comes again.

And any of those who are not genuine, those who have been unfortunately playing church, who have not fully loved the Lord will actually abandon the truth and abandon the church and leave.

The spirit of prophecy tells us we're actually in that time right now.

She said that they were in it back in her day, so it has been happening for a while.

And I find that like so many events in Bible prophecy, it starts and then it kind of grows in crescendos and crescendos till it reaches a tremendous climax.

Now, some people ask, why would God do that?

We're going to answer that question at the end.

But I'd like to hopefully show you that this is not some, the idea of the shaking is not some Seventh-day Adventist invention.

We see it, it's happened in Scripture several times before, and Scripture's led us, lend us to the idea that we're going to see it again.

And so, we're going to see not only how people are shaken out, but also why.

Now, let me just see by a show of hands who here is very interested in not being shaken out during the shaking.

Please pay attention because I'm going to give very clear reasons from Scripture why there are going to be multitudes.

We're told a large group, that's the wording that's used, a large group will abandon their faith.

Faith they grew up with, perhaps faith they were converted to, they will leave, they will abandon it.

And we're going to talk about the how and the why.

The first is found in Matthew chapter of 24 and verse 4.

Please turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 24 and verse 4, our Lord Himself will give us the first manner, the first how as to how people are shaken out.

And as you're turning there, a little bit of context.

In the previous verses, the disciples have essentially come up to Jesus and asked him 2 questions.

Essentially what's going to be the sign of your coming as well as the end of the world.

And also they were referring to Jerusalem.

And Christ goes into this amazing passage where he is detailing events around the destruction of Jerusalem which also prefigured events that will lead to the destruction of the end of the world.

And in verse 4, notice the first thing that Jesus says in reference to the last days.

And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that No man do what?

Deception is going to be a Tremendous issue in the last days.

That was the first thing that Christ said in his long discourse about the events of the last days.

And the idea is that people, 1 of the reasons people will be shaken out is because they will follow false teachings.

Now, quick question, is it possible for people now to be saved even though they didn't understand all of the truth?

If they were living up to that which they knew, you know, God doesn't judge you for things you don't know.

But it's going to be different in the last days.

In the last days, if you are following error, it is going to lead you out of the church.

Great light to come and shine from his word.

Wonderful things that we've been hearing, wonderful messages that God has given from many voices all over the world.

And he's doing it because we need to have the full light, the full gospel truth, as we proceed into these last days.

Now, Matthew 24 told us that in the last days many people are going to be deceived, And as you look through that chapter, that gets even clearer.

Matthew chapter 3 tells us that it actually happened in Christ's day.

Let's turn now to Matthew chapter 3 verse 11 and 12.

His forerunner prophesied that this would come.

John, I'm sorry, Matthew chapter 3, verse 11 and 12.

We'll see that this shaking, it happened many places in Scripture.

As a matter of fact, there was a shaking before the flood.

Says in the Bible that the Spirit would not always strive with man.

That word strive also indicates a judgment, that there was a judgment and investigating happening during that time.

In Matthew chapter 3, notice what we have, verse 11, John the Baptist speaking.

He says, indeed I baptize you with water unto repentance, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear.

He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the gardener, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

He pictures the Messiah with a fan in his hand.

And notice he uses that fan in his hand to produce a wind and that takes what away, the wheat or the chaff?

That takes the chaff away out of the barn and the wheat gets retained into the barn.

Now what is wind a symbol of in prophetic language?

Because John is using illustrations, analogies here.

And we want to understand more about this idea of wind.

Why is John used, the illustration of him with a fan in his hand, winding these, this chaff away from the barn.

Autoimmune Diseases and the Last Day Church

Father, we believe you're here and we'd like to ask that as you are here that you would have power on our hearts.

I ask that you please would use this feeble instrument as your mouthpiece to communicate your message clearly and powerfully and that we would have soft hearts to receive it.

We love you, we thank you for reaching out to us in your mercy and desiring to do good for us in our lives.

Well, the title of the message this evening is Autoimmune Diseases and the Last Day Church.

Well, today I'd like to talk about autoimmune diseases because they are an out-of-control epidemic.

Have you noticed the food sensitivities, especially in the children?

Have you noticed all the different people who, even healthy people, who have otherwise had great health coming down with all types of autoimmune diseases?

It is wreaking havoc in our Western world.

What is happening in the bodies of people with autoimmune diseases mirrors something that's happening spiritually in God's last day church.

But I'd like to share a testimony of my experience with autoimmune diseases and how it has affected my family.

Well in 1998, my mother started showing signs of liver disease.

She tried to fight it using many natural methods, but she just didn't know enough about her condition to really be able to treat it effectively at that time.

And she was eventually diagnosed with autoimmune liver cirrhosis.

Her symptoms gradually got worse and worse, until 1 Sabbath morning she woke me up because she had been vomiting and defecating blood.

She was rushed to the ER that morning and she almost died.

As a matter of fact, the doctor himself told our family that if they hadn't stopped the bleeding she probably would have died within minutes.

She was virtually saved by a miracle, I believe.

The next 9 months my mom would come close to death about 3 different times.

And praise the Lord, however, in the year 2000, she received a liver transplant.

And just before that, she would almost die just before that, but it saved her life, and I praise God for that.

Well, not knowing the real truth about her condition, we thought she was totally out of the woods.

Little did we know that new liver would last her 12 years.

And late in 2012, that same disease, autoimmune liver cirrhosis, came back again.

However, it came back much more aggressive the second time.

And during that next 7 months, She would be in and out of the hospital several times for bleeding issues.

We had just met a doctor friend of ours who opened up her own lifestyle program, and she specialized in treating, guess what types of diseases?

But as we met with her and counseled with her, she gave us a specialized program to treat my mother.

She was released from the hospital the last time, and the doctor told us, she does not have 1 week to live.

Be happy that your mom could go home and die at home with her family.

And she was in critical, critical condition.

But nonetheless, we administered this customized lifestyle program given to us by this doctor friend of ours, and friends, we almost saved her.

On April 23rd, 2013, My dear mother lost the battle with liver disease and passed away.

But we almost saved her with the program.

And as a matter of fact, I actually think we would have saved her.

The day she passed away, she was actually being taken off of hospice because They saw that she was healing, not dying.

But she was in such critical condition, I won't really get into it, but let's just say in her critical condition, we really couldn't afford any mistakes to be made on the program.

6 months after my mom died, I found out that I had the same autoimmune condition that killed my mother.

I started to show signs of liver issues as early as 2010, as a matter of fact.

You know, at 30, you really shouldn't have liver enzymes fluctuating like mine were.

And I had several other things, some things that were indicating I had jaundice.

And anyhow, I had several things showing that my liver was starting to have issues.

But back to that doctor friend that opened up that lifestyle center.

Thankfully, we had met her in 2012, just as this whole thing was starting to kick off, and it really was a divine appointment.

And 6 months after my mom passed away, she said, you know, you really ought to get tested to see if you have anything what your mother has, because these things can be inherited.

I did a certain test that found that I was having an autoimmune response to 15 different types of foods.

My body was just attacking, attacking all these different types of foods in my body along with it.

And this made sense to me because I had a skin infection for many years that for some strange reason would not respond to any of the remedies that it was supposed to respond to.

It just got worse and worse no matter what we did to it.

And I had just seen what happened to my mother, and I knew after I got this diagnosis that if I didn't do something different, I would soon be following her.

Well, we signed up for our friend's 10-day detox program, which was fantastic, which was great.

And then after that, she gave me a customized program that I spent the next 9 months self-administering, pretty much as a full-time job, to myself.

And at the end of the 9 months, I got blood work done, and on my blood work, every single autoimmune marker showed up negative.

I got blood work done again just recently and it showed up even better.

And friends, I stand here before you this evening praising the Lord in complete remission to my autoimmune disease.

And the skin issue I was dealing with is clearing up as well.

And now that I'm understanding all this, a lot of things that I had been dealing with really are starting to make sense and click why I had been dealing with those.

And if you're interested, our friend, our doctor friend, the name of her ministry is yearsrestored.com.

Yearsrestored.com if you're interested to find out more about this program.

If I could summarize it for you in a nutshell, it's essentially the body attacking itself.

If it's attacking the nerves, you have multiple sclerosis.

If it attacks the blood, you have leukemia.

If it attacks the intestines, you have Crohn's disease.

If it attacks the liver, you have eventually liver cirrhosis.

And there are a host of autoimmune diseases, friends.

Diabetes type 1 is actually an autoimmune disease.

There's Hashimoto's, PCOS, Celiac's, and the list just goes on.

Chances are, I bet every single person in here either has an autoimmune disease or knows someone that does.

Presenter

Gabriel Arruda

Most Listened

How God Saved Me from the Devil’s Workshop

42m

The Shaking, Why and How

52m

Autoimmune Diseases and the Last Day Church

41m

Why are So Many Adventists Getting Sick?

40m

The Sign of Jonah and God’s Five Step Formula for Victory

51m

How to Pray for A Godly Spouse

45m

Swipe Right, Part 1

48m

The Anxiety Relief Prayer

1h

Caught in the Dragon’s Tail

50m

Swipe Right, Part 3

1h 40m

The Jezebel Spirit & Modern Dating

41m

How to be Happy - Part 1

44m

Swipe Right, Part 2

37m

Fantasies

44m

The Stress Relief Prayer

45m

Attachment Theory and Your View of Salvation

55m

The 4 Reasons for Illness in the Bible

31m

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies Part 2

32m

Why Are We So Numb to the Cross?

45m

The Spirit of Antichrist and My Fifth Grade Birthday Party

39m

How to Pray for One Hour!

49m

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies Part 1

40m

How to Prepare Yourself for the Latter Rain

46m

Broken Adventists - The Mental Health Crisis In The Church

50m

Sound Doctrine