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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eugene Prewitt

An Unknown Evangelist - Ellen White

Turn with me in your Bibles to Romans chapter 2.

Romans chapter 2, we're looking at verse 28.

For he is not a Jew which is 1 outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh.

But he is a Jew which is 1 inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter, whose praise is not of man, but of God." When you read in the Bible statements like this by Jesus, when he says to a certain group, "'O brood of vipers, ' Jesus is not in the business there of just calling names.

He's referring back to that Old Testament gospel promise to the serpent that said, I will put enmity between thy seed and the seed of the woman.

And if you'll think about that promise for just a moment, you'll realize that it was as obvious as can be from the very first moment that it was not a physical seed that was intended.

Can you just see that in the fact that it was spoken to a serpent?

Does that make sense to you what I'm saying?

When Jesus said to the serpent that thy seed, he wasn't referring to literal descendants of the snake.

And I hope when you think it through that way, you'll realize that all through Scripture, when you read about the seed of the woman or the seed of the serpent, you're reading about 2 classes of people.

Didn't He say, I'll put enmity between thy seed and her seed?

It looks to me like the reason that the flood had to come is because that enmity broke down, And when there was a breakdown between the enmity, between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, that is between Abel's and Cain's in this world, God's ability to save Abel's was dramatically reduced.

And in Romans 2, 28 and 29, we just read the same idea that he is a child of Abraham, not 1 that has the genetics of Abraham, but those that have the spiritual experience of Abraham.

What advantage then is there to being part of the literal descendants of Abraham?

What advantage then hath the Jew, or what profit is there of circumcision?

Wouldn't you almost expect the answer to be nothing from chapter 2, 28 and 29?

There is an advantage, chapter 3, verse 2, much every way, chiefly because unto them were committed the oracles of God.

If I could just say this whole idea as I understand it before we come to our theme for this morning, there is an advantage to having the character of Abraham.

When you do, you can share in the blessings of Abraham, things like eternal life.

But there is an advantage to being in the organization, the embodiment of his physical children, if you lived in the time of Paul.

And what is the advantage of having grown up in a Jewish home in first century?

It's that God used that Jewish family as the depositories for his truth.

In other words, when he went to speak to the Babylonians, he did it through a Jewish boy named Daniel.

When he went to speak to Nineveh, he did it through a Jewish man named Jonah.

When he went to speak, really you can read it all through the Old Testament, when God went to speak to the various peoples of the world, He did it through the seed of Abraham.

And if you grew up as a Jewish boy, you would know more about God and about the Torah and about His teaching and about Bible history than men would who had grown up in some other situation.

So is there an advantage, for example, to being a Seventh-day Adventist, a member of the church?

In every way there is an advantage, and the advantage is this, because unto us God has committed the oracles of God.

The advantage of being an Adventist isn't that you get to go to heaven.

There are people that can go to heaven that aren't Adventist, and there are people who are Adventists who aren't going to go to heaven.

That's not the advantage, but there certainly is an advantage.

The advantage is that this is the channel for God's truth to the world.

And did you see it plainly in Romans 3 that that's an advantage?

Turn with me to your Bibles to Jeremiah chapter 23.

Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words, every 1 from his neighbor." This passage has been so interesting to me now for years.

I can see in this passage the distinct idea that when God gave words to certain men, even though he gave the words to those men, the words weren't for those men.

If I, you know, I don't even have my wallet in my pocket, but if, I don't need it.

If I did have my wallet in my pocket and I pulled out 10 dollars and I gave it to 1 of you to give to Tim to put into the offering for Josiah Ministries, even though I put that 10 dollar bill in your hand, If you don't give it to Tim, you've stolen it.

Does that make sense to you, what I've just said?

The fact that I put it in your, the fact that I gave it to you didn't make it yours.

It only gave you a certain level of responsibility.

When I gave it to you, it made you accountable to make sure it went to the place I intended it to go.

That is analogous in every way to the privilege of knowing truth.

The truth that God has given us wasn't given us for us.

And when we do not share the truth that has been given us for others, do you see it there in Jeremiah 23, 30?

The neighbors don't even know that they ought to have them.

The neighbors have never possessed them, but we steal it from them because God gave it to them through us, and if we do not deliver, we have stolen from men who don't even know what has been taken from them.

I want to put these 2 ideas together simply.

There is an advantage to being a Seventh-day Admonist.

The advantage is that the truth has come your direction.

You know more about it than the average person, far more than the average person, and that is an advantage because The truth sanctifies the soul.

Knowing the truth dramatically increases your chance of being changed by it.

The truth is a beautiful gift, but it wasn't given to me for me.

It was given to me to change me in the process of me giving it to others.

The truth, this is not a complex idea, but it's a big 1, so follow me.

To receive the truth only takes a moment.

And while I receive it, it has my attention for a moment.

But to share it with someone else requires my attention for another moment.

And it's in the process of sharing that the truth keeps my attention.

While I'm sharing the truth, it has my attention, and while it has my attention, it's changing my life.

So that why did God give us the truth for the purpose of sharing?

Really, the truth only does its work in me when I am sharing it.

And if I'm not sharing it, I should not be surprised if the beautiful truth I know just hasn't done for me what it could have done.

In other words, if I'm wondering why am I not changing when I know this and this and this, it's because knowing these things doesn't change you.

But the truth, when it has my attention, the way it gets my attention, when I have to process it, share it, think it through about how to illustrate it, when it has my active attention, the way it needs to in sharing, that's when the truth is changing me.

1 of the great advantages of being a Seventh-day Adventist is access to the writings of Ellen White.

But I don't expect anyone that I meet on the street to consider this to have any authority at all.

I don't think they should because the Bible says very clearly, beware of false prophets.

And if any of you feel like you have good reasons to have no confidence in Ellen White, I think you should not have any confidence in Ellen White.

Really, the Bible injunction, it's more dangerous to believe a false prophet than it is to have a lack of confidence in a true 1.

I mean at least if you do have confidence in some true ones.

Does that make any sense to you what I just said?

In other words, someone who has perfect confidence in the prophets that wrote this book, who doesn't know anything about the woman who wrote this book, can have a beautiful spiritual experience today.

But someone who goes after a false prophet, their experience is jeopardized, Because they get confused the words of men and the words of God.

And the words of men just don't have the power or the quality of the words of God.

That being said, I'm going to share something with you this morning from the writings of Ellen White that does not require that you have any confidence in her at all to be benefited by it.

It's just her experience as a personal evangelist.

Does that make any sense to you, what I just said?

This is from the book of Evangelism, page 447.

This is speaking of Ellen White's experience when she was Ellen Harmon, that is, before she was even a prophet during part of this period.

The reality of true conversion seemed so plain to me that I felt like helping my young friends into the light, and at every opportunity exerted my influence toward this end.

I arranged meetings with my young friends, some of whom were considerably older than myself, and a few were married persons." Do you get an idea of how young she must have been?

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An Unknown Evangelist - Ellen White

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