How God will use His church to settle the accusations brought against His character and it’s connection to city ministries.

<p>How God will use His church to settle the accusations brought against His character and it’s connection to city ministries.</p>

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Adventist City Ministries

Jeff McAuliffe

ACM: 4 The Mystery of God

Father in heaven, 1 more time we ask you to be with us and for your Holy Spirit to be poured out upon us as we consider your word.

There's been a ton of information delivered and so many wonderful stories, Lord, that we just can hardly contain ourselves and Lord we pray that you would not allow ourselves to be contained that you would allow us to take the energy and the enthusiasm that is welling in our hearts and turned it into ministry for you and for the salvation of souls.

It's not very natural for me as an individual to be thinking about the least of these.

Simplicity is gonna have to bear with me and some of my friends, but I'm a man and I just, for some reason I have a hard time sometimes relating to the position that people find themselves in in the city.

And then along about 13 years ago, God put something in my life that changed things.

He's the fourth of 4 and he has Down syndrome and autism.

Sometimes you find exactly what God is calling you to in your own home.

Hopefully we all feel that way sometime I would imagine.

Anyway I like to tell this story about Jaden because you think that most of what you learn about in life is that you're teaching your children and that a boy with autism or Down syndrome couldn't possibly teach you but my kids would beg to differ with that.

My kids have grown up now and 2 of them are married and but their benefits, the benefits they received by having a little brother like that have been astounding in their lives.

And as the story goes, 1 day, Jaden And my wife and I were at Queens in Bethlehem.

It's a nice naturopathic store where you can go and get all kinds of herbs and stuff like that.

And Jaden was probably, he was still small enough that I could carry him.

And the reason you carry a little boy like that is just because I'm not just like any other little child.

And I didn't want to end up with more stuff in the basket than we really wanted.

And so I slung him over my shoulder and I held on to him that way and he was fine he was looking behind us and everything was copasetic that way and I just held him like that I couldn't do that today because now he you know is he's built like a McAuliffe and he's 13 and he's thick, you know, and he's probably muscle strength getting close to as strong as me, which is not saying much anymore, but you know, he likes to wrestle, he likes physicality, he likes to, you know, push us around and I couldn't do that today.

But then I could sling him over my shoulder.

It was getting time to leave and we, I started walking towards the door and at the entrance to the door, there was a man who was indigent.

There was a man who was homeless, and he looked like he was homeless.

And my mind immediately went to, okay, well, how can I get by this situation without investing anything personally I didn't think like that I was just thinking how can I get around this dude right because that's my first you know that's what I think that's what people think You're walking up a sidewalk and somebody's there and if you can?

And so you start thinking, okay, avoid eye contact, stay to the side as far away as possible, and see if you can slip by without having an interaction.

And so I had my little boy slung over my shoulder and we walked to the door and we kind of pull, he was over here, we kind of pulled over this way and I walked as quickly as I could.

And as we were walking to the car, we were about 3 steps away from being in the clear, and I hear a little voice say, I love you, mister.

I was content to walk right by it, But the Holy Spirit wasn't.

This stuff we're hearing about, it's just not natural to us, you know?

It's just not our human nature says, you know, get away as far as you can.

The stuff that John and Belinda are talking about, the stuff we see in our school, the stuff we're seeing in simplicity.

It's not natural to want to be around kids who are in chaos for 3 and 4 hours at a time and try to have some kind of impact in their lives.

And that's what we need to be is spirit-filled.

I have all kinds of Jayden stories by the way.

He's done crazy stuff in our house and in our lives.

For many years we refused to put anything on the walls or erase anything that was put on the walls because why paint when it's just gonna be ruined?

You know, you just, you get thrifty when you're in a situation like that.

And that's good because it's made me such so much a better steward of God's grace, you know, and of the things that he's brought to us.

We had a friend who just died recently, his name was Bill Liversidge, and he was probably, I would call him a spiritual mentor to us, the 3 of us here in the front row.

And he had a lot of ministry in a lot of places and we're gonna miss him dearly, but he's the lucky 1 because the next thing he sees is Jesus Christ and Today I just I'm gonna preach a little bit and I am gonna preach because I like to preach I'm gonna preach a little bit of something that some of you have heard and that we learned from him and I think it's appropriate to the day.

So we're going to go to Revelation of all things.

Turn in your Bibles to Revelation chapter 10.

Revelation chapter 10 is an interesting chapter.

Bob said last night that the chemotherapy caused him to be emotional.

Revelation chapter 10 is a transition chapter because we see some interesting things occurring in this book and I just want you to go through it briefly with you because I want to take us somewhere exciting with this.

So if you have your Bibles and you're reading with me I'm going to start with verse 1 and we'll have a little explanation along the way.

Verse 1 says, and I saw still another angel coming down from heaven clothed with a cloud and a rainbow was on his head.

Remember what Bob said about the rainbow?

This one's right on the head of Jesus Christ.

And His face was like the sun and his feet like the pillars of fire.

And he had a little book open in his hand, and he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land.

OK, first off, I want you to know that, indeed, that this is Jesus Christ.

It's a description of him that is used in other places and so we can know that this is our Lord and Savior who is now looking pretty victorious, right?

With a rainbow and a Sun and his everything that describes him is looking victorious and he's got a little book in his hand and it's open and he's got his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land.

And that just tells us that whatever's going on, he's got the whole world underneath him.

And he cried with a loud voice as when a lion roars, and when he cried out, 7 thunders uttered their voices.

And when the 7 thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, seal up the heaven, seal up the things which the 7 thunders uttered, and do not write them.

And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land lifted up his hand to heaven.

Now I want to stop because I'm going to keep you up to date in this passage by helping you to understand what we understand, and you probably know all this stuff, as to what historically is going on here in Adventist eschatology.

So what we understand is going on here is that in the 7 Thunders, that something is revealed.

There's a brief passage about it in Ellen White's writings and she says that those 7 thunders talked about the events that were about to take place between 1882 and 1884.

You know what happened in those years, right?

What's the words that we use to describe what happened?

There was a great disappointment, but what was happening up to that point was that there were 2 angels sounding out in the first and the second angels' messages.

That's what, and the reason that these events were not revealed is because if they had known the disappointment that was coming, it would have changed the course of history.

So I want you to know that in terms of space and time, we're looking around 1844.

That's what we're looking at here historically for what's happening here.

Okay, let's listen to what the angel has to say.

And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land lifted up his hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever who created heaven and the things that are in it, the earth and the things that are in it, and the sea and the things that are in it, that there should be no There should be delay no longer and some others Bible say what?

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ACM: 4 The Mystery of God

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