GYC 2015: Called. Chosen. Faithful.

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Adventist Apologetics: Complex Issues, Adventist Answers

Andy Im

1. The Adventist Worldview: What’s Shared

2. The Adventist Worldview: What’s Distinct

3. The God Under Your Rug: Why the Old Testament God Appears So Mean?

4. Worst Decision Ever: Why God Permits Evil?

5. Delusions of Grandeur? (Panel Discussion)

6. The Final Generation (Panel Discussion)

This message was presented at the GYC 2015 conference called Chosen Faithful in Louisville, Kentucky.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the Sabbath, a day where we can come and break open the Word of God, the spirit of prophecy, and have a discussion on vital truths that are very important to this church, this movement.

We just want to pray in a special way that your Holy Spirit would immerse our hearts and our minds of those of us who will be sharing today, and also be with the hearts and minds of those who are listening.

And we just pray that ultimately your spirit of love and your wisdom will be present this afternoon.

Let's go ahead and start and cut to the chase.

I'm going to go ahead and introduce our panelists.

I really don't need to do that, so I'm going to do it very briefly.

Adam Ramden, on the far left there is Youth Ministries Director for the North England Conference, also Director of Peace, Center of Evangelism in England.

Chester Clark is a pastor in Dalton, Georgia, also has served as ASI Vice President, also as Executive Committee of the GC.

He's certainly no stranger to GYC, he's been a board member since the very inception of GYC.

We also have Siku Daco, 1 of the directors of campus and a speaker at GYC and no stranger to GYC.

And of course, last but not least, Ty Gibson, co-director of Lightbearers and pastor of Storyline Adventist Church.

You've probably seen him on 3ABN as well.

Whoops, I needed to have gone down there.

And so I just want to go ahead and start off by stating this, that please no comments or remarks from the audience.

We want to ask that you be respectful and courteous as we have our dialogue up here together.

I also want to say that the statements and discussion points of the panelists do not reflect the views of GYC.

So there's a disclaimer here in any official capacity.

So with that said, the final generation, also known as last generation theology, It's been a heated controversy, or subject of heated controversy over 50 years.

Theologians, pastors, and popular speakers and local churches have debated this over those years.

And really this subject matter is too big for us to conquer in a 1 hour setting and we're really going to be hitting many of the highlights.

I want to also introduce the subject with several quotes from theologians and church leaders to get the discussion going and get the framework on the go.

So this is in an article in 2007 from Woodrow Witten.

We have 2 identifiable theological traditions, or paradigms of moderately conservative present-truth Adventism.

These 2 traditions have developed 2 essentially distinctive versions of soteriology, which has to do with the study of salvation, Christology, i.e.

The nature of Christ, and eschatology, or the study of end time events within the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Ángel Rodríguez, the former director of the Biblical Research Institute in 2013, stated, and I quote, and he's summarizing the issue, so, quote, the theology of the last generation was developed and popularized in the Adventist Church by M.L.

Andreassen was building on insights from A.T.

This theology introduced a strong element of legalism in some sectors of the church by claiming that the character of God, maligned by Satan in the cosmic conflict, will be vindicated through the holy and perfect life of obedience of the last generation of believers.

This generation will reach a level of character development unequaled in Christian history, copying perfectly in their lives what God did in Christ.

This theology seeks to explain why the Lord has not returned and the nature and purpose of Christian perfection.

It is based primarily on a particular reading of the writings of Ellen G.

I want to point your attention to several items.

GYC is no stranger to the notion of the final generation.

In 2014, Eugene Pruitt, a friend of mine, spoke on it.

Also, Professor Nick Miller spoke on it in 012.

Some GYC supporters are prominent leaders of the last generation theology movement defending GYC and LGT on message boards of various publications of the church.

The converse, I would like to add, is also true, that many who do not adhere to last generation theology also attend and support GYC.

And I'm going to quote an article in Spectrum entitled Viewpoint Before Men and Angels and I'll go ahead and read it now.

1 of my interests, the author states, in coming to this meeting was to witness first-hand reports that GYC advocates last generation theology and perfectionism.

This should have been apparent not only from the conference's theme, but from the name of some of the speakers in years past.

And I want to be fair, this is my own words here, many speakers who do not adhere to LGT are also invited speakers of GYC.

The article goes on to say that GYC subscribes to LGT should have been clear to anyone who watched the promo video for the Orlando conference.

The senior pastor of a large Adventist congregation was outraged by the video, the idea that God needs to be vindicated by us is pure blasphemy.

Moving forward, I think it is rather unfortunate, he concludes, that our young people are getting a heaping dose of perfectionism at GYC conferences, which will later come to haunt them spiritually and emotionally as it did me in my younger years.

Chester, what is your reaction, first of all, to some of the statements made there?

An argument can certainly be made that GYC is supportive of last generation theology.

It's assumed by many that LGT is the official, at the very least unofficial, position of GYC.

Does GYC have an official, formal position regarding LGT and any formal ties and relationship with its main proponent?

And by the way, I'm glad I'm not being asked that question.

Yes, those questions would be the proper way.

Yeah, I think, you know, first of all, just to say this, I hope that when we're finished here, you have a clear understanding of what at least us on the panel believe, not just what we don't believe, okay?

And I think that you saw the list of speakers that have addressed this topic in the past.

I, myself, I think it was the third GYC, the chart on Sunday morning, I had, it was called the 10 Characteristics of the Final Generation, and we covered the final generation.

A number of us have spoken widely on the topic of what God is wanting to do in the last days.

And so, 1 thing is very clear, we all believe that Jesus is coming soon, which means there's going to be a final generation, right?

We believe that God is going to do a special work in the last days.

We know the characteristics of 144, 000 and so forth.

But what GYC does not adhere to or try to do, GYC does not try to define theologies or theological positions that are not broadly understood and accepted by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

If you read in our mission statement, number 10 actually, of our Spirit of GYC, we seek to cultivate an attitude of humility and cordiality as we seek to clarify, articulate, and defend the biblical teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And so this is where we have historically stayed as a GYC organization.

We believe that GYC was not called into existence in this part of Earth's history for the purpose of being a theological think tank.

We don't believe that GYC is here to try to, you know, take the place of the BRI, or in some way, you know, be able to spell out the specific tenets of truth that the Church has been remiss on.

Our belief, our understanding of what GYC has called us to, is to equip and mobilize young people to take the biblical Sunday Adventist message to the world.

So I'm uncomfortable, I'm speaking a little bit personally right now.

I am personally uncomfortable with the undertaking of creating a new theology.

I think even if I could agree with every portion of whatever the Last Generation of Theology teaches, I would not advocate defining it as a new theology.

If it's not, well, let's not teach it, right?

When I hear, when I read those statements, I do not believe that GYC stands for what they are characterizing us to stand for.

I do not believe that we are attempting to create a generation of young people who, as it was said there, perfectly have all the character of God as it was manifested in Christ.

I also don't believe that we are going to, or It is our responsibility to focus on vindicating the character of God.

I do believe that God's character is going to be vindicated through the last generation.

But it's God who's going to do that, not us.

It's more than just a semantic difference there.

When we start focusing on ourselves and our perfection, we start elevating our role above where it should be in the great controversy.

And I found, you know, when I was a young person, there were certain litmus tests that conservative Adventism, and 1 of the things that was going around was this idea, do you believe in victory over sin?

Now, I praise God that God has the power to change human hearts and lives.

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Series

Adventist Apologetics: Complex Issues, Adventist Answers

6. The Final Generation (Panel Discussion)

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

1. The Adventist Worldview: What’s Shared

55m

2. The Adventist Worldview: What’s Distinct

1h

3. The God Under Your Rug: Why the Old Testament God Appears So Mean?

1h

4. Worst Decision Ever: Why God Permits Evil?

47m

5. Delusions of Grandeur? (Panel Discussion)

1h 18m

6. The Final Generation (Panel Discussion)

1h 14m

Sound Doctrine