GYC 2008: For This Purpose

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Steve Wohlberg ~ The Shaking in Our Heads: Current Issues in the Church

Steve Wohlberg

No Compromise

The Character of God Controversy, Part I

The Character of God Controversy, Part II

The Character of God Controversy, Part III

Let's open our Bibles up to Matthew chapter 26.

I imagine some people will continue to straggle in.

This is part 2 of a little series within a series called The Character of God Controversy.

I've mentioned this in the last meeting that Dr.

Chris Lewis and I have co-authored a book called The Character of God Controversy.

This book is available at our booth, at White Horse Media booth.

And I believe that my associate, Gilbert Navarro, should be here in a little while with a stack of these in case you want to just pick 1 up while you're here.

We've discounted them for the seminar or for the convention.

And it's just a very powerful book that deals with issues that are facing Seventh-day Adventists and the world, but especially within our church.

I want to just clarify something that I mentioned in the last 1 hour period, that I mentioned the name of Dr.

He was a Sabbath school teacher at Loma Linda University and is quite influential still today, even though he's not teaching like he was before.

The book that we've co-authored does not mention his name or anybody's name.

We felt that that would be the better way to go.

But in this seminar, I did mention it in the last meeting, and somebody came up to me and said that she had read 1 of Graham's books, Can God Be Trusted, 5 times.

And I want to clarify that there is a lot of good in his teachings.

I'm not saying that everything is wrong, but from my experience, which I shared with you when I first became an Adventist, I became exposed to his teachings, especially the little book called Can God Be Trusted.

I read that book and there are good points in there, but there are other things that I found to be woven in that I found to be really just wrong, to be straight out and open with you.

And I see a lot of what is in that book and other books like it to be a mixture of truth and error.

Our conclusions are in the book, The Character of God Controversy.

Of course, we all have to make our own decisions and wrestle with the issues ourselves.

Who knows who's listening to this CDD, the CD or who will listen to it.

But these are all issues that we have to pray and study and compare Scripture with Scripture and then seek to know God correctly, because that's what life is all about, is knowing the Lord and knowing Him aright.

And Satan's goal is to lead us away from God, and 1 of the ways that he does it is by deceiving us about who God really is and what his attributes are.

And so he can lead us step by step in the wrong direction.

So why don't we pray, let's bow our heads and pray and then we'll look up a couple of texts.

Before we get to Matthew 26 I want to show you a couple more verses.

Heavenly Father, thank you for this conference here in San Jose and thank you that I can be here.

And we pray that the Holy Spirit will take charge of this meeting and all the meetings, and just inspire us and teach us truth, and reveal Jesus to us in a way that will melt our hearts and help us to really know you correctly and to follow you with everything that we have and are.

Okay, before we get to Matthew 26, a couple verses.

This is a simple statement of Jesus Christ but it has profound implications and Jesus is talking about eternal life.

John 17 verse 3, Jesus said, this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

So Jesus says eternal life is knowing God.

And obviously we need to know him a right and it says knowing the only true God knowing the true God must be based upon his revelation of himself in Scripture and I mentioned that in the last last meeting that is just vital 1st John chapter 3 verse 2 also talks about God's people and the Lord and at the second coming we're going to see him.

1 John 3, verse 2 says, Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him, how?

And that should be our goal is to see him as he is.

Not just at the second coming, but right now.

We need to see God as he is based upon the Bible.

And if we see him in the wrong way, it's going to affect us.

It's going to affect our personal experience.

It's going to affect our relationship with other people.

Now, in the last meeting, we talked about God's character being a blend of mercy and truth and justice, right?

Now we also talked about, we analyzed a little bit about the nature of God's justice and talked about how in the church 1 of the big controversies concerns God's justice and his wrath and whether that justice is entirely passive or whether it's active or whether it's both.

And I mentioned that my belief, and I can support this from Scripture, it's inside the Character of God Controversy book.

To me, it's very, very clear that God's justice, as it is manifested in the Bible, is a combination of both.

There are times when God does withdraw and allow natural consequences to run their course.

It just in natural life, God lets people reap what they sow.

And that's the principle that we reap what we sow.

If you plant evil seeds, you're going to reap evil seeds.

If we live a life of sin, we're going to reap a harvest inside of us.

And sin does carry within it built-in consequences, no question about it.

But beyond that, there are times in the Bible, and we looked at the golden calf, that was 1 event, and there are many others where God goes beyond just allowing natural consequences to take place.

That there are times when he does himself act directly to punish sin.

And the biblical teaching is that God does do that, and when he does it, he's good in doing it.

And that's part of the controversy these days, is does God punish sin directly sometimes and if he does is he good in doing it?

If you're taking notes, the book Patriarchs and Prophets, I believe it's page 94, it's the chapter on the flood.

Patriarchs and Prophets page 94, and I'm going by memory, it says that 1 of the arguments of the anti-Diluvian wise men, while Noah was building the boat, and while Noah was saying that a flood is coming to destroy the world, 1 of the arguments of the philosophers against Noah was they said that it was, quote, contrary to the character of God to punish sin.

And sadly, there are many today that have adopted that philosophy.

That it's just, it's contrary to the way God is to directly punish sin.

He won't do that, but that's not what the Bible says.

I mentioned this also in the last program and I wanna clarify that another example of God directly punishing sin is in the book of Acts.

And I think I mentioned it's Acts chapter 13, but it's actually Acts chapter 12.

And it's the account of the angel who struck Peter when he was in the prison and woke him up and delivered him from jail when Herod had arrested him and was about to execute him.

And then later on in the chapter, Herod is giving an oration in front of this huge group of people and they're just praising him and saying, this is the voice of a God and not a man.

And Herod is basking in that praise and then the Bible says in Acts chapter 12 that the angel of the Lord smote Herod and he died.

And when you read Ellen White's comments about that in the book Acts of the Apostles, she's very clear that it was the same angel who smote Peter who also smote Herod.

But she says that it was a different stroke.

And you probably heard the expression, different strokes for different folks.

Well, that was a different stroke for a different folk when the angel struck Herod.

Nadab and Abihu, when they were inside the temple and they were drunk and they weren't taking their responsibilities as priests seriously, they were a terrible influence upon the rest of the Israelites and they walked into the temple, they offered strange fire upon the altar, and the Bible says that fire, it says, came out of the temple, and it consumed them.

And I don't see any way that people can imagine that that really was Satan who did that, because Satan wasn't inside God's temple.

And the Bible says it was the fire of the Lord that did that.

And the reason was because these men were just really, really bad, and they weren't respecting God at all.

And so the time finally came after warnings and warnings and warnings that God did that.

And there's a lot of examples in the Bible that, to me, there's just no way around them.

It's just pretty clear that there are times when God does do this.

And again, he does it because he's a God of love and evil is evil.

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Steve Wohlberg ~ The Shaking in Our Heads: Current Issues in the Church

The Character of God Controversy, Part II

Transcript

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