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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

It's Time Someone Finally Told You the Truth About...

Mark Howard

The Last Generation

The series of what we're talking about this weekend I'm calling It's Finally Time Someone Told You the Truth About.

And tonight's topic is the last generation.

Now it sounds a little facetious, it actually sounds a little bit arrogant in a way.

It's fine, I know the truth and you don't know it, I'm going to tell you that.

It's kind of tongue in cheek, what I'm doing here.

But I'll tell you what this grows out of.

Tonight, the title is, it's time someone finally told you the truth about the last generation.

Tomorrow morning, about the Adventism's invisible gorilla.

I know tomorrow morning is, you know, visitor Sabbath and all that.

Even though it has Adventist right there in the title and all that, you're gonna like it.

Tomorrow afternoon, it's going to be it's time someone finally told you the truth about the human nature of Christ.

And then the last message will be It's time someone finally told you the truth about the grace of God, I'm sorry, grace and the imputed righteousness of Christ.

Now, you're going to have to bear with me through some of these and I'll tell you what this grows out of.

And you'll get a little bit more of this as we go.

My mom and dad separated when I was young and my mom was remarried.

She left the Adventist church and I along with her when I was about 14 years old.

So I'd gone to Adventist education up and through my eighth grade year.

We left not just Adventism, but we left Christianity.

We had no Christianity in our home for 10 more years after that.

The Lord, through some really amazing and miraculous events in my life, was able to redirect my attention to him and I praise him for that.

I shared it when I was out here for restoration.

And so I've been back in the Seventh-day Adventist church for 22 years now.

I will tell you that something that especially in recent years wearies me, and I'm not verbally inspired so I may not say everything right.

There's a saying that I think is especially fitting in our day.

It says, we finally mastered the art of almost saying something.

There are certain topics in our church that we're not even allowed to talk about without getting labeled and marginalized.

I don't think that, incidentally, it generally happens in the context of people who are supposed to be free thinkers.

And so I recently was at a, I don't want to give everything away.

But I was recently at a conference where there was a panel discussion on the last generation.

At the end of it, I kind of felt like, wow, they almost said something.

Because we're so afraid of what people might think if we say what we think about, or more than that, what's clear.

Tonight I want to talk to you about, and incidentally, that panel discussion was on the last generation.

I can't, I've sworn, I've gotta break my silence on this.

And when I even say that, break my silence, as I look back even in past years in my ministry, there's certain topics that I just wouldn't get into a lot.

Not because I didn't believe them, not because I didn't think they were clear from Scripture, but because I knew there would be repercussions.

Well you know what, a minister can't just preach what people want to hear, especially in the days we're living in, especially if it's a topic that directly applies to the days we're living in.

So with that said, I want to start with a word of prayer, ask the Lord to bless our time as we discuss the truth about the last generation.

I'd invite you to bow your heads with me at this time if you would please.

Father in heaven, Father I ask tonight, as we've entered upon the hours of the Sabbath, the Holy Sabbath.

Your presence is with us in a special way during these hours.

So Lord, don't fail us now, and we know you won't, but I pray your spirit would be present to speak to our hearts and minds with clarity.

Not from a vantage point of debate, Lord, but to help us to be clear in our hearts and minds about the truth for this time.

That we may be the people that you've called us to be.

And we ask and pray this in the name of Jesus and for his sake.

How many of you have heard that term, the last generation?

How many of you have heard that term in a negative connotation?

The final generation is another way that the term is used.

Now the term the last generation at least in recent years has been credited, not just the term but what's called last generation theology has been credited to a man named M.

He was a well known and respected scholar, pastor, evangelist, administrator, seminary teacher and author, among other things, in the 1930s and 40s and 50s.

Well I think he retired in 50 or 51, maybe it was 49, but right around there.

Andreason's, incidentally, how many of you have the Seventh-day Adventist Bible commentary?

The commentary section on the book of Hebrews, that was written by Andreason.

He was the contributor on that particular chapter.

He wrote a book called the Book of Hebrews.

I mean he had a lot that people are aware of and maybe some things that they weren't.

1 of his most well known and widely circulated books even to this day is a book that he wrote called the Sanctuary Service.

The second to last chapter in that book, chapter 21, is a book entitled The Last Generation.

And therefore, Andreason became known as the last generation guy, and last generation theology grew out of Andreason, and this is the guy who came up with it and incidentally has been blamed for much of what's going wrong in Adventism.

It's interesting that sometime later a man by the name of Leslie Harding.

Anybody know that name in Adventist history?

Harding was an Adventist scholar known for his work, especially on the sanctuary and other things, but he has done some fantastic things on the sanctuary.

A little book of his entitled Shadows of His Sacrifice.

Leslie Harding, he has a little selected bibliography in that book, and the very first book listed with his comments is Andreasen's The Sanctuary Service of which he says, quote, this is the best book published on the subject, period.

Okay, no qualification, this is the best book except for there's some things in there.

That's just to help you understand that at least for some period of time in the Adventist Church there wasn't any concern with Andreason.

Now, in an article, And I don't have the date, this is online.

You ever look up those things on the internet?

You look up the Adventist Review and you read an article and you're like, when was this thing published?

I guess they do that to keep it timely and fresh.

But this article, I can't tell you the date, but it's an article by Dr.

Revisionist Adventist History

In Michigan Conference, actually in our Union, the Lake Union, we are about to kick off a union-wide evangelistic campaign in March, March 28, actually, called Unlock Revelation.

And prior to doing that, now we're in Cedar Lake, Michigan.

Most of our churches, I'm a pastor, most of our churches aren't in Los Angeles.

And pastors, Adventist pastors, pastor of 3 and 4 church districts of 20 people apiece.

And so we're in Cedar Lake, but we have this series coming up.

In fact, 1 of our local pastors, a young man named Taylor Hinkle, some of you may know Taylor.

Anyway, we decided we're gonna do this thing in our little area.

It's not gonna be a 3 day, it's gonna be a 1 day.

And you know, I hear Some of you guys are like, oh, Los Angeles, that's a long way away.

1 of our challenges was finding the dentists and the doctors.

You guys, I don't know where you'd find them here in Loma Linda, right?

But at any rate, look, the Lord Jesus is coming.

And we wanna let people know, we wanna minister to them just like Jesus did.

And so pray for us with our pathway to health that we're doing in Cedar Lake, Michigan.

I'm glad to be with you here this morning.

And before I get into the message itself, I'd like to have a word of prayer.

So I'm going to kneel and ask God to bless our time together.

If you bow your heads with me at this time, please.

Father in heaven, I thank you for the Sabbath day.

Father, the Sabbath is a time where you've cleared your calendar for us, and we thank you.

You invited us into your presence to reveal to us your love and your purpose for each of our lives.

We aren't some random biological accident, but there's a loving God who has a holy purpose for each 1 here.

I pray, Lord, that you will help us to sense more of that purpose as we're in your presence this morning.

We ask and pray it in the name of Jesus and for his sake, amen.

Now I tossed around this, I tell my students at Emanuel Institute that the first qualification of ministry is adaptability.

How many of you here are in some sort of ministry?

You know how ministry always goes exactly as planned, right?

And so things always happen and I've been wrestling with the different messages, you know, what I was going to be presenting and the Lord laid something, it's not totally different, but it's a little different on my heart this morning.

And the series that I'm addressing this weekend is it's time someone finally told you the truth about.

And this afternoon we're going to be talking about, it's time someone finally told you the truth about the nature, the human nature of Christ.

That's 1 of those things in the Adventist church that we get in these big debates about.

We're not going to be debating this afternoon, this is going to be a study.

It's for the purpose of enrichment, not debate.

And then the last message we're going to be looking at is the...

It's time someone finally told you the truth about faith and works.

This is another 1 of those things that Christians try to figure out where do we, where does, where do, do, does faith begin and works end or works begin and how's the whole thing in there and when do your works become legalistic and all of this kind of thing.

Well it's an important question because you just can't, you know, we talk about pew warming.

Well, when does getting up and getting active become legalistic?

And these are questions, practical questions, questions I get a lot of, so we're gonna be addressing those a little bit.

This morning's message is it's time someone finally told you the truth about revisionist Adventist history.

Some people say, well, this is, we're gonna be talking about Adventist history.

Really, not a whole lot, but a little bit.

And you'll see what I mean in just a moment.

You see, I grew up in the Adventist church, I shared this last night, until I was about 14 years old.

At that time, my family left the Adventist church, well, my mom did, I lived with my mom and my stepdad, left the Adventist church for about 11 years or so, and then I came back into the church later on.

The Lord is so good and merciful and he pursued me like he pursues each 1 of us, to draw us back to himself.

But growing up in the church and especially coming back into the church, it's interesting, I'll talk about 2 different aspects of Adventist history.

And I've read some great histories on, I love religious history.

And 1 of the biggest, what I want to say, Eras in our church, the most influential was the 1888 era.

I don't know how many of you studied history on that.

There's a fantastic book by a man named Ron Duffield called The Return of the Latter Rain, a phenomenal book on Adventist history.

What I discovered, well I didn't discover it in that book, I already knew it, but that book confirmed it, is there are a lot of accounts of what happened in the past that really didn't happen the way they say they happened.

And, you know, that could be my say versus your say, but we have plenty of historical documents to do it, and that particular book documents that very well.

So there are sometimes there are histories that we say, oh, this happened and that happened, and you go back and you find out, well, that's not exactly what happened.

And so when we use the term revisionist history, that just means it's a history that really didn't happen just the way they said.

Now there's that type of church history, and there's also personal history.

And ever since I've been back in the Adventist church, I always hear these stories, they're unending stories about the grinding legalism of Adventism, when you had to do this and do that and do the other.

And all these things so you could be saved.

And I'm so glad we're past that and that kind of thing.

What's interesting to me from my personal experience is, now I've been back in the church now 22 years, is what I hear described in stories is something I've never experienced in 22 years in the church.

So whatever, if it happened, it didn't happen just like that and it certainly didn't happen in 22 years.

Now you're gonna say, oh wait a minute, I experienced that.

So I want to suggest something to you this morning, you're going to have to bear with me, as we look at another perspective.

Now how many of you are familiar in the invisible gorilla experiment was they had a group of young people passing basketballs around.

I believe there were 3 in black shirts and 3 in white shirts.

So they're passing, the 3 are passing here, and the other group, the 3 are passing there.

They played the video to their subjects in the experiment, and they said, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to watch carefully and count how many times those in white shirts pass the basketball.

How many times the basketball changes hands.

Now you have to be careful, watch closely because sometimes they'll fake a pass and it won't change hands.

Now that was what they were supposed to do.

Now what happens is they begin passing the ball around.

In the middle of this, and it's about, I don't know, maybe a minute, maybe 2 minutes most, this little video.

But in the midst of them passing the ball around somebody walks out.

So here you have the frame, say the frame of the screen is right here, they're passing the ball around.

Somebody walks out in a gorilla suit, stops in the middle, goes like this, walks out of the frame on the other side.

They ask the people afterwards, how many of you saw the gorilla?

The Human Nature of Christ - Part 1

I'm going to be talking this afternoon, the series is titled, It's Time Someone Finally Told You the Truth About.

Remember, that's kind of tongue in cheek.

I'm not presenting myself as the expert on everything.

I'll introduce a little bit more about that in a minute.

But this afternoon is the human nature of Christ.

And 1 of the reasons I shared, if you weren't here last night, there are certain topics that you're almost not even allowed to discuss in Adventist circles anymore.

I don't like an atmosphere where you can't investigate.

I don't like an atmosphere where you can't discuss.

Now somebody had told me earlier this afternoon they were thinking about being here and they said, you know, I'm just not sure.

I figure everybody's pretty much got their mind made up on this subject anyway.

You better not have your mind made up on this subject.

I don't have my mind made up on this subject anyway.

I don't have my mind made up on this subject from this standpoint.

When we're talking about the nature of Christ, we're talking about the nature of God, when we're talking about the nature of God, you don't understand it yet.

We're told it's going to be the science and song of redeem through eternal ages.

So I hope you don't have a mindset that you're not going to learn anything more.

Now our purpose here this afternoon is not for debate, as I mentioned earlier, but more for edification.

And I want to touch on a little bit of what we looked at last night before I jump into this particular topic, before I do that, I'm going to kneel and ask God to bless our time together.

So I'm gonna invite you to bow your heads with me at this time.

Heavenly Father, Father, once again, we just thank you for the privilege we have of being here in your presence on your holy Sabbath day.

Lord, if we've ever needed the Holy Spirit in human history, Lord, it's now.

And as we come together and we're studying these subjects together today, We need your spirit, the spirit of truth, to lead us into truth, to give us understanding, to humble our hearts, open our ears.

I pray Lord that you would touch my lips and that the words I speak would give glory and honor to your name.

And Lord, I ask and pray all of this in the name of Jesus and for his sake.

Amen Now I want to just briefly okay, it's up there now When we talk about the human nature of Christ I'm gonna share a number of quotes here and I had wanted to have slides for them I didn't and so what I did is I gave you a URL.

If you happen to have a smartphone you can pull up the notes I'm going to be following right there, so at least you have some reference point, and you can look at it later on because I'm not going to read my notes and I'm not probably going to touch on everything in my notes today.

This is not intended incidentally to be an exhaustive study on the nature of Christ in the time period that we have.

But it will be food for thought for you and hopefully, like I said, a little bit of encouragement and direction.

Last night we talked about the truth about the last generation.

And I told you there were 2 things I was, reasonably, actually I told you there was 1 thing I was positively certain about, and 1 thing I was reasonably sure about.

The thing I was positively certain about is there's gonna be a last generation.

And the point that I was reasonably certain about is that some of us are going to be part of it.

So that makes it important for us to understand.

And the reason I decided to share what I did, as I said last night, is this, when you talk about, some of you are aware of this, maybe some of you aren't, but when you talk about a last generation, it's a subject that is very marginalized in the church today.

It's criticized and ridiculed like you would believe such a thing, and it's so non-grace, non-gospel-centered.

But as Seventh-day Adventists, we have to remember something.

And it's rooted in the concept of the sanctuary.

What the sanctuary, the heavenly sanctuary teaches us is that Jesus is doing a work.

Now this isn't just taught in the sanctuary of course, but when we look at the salvation picture, the work Jesus is doing is putting away sin.

Okay, so He's in the heavenly sanctuary and from the biblical vantage point, he's going to finish his work in the sanctuary, i.e.

When he completes that, he's going to put off the priestly garments, he's going to put on the garments of vengeance, he's going to come back not as a priest, but as a king and receive his people.

He's not gonna do that until his work in the sanctuary is finished, i.e.

It wouldn't make sense for the high priest to leave the sanctuary when sin wasn't put away, amen?

And so it's from that standpoint that we have a clear understanding.

Now you're not gonna get this from the evangelical churches and this is our problem.

We go to the evangelicals and they ridicule us because they don't understand this framework.

They come from a whole different framework, and instead of us being bold and saying, listen, we have a high priest who can save to the uttermost, we cower and say, well, yeah, I guess it was all done at the cross.

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It's Time Someone Finally Told You the Truth About...

Revisionist Adventist History

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