The 1st angel’s message is God’s wake-up call to a church steeped in worldliness and backsliding. This message will draw the practical lessons for this generation.

GYC SE 2016: Good News

<p>The 1st angel’s message is God’s wake-up call to a church steeped in worldliness and backsliding. This message will draw the practical lessons for this generation.</p>

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GYC Southeast

Plenary

Mark Howard

Wake-Up Call

Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid!

The Final Exam

Daniel Neacsu

Righteousness by the Death of Me

For Such a Time as This

Preparing for Rain

Well, I'm glad to be here at Southern Adventist University.

I'm looking forward to our time together.

But before we begin our message tonight, I'd like to begin with a word of prayer.

So I'm going to invite you to bow your heads with me as I kneel and ask God to bless our time in His Word tonight.

Father in Heaven, we thank you so much for all of your goodness to us, for all of your mercies toward us.

Lord, we thank you for the Word of Truth and the message you have entrusted to us as a people.

And Father, tonight and in our subsequent nights, I'm asking for a special outpouring of your Holy Spirit.

Father, give us understanding, open our understanding to receive the truth you have to share with us here, not just in an intellectual way, but in an experiential way, Lord, that we may be doers of the Word and not hearers only.

We ask it, Lord, in the name of Jesus and for His sake.

Well, we are starting this evening with our first in a series.

Now the series is entitled the everlasting gospel which in some ways sounds kind of mundane and what I mean by that is it could go any direction but what I want to speak about very specifically over our next several nights together are the 3 angels messages of Revelation 14 and I'll tell you what I mean by that in a minute.

You know I was thinking about this as a Seventh-day Adventist there's a question that we really ought to be asking ourselves today.

And that question is, what are we still doing here?

I mean, seriously, what are we still doing here at Seventh-day Adventist?

This church was raised up to proclaim the soon coming of Jesus Christ over 160 years ago.

And it's interesting to me, and don't misunderstand me, you know, you want to give kudos and credit to people sometimes for the, you know, or to the, you know, the truth or the institution or whatever else.

What I'm saying is, it seems odd to me when we have these celebrations, these centennial and what have you celebrations in the average Church.

I mean, this doesn't seem right for a church that should have been gone a long time ago, that should have fulfilled her mission, especially, well, let me back up a little bit and let me clarify something.

In the Seventh-day Adventist Church, we've gotten to a point in this day and age where fewer and fewer people are really talking about Jesus coming soon.

Now I know we hear, we still hear it a lot, but I know people that'll say, you know what pastor, I thought my kids would never enter college.

I thought, I remember when just like you, I used to say Jesus was coming soon and you know, so on.

The idea is that we somehow feel that the reason we're still here is because God is busy doing something we just don't know what and when he gets around to it he's going to come and we thought it would have been sooner than this but it's not.

The problem with that thinking is that we have very clearly an inspiration and not just a rare statement hither and yon in the writings of Ellen White, but repeatedly we have statements that say that the reason we are still here is not because we're waiting on God, but He's waiting on us to finish the work He's given us to do.

1 such statement is in the book Evangelism and I don't have that on the screen, but it says this, it says, we may have to remain in this world many more years because of our insubordination to God.

That's failure to come under the leadership of your commanding officer or obey your commanding officer.

We may have to remain in this world many more years because of our insubordination to God, but let us not add sin to sin by charging God with the result of our own wrong course of action.

The point is, we are here because we have not taken hold of the work that Christ gave us to do.

So on 1 side of our mouth we're saying, oh, we love Jesus and we're just so glad to be Christians and be his servants in this earth, and yet we're not doing what he told us to do.

And so when we have these celebrations, they, oh, 160 years is the, or 100 and whatever years is a great controversy vision and we celebrate this, that, and the other.

What are we celebrating but our own mediocrity and failure to do what God's told us to do?

We have to have a new look at the mission, and again, why we're still here.

And I'd like you to go with me to the book of 2 Peter.

We're gonna look at a text that is probably familiar with you, but let's go to 2 Peter chapter 3 and just clarify this from scripture.

This is, as I said, a passage that you are probably familiar with, but maybe not in this way, I'm not sure.

It took me a while to connect these 2 texts.

2 Peter 3, verse 9, this is 1 that I had heard for a while, but I'd heard just this verse and it wasn't connected to the rest of the passage.

2 Peter 3, verse 9, the Bible says, the Lord is not slack concerning his promise.

In 2 Peter chapter 3, In fact, the heading in my Bible says, the day of the Lord will come.

It's talking about the day of the Lord or the second coming of Christ.

And you can pick that up in verse 4, where it says that there are scoffers who say, where is the promise of his coming?

So there's the promise we're talking about.

So in verse 9, It says, the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, the promise of his coming, as some men count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Now, basically Peter's saying, you know, God's not slacking off.

You might have thought he should have come sooner.

Jesus should have come sooner and he didn't.

Because God is long-suffering is the word, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.

Okay, so basically the reason that Christ hasn't come yet is he's giving time for people to repent.

He's wanting to give more time so more people can be saved.

Now, like I said, I've heard that verse, but oftentimes for a period of time I hadn't read on, but I want you to go to verse 10 with me.

The Bible says, in the elements will melt with fervent heat, both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.

Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for, and notice that next word, hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will come out with a fervent heat.

So here it brings up a very interesting word for us today, says that we are looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, speaking again in the context of the Second Coming of Christ.

Now if you can hasten something, what does that mean?

Now if you can speed something up, what else by inference can you also do?

And so the Bible's telling us that we have the ability to speed up or slow down the coming of Christ.

Why was it that the Bible said that Christ hasn't come yet?

It's not because God's slack, but because what?

So he wants people to have an opportunity.

And then we have a few verses later where it says, we can hasten the coming of Jesus.

By implication, very clearly, the only way that we can do that is giving people, more people, an opportunity faster.

That means we've got to get the message out.

And that goes right along with what Jesus told us in Matthew chapter 24.

Matthew chapter 24 and we're going to verse 14.

Another well-known passage at least to most to Matthew 24 verse 14 the Bible says, and this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations and what?

So in his signs, the signs in Matthew 24 that Jesus is giving, predicting his coming, he points out 1 of the greatest signs here being the gospel, the proclamation of the gospel.

Once the gospel's preached, the end will come.

That's what it's saying in 2 Peter that God has entrusted his people with a gospel message and when they finish that work he will come but he's not going to come sooner because he wants to give people time right he's long suffering not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance So he looks to his people who should be giving the message, and if we really were on top of it, says we could have hastened the coming of Jesus.

Now I know there are gonna be people who argue this and say, You put it all on God's people.

Look, God works through His people, but let me make something plain here tonight.

If you refuse to be used by God, God will replace you with somebody who will be used.

The Lord will come and you will not keep silent, the scripture says.

Series

Plenary

Wake-Up Call

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

The Ripple Effect

1h 19m

Being Adventist

Born Adventist or Born Again?

1h 2m

Dwayne Lemon Revival

The Wake Up Call

1h 19m

SWYC 2006 Plenary Sessions

The Loud Cry

1h

Back to the Mission

The Battle Cry of the Remnant

1h 1m

There is Hope

Called Out to Stand Out

1h

God Still Speaks

1h 11m

Prepare to Meet thy God

1- What Is the Church?

1h 36m

Power of the Everlasting Gospel

An Unwanted Guest: Jesus at the Door

1h 25m

Taking the Kingdom by Force

48m

The Oil Crisis

1h 28m

Sound Doctrine