Ellen White looked into the future and trembled. What did she see? An examination of the Alpha and Omega apostasy.

GYC 2016: When All Has Been Heard

<p>Ellen White looked into the future and trembled. What did she see? An examination of the Alpha and Omega apostasy.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Sanctuary Under Siege

David Shin

1. The Shaking

This message was presented at the GYC 2016 conference, When All Has Been Heard, in Houston, Texas.

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

They've asked if you could move in toward that way a little bit.

Yeah, that's, I mean, as much as possible toward the edges if possible to make room for people that are still coming in and make it easier.

And then we'll have a word of prayer and get started here in a little bit.

Trust you've had a wonderful GYC experience thus far and that you had a good night's rest.

My name is David Shin and I am presenting a seminar entitled Seminary, no it's Sanctuary, it's been a long night, Sanctuary Under Siege and we will be covering what I believe are some of the most pivotal issues in Adventism, and as we go on, it may get a little bit controversial for some, but that's okay as long as we're biblical.

And I want to invite you to bow your heads with me as we open with a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for this opportunity that we have to study the Word of God in freedom.

We praise you for this opportunity to study the sanctuary, which makes us distinctively Seventh-day Adventists.

We pray that you would bless us as we open your Word.

May the Spirit that inspires also be the spirit that instructs.

I want to begin by doing a brief overview of the seminars that we're going to be doing during GYC.

And if you open your seminar booklet to page 15, you will see Sanctuary Under Siege, and today we're talking about the shaking.

We'll be doing a brief historical reflection in terms of the sanctuary in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, specifically the sanctuary being questioned.

The second seminar is the hijacking, and I believe this is 1 of the pivotal notions that has helped me to understand Protestantism as well as Catholicism.

Number 3, we're doing the central pillar and it is a fundamental teaching that if you miss, We really don't have an understanding of what it means to be a Seventh-day Adventist.

The next seminar is entitled Gospel Wars and what I describe as the holy grail of living a balanced theology.

We have this pendulum that swings back and forth.

On Friday, we have a topic entitled Last Generation Theology.

And it seems to be a term that is, many are allergic to in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

I'm going to be doing a brief history of M.

Andreason's theology, questions on doctrine, and then Hepinstall's theology, who is arguably the most influential theologian of our generation.

In fact, he's the theologian that no 1 has heard of, but many people are influenced by his theology.

And then I'll do a personal reflection after that.

The sixth seminar on Saturday is the Omega Apostasy.

Ellen White described the Alpha of Apostasy in 1902, 1903 with Kellogg and what took place in Battle Creek.

She said that she looked forward to the future and saw the Omega apostasy.

And she saw that and she trembled for her people.

So we're gonna be doing an analysis of what happened back during the time of Kellogg and then look at the Omega apostasy and look at how the Protestant movement and the Catholic movement and the Muslim movement are all coming together on this platform built on mysticism.

And even how that is making inroads into the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

I wish I had more time for that topic, but I wanted to make sure to at least give a brief synopsis in the hour that we have.

All right, so that gives you a picture of what we're going to be doing through this.

Believe it or not, the sanctuary is something that many Seventh-day Adventists do not incorporate into their theological structure.

And I believe that this is a pivotal thing that we need to study in this seminar.

And if you have room next to you, scoot in toward the edges.

I thought this would be empty, but thank you for coming.

All right, so let's start right off here in the beginning.

The sanctuary, Great Controversy, page 423.

The subject of the sanctuary was the key which unlocked the mystery of the disappointment of 1844.

It opened to view a complete system of truth, connected and harmonious, showing that God's hand had directed the great advent movement and revealing present duty as it brought to light the position and work of his people." Notice that Ellen White uses a term here.

She says that the sanctuary opened to view a complete system of truth.

Now this is code indicating that the sanctuary is more than a doctrine.

The sanctuary is a framework for doing theology.

Now there is a fundamental difference between a doctrine and a framework.

Now the sanctuary is a doctrine, please don't misunderstand me, but this indicates that the sanctuary is more than a doctrine.

It is like a roadmap that gives us a theological understanding.

Now here is a blueprint of the Mosaic Sanctuary.

It's a bird's eye view of the sanctuary and you can see that it's divided into 3 main compartments.

The courtyard, the Holy Place, the Most Holy Place.

The Holy Place, the Most Holy Place has the Ark with the Mercy Seat.

The Holy Place has 3 articles of furniture, the Table of Showbread, the Altar of Incense, the Lamb Stand.

And The courtyard has the laver and the altar of burnt offering.

This is a roadmap for understanding the work of Christ.

Adam and Eve in Edenic perfection, let me see if I can get this thing going here.

Were in the presence of God in the most holy place.

They had open face-to-face communion with God.

And the sanctuary is like a kindergarten illustration that shows us how God will bring us back to here.

You know, just a very simple kindergarten model.

Adam and Eve were here, alright, Eden lost, Eden restored.

Alright, this is just a very kindergarten framework.

So God is attempting, or I should not say attempting, but bringing this heavenly theme down to a human level of understanding.

Here Adam and Eve were, here we are, and we are going to come back.

Now notice that You do this in 3 distinct stages.

And then here, you have final glorification.

And remember in Revelation chapter 22, the Bible says, and they shall see his what?

They shall see his face and his name shall be on their what?

It indicates that when Eden is restored, we will have the character of God reproduced in us.

2. The Hijacking

Well, it is 1030, so I want to make sure that I'm able to cover the topic in the time that we have.

All right, well let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for this opportunity that we have to study your word.

We pray that You'd bless us as we reflect on a little bit of theological history.

May You speak to us, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Today's topic is the hijacking, but before we do that I want to remind you of these quotes that we discussed in our last seminar.

It opened to view a complete system of truth, connected and harmonious, showing that God's hand had directed the great Advent movement in revealing present duty as it brought to light the position and work of his people." The operative word there is system.

The sanctuary reveals where Jesus is in the plan of salvation.

The most holy place 1844 to the present day.

The sanctuary reveals what Jesus has been doing since his time here on earth in AD 31.

It's our framework and as we discussed Adam and Eve were here in Edenic perfection.

This shows us how God wants to bring us back.

Book education, the central theme of the Bible, the theme about which every other in the whole book clusters is the redemption plan, the restoration in the human soul of the image of God from the first intimation of hope in the sentence pronounced in Eden to that last glorious promise of revelation, they shall see His face and His name shall be in their foreheads.

The burden of every book and every passage of the Bible is the unfolding of this wondrous theme, man's uplifting the power of God which gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Notice, it is about restoration to bring us all the way back.

Now today I want to talk a little bit about presuppositions and assumptions.

And we have the Pharisees in the first century.

Now today, the term Pharisee is a pejorative term.

If you call me a Pharisee, that is not a compliment.

But in the first century, it was a compliment.

They were the most spiritual, quote unquote, and the Pharisees' training was quite extensive.

First, they went through this stage called Beth Tziffer from age 6 to 10.

They would memorize the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

By the age of 10, they had memorized the entire Torah and completed Beth Tzifir.

Imagine a 10 year old memorizing the entire Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Bible.

Those that are the best of the best would go on.

In Beth Talmud, you would memorize the rest of the Old Testament.

By the age of 14, they would have memorized Genesis to Malachi.

They knew biblical languages, but they had certain presuppositions.

And these presuppositions prevented them from recognizing the Messiah.

These individuals that could quote from memory large portions of scripture came face to face with God and did not recognize it.

Now this really shows us that there's something more taking place here than just a face to face interaction with the Word of God.

Now, this is a model that is used during the time of the Enlightenment in terms of our understanding, how we know what we know, otherwise known as epistemology, the science of knowing.

In the Enlightenment model, it was the model that information, the data, would just project itself onto you like a picture onto a film.

There was this notion of pure reason that came to prominence during the time of the Enlightenment, that our minds are able to come to, quote, objective reality and objective truth.

We just have to follow the right methodology.

So the Bible, in hermeneutics, we just need to study the Bible, and the Bible would project onto us information and we would come to objective understanding.

This was the enlightenment paradigm of epistemology, how we know what we know.

Now in terms of epistemology there has been considerable development in terms of presuppositions.

In other words, not only does the information project onto us, but we project onto it.

Culture, education, All of these things are presuppositions that really skew our understanding.

So this model here, if you think that we have pure reason and come to objective truth, is really challenged by this other notion that we interpret, we impose onto the data our presuppositions, our biases.

Now when we look at Scripture, it actually follows a model like this.

Not only does the Bible project onto us, but remember in the New Testament, it says that spiritual things are what?

So in terms of the Pharisees, the Pharisees knew their Bibles, but they were working from a framework of presuppositions that really challenged and changed their understanding of Scripture.

So this shows us that when we come to the text, we are not coming without baggage.

All of us are coming with cultural biases that really skew our interpretation of the text.

Now there's a whole other element of this that we could go into.

Ellen White actually says that there are invisible entities that are next to us when we come to Scripture.

And she says that if we do not pray, We are actually by default having another entity, an evil spirit, there to skew our understanding of Scripture.

She says the spirit that we come to the text determines the assistant that is by our side.

So there's a whole great controversy framework that we don't understand.

So we need to come to the text with humility and with prayer, all right, because spiritual things are spiritually discerned.

And that is the reason why someone with a PhD can read the text and come to the conclusion that this is just a bunch of contradictions.

And then someone with a GED reads the Bible and meets Jesus, alright?

Because John 7, 17, intent is prior to content.

And truthfulness in the heart precedes truth in the objective world.

And the beauty of Scripture is that as we come to the text, we need to refine our presuppositions and make them more biblically compatible.

And it's an ongoing thing that we go through.

We come to the text, refine our presuppositions, and through the work of the Holy Spirit, we can come to a spiritual understanding.

Now this shows you the power of presuppositions.

Look at this picture and then look at this picture.

3. The Central Pillar

Trust you've had a wonderful lunch and it is 2.45 so let's start.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this opportunity that We have to study the Word of God.

We pray that you would bless us this afternoon as we reflect on this very important topic.

Before we get into the heart of today's topic, I want to do a brief theological historical look at Adventist history and its impact on the divisions within the Seventh-day Adventist Church today.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church began with what we call an eschatological beginning in 1844.

It was an end time emphasis, Jesus is coming, the antitypical day of atonement begins in 1844.

Eschatology comes from the Greek word eschaton which means the end.

So it's an end time framework that the Adventist church began in.

In 1888, there was what we call a soteriological emphasis in 1888 with Minneapolis, Righteousness by faith.

It was not as though the Advent movement was born with the removal of righteousness by faith, but in 1888 it was a reaffirmation and a re-emphasis of this reality.

By the way, I'm not making these things up.

This is Fernando Cannelli's analysis of the history of Adventist theology.

Fernando Cannelli is professor emeritus of systematic theology at Andrews Theological Seminary.

All right, in 1960, there was what we call a soteriological turn in which Fernando Canale describes it as going the evangelical way.

And in 1960, there was a division within Adventism between the conservative and the liberal thought of view.

Now it's not by accident that prior to 1960, 1957, you had the book, Questions on Doctrine, that was published.

And we'll be addressing a little bit of that tomorrow.

We could do a whole seminar just on questions on doctrine.

But in 1960, you really had a split, a fissure within Adventism between conservatives and liberals.

And then in 1990, thereabout, you had a cultural turn within Adventism, a worship renewal, and what we would call the secularization of Adventism.

So we began with an eschatological beginning, soteriological emphasis.

In 1960 there was a soteriological turn and an evangelical perspective and the separation between conservatives and liberals, and then you had the cultural turn and the worship renewal of the 1990s.

Now there's something else that we need to recognize as well in Adventist history.

We had the emergence of the Adventist intellectual and the emergence of universities.

In 1960, Loma Linda and Andrews became universities.

In 1980, which is not that long ago, we began having doctoral programs.

And the emergence of higher learning really established a framework for asking questions that we had never asked before, particularly in respect to Revelation inspiration and other aspects of Adventist theology.

And then in 1990, you had university explosions around the world.

So these are some of the dynamics that really influenced Adventist theology.

And as a result of our history and the turns and the emphasis that took place, you have these 4 basic divisions according to Fernando Canale within the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

It has the eschatological start of 1844, it should say the eschatological start of 1844, plus the Soteriological emphasis of 1888 without the turns.

Now I believe that the majority of Seventh-day Adventists today in the pew are what I would call biblical Seventh-day Adventists.

They believe in the inspiration of Ellen White.

All right, then you have another faction within the Seventh-day Adventist Church called Evangelical Adventists or Adventism.

And it's the soteriological turn of the 1960s based in evangelical theology, and it's what Fernando Canelli calls the reduction of Adventism to generic Christianity.

It's essentially an evangelical perspective on salvation with a sprinkle, not a sprinkle, but tacked on with the Sabbath plus our understanding of the state of the dead.

But when it comes to soteriology or the understanding of salvation, it is really evangelical in terms of a limited reduction of Christianity to the courtyard experience.

We'll be unpacking that a little bit more in future sessions.

All right, then you have generic Christianity according to Fernando Canelli, the liberals of the 1960s, so the theological turn, plus the cultural turn of the 1990s, and this is the secularization of Adventism.

On the outer fringes of what he would call evangelical, I mean generic Christianity, you have elements such as theistic evolution, such as a different take on revelation inspiration.

And many of these are in our more progressive, was that the right term?

More progressive intellectual elites of Adventism that believe that Adventism really needs to go beyond our eschatological beginning and kind of find new identity.

So it's a very progressive perspective of Adventism.

Then you have the separationists, according to Canale, believe that the church is Babylon, independent home church movements, and so forth.

And so, that is another element that is an aspect that you could say is a fallout of the theological divisions that took place within Adventism to this day.

So it's not by accident that you go to any average Sabbath school on an average Sabbath, and you may have different elements discussing the Sabbath school quarterly within your church.

I have people in my congregation that are from the top 3, alright?

Top 3, and there's the not separation, it's because they wouldn't be there.

But the top 3, I mean, we have people that I would esteem as biblical.

I have individuals that are more from an evangelical take on the gospel.

And then I have very, very, very, very, very progressive Seventh-day Adventist within my congregation as well.

Ministry is kind of messy when you get in there.

And how do you form a dialogue in this type of a milieu within the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

This is a reality that we're facing right now within the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Another challenge that we're facing is really the fallout of what happened in the 1980s.

We talked about this in our earlier session with Robert Brimsmean, Desmond Ford, Dale Ratzlab, Raymond Cottrell, and this whole notion that there is no heavenly sanctuary and that we're talking about heavenly geography and that when Jesus ascended in AD 31, He went directly into the most holy place in AD 31.

And we talked about that in our last session.

So what we're facing right now in Adventism is that we are in the midst of an identity crisis.

Are we evangelical in the ultimate theological sense?

You know, that's been a real question that emerged since 1957 in questions on doctrine.

Or has the church fallen so low that it now needs to be categorized as Babylon.

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Series

Sanctuary Under Siege

6. The Omega Apostasy

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Parts

1. The Shaking

1h

2. The Hijacking

1h

3. The Central Pillar

1h

4. Gospel Wars

47m

5. Last Generation Theology

1h

6. The Omega Apostasy

1h

Sound Doctrine