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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Adrian Zahid

The Great Omission

Dear Father, I come before you and I want to make some trades.

I trade in any eloquence that I have for influence.

I trade my unrighteousness for your son's righteousness.

Father, I pray especially for the young people in this room today.

May their hearts be touched, and may they see the potential that they have in working with you.

I ask that you bless me today and bless my ears.

For those of you who do not know me, my name is Adrian Zahid.

I am the Associate Director for Avinhope, and for those of you who are more familiar with the church manual, I am the Assistant Sabbath School Superintendent of Avinhope.

And I think it is important for us from time to time to examine what we are as a group and what we're trying to accomplish as a group.

Because if we're not on the same page, then it can be disastrous.

There is a story that was published a few years ago of, I think it was in London.

Some of the buses, or most of the buses, weren't stopping to pick up the riders as they were on their route.

And so people wondered what was going on.

And people were getting upset, people would run after the buses and they just wouldn't stop.

And they just kept doing it over and over again, until finally people started writing to letters to the editor, saying that the buses are not stopping to pick up the passengers.

And the editor finally got tired of it, and he wrote an editorial.

And then the response came from the head of the transportation for that city.

He said, if our buses stop to pick up the people, then we will get behind schedule.

If we stop to pick up the people, then we will get behind schedule.

If we stop to pick up the people, we will get behind schedule.

And we certainly don't want to get behind schedule here at Avent Hope, but we certainly want to pick up the people.

There's another illustration that is given.

Stephen Covey in his book, I think it's called The Speed of Trust, he interviewed or surveyed 23, 000 employees of a single firm, trying to find out exactly how many people agreed with the mission and the vision of the company and were working to fulfill the the mission and the vision of that company.

And the core real correlation that he got from the numbers was He expressed it in terms of a soccer team.

He said that if the same numbers were to be applied across the board to a soccer team, you know, for a soccer team, when they take the field, there's 11 players.

He said that 4 of the 11 would know what part, what they're supposed to do on the field.

That is, they would know which team they were on.

Just they would just know which team they were on.

2 of the 11, this is a little unstable, I may have to go to the middle to do this, 2 of the 11 would actually care which team they were on, okay?

And only 2 of the 11 would know which goal to aim at.

The rest of them would be in some way working against their team, scoring own goals or hitting their own players or whatever.

So what he drew from this is that most employees of companies, of corporations, and even churches, most members of these groups really do not know what their vision is and what they're trying to accomplish.

And as a result, inadvertently, they end up hurting their own company and hurting their own teammates in this battle for winning.

There are 2 groups that I have somewhat broadly identified in the Adventist church.

And maybe if I wrote bigger or thicker it might… Okay, so there's 2 groups there's 1 1 group that is called can you see it now yeah you can salvation by information And please forgive me if my spelling skills defeat me in this purpose.

But there's this group called Salvation by Information.

The second group is the Don't Ask, Can't Give crowd.

2 groups, Salvation by Information and Don't Ask, Can't Give Crowd, broad generalizations of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And just a disclaimer, I have been a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church for 16 years, a baptized member.

My father has served 35 years in the ministry and also as conference president in the church.

And my grandfather has served the same 35 years as a pastor of the church.

And in the words of our general conference president, he says that the youth should take ownership of the church.

And so today I'm going to encourage you to take ownership of this church.

And so as I describe this church, I'm not criticizing it because it's my church, but I'm just describing a problem and then hopefully a solution.

So the Salvation by Information crowd, their information that they gain, the Revelation seminars, the Daniel seminars, the study on the 144, 000, the study of the spirit of prophecy does not move them to do anything in the church, okay?

And they know the most, but they do the least.

They have this subtle plan of trying to somehow, through gaining information, be able to stand at the end of time.

And their whole goal is self-preservation.

And so what happens is when they go out to do evangelism, they have so much info, if they ever go out to do evangelism.

They have so much info that they do an information overload.

They expect their people, whoever they're working with, to go from 0 to hero in just 1 conversation.

And so the conversation is like this, my dear friend, the Seventh-day Adventist Church is the true church of the living God.

The Sabbath is his seal of perfection on your soul.

And so we ask you to join the true Sabbath-keeping church and be ready and become part of the 144, 000.

And it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if this person has never heard of the church or is part of another church or couldn't care less and needs to be convinced why he needs to join this church.

But they do this, and so they have this 0 to hero thing and they try and they fail.

And when they fail, they say, well, the world is just not ready.

These guys are just not ready to hear the message.

Or they just feel like these people just do not love Jesus.

Then there's the don't ask, don't give crowd.

They have a superficial Christian experience.

They haven't asked Christ, and so they cannot really give anything to anybody.

They haven't asked of Him, so they can't give.

They can't really model what Christianity is supposed to be, because they really haven't lived it.

And yet they want to really work hard and try to bring people in because they hear the pastor saying we need to bring people in.

And so they go out and they bring people in.

But the problem is that they are untrained in Christ's method of winning souls.

And so they win by fear or they win by friendship or they win by whatever means possible.

They bring people in but the problem is that they don't know how to keep those people in and So because they themselves really do not have a spiritual experience, they don't have that living connection with Christ, they cannot really hold on to someone else and help them get connected with Christ.

And as a result, when the people that they bring in fall out, they fall alone.

And they're so far removed from other people that when they fall, no 1 hears them fall, and they fall out of the church.

And today, just briefly, I want us to look at John chapter 3 to see Christ's method of evangelism, Christ's method of winning souls, Because we're here not to find out the latest and the greatest in soul winning, but to find out Christ's method because it's the only method that has long-term results and brings you to salvation.

John chapter 3, if you look here, he's talking to someone who knows about the Bible and so he is using some theological, some theological text that he knows that that can reach this person.

Reaching him at his level, his exalted level.

But it's still very simple and he doesn't come out and say, hey, you need to be born again.

Notice in verse 3 he says, Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man, not you, a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Then he goes on to say, after he has put that out there, and Nicodemus is a theologian, he wants to see the kingdom of God, and he really wants to be there.

Now he sees this need, and he's like, well, what is it?

And then Jesus says, So he explains this a little more.

And then in verse 7, he finally says, "'Marvel not that I say unto thee, ye must be born again.'" Once he created the need, then he becomes way more specific and he says, you need to be born again.

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The Great Omission

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