Why are Seventh-Day Adventists getting sick? Is there something God wants us to learn through this unfortunate situation? In this message you’ll find out why God may have allowed your sickness, and what He wants you to do about it.

<p>Why are Seventh-Day Adventists getting sick? Is there something God wants us to learn through this unfortunate situation? In this message you’ll find out why God may have allowed your sickness, and what He wants you to do about it.</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>

Heavenly Valley SDA Church

Gabriel Arruda

Why are So Many Adventists Getting Sick?

Title of this message is, Why are so many Adventists getting sick?

In 2013, my mother was having an all-out battle for her life.

She was struggling with autoimmune liver cirrhosis.

And she had had a liver transplant back in the year 2000 that saved her life and bought her 12 more years.

And at the end of 2012, her liver cirrhosis symptoms started to come back.

And sadly to say, in April, actually just about a week from today, she will have been dead 4 years.

5 months after that, after some testing, I found out that I had the very same disease, autoimmune liver cirrhosis.

You know, my mom passed away from autoimmune liver cirrhosis.

My mom's mom passed away from autoimmune liver cirrhosis, and the genes were telling me that I had them as well.

I also had many symptoms, just a quick rundown of a bunch of symptoms I had.

My liver enzymes were fluctuating, which for a healthy 30-year-old should not have been happening.

I was having some slight symptoms of jaundice, and for those of you who don't understand what liver failure is all about, that's common with liver failure, some slight symptoms of jaundice.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I got a really bad body odor.

I have other struggles, but that wasn't 1 of them.

And all of a sudden, just out of nowhere, really bad body odor, I broke out in a really terrible skin rash, a skin fungus that at 1 point covered a third of my body and just was taking over.

And also I would get headaches at times depending on what kind of foods I ate.

And certain foods would trigger terrible headaches, sometimes migraines, terrible head exploding headaches.

And so I had several symptoms And by divine appointment, the Lord introduced us to a protocol that within 9 months was able to completely reverse my autoimmune disorder.

I did blood work done and I was in full remission.

And my wife and I were just praising and thanking God for that.

And it took several more years, but the skin issue also cleared up.

That was very difficult to deal with, however, even more difficult than the autoimmune disease, actually.

And so, I preached a sermon on this topic, sharing this testimony, and it went on a really popular website called Audioverse, and it made its rounds, it was shared quite a bit, and had several people contacting my wife and I, and everywhere we would go, we would meet people who were struggling with an autoimmune disease.

And so it was just really hard in a short conversation to tell them what we did.

And so we put together a little two-page PDF that we would give people just with the outline of what we did.

And after a lot more learning and research, We just recently took that little two-page PDF and we upgraded it to a 100-page e-book detailing everything that we did, and it's already helping several people, so we're praising God for that.

And we've actually made that available on our website, revelationrevealedtoday.com.

So, but in the whole process of this, I was asking, I found myself asking myself the question, why are so many Seventh-day Adventists getting sick?

To answer that question, it actually works out perfect because this weekend, as Craig referenced to, is a weekend that the Christian world is recognizing what biblical event?

That's right, the death and resurrection of Jesus.

And so to answer this question, why are so many getting sick in the church, we're actually going to look at 1 of the most popular resurrections in all of Scripture, second to Jesus.

Who would you say, what resurrection would you say was probably the most popular, the most astounding resurrection aside from Christ's?

Please turn in your Bibles, open your Bibles to John chapter 11.

We're going to look at the story of Lazarus in, on Resurrection Weekend, and we want to also answer the question, why are so many in the church getting sick?

John chapter 1, I'm sorry, John chapter 11 and we're going to start in verse 1.

It says, Now a certain man was sick named Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.

Now was Lazarus someone who was known to Jesus or someone who was unknown to Jesus?

Yeah, Jesus knew of Lazarus and his family.

And could you even say that Lazarus was a dedicated disciple of Jesus, yes or no?

Lazarus, Mary, Martha were very strong supporters of the ministry of Jesus, very strong disciples of Christ.

So question, do very dedicated disciples of Jesus get sick sometimes?

And I found, this is another message, but I found there are really 4 reasons why people get sick.

It's a result of being in a sinful world.

We live in a dysfunctional, broken world.

Perhaps you're not following the laws of health, you've done something, and it's simply cause and effect coming into play.

Reason number 3, due to your guardian sins.

You know that we can inherit what the Spirit of Prophecy calls a weak constitution.

We can inherit some things that we have to struggle with for the rest of our lives.

So reason number 3 might be due to our guardian sins.

And reason number 4, why some people get sick, because of God's glory, due to God's glory.

Now, this is the 1 that we're going to focus on for this message.

And I'd like to say that no matter what category you might fall into, whether it's because of sin in general, whether it's because of your sin, whether it's because of your guardian sins, God wants to move all of those categories into category number 4 and have it result somehow, someway in God's glory.

Now let's read verse 2, John chapter 11 verse 2.

It says, it was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.

So the Bible is going out of the way to let us know this is not just any family, this is the Mary, that famous Mary who came and anointed the feet of Jesus.

Absolutely, a well-known biblical figure, Someone who had showered an act of love and devotion on Jesus that we people have been teaching and knowing for over 2, 000 years a famous story and so Question because Mary have done this act of love and devotion, does that mean that her household was free from tragedy?

And this is significant because sometimes when we have been faithful to God, sometimes when we have given our lives in service to Jesus, when we've given our money to the church, when we've given our energy and our efforts to the cause of God, we somewhere in the midst of that kind of get the feeling that we have been entitled to special benefits.

That because of that, that somehow we should be exempt from some of the other tragedies that happens in the world.

Somewhere in the back of our heads, that gets put in there.

And now, are there benefits of being a Christian, yes or no?

You are free from a lot of the things that the world deals with.

You are free from a lot of the sufferings that is out there.

You are protected because you put yourself within the hedge of God's commandments.

And by virtue of simply doing the right thing, you're protected, and by virtue of God's protection, you're protected.

However, these are benefits, the ones that we feel entitled to, these are benefits that God has not necessarily promised.

And somehow when we give our lives in service to God, we kind of feel that we're entitled to these certain benefits, but these are not ones that God has promised us.

And Mary, Lazarus, Martha are an example that tragedy does at times strike at homes at families that have been very dedicated to the cause, very dedicated to Jesus.

Now this is important because I've seen people, perhaps you've seen people, who've been very faithful their whole lives, something happens and it really shakes their faith in God.

Giving my life to the church and supporting it financially, supporting it with my energies and my time, and just to get sick?

It's biblical that sometimes this happens, and we're going to see why it happens.

Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, He whom thou lovest is sick.

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Why are So Many Adventists Getting Sick?

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