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Manchester South SDA Church

Identity Theft

Adam Ramdin

1. Origin, Purpose and Destiny of Adventism in Revelation

2. He Says She Says

3. Reformation & The Remnant

4. Lessons From 1888

5. Pioneer Stories

6. The Missing Part

Father in heaven, we pause to thank you for your goodness, your mercy to us.

We thank you, Lord, for bringing us through this day.

And as we gather together here as a church family, whether we know others here or whether we don't, we thank you, Lord, for the commonality of faith that we can share, and the purpose of coming here.

I pray, Lord, that you would speak to our hearts.

I pray, Lord, that you would speak through me.

And I pray, Lord, that we may reflect upon your word this evening in a personal way.

The sermon title tonight is entitled He Says She Says.

I don't know about you but growing up I learned a phrase in school that we would sometimes repeat to other boys and girls on the playground.

And it went something like this, sticks and stones may break my bones, But, we would say, names will never hurt me.

Now I'm not here to talk on how that saying is actually not that true anyway.

But what we would say when we'd say 6 and stuff will break my bones but names will never hurt me, what we were trying to convey, the underlying message we were trying to convey was, I don't care what you say about me.

You can say whatever you want about me, but I don't care.

Today in life, we're kind of taught to not listen to Some of the negative things that people may say about you.

Have your own identity, be sure in who you are, and don't let what others say about you form you.

To be sure in yourself, to know where you come from, to know why you're here, and be sure in yourself, and don't let other people mold or shape you I Was reading a book recently I posted a picture on Facebook maybe you saw it of it's called the insanity of God if you've never read the book it came out about 2 years ago it's a fascinating book by I forget his name I think it's Nick Ripken.

The first half of the book is his account of being a missionary in the country of Somalia right after their civil war of 1992.

And it's just heart wrenching as he describes what it was like to be literally 1 of a handful of Christians in the country.

They could literally count them on 1 or 2 hands.

What was it like to be a missionary in a country that's completely devoid of God or Christianity?

The second half of his book describes how he then traveled to hundreds of churches, Tens of countries around the world and visited Christians in countries where they had been persecuted.

And he just sat down with these Christians and interviewed them and got their stories.

And some of the stories were just fascinating.

He went to the old Eastern Bloc countries.

He went to some of the Muslim countries in Southeast Asia, and he got story after story after story.

And then he comes to his conclusions at the end of the book.

But some of the stories were fascinating and some of the the situations were really really interesting for example he went to china and he was visiting with the church there in china and he was talking to them about persecution like people there didn't really have too much of a problem with being persecuted.

And at least 3 times in the book when he's talking to people, he says to them, wow, these stories are amazing, you need to write it down.

And then 1 man actually just took him to the window and said, The sun is rising up over the horizon there, isn't it?

He said, at home, do you write down that the sun rises every day in a journal?

He said, we don't write down that we get persecuted for it's just normal.

In China, he found out when he went there, you couldn't be a church leader in China unless you had been to prison.

Nominating committee meets, we like to nominate so and so to be a church leader.

You could only be a church leader if you'd served time, proving your commitment to the cause.

Without prison time, you were just a girl or a boy.

The stories that he wrote there in the book though, it was people writing their stories and 1 of the conclusions he came to was that the ability to witness, and this really resonated with me, The ability to witness does not depend upon the political system that someone lives under He said we in the West we pray for people's freedom Why so they can be layered to see and like us He says they don't pray for freedom, they pray for obedience.

We're here in the West thanking God for the freedom so that we can be Christian and no 1 knows we're Christian.

See they don't pray for freedom, They pray for obedience.

And he says 1 of the conclusions at the end of the book was that the ability or the opportunity rather to witness does not depend on the political system that you were born under.

It's just the consequences are different depending what country you live in, but everyone has the freedom granted by God to be a witness.

The Christians in that book that I was reading about though Had an experience where other people knew for sure There was no question They knew for sure that they were a Christian.

There was no like, I'm not quite sure, you know.

No, everyone that was writing about other people would know well that's a Christian and they were often a Christian in spite of all the situations around them You see we have been taught to be personally confident in what we say and yesterday I said that you know as an adventist We should know why we're a seven-day adventist.

Amen We should have personal confidence in our understanding of god's word and know why we're a christian or know why we come to church or we should know why we believe that Jesus is a divine being and part of the Godhead.

We should know why the seventh day is a Sabbath.

We should know why the sanctuary was on earth but was also a replica of what was what is sorry in heaven we should know that when the dead die they don't go to heaven but they go to the grave and they await the resurrection as a seventh day adventist christian we should know these things we should know why we are a christian and oftentimes we we turn to bible characters certainly a bible to the book of daniel oftentimes we turn to bible characters that illustrate those traits of character and we look at those bible characters as people that we want to emulate in our lives daniel stands as a prime example of that daniel grew up in jerusalem there in jerusalem he would have gone to his his nice church school as we would say he would grow up in a very protected environment at the age of 15 or 16 his life was shattered he was ripped from his home essentially no parents for the rest of his life, becoming an orphan at the age of 15 or 16.

He was taken to a foreign country after he had to walk 800 miles across the hot Arabian desert.

As he gets to the foreign country he's there in the center of the universe sorry center of the globe the biggest city there and as they're you know as you know you read the story the food spread out in front of them they're about to eat and the bible tells us in daniel chapter 1 and verse 8 that famous verse that we read read so many times in church it says but daniel did what he purposed in his heart that he would not he would not defile himself with a portion of the king's meat nor with the wine which he drank.

And we look at this story and we say, Amen.

And then we turn to our some of the Adventist hymnal and we sing Dare to be a Daniel.

And then if you go through Daniel's life, you can find Daniel in Daniel chapter 2, he's standing for God again.

His life is on the line, he's about to get killed and he goes into the king and he tells the king the meaning to the vision and he tells him what it means as well and the king's like wow you're amazing then you get to Daniel 3 well Daniel's not really in Daniel 3 the 3 hebrew boys are in there and then you go to daniel 4 nebuchadnezzar gets converted in daniel 4 written by nebuchadnezzar then you get to daniel 5 and daniel 6 and at the end of daniel's life so in daniel 1 you've got him as a 15 year old 16 maybe 17 year old in Daniel chapter 6 Daniel is now about 87 years old.

So we've got the example of the beginning of his life chapter 1 and then chapter 6 we have the end of his life and in Daniel chapter 6 you have the story you know the story I don't need to recount it too much to you.

What empire are we living under now in Daniel 6?

It's not Babylon anymore, it's Medo-Persia.

So picture the scene, you know you've had a change of emperor, but despite the change of emperor, the prime minister stays the same.

That's like Donald Trump winning the American election, but keeping on Barack Obama's vice president as his vice president doesn't happen.

It's like Jeremy Corbyn going to power and keeping Theresa May as his vice prime minister, whatever you call it here, deputy prime minister.

And if that did happen under a Labour government, you can imagine what all the Labour MPs would think of the Deputy Prime Minister from the other party.

So Daniel and Daniel 6 is now the other party, the other empire serving over the Persian empire.

You know the story, they try and frame him.

Verse 10 says he knew the writing was signed.

And then you come down to verse 15 says these men assembled unto the king and said to the king No, king that the law of the medes and the persians is that no decree nor statue which the king established may be changed And verse 16 says Then the king commanded and they brought daniel and cast him into the den of lions and the king spake and said to daniel What does the king say the king says your god whom you serve continually?

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Series

Identity Theft

2. He Says She Says

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

The Left-Handed

41m

Testimony of Christian Berdahl

2h

Of Prophecy and Praise

39m

Seminar: Live the Light: Personal Testimonies

From Trials to Triumph, From Atheist to a Theist

48m

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Most Important Book Outside of the Bible - A Deeper Look at The Great Controversy

02-Lessons From the Church in the Wilderness and the Reformation

1h

Adult Sabbath School

Adult Sabbath School Second Sabbath

40m

Cosmic Conflict

4. Martian Men and Venusian Women

1h 5m

Who Am I - A Crisis in Identity

04 Love... But Lead

1h 3m

The Second Conversion of Peter

1h

Scott Moore: Do or Die

Communicate: Say it or Die

57m

Established in the Present Truth

The Law of the Lord is Perfect

1h 7m

Sound Doctrine