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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

Let's bow our heads as we start with a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we pray that you would bless us and speak to us and be with us here in this place at this time.

As I mentioned on Sunday night, the big 3 questions we have in life is where do I come from?

And those are the questions that challenge us at various times in our lives.

Sometimes we're not really bothered about 1 of the questions, but there may be another 1 that's really bothering us.

It may be when you're coming up to the end of high school or college or university, and you really want to know where you're going with your life in the immediate next 2, 3, or 4 years' future.

You know, if you just look at your family, there on the screen is my mother, my father, Aiko's mother and father, and her 101-year-old grandmother on the far right-hand side, who's strong in health, living on her own, in her right mind, and makes her own breakfast every day.

Now, it's important for us to know maybe where our family, personal family, where we come from.

When we look at our ancestors, our parents, our grandparents, and sometimes when we ask questions about our parents, about our grandparents or our great-grandparents, and we find out who those people are, it can explain sometimes who we are today.

Sometimes certain traits of character we can understand when we know that our grandmother or father was like that.

I haven't gone back too far in my generations.

But it's interesting to know where you come from.

It was Edmund Burke who said, those that don't know their history are doomed to what?

And unfortunately in this world, we have seen history repeat itself on numerous occasions, and it's often the negative side of history that gets repeated.

When we are filming for Lineage, this is 1 story that does stand out, Not for the good part.

Maybe I've shared this story with you We were in cambridge at the wesley house myself and clive and we were going to film in the building just next door to it Which is jesus college part of cambridge university and on our way there we stopped and saw this building there it says Wesley House there on the thing.

So we walked into that doorway, and a lady came out and talked to us, and she said, you know, what are you doing?

We told her we were just looking around, and then she proceeded to tell us that this was Wesley House, and she went da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and then heard the word American, and America, da-da-da-da-da-da, Whoa, what did you say?

This lady working for the institution named after him was telling us that he was from America and he was an American.

We very carefully made a slow exit and then as we got to about the peak point where I took the photo we both burst out laughing.

We didn't have the heart to let this lady know, as she told us so confidently.

That's kind of like going for a tour at the Ellen White estate at the General Conference headquarters.

And someone who works for the Ellen White estate then tells you, oh, Ellen White, yeah, yeah, she comes from Hungary and she was Hungarian They say history is linked to identity and if you don't know your history or your family then they question who are you?

When we look at the reformation and we see where God led his people over the years, this is a photo taken inside John Wycliffe's church in Lutterworth, England.

If you're ever driving down the M1 motorway on your way to London or somewhere else in the South, you get to Junction, I believe it's Junction 20.

If you take Junction 20, it's no more than half a mile from the junction, you will run, if you know where you're going, to John Wycliffe's church.

You can't miss it, it's on the hill, you just literally drive towards what you can see.

And there you've got John Wycliffe's church.

He was the first person who translated the Bible into the language of the common people, translated the Bible into the English language.

He translated the Bible, and you can see a copy in the Old English as to what the Bible looks like.

These men are some of our spiritual heritage.

Ellen White writes a whole chapter in the book Great Controversy about John Wycliffe and she says he was 1 of the foremost of all the reformers in breadth of intellect, in firmness of conviction, etc.

She says he was 1 of the best reformers that ever was.

Coming after John Wycliffe you had this man here.

You can go to Prague today, that's the old town square, and there looking down over the old town square is a statue of John Hus, or as they say in Czech Republic Jan Huss.

He also had gotten a copy of John Wycliffe's writings and he was starting to preach the Bible in the language of the common people there in the Czech Republic and slowly the darkness was being peeled back.

Then a hundred years later Martin Luther was on this very staircase.

It's 1 of the most authentic places in Rome.

If you go to Rome and get a tour guide, they tell you a bunch, they tell you lots of stories that you question the historical authenticity of much of the stories.

But if you go to this place, you know for sure that on 1 of those steps, Martin Luther was on his knees and then he stood up when he heard the verse in his mind, the just shall live by faith.

Like on those staircase, that staircase, he had an epiphany of understanding about the gospel and got up and walked away You can go to Wittenberg Germany and there is the door It's not the literal door because the door has been moved it was a wooden door and it's been replaced with a metal door but it was on these this door here where he nailed or probably he used some candle wax which doesn't sound as remarkable as nailing a 95 thesis to the door but either way he posted his 95 thesis to this door in 1517 on the 31st of October the 500th anniversary was last year these men these people who went before us they left a legacy you go to Westminster today you got Westminster Abbey on 1 side and then just across the grass, you've got the Central Methodist Hall, which stands as a legacy of John Wesley's work here in England and America and in other parts of the world.

This here is the Reformation monument in Worms, Remembering the reformers like Martin Luther and some of the other ones.

This is Constance, Germany, remembering the spot where John Hus was burned at the stake.

That stone there on the right is the very spot where he was burned.

And after he was burned, they dug up his ashes.

And just to make sure they got all his ashes They dug the mud up under the ashes as well And then they walked to the nearby River Rhine and dumped his ashes in the River Rhine When you read these stories you realize that men and women stood for something in an era when it was not popular, it wasn't normal, It wasn't the thing to do.

The statues of various of these characters dotted around Europe.

Statues are built to honor the courageous stand that they made.

There's a statue of John Wesley on the left, William Tyndale on the right.

It's right outside the Ministry of Defense overlooking the River Thames in London, right there.

There's a statue of John Knox up in Scotland.

And the 1 there on the right that you can't quite know what that is at the top right that's a cross on the ground in Oxford that marks the spot that Latimer Ridley and Cranmer were burned at the stake on that very spot You know why they were burned at the stake You know as Adventists, What do we understand will be the end time issue, or 1 of the end time issues that we may have to make a stand on?

If you've done a bible study on the mark of the beast or you understand a little bit about that.

We understand that the sabbath is more than just a day of rest, but 1 day and even today it is also a test of your faith and trust and relationship in God.

You know why these men were burned back then?

What was the issue that they were burned over?

It was the issue that we sometimes take for granted today.

We sometimes skip church over it just because we don't like getting our feet wet the issue that they were burned for was communion the question was is the bread the body of christ yes or no what's the answer to the question The answer to the question is no.

But the belief was that the bread is the literal body of Christ.

That when the priest prays over it, it converts miraculously into the literal flesh of Jesus and the wine turns to the literal blood of Jesus and if you deny that we'll kill you that was a life-and-death issue There was a different variance of that.

The Lutherans came up with kind of a hybrid version.

And then Calvin came up with another version.

Zwingli was the 1 who came up with what was called memorialism, which is basically the Adventist view we hold today, that it's simply a symbol of what Jesus did and nothing more.

It's interesting to know what was a life and death issue back then and what's a life and death issue today.

You see the spiritual lineage that we come from is 2, 000 years since New Testament times.

If you think about it Christianity went from being a Middle Eastern slash African religion.

It then went to being a predominantly European religion.

Christianity went from being a persecuted religion when it was illegal it then went to being a popular religion it then went to being institutional and you could argue today in secular Western Europe and America and so on that it's just an indifferent society now.

There's been certain turning points in history.

The translation of the bible John Wycliffe was a turning point.

The translation of the Bible by William Tyndale was a turning point.

The protest of the princes in Martin Luther's day, when they stood up for the liberty of conscience and for the separation of the civil power and the religious power, that was another turning point.

The breakaway of the Protestant groups, so to speak, was another turning point of history where you went from having just 1 church just 1 Christian church that was Catholic now people broke away and said no we're going to be Lutheran no we're going to be Presbyterian we're going to be Anglican we're going to be Methodist and Christianity started to get fragmented Lutheranism Calvinism Anglicanism Methodism and then the rise of America as a nation in general has been a significant turning point in history and as Adventists we understand a significant turning point in our history.

For our church was founded in the United States of America and then from there spread all the way around the world.

When you think of all these different churches, the Church of England that was started by Henry the Eighth.

An interesting history, the Church of England.

The Methodist Church in the 1780s, the Lutheran Church in the 1500s with Luther the Presbyterian Church who started that 1 John Knox.

Which really comes from the Calvinist roots.

These were different movements that started and still continue to this day.

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Series

Identity Theft

3. Reformation & The Remnant

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Essentials for Salvation

01 Feasting on the Word

45m

What is the Sea Beast Doing Today

1h 22m

Go Forward

57m

Dumb Dogs

1h 20m

Boris Jovinov: The Surety of a Prophet

The Surety of a Prophet, Session 1 (Part 1)

59m

Daniel 12

2. Daniel 12: 1290 Days, 1335 Days, and Time of the End

52m

GYC SE 2013: What is Adventism?

Tell the World: Say What?

1h

Recent Developments in the Papal Counter-Reformation

1h 10m

Abandon Ship

43m

Some Roots of Modern Movements in The Church

41m

The Shaking and the Shaken: How to Face the Shaking of God's Remnant

The 2010 General Conference and the Shaking

57m

Sound Doctrine