Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

<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>

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Faithful Talks

Louis Torres

1. A Lost God

2. The Bridegroom is Coming

3. Faithful

4. The Sons of God

5. On the Throne

Tonight's presentation, how many of you have been at weddings?

And some of you are hoping to get married, wannabes, Someday?

Well, I've been to many weddings, and in every country you go to, there's kind of a different slant to the way they do weddings.

I remember I was in Romania, and they wanted me to celebrate a wedding.

And I was a little nervous because I didn't know what they do, how they do it.

And it turned out to be completely different than what I was used to because I was waiting up the platform at least for an hour and I was not sure what was going on whether or not a wedding was gonna take place or not.

But the people in the audience, they were sitting there and everybody was peacefully just waiting.

And it turned out that what they do is that the bride dresses up in a white gown and then she is supposed to hide someplace in her house.

And the groom is supposed to come and try to find the bride.

And when he gets to the door, the families are supposed to try to discourage him from even wanting to find her.

And so he goes and he has to demonstrate his earnestness and his longing to be able to get a hold of this bride.

And they spend their time badgering back and forth.

Well, there was a mistake, this is not the right house.

You know, they could go through all this.

No, it's not that I don't believe, well look, okay, you come and look inside for yourself.

So then he's supposed to come into the house and begin to look throughout the house until finally he hits the right room, he opens the door and there she is in her splendor.

And then he takes her and as he comes to the door, a band is waiting at the door.

And they begin to walk toward the church, and the bride and groom are walking behind the band, and the family are following behind.

And then I could hear some music in the distance, and it got louder and louder and louder.

And the band walks into the church playing their music as the bride and groom come in.

And then what I did not anticipate was that it was not a short ceremony.

Anyway, so they're supposed to sit there, the bride and groom, and the preacher's still standing.

So I'm standing there, and they sit down.

And the reason they sit is because the friends and family and all that are going to take this opportunity to, okay, there we are, they're gonna take this opportunity, there they are sitting, can you see that?

And so they're gonna listen to all sorts of poems and songs and poems and songs and poems and songs.

And finally, after they're finished, you cannot preach a 10-minute sermon.

It has to be at least a half an hour with translation, which means that the sermon is about an hour long.

But they're sitting, so they're enjoying all of this.

And finally, after all of that, then they stand up and then we do the normal vows, exchanging of vows and finally get married.

And what's interesting is that I went and did this wedding in 1991.

And I returned back to Romania in February.

It represents a total member involvement.

What's happening is that the general conference president is encouraging membership to be involved in sharing the gospel.

So I had to go over in December to begin with to prepare the ground.

I had to train 2, 070 preachers, lay preachers.

And after that, then 100 of us went over with the 2, 000 plus preachers, and we did over 2, 000 meetings at the same time throughout the country of Romania.

And then I had to go to Ukraine and do training over there in December.

In the Ukraine, I don't know how many people were involved because they actually satellited the whole program to the whole Soviet Union.

And so I know hundreds and hundreds of people listening to it.

So at the same time, we launch evangelistic meetings.

And I don't know how many of you know about this, but you are able, if you'd like to participate in 1 of these, just go on the website of TMI.org, and you can see the different countries that they're gonna be holding meetings at, and you can then volunteer and participate and preach your own series.

Of course, they'll give you the sermons and all that and prepare you, and you can participate for 2 weeks when they're in another country and do an evangelistic meeting.

How many of you would like to do something like that?

Okay, and so all you have to do is to do tmi.org, okay, www, and there you'll see the countries.

Last year, they did meetings in Rwanda and 100, 000 people were baptized.

And presently, there are 20, 000 evangelistic meetings going on in East Africa.

And then there'll be 20, 000 meetings going on in West Africa and then in 2018, I went in January to the Philippines to prepare the conference leadership, talking about the Sava School, personal ministries directors and training them how to train because next year in 2018, Japan is gonna have the program, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, et cetera.

So there'll be thousands of meetings going on at the same time.

Can you imagine seeing 100, 000 people being baptized at the same time?

So anyway, I returned back after 1991, about How many years is that?

And so the couple that I married showed up just to thank me for what I did 25 years ago.

And they were still in love, still excited.

It was just a wonderful thing to see this couple.

So, weddings then are filled with thoughts of joy, festivity, and celebration, et cetera, aren't they?

And it's interesting that the Bible, the Bible uses a lot of wedding stories as messages.

So let's pray together as we say the word of God.

Father, thank you for the privilege we have to study, to pray, to consider your messages to us.

The Lord used different wedding scenarios to bring to us messages And 1 of the things that he did was he gave a message before the wedding message in Matthew chapter 24.

Now if you see what I wrote there, Matthew 24 comes before Matthew 25.

Well you say, pastor, that's obvious, you know, 25, yeah, 24 comes before 25.

But here's the point that I've discovered recently, that most of us don't catch, and that is, that 24 and 25 actually are together, not separated.

By the way, the person who separated the Bible into verses and chapters was a man back in England who was riding on the back of a horse, and while he was doing that, he was dividing the Bible.

So the Bible originally did not have chapters and verses as you have it.

That's why in the Bible, when you read the Bible, it doesn't say go to Jeremiah, or it doesn't say Jeremiah chapter so and so.

It just says Jeremiah said or Moses said.

The reason for that is that in those days there were no divisions of the Bible as we have it today.

Back to Menu

Series

Faithful Talks

2. The Bridegroom is Coming

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

GYC SE 2012 Seminar: Lessons in Warfare

Special Forces

51m

A Sure Foundation

31m

The Godhead- Part 3

1h

Keeping Focus

Keeping Focus Part 3

48m

Keys of Revelation

16. The Day the Devil Dies

57m

03 Waiting

48m

Elijah

03 Willing to Give Up Everything

55m

Loss

41m

Elijah: Part 1 - Where Is Your Fire?

49m

Breakout Session B

The Last Attack

56m

Got Circumcision?

31m

Plenary

The Lamb and the 144,000

1h 9m

Sound Doctrine