A look at the issues of faith and science and how we can deal with the challenges that science presents, not only to our own faith, but also to our witness.

ASI 2018: Business Unusual

<p>A look at the issues of faith and science and how we can deal with the challenges that science presents, not only to our own faith, but also to our witness.</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>

Unusual Faith

Rivelino Montenegro

How is Science Confirming the Biblical View of Our Common Ancestor?

Heavenly Father, thank you for the beautiful opportunity to be here and to discover more of how beautiful your love is and your wisdom is.

Help us to humble ourselves every day more that you will exalt us.

Help us to learn, to understand, and to put in practice what you have taught us in the name of Jesus, amen.

So I will start introducing myself since most of you don't know.

My name is Rivelino Montenegro and you will discover in a few minutes where I come originally from.

I live in Germany, but I'm not German as you have noticed.

And I work in the medical field, although I'm not a medical doctor.

I have a PhD in chemistry and I develop medical devices.

I've been doing that for many years and I have worked in a few countries.

Right now my company is actually in Switzerland.

I live in Germany, but as you know, Europe's quite small.

You can go from 1 place to the other very quickly.

So the reason I made this presentation, I will tell you now, and I have actually presented this a few years ago in Sweden.

There was a youth congress, and they have even filmed, they have in internet this, you probably can see the same presentation that I'm going to do now.

But there is a special reason why I decided to do this presentation again.

And this you will discover in the end of my presentation.

So the reason why I made this presentation in the first place was 1 day I was walking through the streets of the city of Mainz.

Mainz was 1 of the capitals of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nations.

So the Bishop of Mainz was the first guy that Martin Luther challenged with his 95 Theses, because that was the man who was giving the orders to sell The indulgences, exactly.

It's a beautiful city, a lot of history behind.

I was walking through the cities, and I saw these 2 ladies selling orange juice.

So I wanted to buy an orange juice, and I noticed they were talking a language that I could not understand.

And then they told me, and then they asked me, what about you, where do you come from?

And then they went all the way North Africa after crossing the Middle East.

And this lady looks at me and she says, you are not Brazilian.

But she was so serious about that, that I thought I was Swedish at that moment.

So, she was so sure I was not Brazilian, that I was like, hold on, how do you know I'm not Brazilian?

And she said something that made me create this presentation.

She said, I thought all Brazilians were good looking.

So I decided at that time to run a DNA test.

So well, and for my surprise, she was right.

Now I understand why I can't play football, why I can't play soccer.

So, as a matter of fact, I'm only 5.9% from the American continent.

And I'm actually way more African than I'm Brazilian.

I have a 4% no 2% Kenyan genes and Nigerian genes.

Now I understand why when I tried to run the marathon I was only 2% of those guys because I have only the 2%.

So I am actually, now I understand why my name Montenegro is.

I have actually some percentage of the Balkan regions, you know, from Yugoslavia.

So when I was like, man, the lady was right.

And this is a very interesting point, how we all are connected today.

And that's what we're going to talk about this.

We are going to talk about how close connected we are.

You can order the kit and make the DNA test, a very interesting thing.

And the more people does the experiment, of course, the more updated and more precise the results will be.

But the reason I'm making this presentation is because if we look today at the population, and let's imagine, I mean, I will start stating the following, there are no different races.

There is only 1 race, it's called human race, okay?

There are different shades of color of the skin, we have different shapes of the nose and eyes, but they all belong to the same race.

But of course, some people are more related to others.

For example, it's much more likely than an American marries an American than an American marries an Australian, right?

Probabilistically speaking, I mean, I know you married a Brazilian and I married a Lithuanian.

Most people will marry to someone nearby.

So that means some people are more closely related than others, if you look at the gene pool.

If we go back in time, and that's what I want, and imagine for a second that this here represents all the human population, all right?

Some people more closely related to that than others.

We go back in time, We are getting closer and closer to each other as the population decreases.

And we are going back in time, all right, until we come to someone that we call a common ancestor, someone that connects everyone in this room.

No matter if you come from the US, from Africa, from China, from Russia, it doesn't matter.

No matter where you come from, we all connect to 1 person.

And this is believed not only by us Christians, but by the scientific community.

The question actually is How many years did it take between this common ancestor and we today?

How long, how many years were needed for this man that connects everyone and we today with all the different shades and shapes that we have today?

And this has a major impact in our faith.

Okay, it has a major impact and you will see why.

So the question actually is, when did our great-great-grandfather live?

The man who connects everyone today, and this is the most recent 1, okay?

If you go back in time, you'll find other people, but I want to know, who is the 1, the last 1 that connects everyone today.

So, in 1987 there was a paper published by Kahn, and he made some calculations and some tests, and he came up with this number.

He came up with a number of 100, 000 to 200, 000 years ago, the common ancestor lived, the man who connects everyone today.

That was the initial proposition in 1987.

Of course, if you look at this number and If you look at biblical chronology, they don't match.

So there is a problem here, so who is right?

And as a scientist and as a Christian, I come across this very often when I'm trying to preach the gospel and some people tell me, I only believe in science.

And I usually ask them the following question.

JoAnn Davidson

The Great Sabbath Welcome: Revisiting the Glories of God’s Gift of Time

Heavenly Father, we come to you this afternoon asking for your sweet spirit to bless our discussion and our thinking.

We thank you for the gift of the Sabbath and we've been so slow to appreciate its richness.

So please speak to us this afternoon, Lord, and warm our hearts anew.

I'm a fourth generation Seventh-day Adventist.

I've kept Sabbath all my life, and I thought I knew everything there was to know about the Sabbath.

I knew the fourth commandment by memory, and I knew Sabbath starts at sundown Friday night and ends sundown Sabbath evening, and I was gonna do this for God if it killed me because I love Jesus and this is his holy day.

Well, God realized the sincerity of my heart, but he wanted to give me an additional blessing and through a very unusual means, that word unusual, right, as a part of our theme, he broke my heart open to his great gift of the Sabbath.

And I'll share that with you first because you'll see what a hard job it was for God to even do that.

My husband teaches Old Testament at the seminary, and you know that the basic tool of teaching Old Testament is the Hebrew language.

And he studied hard Hebrew to be able to translate Hebrew.

Even when we go on trips, he'd take his Hebrew vocabulary with him and study the Hebrew vocabulary, but he had a dream.

He heard that the nation of Israel had sponsored an intensive Hebrew language school for Jewish people who live around the world and move back to Israel and they don't know their mother tongue.

So they, they, government funds this old pond they call it and they guarantee you that a Jewish person can come there and 6 months be fluent in their mother tongue while they're living, as they live in Israel.

And Dick had heard about that and he just dreamed someday to be able to do this.

Because I guess some of you I'm sure are multilingual.

I guess that the true test that you know another language if you dream in that language and he wanted to be able to dream in Hebrew.

So he was telling this to 1 of his colleagues and he said, well listen, apply for a 6 month sabbatical.

Now Andrews University doesn't do this but sometimes for special projects you fill in a bunch of papers and how this will make you a better teacher and where you're gonna go and all this wonderful stuff, and they will grant you a special dispensation to do some special study project.

So he turned it in, and I was cheering him on because I thought this would be a dream come true for him.

Well, it took several weeks for this to be finalized and finally came on 1 day.

He was just beaming and he said, Honey, you're not going to believe it.

Andrews has granted me this chance to go study at the Olpon in Israel.

And that stopped me dead in my tracks because I had never thought that I was part of that dream.

Because I know that Andrews will give this special project, but they don't give the money, they give the time, but not the money.

And so I said, honey, this is a dream come true for you.

Let me take the kids, and I'll go stay with my parents.

They never get to see their grandkids enough.

And you go, and you just live their uninterrupted Hebrew and just fulfill your dream come true and this will just be so special.

I was really happy for him, but I didn't want to go.

You know that The Davidsons have, well let's put it this way, some people decorate their home with everything matching, you know, like Mediterranean style or Italian or early American or something, you know.

And the Davidsons have always decorated in what I lovingly call early relative.

Because we have a rather eclectic blend of nice furniture.

My parents and Dick's parents have donated us together because we've spent much of our money for education.

And I'm not begrudging that, but that's just the way life turned out.

And so I had a dream that 1 day when we finished paying off all our educational challenges that I would buy a new couch.

And so see when Dick said we would go to Israel I thought there goes my couch right there was my couch.

And so I didn't tell him that that night.

And it was a couple years later after this happened, I brought it up and I said, remember that night when I didn't want to go to Israel?

And he said, well, honey, I got to tell you the real reason why I didn't want to go.

And so I told him, I said, I wanted a new couch.

And he said, he laughed, and he said, well, I had a dream too.

He said, well, I dreamed that someday we'd have a car with a floor.

Because when we moved back to Michigan, we drove an old car.

And I'm not complaining, I'm just describing the situation.

And you know how they put salt, you don't have to do that in Florida, but we had to put salt on the roads with the snow and the ice.

And our old car had, the floor had rusted out, completely rusted out.

And so my ingenious husband, he figured out what to do.

I'm going to get some plywood and make wooden floors to cover the holes.

He said, because, Well, to add a sideline, my husband is very good at fixing things.

And this was an old car before this digital stuff, and he could always make it run.

And he said, honey, this is a perfect solution.

And you know, someday I'm not going to be able to fix this car.

But never mind, we'll pick up the floor and we'll walk it home, you know.

So we had a good laugh that night, but the first night when this came up, it was no laughing matter for me.

I've got to tell you, I did not want to go.

And so, but I didn't go through all this with Dick, and I just said, so he said, well honey, if you don't think we should go now, let's go another time, because I don't want to go without you.

Now this is a part of the story I don't want to admit, because I too quickly said, okay, let's go another time.

And my good-natured husband just smiled and said, sure.

We went to bed, and he fell promptly to sleep, and the Lord started working on my conscience.

And I kept turning over and turning over and turning over, and God was saying, Joanne, you said the wrong thing.

I don't mind spending all that money for him.

I'm not begrudging that, but I don't want to spend to take our kids and me.

You know, like a timpani roll, they keep getting louder and louder and louder.

And after about 2 hours I realized that God wasn't going to let me get out of this.

So I nudged Dick and I said, well maybe we should go to Israel now, gritting my teeth.

And my next level of maturing process began as I, have you ever been to a place where you know what God wants you to do, but you don't want to do it?

I knew exactly what God wanted me to do, but I didn't want to do it.

So I'm laying there in bed and I'm gritting my teeth.

Pavel Goia

Unusual Prayer

Father in humbleness, we come in your presence and thank you so much for your love that is greater than our Capability to understand greater than our mind greater than our imagination Thank you for Jesus.

Thank you for this privilege to learn more about how to connect with you.

Please, open the world for us, touch every heart, and transform us.

In Jesus' name and merits we pray and thank you, Lord.

So, I will not try to offend you, but I may challenge you a little.

If you don't feel comfortable, don't take what you don't like, okay?

If you get upset with me, I will pray for you.

Can it be, just think about it, can it be that you pray, you keep Sabbath, you go to church, you study the Bible, You get involved in ministry, you do evangelism, you go to camp meeting, you do all the good stuff, and you are lost and you don't know that you are lost.

How do you know if you don't know that you don't know?

How do you measure, how do you search to make sure that you are okay?

Whatever we do, Literally, whatever we do for God, unless we do it with God, has no value.

You cannot keep the doctrines of the God if you don't have the God of the doctrines.

And so many times we get so far into religion and so far into service and so far into doctrines That we have the risk to forget the real connection with God where the power comes from.

And if we have no power, whatever we try to do, we never accomplish anything.

And that's the reason we pray for God's blessing and we pray that God would help with this and that and that.

And we never experience power and results.

Because we should not pray for God's blessings but first for God.

God has a plan for us and we go and give God our plan and ask God to bless our plan instead of seeking his plan.

His plan is usually different than our plan.

If the plan that you have is not crazy, it's yours.

God's plans are as far as heaven to earth from our plans.

God's plans and wisdom are foolishness for us.

God would come to Noah and say, build an ark.

If you were Noah, when it never rained, would you build an ark and spend 120 years Building an ark would you?

God's told Joseph I'm gonna put you over your brothers over your parents over your family And then God put him in prison.

He was a slave in a prison in Egypt God told Moses you are going to deliver my people and send him in the wilderness 40 40 40 years Would you accept that plan?

Because God, before using you, he has to break you.

God cannot use somebody wise and smart and good and experienced.

And before God can use you, he needs to break you on me and to teach us faith that has no doubts because when we doubt God, we make him a liar.

When you doubt God's promises, Ellen White says we make him a liar in Selected Messages Volume 1.

It is Satan's plan that we doubt God and we trust self.

In fact, when we seek our plan, Ellen White says, anytime we seek our plan, we focus on self.

We Show Satan's character she says Did you hear you don't want me to repeat that do you I Have the Quotation on my cell phone literally when I showed it to 1 of the meetings where I spoke people like wow Can you imagine that every time you seek something for self you show you exhibit Satan's character?

Jesus did not come to serve self, he came to serve others.

Jesus did not pray for self, he prayed for others.

In fact, 1 time in his life he prayed for self.

It was in the garden, he said, please take the cup away.

And he told us to follow him and to serve.

Miracles that he did, he did not do them for self.

He didn't say, heal me, give me bread, solve my job problem, My foreclosure.

Moses said, take my name off the book of life and save them.

Would you be willing to say, Lord, Take my name off the book of life and save that and that would you do that?

He became like God Paul says I would rather be another mother means cut off from the book of life if you would save them.

When you start serving, God doesn't need you to serve.

God doesn't need you or me to serve, but only, Elenoi says, by service we learn to surrender self and to focus on God and others.

And the more we focus on others and invest in others, The more we are transformed, she says in the book Prayer, into his image, we become more and more like Jesus when we forget self and serve others.

So God wants you to serve because that's the way you grow.

Now Imagine every time we serve self, we ask God to do something against his character.

It is better to focus on God and let him focus on you, than you focusing on you.

Series

Unusual Faith

Baptizing the Devil

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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