GYC 2009: unASHAMED

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Mark Finley:  Empowered by the Spirit

Mark Finley

When the Spirit Falls

Receiving the Spirit

Strange Fire on Church Altars

Pentecost Repeated Part 1

Pentecost Repeated Part 2

End Time Symbols of the Spirit

Father in heaven, thank you so much for the opportunity of knowing your love.

Thank you so much that you long to pour out your Holy Spirit in latter rain power.

And Father, I pray that just now that you would reveal to us how we can be filled with your spirit.

Teach us by your spirit to live in your spirit, to minister through the power of your spirit.

I have visited China on a number of occasions and not long ago I visited Shenyang, China.

When my wife and I visited Shenyang, it was 23 degrees below 0 Fahrenheit.

Now if you think it's cold this morning in Lexington at 18 degrees, imagine 40 degrees colder.

We have between 400 and probably 450, 000 members in China.

We visited the largest Seventh-day Adventist church in the world.

We have our own church building with our own Seventh-day Adventist logo on that building.

It's openly identified as a Seventh-day Adventist church.

And I'll give you a background of how that church started.

The church started when a woman was sick and she was so sick that the doctors couldn't do much for her, but she had a seventh day Adventist neighbor And the Adventist neighbor believed the seventh day Adventist health message.

And she began nursing that woman, helping her on a better diet.

She began giving that woman hydrotherapy treatments.

And this woman had a daughter who was a teenager, 17 years old.

And as the Adventist ministered to this woman, and as she ministered to the family, both the woman and the daughter accepted the Adventist message.

There was no Adventist church in their town.

So the woman who improved in her health because of the Adventist health message and her daughter and the Adventist woman began meeting in their home.

They began praying for the ministry and outpouring of the Holy Spirit on their lives.

And this little group of 3 or 04:20 years ago grew to 6 and 8, and it grew to 30, and it grew to 40, and they began to rent a little place.

Today, they have 6, 000 members, 500 groups, and they call them small groups, and some of them are meeting in churches of 300 to 400.

When we met there, we sat with this woman in the church.

I wanted to preach, but I was restricted in preaching.

I had sent my sermon to the appropriate officials because this was an official visit.

I was representing the general conference.

I was meeting with government officials and meeting with religious officials.

And when the Chinese government read my sermon, it was a simple sermon on Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit and so forth, they said, you haven't given us enough time to organize an official visit and since you're coming officially, you will not be able to speak.

So, but they said you can give greetings.

I gave greetings and I asked how long the greeting should be and The pastor told me a greeting should be about an hour.

I stood and gave greetings from John when he wrote on the book of Revelation on the island of Patmos.

And I get up and said, today I will not preach to you, but I want to give you greetings from an old man who wrote a book called Revelation.

And I want to tell you what he would tell you if he was here.

He would tell you that the gospel is going to the world.

He would tell you that it's going to every nation, kindred, tongue and people.

He would tell you about your brothers and sisters in Brazil.

Then I gave them greetings from Brazil and told them all the stories about what was going on there in the church because this church is isolated.

I gave them greetings from Adventists in about every country in the world.

At the end of my sermon, the pastor got up and made an appeal.

The pastor said, you've heard what Pastor Finley has said, and as the appeal was made, 3 to 400 people came forward in the church that Sabbath on a specific call for baptism.

I said to her, What is your criteria for baptism?

She said, they have to attend church a year.

If they miss, it has to be for a special reason because we wanna protect the purity of our church.

I said, well, that's not found in the Bible.

She said, I know, but there are people that would like to join the church that are not quite Adventist.

She said, we teach them all the doctrines of the Adventist Church.

She said, these people become genuine Adventists when they're baptized.

She had 400 people that had been attending church all year that came forward in that call, I said, what is the power?

Now, incidentally, the pastor of that church happens to be a woman.

The reason for that is that many of our men in China have been in prison for their faith.

The same thing happened in the Ukraine many years ago.

We had 39 pastors under communism and 37 were in prison.

And many of our ladies stepped forward and preached and preached powerfully for Jesus.

I talked to the pastor of this church and I asked her this question.

I said, why is it that you have 6, 000 members and 500 groups and your church is exploding in growth?

She said, Pastor, every morning at 4.30 we meet at the church.

She said, no, pastor, that's a little exaggeration.

We don't meet at 430 every morning because on Sabbath we meet at 6 o'clock because we're going to stay all day.

She said, but 6 days a week we meet between 430 and 5 at the church and we pray for the Holy Spirit from 5 to 6, 630.

We said, why do you meet at 435 and pray for the Holy Spirit then?

Why don't you come at 8, 9 or 10?" She said, pastor, our people work.

She said, every day there will be different people, but we'll have 80, 100, 150 people every morning praying at this church for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

We're praying for the moving of the Spirit of God.

What if every Sabbath morning, 30, 40, 50 Adventists came to your church and prayed for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit?

What if there was a meeting on Tuesday or Wednesday night praying for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit?

We want to look this morning at the outpouring of the Spirit for the finishing of God's work.

If you have your Bible, please take it and turn to Matthew chapter 24, verse 14.

Jesus talks about famines and earthquakes and pestilences.

Jesus talks about rising crime and violence.

He talks about the days of Noah and increasing immorality.

Then Jesus says, after he talks about those signs in the natural world, the political world, those signs in the social world, and the spiritual world, Jesus says, these things will always be with you.

Series

Mark Finley: Empowered by the Spirit

Pentecost Repeated Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Mark Finley: Empowered by the Spirit

End Time Symbols of the Spirit

50m

Angelo Grasso and Justin Kim - One Step at a Time: Pathways to Spiritual Growth

By the Wayside: Devotion - Growing in the Right Place

41m

Mark Finley - The Shaking and the Sifting: A Biblical Approach

Christ and the Coming Crisis, Part 1

1h 16m

GYC 2011 Seminar: The Movings of the Spirit

The Result of the Spirit, Part 1

1h

The Wheel of Faith

5. The Battle of Titans

54m

Living in the Day of Atonement

1h 1m

Plenary Sessions

Sabbath School

1h 34m

Justin Kim, Amy Sheppard, and Nomthandazo Malambo: GPA's and SDA's

Christ’s Method: A Practical Approach in Ministering to Academia

56m

How to Experience Peace During the Final Storm - Part 3

1h 4m

Devotions For Decisions

2. Where Did You Find That?

54m

You are Needed!

2. How to Share the Adventist Message in 5 Minutes

1h 8m

Louis Torres ~ Gripping the Soul: Reaching the Heart Through Personal Evangelism

How to Make Public Appeals Appealing

58m

Sound Doctrine