God has given 11 steps that that church needs to go through every time it’s in a crisis. Listen to find out what those steps are and which one we’re currently on as a church.

<p>God has given 11 steps that that church needs to go through every time it’s in a crisis. Listen to find out what those steps are and which one we’re currently on as a church.</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>

Heavenly Valley SDA Church

Gabriel Arruda

11 Steps to Survive the Current Church Crisis

We are going to talk about the 11 steps to survive the current church crisis.

So the Church of God, when it's encountered with a crisis, goes through 11 steps.

This is what has happened in the past and this is what will have to happen also in the future.

And I believe this is a timely message that I'm about to give because I do believe the Seventh-day Adventist Church today is in a crisis.

I'll be very transparent with you, I'll be very honest with you.

We are, I don't know how many of you realize it, we are a seriously divided church.

On 1 side we have many divisive groups just chopping up the more conservative branch of the church into a million little pieces.

And on the other side we have liberal theology just completely obliterating our traditional historical message, especially amongst the leadership.

And worse of all of it, the hatred between these 2 groups is startling, friends.

If you ever go and look at Seventh-day Adventist websites that are reporting things, and just look at the comments, honestly I get discouraged.

The hatred, the hatred, friends, that exists in the church to other people that don't believe like us in the church.

Look at the YouTube videos, the different sermons, Adventist sermons on YouTube videos.

It's absolutely appalling, the comments that people have made on these videos, not even Christian.

It's not just not Adventist, they're not even Christian, many of these.

And an almost universal lack of personal evangelism in the lives of the individual church members.

And many who are 1 are not discipled and they eventually go out the back door.

In all of this, friends, all of this in the face of a world that gets darker and harder to reach every year.

And we do need to wake up, and we're gonna see 11 steps from scripture that I believe outline our duty, what we need to do.

Please open with me in your Bibles to 2nd Chronicles chapter 20 and let's look at these 11 steps from scripture.

Pray that they guide us in what to do in this mess that we have.

2 Chronicles chapter 20 starting in verse 1 and verse 2.

And it came to pass, after this also, that the children of Moab and the children of Amnon, and with them other besides the Ammonites, came against Jehoshaphat to battle.

Then there came some that told Jehoshaphat, saying, There cometh a great multitude against thee from beyond the sea on this side Syria.

And behold they be in Hazon Tamar which is in Gedi.

So the children of Israel, Some Israelites saw a grouping, it was actually 3 enemies.

It was the Moabites, the Ammonites, and you read later you find out was the Edomites, who had come together and were planning a massive attack on Israel.

It way outnumbered the children of Israel.

Now step 1, I actually didn't see it the first time I studied this until actually my wife brought out.

Step number 1 is you have to recognize a threat when you see 1.

The children of Israel recognized a threat.

And then these Israelites, they went and they told the king.

And so this might seem kind of like, well, yeah, you know, they're, yeah, if a bunch of people were going to come attack me, I would have obviously considered that a threat.

But you know, we're actually making a huge mistake in the church today.

And I believe the church can make 2 mistakes here in not recognizing a threat.

The first is not recognizing a clear threat that is real, a real threat that's there.

The second mistake we can make, however, is calling something a threat that's actually not a threat at all.

So there's a huge threat here, we're ignoring that, and we're picking on this thing, and it's actually nothing.

And as a church today, I believe we're actually making both mistakes.

You know, some friends of mine and I, back in the day, when I was a bit more rowdy.

We were out at the lake in Folsom Lake here in California, Folsom, Sacramento area.

And we were out there at night, and we were unfortunately under the influence of marijuana.

We had done that, we were walking back and it had gotten dark and we were walking along this dirt road.

You know there's a lot of rattlesnakes around there.

And we look and there's this dark thing right in front of us.

And we start freaking out and yelling and get rocks.

We're running away from it and going in and out of the woods.

Then someone, I think it was me actually, said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I got close to it.

It was a stick that was laying on the road that we thought was a snake and we were freaking out.

It was like 10 minutes, we're freaking out, this thing's chasing us, you know, and considering this thing a threat when it wasn't a threat at all.

And we're making both of these mistakes as a church.

And on the other hand, we're calling something a threat that's actually not.

You know, many in the church recognize, hey, something has to happen.

Obviously we need something to wake us up, right?

And so some have therefore believed and concluded that we need to come up with some radical new truth to wake up God's people.

If you believe in any of these, please don't be offended, but based on my studies, what I'm about to mention, all of these are not biblical.

And by the way, what I'm about to share is the official position of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and that's the church you're sitting in today.

If we just got that, we would just wake up as a people.

Some say, hey, we need to keep the feast days.

If we got that, we would wake up as a people.

We need to believe in that, and that's the thing.

We need to believe to send the ladder in and to wake up God's people.

Did you know the sealing happened at 9-11?

LOI teaches the sealing happened at 9-11.

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11 Steps to Survive the Current Church Crisis

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