GYC 2009: unASHAMED

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Health Evangelism in Action

Allen Lloyd

Reaching Top Mental performance - Lessons from Scripture & Science

Say before we get started and while we're hooking up, I wanted to invite Tini Finley up here.

I know this is a place that was hard to get to.

In fact, if I were trying to come to this seminar, I would have given up and gone to 1 of the 200 seminars because I circled all around and got lost.

And 1 of the reasons why we're holding this seminar is what Tini is going to tell us just right now.

Why should someone come to a seminar like this, Tini?

Well, I really believe that health evangelism has a great impact upon many people that you are surrounded by, and that this is the work that's going to last until the end.

We're told that medical missionary work is going to be only work.

And why should you, as young people, as older people, why should you even get involved in health evangelism, health ministry.

We're gonna give you reasons why you should be involved.

And of course, the number 1 thing is that you have an opportunity to lead those people to the Lord Jesus Christ, right?

That may not be interested in spiritual things.

And we're gonna share experiences, and I know in my section I'm going to share with you what medical missionary work is, what medical evangelism is, some of the background of why God even gave the health message to Seventh-day Adventists, and some things that surrounded that.

We're going to share with you some of the health fads of the 1800s of Ellen White's day.

We're going to share with you some of the conditions of our early pioneers and how their own health needed to be improved.

And then, of course, the 1 important thing, and that is that we have an opportunity to lead these people to the Lord Jesus Christ.

So I'm going to share with you how practically that can be done in your health programs and cooking schools, and How you can transition even.

How do you transition from health programs to evangelism, to evangelistic meetings, to a seminar, to something spiritual?

And so I think that we'll have a lot of good material.

We have a lot of, I know I have a lot of research in mind of just things that will help you in your own personal health.

How do you even know what to present in a health program when you're doing health evangelism?

We're going to share some of those practical things.

So I believe that we're on a journey that will help you personally with your own health, and also how that you can help the health of those around you.

So we're excited about this particular seminar, so don't miss even 1.

In order to be a health evangelist, we need to have a mind of such that is capable of helping others and drawing people in.

And part of becoming a health evangelist is ourself becoming healthy.

In fact, Ellen White, who was given visions in regards to how this message would be the last message that would win souls to the Lord Jesus up until the end.

In fact, Revelation, it's not just Ellen White, Revelation gives us a number of different scriptures that help us to understand that as well.

But she mentioned that anyone who's involved in this work themselves needs to be a health reformer, someone who actually is practicing the message.

And of course, as a physician, I recognize that physicians who smoke have a dismal success rate in helping their patients to quit smoking.

They might say the words, but they're not there to really help them through that process because they themselves have not been able to be successful in that line.

And so this morning's presentation is Reaching Top Mental Performance.

And our opening text is Revelation 22 verse 4, and they shall see his face, and his name shall be where?

We'll go back a little bit in history in regards to the frontal lobe.

He was the foreman of a railroad crew in 1848, interestingly enough, right there at Adventist history time.

In fact, he taught his weekly Sunday school class.

And then came that fateful day of September 13, 1848.

He kissed his wife and children goodbye, and he said, I'll be home for supper tonight.

But Phineas did not come home for supper that night.

And it had to do with where he was working.

Now, How many of you have been to Vermont in this room?

Very few, less than 10% of the audience has made it to Vermont.

What's characteristic of those of you who've made it to Vermont, about Vermont?

You can't go any place in Vermont without seeing a mountain, at least that I'm aware of.

And what Phineas was doing is he was blasting away portions of the mountain to lay railroad track.

He would drill a long hole into the rock.

He would fill it partially with explosive powder.

And then he would consolidate the charge by using a tamping bar to pound down on the sand.

We're not sure exactly what went wrong, whether Phineas, this was after 10 o'clock in the morning, they had repeated the process several times, whether Phineas was being too efficient and didn't wait until the sand was poured in when he came with the tamping bar, he was wielding the tamping bar that morning, or whether his helper went to the wrong pile and instead of putting sand in, actually filled the entire hole up with gunpowder.

But 1 of those 2 things very likely occurred because as Phineas used that tamping bar to come down very stiffly on that hole, an explosion occurred.

And if it hadn't occurred, then of course he would have lit the fuse to detonate the explosion.

But instead, the tamping bar became a missile that ended up going through the right eye of Phineas Gage, and actually the left eye of Phineas Gage, and out the top of his head, and landed some 20 feet away from the scene.

Amazingly, Phineas survived that accident.

Within minutes, he was walking around again.

He did have to have, he did go to a medical facility where the bleeding was stopped and he ended up at Harvard actually.

He did develop an infection but through natural means that infection was cured.

There weren't antibiotics back in those days.

It was actually a fungal infection that he ended up developing.

But within a few weeks, Phineas Gage was back on the job again.

The problem was Phineas Gage was no longer the former Phineas Gage.

This was a man who had always been faithful to his wife and children.

Now any woman that appeared desirable to him, he would attempt to go after.

This was a man who had always had calmness, even when there was a stressful situation occurring.

And now he would frequently lose his temper in abrupt, short-lived manner.

His neurologist described him as irreverent, irascible, irresponsible.

He did not want to have anything to do with religious things anymore.

In fact, he would ridicule those who went to church.

And of course, he lost his job as foreman of the railroad crew.

They offered him a lower job, but he was too proud to accept that lower job.

And he ended up joining the circus that traveled around the world because he was a shock appearance act after this occurred.

He actually would carry this tamping bar around with him as part of the Circus Act, and he ended up dying in Chile some 13 years later of unrelated causes.

Harvard University requested that his body be exhumed when they found out about his death and brought back to the United States.

And if you were to go to Boston today to the Warren Anatomical Museum, You would see the skull of Phineas Gage.

You would see the tamping bar that was buried next to him.

And you would see detailed personality inventories that took place before and after, so that you could more intimately be associated or understand what happens when people lose a significant part of the frontal lobe of their brain.

Years later, Interestingly enough, there was a neurologist, in fact, many neurologists, who would actually remove the frontal lobe of the brain of individuals who were guilt-ridden.

Saving People from Suicide - Lessons from Scripture & Science

Well, the topic I was assigned to give you this morning in this hour is suicide.

Number 1 reason for suicide in the United States is major depression.

But it's not actually the majority of cases of suicide, even though it's the number 1 reason, is not major depression alone.

35% of suicidal cases are directly related to major depression and its complications.

Anyone want to guess what other things besides depression might lead to suicide?

Other common causes are blatantly going against conscience, such as murder.

Pretty common, after an individual murders somebody, they start contemplating about what they just did.

And they also contemplate over the fact that they are going to be caught and that they are going to have to go through significant turmoil in the prison system, in court systems, et cetera, and they often then point the weapon at themselves and do themselves in.

And so blatantly going against conscience will do it.

Betrayal, when someone blatantly betrays someone who's in the right, and then they realize the consequences of that.

Can we think of anyone in scripture who fit that role?

Judas, after he realized the consequences of his action and betrayal, actually went quite quickly, threw the money back, and then killed himself.

Fornication or adultery that becomes public, suicidal thoughts, can come about.

And you are hearing more about this in a public venue, but there's a people that 1 girl that was a very godly girl, that actually is someone that I was acquainted with beforehand and also of course during and afterwards.

Met an individual in church who was a in who had just gotten out of prison.

And of course, 1 of the things that ought to help individuals along, part of what we talked about last time, is frontal lobe.

When someone just comes out of prison, is that a good time to start a romantic relationship with them?

Prisoners are trained con artists, many of them.

They can be very good at conning individuals, etc.

It's good to give them at least a year or more in society, et cetera, and see how those decisions are being made.

But this individual was successful in conning this beautiful young girl.

And before you know it, he had also conned her into that adulterous relationship and then posted it in a proud manner on his Facebook and told the world about it.

And of course, she at that point in time was seriously contemplating ending her own life as a result.

Fortunately, she did not and she went through an appropriate experience and treatment program that makes her far from that today.

Increase risk when there's a perception of severe shame or guilt as well.

And so that's where a lot of the suicides come in that are not necessarily intricately related to major depression.

And then there's other diseases that increase the risk such as bipolar disorder can increase it, particularly when the individual goes into the depressive phase of bipolar disorder.

Schizophrenia also has an increased risk and then there are other less common diseases.

Of course, it's very high among Iraq soldiers and those returning from Iraq.

There's been a number of studies showing how high it is in our military right now.

And we'll talk about reasons for that here in a little bit.

It's the eighth leading cause of death in the United States.

Still in the top 10 causes of death in the US in all age groups, but it's the third leading cause of death in young people ages 10 to 24.

And so it is, Anyone want to know what the number 1 cause of death is in the ages 10 to 24?

It's actually accidents are the number 1 cause.

And so cancer is number 2, and number 3 is suicide.

But when you see a young person in a funeral home, a third most likely chance is suicide.

When an individual dies of suicide in this country, they'll end up as an obituary, but it won't say anything about why they died.

And it won't be, there won't be an article about it or anything like that.

And so it's often under the radar screen as a result.

But it's twice as frequent in our society, twice more common than homicide.

And we know murder is far too frequent in this country.

But for every murder that is committed, there have been 2 suicides in that area.

Feelings of hopelessness is the best correlate of imminent suicidal action.

And so, if you can give individuals a reason to have hope, as Don McIntosh mentioned, a lot of times your friends are going to come to you with thoughts like this before they come to a professional.

If you can give them reasons to have hope that will help out a lot.

In fact our depression recovery series many of you are aware that we have a residential depression recovery program plus 1 that can be run in a church setting or in a community center setting, if they just get to that first session, the info session, or if you can just download that section, that either DVD from the internet or just get that 1 session, often you will save that suicidal death because they will find out that there's a whole lot of reasons to have hope, whole lots of things that they've never tried before that have a very positive effect as far as brain function is concerned.

Turns out half of all young people who commit suicide, a little over half, have a mind-altering substance on board that is suppressing the frontal lobe of their brain.

And but it could be something else such as cocaine or amphetamines or narcotics or something.

They often have a mind-altering substance impairing their judgment.

And then very frequently they have impaired, what?

And this is, there have been studies showing the dramatic worsening of young people's coping skills today versus a generation ago.

And even 2 generations ago, the coping skills were even better.

And how they measure this out is they take people in certain life events, for instance, that they've broken up with their boyfriend or girlfriend, and then have them talk about options, you know, as far as how to overcome this.

And in today's young person, they're frequently, when things go bad in their life, they're frequently thinking of the option of suicide, where a generation ago, it was, there had to be multiple, all sorts of bad things happening before they got to that.

And today, because of the lack of coping skills that young people have due to an all-time low emotional intelligence.

We are seeing increasing thinking, at least contemplating suicide.

Now this is something that is not necessarily understood by people who are not, who haven't been actively suicidal.

But it was well described in San Francisco after the thousandth person committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

It's still a way that people commit suicide today because it's only a four-foot fence there and there's multiple lanes and you can pull over and quickly make the jump.

And 20 people, it turns out, survived that jump after the thousandth person had committed suicide.

And so 1 astute psychologist studied those 20 individuals that had survived the jump.

Those individuals had all gone through medical problems as a result of their jump.

You know, when you're that far off the water, it's like 400 feet.

It's almost like you're hitting concrete.

They just happened to land just right to not die.

But most of them had compression fractures of their spine.

In fact, virtually all of them had been in ICU for a long period of time.

And then finally, they were able to get out and at least function to some degree in society.

But these 20 individuals were interviewed and they were asked just 3 simple questions.

Do you wish that you would have not survived the jump?

Yeah, actually they were glad that they survived.

And so to make sure there was a second question, because a lot of people would think, you know, with their lives now worse, their lives all turned out to be worse, at least for a short time, afterwards than before.

Don Mackintosh

The Prophetic Significance of the Health Message

Father in heaven, we're indeed thankful for life.

We're thankful for a land where at least at this time we can still open your word and we can study.

And there are parts of the world where that's vastly limited.

So we thank you for America and for the opportunity that it still affords.

And we're thankful that we have a sense of urgency because we know it won't always be that way.

And we're thankful that when other things begin to shut down, when jail ministries start again and all of probably the most prominent speakers here at GYC are doing jail ministries, that the people in this room will be doing health ministries, and you'll be able to use that at the end of time.

So, bless us to that end, in Christ's name we pray, amen.

True, you know, during times of conflict, that's certainly been true, that the health message has been the last thing standing.

Speaking of last thing standing, my wonderful presentation that I slaved away on is sleeping after lunch.

Okay, our topic is prophecy as it relates to health.

Now, the Adventist Church was founded as a result of the preaching and teaching of what books?

Daniel and Revelation are just the core cardinal books of the Advent Movement.

You take away the preaching of Daniel and the preaching of Revelation, there's no need for an Adventist church.

Now recently I was reading several of the leading scholars in the church that are concerned about this.

1 said that the preaching of Daniel and Revelation is largely being left to evangelists, and largely being left to people that focus and specialize on that.

And that the normal pastors and churches and some churches are getting away from the preaching of Daniel and Revelation.

I had the quote in my presentation, I'll give it to you in a handout so you'll have that.

A loss of our core identity were the words that he used.

Another said, if we lose the preaching of the apocalyptic, of Daniel and Revelation, we lose our reason for existence both as a church and an educational system.

It totally lose, now I'll say something else to you.

If we lose the preaching of Daniel and Revelation, we actually lose the intellectual foundation for scientific thought.

Now you're saying, wait a minute, what are you talking about?

Well I'm talking about the fact that people that have studied science and its origin, in fact there's a book I read recently called The Origin of Science and the Science of Its Origin.

And this book painstakingly went through the history of the development of scientific thought.

Scientific thought was only developed in the cultures that were called Judeo-Christian cultures.

Many cultures had stillbirths in science, the Chinese, the Hindu, the Mayan cultures, but they never were pronounced developments.

It was according to these researchers from Cambridge University and Oxford University, it was only within the Judeo-Christian realm that science really began to thrive.

It was this idea, another author, another quote that you'll get in the hand-dite.

The idea was this, that there was in the Bible a certainty about who God was based on what He had said would happen, because it did happen.

In other words, these authors begin to say, why was there such certainty in the thought of Christians?

Why was that certainty there and how did it lead to the development of science?

It was because when they saw the stars moving, let's talk about Copernicus.

And he would be called by some 1 of the early sciences, would you agree with that?

Well, why was it that he had a certainty that when he looked at the stars he could figure something out.

And he knew that there was a star that moved and he knew that God ordered things and this caused him to think, wait a minute, there is a meaning, there is a purpose, there is an organizational structure, there is something there, and those luminary bodies that can, in fact, tell me something about who I am, what I should be doing, where I should be going.

How many can see how a mindset like that would lay a foundation for scientific thought?

And that would be the medieval Roman Catholic Church at that time.

I'll tell you there was a book called, Copernicus' Revolution that I read a couple of years ago that opened this up to me like kind of like a Copernicus Revolution in my own cranium.

And as I looked at that here's why they really rejected it.

It wasn't just because he went against the teaching, the normal teaching of that day that everything revolved around the earth instead of the sun.

It was because of Copernicus' connection with a certain guy by the name of Rectus, I think his name is, I don't have my notes in front of me, R-H-E-C-T-I-S, I see in my mind.

This guy was the math teacher that came to study with Copernicus and guess where he was from?

And you see, Luther sent this mathematician over to meet with Copernicus, why?

Because he said, wait a minute could it be that the Protestant Reformation was foretold in the stars like the coming of Jesus was foretold.

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Series

Health Evangelism in Action

Maximizing God’s Message of Health - For Outreach

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Parts

Reaching Top Mental performance - Lessons from Scripture & Science

1h

Saving People from Suicide - Lessons from Scripture & Science

57m

The Prophetic Significance of the Health Message

1h

Q & A - The Top 20 Questions Young People Have About Health and How to Answer Them

54m

Maximizing God’s Message of Health - For Outreach

1h

Top Tips of Successful Soul-winning Through a Cooking School

1h

Sound Doctrine