ASI 2019: Business Unusual

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Unusual Sacrifice

Mark Finley

Three Angels’ Messages and End Time Events

Father in Heaven, we're going to study your book.

And as we open the Bible today, we pray that the spirit that inspired the Bible would enter into our hearts.

The spirit that inspired the Word of God would speak to our souls.

We pray that this would be more than a humanistic lecture, more than a learning experience, but it would be an experience in which the word of God burns in our hearts and fills our lives and changes our lives In Christ's name, amen.

In the 1840s, there were social, political, scientific, and religious revolutions that would ultimately change the world.

And to understand the 3 Angels' messages, it becomes imperative that we understand the social, the political, the psychological, and the religious trends of that day.

In the 1840s, Charles Darwin, in 1842, published his first draft of the Origin of the Species.

The Origin of the Species, which dealt with the evolutionary philosophy, would change the world.

It would change politics, it would change philosophy, it would change psychology, and it would change religion.

1844, Charles Darwin published his first essay of The Origin of Species.

Now the book wasn't published until 1859.

When Darwin published The Origin of the Species, it basically reduced dramatically human beings' belief in the Bible and in the Word of God.

The origin of the species shared this revolutionary thought, which was revolutionary in that day, although not new, which I'll show you in the lecture.

It introduced the thought that human beings were not created by an all-powerful God, that rather they evolved from lower forms of life, from the primeval sources of the sea, ultimately to single-celled amoeba, ultimately to plant life and human life.

He ruled out the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis.

It took away the idea of a personal God as creator.

Now at the same time that that was developing historically, there was another major movement in the world.

The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848.

Do you think it is any accident that the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, is published in 1848?

That The Origin of the Species is published in 1859.

The devil knew that an end time message would be going to the world.

He knew that God would raise up a divine movement of destiny in 1844 to herald the message of the 3 angels.

And so the devil was doing everything he could politically.

He was doing everything he could intellectually.

He was doing everything he could with the publishing of The Origin of the Species in 1859, First Draft, 1844, doing everything he could with the publishing of The Communist Manifesto in 1848.

Now there were religious movements that were developing at the same time.

Joseph Smith of the Mormons in the 1840s, which had become the largest homegrown American religion, with Mormonism, the Latter Day Saints, that was developing in the 1840s.

You had Christian science with Mary Baker Eddy developing in the 1840s.

By the time you come to the late 19th century, Jehovah Witnesses are developing.

So the devil knows that he's gonna try to deceive humanity in every possible way he can so that his Adventism is growing, you have political movements, psychological movements, scientific movements, and religious movements that are beginning to develop.

Now To understand Revelation chapter 14, it becomes necessary to understand its context in the book of Revelation.

So, I'd like you to take your Bible and turn to Revelation the first chapter.

The book of Revelation is divided into 2 major parts.

The first 12 chapters and the last 10 chapters.

The first 12 chapters of the book of Revelation start with an introduction to Revelation 1, then you go through the 7 churches, the 7 seals, and the 7 trumpets.

They are really a historical overview that take you to Revelation 12, and Revelation 12 gives you 4 specific snapshots that summarize the great controversy down through the ages.

Revelation 12 is the hinge upon which the entire book of Revelation turns, and that leads you to Revelation 13 to 22, which deal with primarily end events.

But we're looking at Revelation 1 verse 1.

So if you study the book of Revelation, and for you it's more about beasts and strange images, you've missed the point of the book of Revelation.

In the book of Revelation, Jesus is mentioned as the Lamb of God 28 times.

7 in the book of Revelation is a number of perfection.

4 times 7, Jesus the Lamb of God, the perfect universal savior for all mankind.

Revelation 1, verse 1, the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave to him to show his servants things which must shortly take place.

And he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servants John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ and to the things which he saw." So this is the revelation of Jesus.

And you and I open that book and we read it.

When we read the book of Revelation, our hands tremble with the sense of sacredness because we sense that this message comes from the heart of God.

And the angel flies and gives it to John, exiled on the island of Patmos, and John writes it down, and you and I take it in our hands today.

We have a straight line of prophetic truth that comes from the heart of God.

Would you say that the book of Revelation is a serious message?

If you were the devil, what would you do?

If you knew that God gave an end time message to Jesus, to the angel, to John, what would you do?

You'd tell people that this book is a closed book, right?

You tell people that this book could not be understood.

You tell people that it's too strange to understand and too complicated, because it comes from the heart of God.

Now the heart of the book of Revelation are these messages that we call the 3 angels' messages.

And we're taking our Bible and turning to Revelation, the 14th chapter.

Now, Revelation 14 is divided into 3 parts.

And to understand the center part of the book of Revelation, Revelation 14, it's necessary to understand what proceeds and what comes after it.

The first 5 verses in Revelation 14 speak of a people standing on the sea of glass, a people redeemed.

Now, Eastern thought is always different than Western thought.

Western thought is linear in its progression.

So in Western thought, we think of an introduction, the main body, and a conclusion.

And so in Revelation chapter 14, you first have the redeemed people called the 144, 000 that stand on the sea of glass, that follow the Lamb wherever they go.

In Revelation 14, 6 to 12, you have the message that prepares that people called the 3 angels' messages.

In Revelation 14, 13 to 20, you have the event for which they are prepared.

So there are 3 things in Revelation 14 to keep in mind.

The message prepares the people to stand on the sea of glass for the event of the second coming of Christ.

Now with that background, it's important to understand that Seventh-day Adventists find their unique prophetic identity outlined in Revelation 14, 6 to 12.

Scott Griswold

Isaiah 58’s Unusual Sacrifice and Last-chance Glory

Father in heaven, we are here because you called us, because you have invited us to fellowship with you today, tomorrow, and for eternity.

I ask that you would be here right now, that you would take this vessel and use me, that you would be able to speak through me, that I would be able to lift up your love, your power, your goodness, that we can take seriously where we are in Earth's history and be able to be who you intended us to be when you created us, when you redeemed us.

We are so often failing, so often not understanding what your plans are or how to cooperate with you, we feel like you'd be much better off to use somebody else, but we are what you have chosen.

And so it's up to you as our creator, as our redeemer, to fashion us into a tool that can be used.

And to fashion us as a group, as a family, as a church family throughout this world.

To be able to lift up your glory and finish the work as you've called us to before Jesus comes.

So please, once again, we ask that you would speak individually to each person here, and that they would go with what you intended them to go with, and be used by you as you intended.

So We're gonna be looking at a bunch of beautiful texts and statements that God has given us to show us how the end of time is gonna wrap up, at least in a new and clearer picture that has come to my mind.

We're gonna be looking at some of the needs of the world that I've been exposed to in our ministry.

We started out in Cambodia in the refugee camps on the border.

My wife and I just fresh out of college and then learned so much from the people 6 years in Cambodia as church planting with Adventist frontier missions.

Just an amazing time in their history because of the war, aftermath of the war, intense poverty, 50% of the country under the age of 15, and just an amazing time there.

And then we're back in the States for a while in California pastoring and then over in Thailand for 10 years where we got to work with Buddhists throughout Southeast Asia trying to find ways that the gospel could come alive for them, that it would actually make sense because for many Buddhists as we try to communicate, it just seems so strange, very difficult to understand and appreciate.

So that's been our experience, and then coming back to the United States, we landed in Houston, Texas, just for a conference, and saw the huge numbers of refugees that were coming to that 1 city, let alone throughout the United States and Canada, and just realized God was allowing people to come here from countries you cannot go with the gospel, like Somalia and Afghanistan and other places.

So that spoke to us as we were coming back to take care of my wife's father and for my daughter who was ready for college instead of sending her around the other side of the world after living in Thailand.

And that helped us to recognize now in the age that we live in, in any city around the world, the people that God is wanting to reach have been brought right where we are.

And we just need to open our eyes and open our heart and lift up Jesus and he is gonna finish his work.

So this is a story, just to begin with, that happened in Thailand when we were living in the Central Valley where there's just almost no Christians at all.

And I was headed to the airport to go somewhere and my wife dropped me off in the city center where there were a bunch of taxis.

And I pray before I get on somewhere usually and say, please lead me to somebody who's open, somebody I can interact with.

And so I passed up 2 or 3 taxis and got in another 1 with a man named Sawan.

The Thais are kind of stoical and stayed in their emotions most of the time, not all of them.

But he was just this exuberant guy that was very talkative and started asking me all kinds of questions.

So as we're going down the road, I begin to share what I'm doing there and we talk.

And finally, we get to questions about God and religion.

And I'm telling him about who this God is I believe in.

And for him, you know, there's Buddha and there's Hindu gods and there's spirits and ancestors and different things, but as I'm talking about the creator God and the actual story of where we came from, he said to me, I'm so lucky, I can't believe my good fortune to learn who the creator of this world is And I'm not even 40 years old.

He just began to be excited about everything that I was used to people just kind of like, uh-huh, all religions lead to the same goal.

But here was a man who was wide open, who'd been eager to know the truth.

And I got to be the 1 who's sitting there telling him for the first time these things.

So I get out at the airport, I get his contact so I can be in touch, called him so that he would be able to pick me up.

And we began, he began to be the taxi guy that would come when I needed to go somewhere.

And then 1 day I was ready to go to the airport.

I'd arranged for him to come at 08:00 in the evening and it was 8.10.

He's always here like 15 minutes or a half an hour early.

So I called his number and his wife answered the phone.

Sawan was killed on the way to the airport yesterday.

I called my friend Mike who worked with us and said, I need a ride to the airport, but I hope we have time.

So we went by the temple and there was his wife and his 2 sons and the monk sitting there in the middle of the Buddhist temple.

I was at a loss for words, but tried my best to give them some hope and encouragement that this was not the end.

Because I knew that Siwon, my friend, had had a chance to at least know about the living God, to respond in some way to the moving, the power of the Holy Spirit, the reality that Jesus at the cross died with Siwan's sins on him.

So that if Siwan, even if he didn't fully understand, was responding in some way, that the blood of Jesus could save this man.

And I don't know for sure, but I'm hoping and praying that at the resurrection I will be able to see this man.

He is 1 less of the 61 million people in Thailand who are unreached, who have not had a chance to know Jesus.

In the world, if we were to count up all the uniquely distinct unreached people groups in the world, those who speak their own language, have their own unique culture.

You go up 1 mountain, and they're speaking like this.

And you go down the other side, and they're speaking like that.

They have weddings different and funerals different.

These are people that, even if they speak the common Burmese language in Myanmar, their heart language is something else.

And for sure, grandma and grandpa, if you were to try to share the gospel with them in Burmese, they would not be following.

They're people who need the gospel witness before Jesus comes.

And how many people are they that they represent?

Much of the world still is within these distinctly unreached people groups that do not have a vibrant Christian witness.

If you have a Bible or a phone you want to follow, that's great too because it's nice to have it right in front of you.

It says, for as the earth brings forth its bud, as the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before where?

That word is not countries like we think of it.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is in almost every country of the world, but this is talking about ethnicities, cultural people groups that he is going to make it possible for his righteousness and the praise of God to be in front of all those people.

Now I've got a lot of quotes that were written down over 100 years ago by a lady named Ellen White that I'm going to share with you as well because they add a distinctive picture to some of the things that we are just hinted at in scripture that are so beautiful and powerful.

And this is from the book Evangelism, page 694.

It says, during the loud cry, that final cry the Bible talks about in Revelation 18, the church aided by providential interpositions of her exalted Lord will diffuse the knowledge of salvation so abundantly that light will be communicated to every city and town.

Yes, there are cities where there are no Christians, where there is no 1 representing Jesus, but towns?

The earth will be filled with the knowledge of salvation so abundantly will the renewing spirit of God have crowned with success the intensely active agencies that the light of present truth will be seen flashing everywhere." Is that encouraging?

There's another quote that actually says, every village, so many times flying over Thailand or these other countries and looking down and realizing how few know Jesus, I thought how can this ever happen?

And it's beginning to come clear in my mind what God is going to do to finish his work.

Believe these promises for India, the country with the most amount of unreached people groups, 2, 330, representing 1, 299, 000, 000 precious people.

Let's believe it for China, the next group that has 445 unreached people groups.

There are a billion, more than a billion people in China, but many of those groups are considered reached because there's a growing, vibrant church among them.

But still this many that don't have it, who yet are going to get to here.

The next 1 is Pakistan, with 433 unreached people groups, 214 million.

And then believe it, for America, where we have 82 unreached people groups, 24 million, 821, 000 precious people.

We'll talk about that a little more later, but I don't have a lot of time to talk about that's the main focus of our ministry, reach the world next door, because God has allowed these people to come here so they can hear the good news, be able to grasp it, believe it, be discipled, and then in turn, disciple back to their countries.

Some of them, like they say, the typical person from South Asia, India, and beyond, have over 100 connections back overseas in the countries they come from.

So you reaching 1 person, it may be the Apostle Paul, it might be the Ethiopian treasurer, it is the person that can in turn turn their country right side up for Jesus.

Dwayne Lemon

The Secret to a Life of Power

Our Father in heaven, we are truly grateful for the time that we have that we can come together and to study your wonderful words of life.

We thank you for allowing us to be here at ASI.

And Lord, I don't want to pray just for myself and all those under the sound of my voice, but I want to pray for all the speakers.

And I pray that you will truly anoint them with your Holy Spirit, and that everything that would be said and taught would be that which is ordained from the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary.

And Lord, I pray that as we begin to study 1 with another, send your Holy Spirit.

We can't understand these words and especially live them without him.

And so we're praying for the forgiveness of our sins, and we're praying for the enlightenment that only your spirit can give, that we can leave here better than when we came in.

And this is our prayer that we do ask, and thank you for answering.

In the worthy and mighty name of Jesus, amen.

If you have your Bibles, which I'm assuming you do, I would like to invite you to turn your Bibles to the book of James chapter 1.

I wanna establish something, James chapter 1.

We're going to James the first chapter and I want to establish this right from the beginning because I'm really not here to teach us anything new.

If it is new to you, well, that's just happenstance, but it's not so much that I wanna startle you with something new.

I believe that what we need to do is master that which is old, is to really take heed to the old things that we've been given.

And so this is why the Lord impressed my heart to give you James chapter 1.

And I want you to see what the Bible says, and if you're there, just let me know by saying amen.

I'm reading from a King James version, and here's what it says.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

My goal in our time that we have together is not to find out how much you know.

That is not as much heaven's interest as it is what are you doing with the little or great that you know.

This is on the mind of God like never before.

Because there may be some of us in here who are not Seventh-day Adventists.

And if you're not, well, we wanna say welcome.

You know, really, it's such a blessing to have those of different diverse views and what have you, because there is a such thing as come now, let's reason together.

And so if there's anybody here that's not from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, we wanna just say welcome and thank you for coming because we believe that part of the reason these meetings exist is so that it doesn't just strengthen us who may know a few things, but it helps enlighten those who don't.

But there's a lot of us here who are Seventh-day Adventists.

We have been exposed to a whole lot of things, and we've heard it over and over and over again that it begins to sound like that old saying says, like a broken record.

And it gets to the point that sometimes we get happy just knowing what God says, not understanding that the blessing was to the doers of what God says.

And so my goal when we go through this study together today, my question to you is not how much of this do you know.

My question is how much of you are doing the thing that you know.

For since we're in the book of James, I think it's an appropriate time to go to chapter 4.

If you look at James 4, this is really the mind of God.

In the mind of God, his desire is for us to receive blessing.

But at the same time, blessings comes from doing and not just hearing only.

Well, we already studied that, but now look at James 4.

The Bible says in the book of James 4, we're now considering verse 17.

It is in James 4 and verse 17 that the Bible also says, to him that what?

They do it not, it says to him it is sin.

And if there is 1 thing that can separate a man and separate a woman from God, it is that thing called sin.

And so God does not want us to gloat, pat ourselves on the back and say, yup, I know that.

What God wants you and I to do is to search our hearts.

And I promise you, this message is just as much for me as it is for you.

I am so thankful that you don't have to be perfect to preach a perfect message.

I'm really thankful for that, for we wouldn't even have the Bible, would we?

Because those were very imperfect men and women.

But oh, how God's perfect message touched their own hearts and then God used them to touch yours and my heart.

And so I'm not standing here before you as a man who has mastered that which I share with you.

I share with you that which I'm on the journey.

1 day I was with a friend of mine, we were in Walmart together, and he weighed about 400 pounds.

I don't see anybody in this room that looks even close to that.

But that's what he weighed, 400 pounds, big guy.

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Unusual Sacrifice

Three Angels’ Messages and End Time Events

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