Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Righteousness by Faith

Royce Snyman

130 Years Later

Father in heaven, how grateful we are that we are not alone in our fight against Satan.

How grateful we are that you love us so much that Jesus came to this earth to live his life, not just as an example, but that we might have his power and his strength.

We pray that you will be with us in our class today, and in the days to come May we be drawn closer to you we pray in Jesus name, amen.

The title of our class today is Righteousness by Faith.

I was hesitant to use it, but there's really no other way to focus in on what's really important about what we're gonna talk about.

But to realize that there's a message of righteousness by faith that God wants us to understand.

And the truth is, it's the difference between life and death, eternal life and eternal separation from Jesus.

But there's so much more to this and it's all good news.

Well, we live in a sinful world and that's not good news.

But we do need to understand a little bit about our history.

How many of you were able to attend Ron Duffield's class last year?

Ron Duffield, I'll talk to you a little bit more about that in a little bit.

Actually, in some ways that's good, because it's never encouraging to be compared between 1 speaker and another.

Ron Duffield is a great individual that I've come to really appreciate.

He is an occupational therapist, respiratory therapist, my mistake in case this is ever seen by Ron, and out in California.

But he has done some tremendous work and we're going to talk about that partway through our class, not so much today, but in the time that comes ahead.

And I'll share a little bit of my own personal journey along the way here in seeking to understand this most important topic.

And it's more than just a topic as you and I will see.

I've titled today's class 130 Years Later.

But I want to share some things with you.

I'm getting a little discombobulated here, so I want to make sure we did.

I want to share something with you that is a focal point.

How many of you have read the Conflict of the Ages series?

At the beginning and the ending of that series, Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, Acts of the Apostles, whoops, Desire of Ages, Acts of the Apostles, and Great Controversy, The beginning of the first book and the ending of the last are 3 words.

And here she quotes John, 1st John 4 16 and then she says, his nature, his law, is love.

It ever has been, it ever will be, the high and lofty 1 that inhabiteth eternity, whose ways are everlasting, changeth not.

With him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." And she's quoting there from Isaiah, Habakkuk, and James.

And then she says, every manifestation of creative power is an expression of infinite love.

The sovereignty of God involves fullness of blessing to all created beings.

That is the center of the great controversy because Satan is trying to prove that that's not the case.

Just wanted you to know in case you were looking.

So this is the focal point of the great controversy.

And he's had several thousand years to work at perfecting that.

And the challenge is when he gets in the church and he gets that whole concept mixed up.

It is really a challenge for us and that's a little bit of what we're going to be talking right up here gentlemen where I can keep a good eye on you.

Fortunately they're friends, that's why I could get away with saying that, so we can work at that.

We're going to 0 in on the message of righteousness by faith.

But in order to be really able to understand its impact and its importance for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, we have to understand a little bit about the history of this particular message in the Seventh-day Adventist church.

I'd like to share with you to start with the purposes that I have in mind.

By the way, you should all have a notebook.

Well, I'm surprised I'm short, but that could be.

We might have to share to start out with, and then I'll have more tomorrow so that we have enough.

So if you've got 1 you can share, I will take that as long as you...

Tell you what, hang on, let's wait till my secretary comes around, and then I will get to you.

So let me just send a message to her real quick.

I want to share with you what our purpose is.

In the notebook, I have given you some notes.

I'm not going to follow those printed notes.

There's a lot more there that I'm going to share, and that's really good news for you because you don't want me to do all whatever 16 pages I think I have in there or 12 pages.

But it's material that is including material that I have on the screen and that I'm going to share.

There's also an evaluation that I'd like you to do at the end of the class, unless for some reason you decide you're not going to be able to be here tomorrow, you're going to be in Hong Kong tomorrow, and so you want to at least share that with me today, that's fine.

Otherwise keep that till the end of the class.

And if you need a pen, I have pens up here.

Anybody need a pen, Just wave your hand and I can toss these at you or something.

Oh, you're such a good class, you brought your own pens.

You want us to come and talk about the end of the week.

This class is going to be a progressive class, not progressive theology.

It's just going to proceed 1 piece after the next, I want you to know that.

But I want to share with you what our purpose and our goals are, and that's what I want to put on the screen for you right now.

The first point that I want to share with you is that we want to review the history of the Righteousness by Faith message given to the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1888 and the years following.

As I said, I'll share a little bit of my own personal journey in relationship to this as a way of giving you a context for me, the person who's doing the sharing here of this message.

The second is, it has been said that the 1888 message began the latter rain.

If so, what is the significance for us today?

Next, our purpose is that the message has been called the third angel's message and the loud cry.

Return of the Latter Rain

Father in Heaven, we're asking that you open our eyes and we ask that you also open our ears.

As we look at truth, as we listen to truth, We know it's only truth if it comes from You.

We pray that Your Holy Spirit will be in this room.

We don't want to go down all the wandering roads that seem to be out there.

We really want to be on Your path, and we pray that You will keep us on that path today.

We're coming to You because we want to see Jesus.

We want to see Him in His beauty as revealed in the Word of God, as supported by the Spirit of prophecy as well.

May we see Christ our righteousness and understand just what You're trying to do for us in these last days.

A few years ago, a book came to me, And I don't particularly recall how, except that I know that it wound up on my desk.

I recall that it probably had been actually handed out by our ministerial director.

I was 1 of those in the office who received the book.

Because so many books come my way and I'm a slow reader, and the book was this book and it's this thick, I basically dismissed the idea of reading it because I figured I'd need about 6 months.

All materials, including today's materials.

So at any rate, I got this book And here it is sitting on my shelf for literally some years, paying no attention to it.

Title didn't catch my attention because I just saw the thickness of the book and didn't really pay any attention to it.

As I told you yesterday, I got a phone call from 1 of our young pastors and he said, have you read, and it was from a different, same author but a different book, these 2 chapters in this individual's book, in Ron Duffield's book, to be clear.

And I said, no, but I said, if you're going to challenge me to read them and there's a good reason to, I'm going to read them.

So I got a hold of the book and bought the book and found, as I told you yesterday, I already had a copy in my library.

Not a good sign, really, of how this was all going, but I picked up those 2 chapters and I read them.

By the way, the 1 who called me, his name is Mark Howard.

And if you haven't been going to his class in the morning, I really wanna encourage you to do so.

He called me and he asked me about that and I picked up the book, I started to read it, and I said, wait a minute, this is fantastic.

And if this is here, I need to find out who else is reading this.

And as I started asking around the office some had said yes we've read it but none of us had discussed it.

We'd read it and so I wondered you know you have to wonder while they read it did they like it did they not like it you know just exactly what And as I got into it a little further, I began to realize that not only we read it, but we'd also been moved by it, and that God obviously was doing something that we needed to pay attention to.

And that was the beginning in about the last year of the journey that I'm sharing with you now.

Today's title is the return of the latter rain, but I do have some statements I need to make as we begin today, Because what we do in the next few days is going to be very important, but I need to make some provisions for what we're about to do.

I would like to share some cautions with you.

I think as you see from our discussion today as we go through it, that this is a story of a major struggle in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist church.

So I wanna share 5 points with you today to help us to understand what cautions we need and what parameters we need.

First of all, we need to understand that we are searching for the truth about Christ our righteousness and righteousness by faith.

I want you to know that there's a lot of ideas out there about what that is and what it isn't, but we're looking for the truth.

Number 2, we are not looking for ways or points to condemn other people past or present.

He did not come to condemn the world, but He came to save the world.

I am gonna share some things today that might sound as though they're condemnatory, but they're historical fact, clearly delineated in history, not intended to come to any conclusions in regard to those individuals, and particularly in regard to Uriah Smith.

But we must understand these pieces that are there because they are cautions for us today.

Today and tomorrow we will also look at history but we will be blending some theology in it.

As we go through what we're talking about today you will pick up as you did from yesterday some of the theology that is in what we are discussing.

You cannot be discussing Christ without theology.

That's what we're all about and Christ is right at the center of all of that.

The theology though is both simple and complicated.

We have made it, God has made it simple, we have made it complicated.

Be careful in your study, search for the truth, not someone else's position.

The devil wants to take us down the wrong road and I assure you that there are an awful lot of side roads to take in this discussion.

And the last point that I want to share with you is the truth will set us free and prepare us for Christ's return.

Error will destroy God's church and His people and will prevent us from being ready when Jesus comes.

We need to know what it is that God is preparing us for and we need to know the truth about what God is trying to share with us.

I do want to remind you that there was a general conference session that took place in 1888 in Minneapolis.

It took place in October of that year and also November.

As we pointed out in yesterday's presentation, there were 3 classes of people, according to A.G.

Daniels, who attended that Minneapolis session.

The second class was confused and neither accepted nor rejected the message.

And the third class rejected the message, feeling that it would undermine the work of the church in spreading the truth about obedience to the commandments.

The challenge today is that we seem to be still in 1 of these 3 classes.

In my mind, most are in the second class, confused about the whole thing and wonder why we're even needing to talk about it.

For now, we need to remember that there was a GC session in 1888 in Minneapolis.

Central to that session were Bible lectures at the Ministerial Institute before the General Conference session and during that session that were presented by 2 individuals, 1 by the name of A.T.

Jones and the other by the name of A.E.J.

So now I'd like to kind of get into the meat of today.

I'm not going to talk about that session today.

I'm going to talk about the aftermath of that session.

A lot has been said about that session, and there's a lot that could be said about that session.

I do want you to understand that as you study this topic, if you want to call it that, of 1888.

There are some individuals who would like us to believe that we cannot know what the message was that was presented in 1888.

The evidence is clear that there were truths that were shared then and much of it can be reconstructed, Partly because it was reconstructed in different materials that came out later from material that was, that stenographers copied during that day.

They didn't have audio recorders in those days, they had stenographers.

And they had stenographers taking copies of material, including E.J.

Wagner's wife, who was a stenographer that took down his lectures.

And some of those came out in book form later.

But the experiences that happened later, after that session, also continued to give us evidence of what that message was that was shared in 1888, and that continued to be shared and continued to blossom into the message that Ellen White called the third angel's message.

So I remind you of the statement that Ellen White made in Testimonies to Ministers, page 91 and 92.

The Lord in his great mercy sent a most precious message to his people through Elder Jones and Wagner.

The message was to bring more prominently before the world the uplifted Savior, the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

It presented justification through faith in the surety.

It invited the people to receive the righteousness of Christ, which is made manifest in obedience to all the commandments of God.

They needed to have their eyes directed to His divine person, his merits, and his changeless love for the human family.

All power is given into his hands that he may dispense rich gifts unto men, imparting the priceless gift of his own righteousness to the helpless human agent." This is the message that God commanded to be given to the world.

It is the third angel's message, which is to be proclaimed with a loud voice and attended with the outpouring of his spirit in large measure, in a large measure.

Wounded in the House of His Friends

Father in Heaven, again that really is the prayer of our heart.

We want to see Jesus and we want to see truth.

We want to understand what it is that you're trying to communicate for us for these days.

So Lord, we invite your Holy Spirit once again and ask that you will give me words to speak and you will give us ears to hear what You are seeking to share with us today.

And I want to read the third angel's message to you and I'd like you to think about it in the context of what we have been talking about in the last few days here, the last couple of days.

It begins in verse 9 and it says, and then a third angel followed them saying with a loud voice, if anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out full strength into the cup of his indignation.

He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name." Now there's a tendency for us to look at the third angel's message as being concluded with verse 11.

If you look at verse 12 it says, Here is the patience of the saints, here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

If you try to fit all that we've been talking about into the first 3 verses, you'd say, what does that have to do with the mark of the beast?

All that we've been talking about into the first 3 verses, you'd say, what does that have to do with the mark of the beast?

All that we've been talking about here, how is that the mark of the beast?

That's why verse 12 is so much a part of that message.

I know that you notice there that in my Bible, New King James, the quotation marks from the angel seem to end at the end of verse 11.

Well, I don't think those quotation marks are inspired in the first place.

Secondly, recognizing this part of the message is critical to our understanding of what we are discussing today and have been discussing.

In the book, The Return of the Latter Rain, there is a story in there and we're actually going to move from the book, The Return of the Latter Rain, to the book, Wounded in the House of His Friends today.

And obviously I'm taking in an hour and a half and I'm condensing the key points of 2 books or 1 book.

And today I'm actually putting 2 pieces in.

But I want to share this with you today because it is inspiring and it reinforces for us the whole concept of Ellen White as an inspired prophet And it fits into the context of this whole scenario that we're dealing with in a significant way.

We didn't have enough time to do it yesterday, but I want to move into it today.

And you'll find it near the end of the book, Return of the Latter Rain.

But let me share with you some of this story.

And in life sketches, it is written this way that Ellen White, climbing the stairs, she knelt by the bed, and before the first word of petition had been offered, she felt that the room was filled with the fragrance of roses.

Looking up to see whence the fragrance came, she saw the room flooded with a soft silvery light.

Instantly, her pain and weariness disappeared, the perplexity and discouragement of mind vanished, and hope and comfort and peace filled her heart.

Then, losing all consciousness regarding her surroundings, she was shown in vision many things relating to the progress of the cause in different parts of the world and the conditions which were helping or hindering the work.

Among the many visions presented to her were several showing the conditions existing in where?

In a very full and striking manner these were laid out before her.

So That is the context of the vision, but it's what happens next in relationship to that vision and that whole experience that becomes fascinating.

That vision of November 3, 1890 in Salamanca, she had that vision and the next day she tried to tell A.T.

White what this what she had seen the night before, but she could not recall it.

She wrote a few words in her diary that evening, a few words about what she had seen, though she was unable to remember the things to tell others.

But in her diary when she sat down to write in the evening, she was able to put some of those pieces together.

9 days later, before the NRLA's annual report to the Review, Ellen White wrote a few more details in her diary.

Of course, you all know what the NRLA is, right?

So let me explain what's happening in this situation.

What's happening is that there is a magazine, the Seventh-day Adventist Church was putting out and A.T.

Jones was the editor and principal contributor to that magazine, but they were part of the National Religious Liberty Association, which included members of other denominations in that.

Even today, there are other denominations that are involved in religious liberty issues.

And we as a Seventh-day Adventist Church, we work together, we participate with other denominations because we're not the only ones concerned about religious liberty.

But at this particular time, the magazine that was being produced by our Religious Liberty Organization was the American Sentinel.

And that was our denomination's publication.

Well there was something going on that will come up in relationship to that, but at the same time as some other meetings were going on in Battle Creek, they were having a meeting of this NRLA, which included some non-Adventists being present there at that meeting conducting some of those things.

And their annual report came out in the review.

And when it came out, just about the time before it came out, she was having this vision and having this experience.

Ellen White returned to Battle Creek shortly after this, though 9 days had gone by, and she became involved in the final weeks of the Ministerial Institute that was going on there, this being 1890.

November 21, she wrote more details in her diary of issues related to the American Sentinel.

The NRLA was working on plans to follow, to follow, that's not what I wanted to say, but anyway to place pressure from the people of the world who did not appreciate the message of the American Sentinel being an Adventist organization.

In other words they weren't particularly, being Sunday keepers, weren't particularly excited about the Sabbath being an emphasis in this Religious Liberty magazine, and so they were anxious to see some of those things either toned down or entirely removed.

And so there was pressure coming from this organization for those changers to a magazine produced by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

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Righteousness by Faith

Return of the Latter Rain

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Parts

130 Years Later

1h 8m

Return of the Latter Rain

1h 6m

Wounded in the House of His Friends

1h 8m

Christ Our Righteousness

1h 5m

Revival and Reformation in the Last Days

1h 11m

Sound Doctrine