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

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

God's Ordained Order

Louis Torres

God’s Ordained Order - Part 1

We are grateful, Father, for the privilege of being together to study your Word.

And we pray for your Spirit to guide and to direct us, in Jesus' name, amen.

Now, if you notice the title of the seminar is called God's Order, okay?

God is a God of order, and everything He does has a calculated order that leads always to something.

Everything that God does, He has a defined course, a standard, a direction, come right in.

And so he does the same thing with the Scriptures.

The Bible God has given to us actually has a what we call an implied system.

Subaddition simply means that it is there but not overtly stated.

For example, I'll give you just 1 simple example.

God says, the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord thy God.

In that statement, there is some additional language or implied language.

And the implied language is that there's no other day but the seventh day.

In other words, God did not have to say, don't worship the first day, don't worship the second day, don't worship the third day, don't worship the fourth day.

He just simply had to say, worship on the seventh day, and by that, it eliminates any other day for worship.

That's called sub-auditional language, or implied.

So when he says, he made the earth in how many days?

By stating that he made the earth in 6 days and rest of the 7, he implies that no other time can be considered for creation except what he stated as the time of creation.

So in the Scriptures, there is sub-audition language or implied language.

Now, the Bible, what I'm going to be doing this week is I'm going to spend time with you actually dealing with the Bible.

But I'm going to deal with the Bible from Eden to Eden.

Jesus says that he is the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega.

That means then that you should be able to find Jesus in the first and in the last, and everywhere in between in the scriptures.

But most of the time we have difficulty finding Jesus in the Old Testament.

You say, where do you find Jesus in the Old Testament?

Well, if you have your Bibles, and I trust you do, just open to the first chapter, the first verse, the first book of the Bible.

And I can't cheat for you because I can't see another Bible around here okay so notice it said in the beginning who God God created the heavens and the earth.

And the fact that it says in the beginning may imply, may what?

May imply that it's referring to the first 3 words of the Bible in the beginning.

And the way we know that the implication is correct is if you read the rest of the verse and it says, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, right?

Without Him was not anything made that was made, correct?

He was in the world, and the world was made by him and the world knew him not.

Ah, he was in the world and the world was made by him and the world knew him not.

So he's in the first verse, the first chapter, the first book of the Bible.

Now, he's in the first verse, the first chapter, the first book of the New Testament.

The book of the generation of Jesus Christ.

What about the last verse of the book of the Bible, the last book, the last chapter, and the last verse.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

So the Bible begins with Jesus and the Bible ends with Jesus.

And therefore you should be able to find Jesus throughout the entire Bible.

God’s Ordained Order - Part 2

Loving God, we are grateful for the privilege we have to study together again.

Thank you for Camp Meeting and the blessings that it is for your children.

And we ask that you'll bless us and give us your spirit to understand.

In Jesus' name we pray it and thank you, amen.

All right, we were talking yesterday about Eden to Eden, the beginning to the near beginning, and that God has an ordained established order of things.

In fact, it's interesting if you read carefully the Bible and you read the counsels that God gave through Mrs.

White, you will find that she says that everything that God made to the minutest atom is synchronized, functions in a synchronized manner, all under the divine guidance of the Almighty.

And recently There's been a lot of exploration into space, and Anderson Cooper, I just heard the other day, did a presentation, a 30-minute presentation on a satellite that's been gone now for 40 years and still taking pictures, and that scientists have discovered beyond their comprehension things that are out there that they never thought were out there.

So the reality is, as the Bible says, that God has expanded the heavens, and there's no searching out of all that God has done.

And that where they thought there were only a few galaxies, now they have discovered that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of galaxies.

And every galaxy has millions and millions of stars.

So God has a system by which He operates, and that gives us comfort.

I don't know about you, but when He says He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, it knows that you can trust in something.

You can depend on something that's consistent.

And no matter what happens, you know that in spite of what we think and how we feel and all that, ultimately, God is consistent.

All right, now, today I want to cover another particular presentation.

That is with the teacher's permission who uses this.

So with your permission, I'm going to move you.

So today I'm going to deal with a subject that has become controversial.

But I want to show you the consistency of the Scriptures concerning that.

The next presentation is the Godhead, showing that the Godhead is consistently found throughout the entire Bible.

Then the next 1 is the Father, the next 1 is the Son, and then finally the Holy Spirit.

I skipped 3 on purpose because I only have so many presentations to make with you.

But this particular topic has been somewhat of an enigma to some people and has become recently controversial.

That people have concluded other than what we as a people have understood and believed for years and years and years.

For example, you know that Jehovah's Witnesses have their particular slant on the Bible, And when it comes to Christ, they think that he's a created being rather than that he was, indeed he is God, not a God, not small g.

1 day I was studying with, I was teaching a group of kids doing evangelism.

Chad Cruiser, I don't know how many of you have heard of Chad Cruiser, a young man, anyway, he was 1 of the young men that I was training, and he happened to come across a lady who was Jehovah's Witness.

And that Jehovah's Witness lady had been in the church for 35 years.

So he felt a little ill-prepared to deal with her, so he called me up and he said, could I help him?

But I already knew their strategy, so I avoided their strong points, because you can just beat your head with them and they'll never move from their position.

So I dealt with something that they don't know very well, and that is on the Holy Spirit.

And so I asked her, I said, according to your understanding, what or who is the Holy Spirit?

Well, she said, it's an essence, like a current, electricity.

So I said, well, would you please turn with me to Acts chapter 10?

And then I asked her to read 1 of the verses in Acts 10.

You remember the story that Peter had a vision?

And the thing was laid before him 3 times.

Did not understand so since Peter did not understand the Spirit of God it says that the Holy Ghost came and said to Peter, Peter arise and get thee down for there are 3 men that are looking for you go and ask no question, for I have sent them." So she read it.

Because she read it with her eyewitness, her Jehovah Witness eyeglasses.

I said, would you please read it again and read it more carefully?

And then all of a sudden, it hit her, like a ton of bricks.

She said, why, it says it's the Holy Ghost.

I said, does that sound like a current, like a person?

And she said, is this why I've been feeling uncomfortable all these years about what they've been teaching me?

She said, The Spirit of God has brought to your attention certain truths that are not in harmony with the teachings of Jerry W's, and because you have thought that the Spirit was a current, you didn't realize that it was the voice of God speaking to your conscience.

And therefore, you were just laying them aside because this was not the voice of God.

But now you realize that the voice of God speaking to you through the Holy Ghost as he spoke to Peter is not an essence or a current, it's a person.

I said, would you mind kneeling down with me and asking God to forgive you?

And that lady, while she wept, she prayed that God would forgive her For turning a deaf ear to the voice of the Spirit all these years and that night She attended the evangelistic meeting that Chad was trying to get her to come to and she was refusing She attended and Chad passed out the decision card and she ran out to the parking lot to find me and as soon as she found me she took the decision card and put it before my face and it was, I decide to be baptized.

So, the issue of the spirit of God is something that has become controversial, But I think we can trace it, pardon me, from the beginning.

God’s Ordained Order - Part 3

Loving God, we thank you for the privilege of studying Thy Word, and we pray for Your Spirit to guide and give us understanding, in Jesus' name, amen.

Now, what I'm going to be dealing with you this afternoon is, again, trace a particular doctrine that has to do with the church.

The reason for that is that there seems to be a lot of debate again about whether it's a bodily church or the spiritual church that goes through.

White makes a statement that the church will appear as if it has fallen, but it goes through.

And what people are arguing is, well, it's not the visible, literal church that goes through, it's those who are spiritual that go through.

However, that is not supported by the statement, because the statement simply says, the church appears as it has fallen, but it does not, it remains.

So if something appears, is that the reality?

No, it's only the appearance, not the reality.

So the time will come when the church will appear as it has fallen, but it says it does not, it remains while sinners and Zion are sifted out.

I mean, I have a million 500000 plus miles on United and a million something hundred thousand miles on Delta.

So I have flown enough to go to the moon and come back several times.

So, the interesting thing is about flying is that sometimes you get into something called turbulence.

How many of you have ever been in turbulence?

I remember 1 time we were flying and all of a sudden the plane did this.

And I remember the gentleman sitting next to me, his face turned to terror.

And he held on to that seat And I was just looking at him, feeling sorry for him because he'd hold on to the seat and it's not going to do anything for you.

So anyway, the pilot comes on and announces.

I just flew from Lusaka, so I had to go to Ethiopia, and then from Ethiopia over to Dulles.

And there were times when we would have this shaking to begin, and the pilot would say, we are having turbulence, open the windows and jump out.

So when the church goes through turbulence, what do you do?

You don't jump out because there's no safety outside.

The safety is within that which God has ordained, Okay?

So let's consider then the church and whether or not we can trace the church throughout history.

We know in the beginning God started with the church.

Now the church is basically made up of believers.

And in the beginning, there were 2 believers, how many?

And It's in harmony with what Jesus says that where there are 2 or 3, there I am in the midst of them.

So we know then that there were 2, and in Genesis 1 and 2, we know that Adam and Eve were the first believers in recorded history, biblical recorded history.

Now, if anybody has any question about that, because there are people who are saying, well, where can you get his wife?

It says that Eve was the mother of all living.

So she's the mother of all living, then there could not be other people alive.

So in the beginning, as well as a new beginning, you find that God had believers there and God has believers here.

Here God uses the term remnant, and I'll explain the term remnant later on.

So we find then that God establishes a system that we call faith.

There was only 1 system of unbelief system.

And that belief system was given to them by whom?

Jesus was the 1 who taught with them and who made them.

So then the first division of that faith came between Cain and Abel.

So God started out with 1 and now what do you have?

You have Cain who decides that he's going to follow a different direction than what God had given to Adam and Eve.

Cain decided to go a different direction.

God’s Ordained Order - Part 4

We thank you, Father, for the privilege we have to study your Word again, and we certainly thank you for it and ask your blessing on it in Jesus' name.

On Women of Our Nation, just let me explain this to you.

There is no verse in the Bible that says that women are pastors.

I haven't found it, can't locate it, etc.

There is enough information in the Bible that the other, what you would call false religions, had women pastors, what we call pastors today.

They weren't called pastors in those days, they were called priests or priestesses.

So in the other religions, there were, For example, some people argue that the culture was that women were not allowed to do anything.

For example, the Roman Empire selected 7 vessels, or 7 virgins, And these 7 virgins were selected from the age of 13, and they were to serve for 30 years.

And the Roman Empire believed that the prosperity of Rome depended on the chastity of these 7 virgins.

And if something went wrong with the Empire they would assume that 1 of those girls had violated her vow of chastity, and they would examine her, and whether or not what happened with Rome came directly from her being a violator of that vow, If they found her to be not a virgin, they would bury her in the ground, body straight up and down, and the only thing sticking out of the ground will be the head.

And that was a punishment for these priestesses because they were allowed to have very high positions and they had great leadership in Rome.

But they were supposed to maintain their virginity until their 30 years were up.

During that time, they could do business, they could do all sorts of things, they were very highly recognized in Rome.

And that's something that most people don't talk about when they say, well, in those days things were different, women were not allowed to do this or that.

The truth of the matter is that women had a lot of advantage.

The fact that Jezebel had the influence that she had in Israel tells you that the women did have a lot of influence in the pagan and heathen entities.

But the reality is that the fall of Rome, pardon me, the fall of Israel, the final, final step of the fall of Israel was when the women took up the work of the priests in Israel.

Maybe you didn't realize that, but in the book of Jeremiah you'll find that the women will tell Jeremiah, we're not listening to you anymore.

When we offered offerings to the Queen of Heaven, then we prospered.

When we did it to God, we didn't prosper.

So we're not going to do that anymore, Jeremiah.

We're going to follow the Queen of Heaven.

Incense was only, come on in, incense was only permitted to be offered by priests.

So anyway, that does not mean, do you hear what I'm saying?

Does that mean that I concur with some of the other interpretation that's not correct, and that is that women can't do anything in the church.

The words of Paul, let women be silent in the church, is misused.

Because Paul said, let them ask their husbands at home.

Married women, because if they were to ask their husbands at home then they were married.

So the council was not applied to all women, It was applied to married women.

The reason for that is I grew up half Catholic and half Jewish, okay?

And if you go to a synagogue, the women are not involved in the worship of the men.

And I'm speaking about the Orthodox Jewish faith.

There's conservative, there's reform, and there's Orthodox.

So the Orthodox are the ones that are still following the old Tradition I'll get to you in just a moment so the if you go to a Jewish synagogue today, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, and the men are separate, you will not find women going in among the men to talk to their husbands.

If you, several years ago when I went to Korea in the military in 1968, and you went to a Korean church, the women sat on 1 side, the men sat on the other side, Okay?

So for a woman to get up from among the women and go and sit among the men would be considered what?

And so There were certain things that were done in the time of Paul that are still done today.

And for example, if you go to a Muslim worship system, you will find a man bowing down, but you will not find a woman among the men.

And so for a woman to enter in to be among the men, it would be considered blasphemous.

It's not that the women are impure and all that, but that basically there's a division, a separation that they make when it comes to worship.

The men do it by themselves and the women do it by themselves.

So when Paul said let the women ask their husbands at home, it's because there was that issue.

And so Paul simply is addressing a principle of doing things decently and in order that's all it was all right because if you read very carefully the book of Romans you'll see that women and men prophesy women and what men prophesy but where did Paul said that prophesying should be done?

Inside the church according to 1 Corinthians chapter 14.

All right, So the prophesying was to be done inside, and men and women did prophesy, and that prophesying was done where?

So it was not that women could not participate, it's simply that there was some women, obviously, that were crossing the line, and Paul was simply writing through inspiration to put things in order.

He wrote inspiration about tongues to put things in order.

He wrote things about the lifestyle to put things in order.

And when it came to worship he did the same thing.

And so God led the by inspiration to give that counsel.

So the the idea that women cannot preach it's not biblical because the counsel that God gives is that all should be preaching.

All right, if I read the Scriptures and it says, go ye, who is it talking to?

The difference in the scriptures is that there's a difference between function and role.

And so in the Old Testament only men could be priests.

And when Miriam, who was a prophetess, challenged Moses on his position, God made it clear that Miriam, even though she was a prophetess, was wrong.

So there's clarity in the Scriptures about those things.

It's just that it has become such an emotional thing that has divided many, many churches.

But in reality, biblically speaking, God wants all of us to participate in ministering to others for the salvation of their souls.