Michigan Virtual Camp Meeting 2020: Forward to the Finish

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

On the Unity of the Church

Fernando Canale

02 Our Adventist Journey: From Unity to Division

03 The Cause of Division: Macro-Hermeneutics

04 The Christian Journey: From Division to Unity (Roman Catholic Ecumenism)

05 Sola Scriptura Christianity: From Division to Unity (Biblical Ecumenism)

01 Unity? My Personal Testimony

Welcome to the, this is the fourth presentation of the seminar.

We have had a good time so far, and Today we are going to talk about the Christian journey from division to unity.

Basically, we have been dealing with the issue of the unity of the church.

I began sharing with you my experience from my childhood, so very, very much into the middle of the last century, basically, so I have been a long time.

This is my time for me to write history directly as a witness.

But my share was that I experienced a unity on the church, real unity on the church.

Everybody thinking in the same way, everybody preaching the same thing.

I mean, when I say everybody, my father—no, my father was not an Adventist, but my mother, the pastor of my church, the visiting pastor, the youth pastor, the president of the association.

When somebody came from the States, everybody was on the same page.

The professors, the academy professors, professors at the college, everybody.

Clearly, they didn't actually say exactly the same words, but they believed the same things.

As the time passed in my experience, as you can see in my first presentation, I began to discover things that did not fit.

This person says another thing, contradicts with this thing, and then they do this and the other.

And finally, at the end of my experience, which is today, I am convinced that our church is not in the state of unity, but in a state of disunity.

And the disunity that exists in our church kind of mirrors the disunity that exists in Christianity.

And it's not a lack of unity like, well, I like to have a carpet that is brown and you want a gray carpet.

So, I interpret this text in this way or the other way.

The divisions that we have in our church are ground systemic divisions at the level of the teaching of the church, which has to do with our understanding of Christianity and the Bible.

And what I see is that everybody in our church, including all the leaders, they kind of think that everybody is on the same page, or at least it is assumed, when in reality that is not the case.

Then after doing that, we all together in the second presentation went through a history of Adventism, since the beginning of Adventism, and we saw that they had, when they began, the pioneers, a great unity.

After the disappointment, they went to study the Bible.

They came to understand not only the disappointment and the cause of the disappointment, but they discover a complete and coherent system of theology that propelled them into the mission to share it to the entire world.

And for that reason, this church was grounded.

White showed that this kind of discovery and the principles of that system that the pioneers called the principles or the pillars, the pillars of the church had been forgotten, And throughout the passing of time, that system, the pillars, were replaced by others, particularly the issue of justification by faith.

And at the end of our history, not even those things are rejected by the very much, but it is also the issue of the sola scriptura principle that is rejected.

And so tradition has come to our church, and you have different kinds of Adventisms or systems of Adventism, which would be the biblical Adventism, those that more or less do exegesis and preach from the Bible, you see.

Then there are the other ones that are the evangelical Adventists that basically they preach justification by faith, and that's the principle of everything, and salvation has been granted, and you are saved, and you are going to heaven, and you don't need actually to study the Bible and all those things, So let's have some celebration here, a little bit of fun, music, popular music, all these things coming into that.

And then there are the others which they are called the progressives.

The progressives are those that do not actually believe that the Bible is true.

They believe in evolution and they believe that we have to merge everything that is Christian with the contemporary postmodern culture, basically.

And then there are others that are called the historical Adventists that just built on LNG.

White and have developed a little system there that I am not going to enter into that.

Then yesterday we went to the issue of what is that caused these issues?

Why are these things happening in our church?

Well, they are happening in our church because we don't study the Bible.

We just go, we go, we baptize people, and the only ones really that come to our church kind of having a grasp of this initial system are those that come into the church through evangelistic meetings where they are taught the prophecies and the way of salvation, and it is in the Bible.

And there are not all the evangelists that do this.

And so they come into the church being those new generation Adventists, but the second generation Adventists, as I am and as my family is because they had this great benefit of being born into the church, but at the same time a church that are not pressing into them that they need to go to the Bible because their salvation depends of how they understand the Bible because faith, we are saved by faith, but faith comes from hearing and hearing the Word of God.

So if you don't understand and you don't know the Word of God, you don't know God.

You may sing whatever you want and you may confess whatever you want, but if you individually are not going to the Bible and understand, not 1 passage, another passage, but the entirety, the totality of the Bible, how God put it in this way, is like you are going to enter into a family.

You know that when we are baptized, really baptized, we are adopted into the family, right?

Well, now, when you are adopted into the family or when you are married into a family, you need to understand what?

If you want to know who I am, what are you supposed to do?

You start asking questions, and the questions are all about what?

Now, if you need to know God, to follow God, to have faith, to be saved, you need to know God.

Why God did that or the other killed these people or the other?

If you don't know God, can you have faith?

If you don't have faith, can you be saved?

So this is a matter not only of unity, But it is the matter of the salvation of people that are in the church and outside the church.

And today, oh well, and then we went to yesterday to discover that the causes of these things are based on some fundamental principles.

The principle of knowledge, which is where do we get our knowledge about God?

I am a pastor, I preach about God, but what do I have that you do not have?

The only thing that I have is what you have, which is the Bible.

What is the difference between you and me?

Well, there are many differences, But what is the difference that makes me preach to you?

I have studied the Bible and I have something to share with you.

But you have to be very careful not to believe what I am telling you without going to the Bible and reading.

Because I am a human being and I go to the Bible to interpret the Bible, which is what we saw yesterday.

And when I interpret the Bible, I can't commit errors.

And so I need you so that you need the Bible together with me to help me not to commit errors, and for that we need a congregation that in order to be united has to be passionate about God, but to know God and to know God you have to study the Bible like crazy.

And you say, OK, yeah, you are a teacher, you will tell us.

And especially the young people, because the young people, as I was young people, I believed that everything that I was told by my elders was true, actually.

This is the normal thing of how all of us come into life and are educated.

So this is a message for the leaders, this is a message for the father, but it's a message for the pastor, for the leaders, but especially for the young.

Because basically this is to say to the young, there is something wrong in our church, and we need to fix it.

It's not just something wrong in our church, it's something wrong in Christianity, and we need to fix it.

But all geese like I am, we already know what the truth is.

And as I told you, we are divided on that.

This is, I mean, in this town we are divided.

I know what I am telling you, I have been in this town for over 40 years.

So please, there needs to be a revolution in the church, and that revolution is the church is the revolution of the forgotten element, to know God, studying and understanding, not memorizing, understanding how this part connects with the other and why God is telling me that and the other.

In reality, the only thing that I have to do is to believe and I am going to heaven?

That's part of 1 version of Adventism that we are going to study today.

Series

On the Unity of the Church

04 The Christian Journey: From Division to Unity (Roman Catholic Ecumenism)

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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