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ARME Bible Camp

Dee Casper

Put Your Sword in its Place

That you would abide here with us a while, and that you would speak with power and conviction and clarity, and that you would do something for us in this moment that none of us would soon forget, and I pray that it would redefine the way in which we do life.

It's a tall order, but if Moses can ask you to show him your glory, then Lord, I can ask for it too.

And so I ask that you would show us your glory just now and that you would speak.

I have nothing for this people, but you have everything that they need.

There will not be any slides on the screen today.

So Don't worry about having any slides, you just have to stare at me and my fancy wooden bow tie that my friends gave me who are endearingly referred to as the homies.

So you know who you are and thank you for your gift.

So yeah, my topic this morning is entitled, Put Your Sword in Its Place.

We are living in an environment in the world today that is troubling for a lot of reasons.

The fact that there's civil unrest, the fact that there's radical injustice, the fact that there's economic hardship, the fact that there's a pandemic, that not only is affecting people physically with their health, but it's affecting their access to just healthy food supplies.

It's affecting people's ability to provide for their families.

We live in a deeply, deeply troubling time right now.

And while that saddens me a lot, there's something that frightens me even more.

I would like for you to listen to this quote from the Spirit of Prophecy that has been a big challenge to me over the years, and something that I have hoped and prayed that God would use to keep me grounded.

Nothing frightens me more than to see the spirit of variance manifested by our brethren.

Notice Ellen White is not talking about the world.

Nothing frightens me more than to see the spirit of variance between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, or Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell or politicians or other people, she says what frightens her most is to see a spirit of variance, of contention by our people, by our brethren.

And she says, we are on dangerous ground when we cannot meet together like Christians and courteously examine controverted points.

You as a Christian are on dangerous ground when you cannot meet together and act like a Christian, when you have to courteously, and if you refuse to courteously examine points with people who disagree with you, okay?

She says, I feel like fleeing the place lest I receive the mold of those who cannot candidly investigate the doctrines of the Bible.

It's so overwhelming to her, she says, that I feel like running away, fleeing the place of meeting because of what I'm seeing.

Then she closes by saying, those who cannot impartially examine evidences of a position that differs from theirs are not fit to teach in any department of God's cause.

That's from the 1888 materials, page 534.

And I'll do you a favor here, and I will copy this into the chat so that you can ruminate on this, because there's some stuff in there.

Nothing frightens me more than to see the spirit of variance manifested by our own people.

We are on dangerous ground when we cannot meet together like Christians and courteously examine Controverted points.

I feel like fleeing the place Lest I receive the mold of those who cannot candidly investigate the doctrines of the Bible.

Poisonous, angry discourse amongst Christians to other Christians is contagious.

And so she wants to flee from the place so she doesn't catch that bug.

And then she says that Those who cannot impartially examine evidences of a position that differ from theirs are not fit to teach in any department of God's cause.

If you can't act like a civil Christian when speaking with people who have different views from you, you have no business being in leadership.

You have no business being in any form of spiritual leadership.

This should deeply challenge us, because what I witness, 1 of the reasons why I'm not spending much time on social media anymore is, 1, because it will rule your life and destroy you and suck you into the vacuum.

But another big reason is because of what I see people who are my brethren, people that I know are fellow Seventh-day Adventist Christians, and seeing how they communicate with 1 another on the things that they differ on.

And it's quite frustrating and scary to me because as Seventh-day Adventist Christians, there were 2 big things, if you're not aware of the history, going into the 1888 General conference where the message of Christ our righteousness was being brought before the church to accept and take to the world in even greater measure.

There were some political arguments happening leading into that conference session.

There was a debate between Uriah Smith and G.I.

Wagner on the topic of the law in Galatians.

So is the law in Galatians, when Paul says the law was our schoolmaster, our tutor to lead us to Christ, is that the 10 Commandment law, the moral law, or is it the ceremonial law?

Wagner, he had believed that it was talking about the moral law.

And Ellen White had written a letter to Jones and Wagner at the behest of Uriah Smith and G.I.

Butler, tell these guys to stop writing about this position that they're saying it's the ceremonial law.

So there's this big political debate going back and forth on this issue, a hot topic, right?

It could have been the nature of Christ, it could have been women's ordination in our day, it could have been the topic of the 1 true God or do we believe in the Godhead, 3 co-eternal beings, whatever the circumstances may be, that was the hot topic of their day.

And Ellen White told Jones and Wagner stop writing on this is causing contention.

But she doesn't remember all of what she wrote in that letter.

And what ends up happening is eventually, she ends up having conversations with Jones and Wagner, they come to the 18 to 8 general conference.

But GI Butler's assure the fact these guys are going to talk about this topic.

He's so sick from the letters that Ellen White was sending him, getting on him about stuff, that he said, you know, stand by the way marks, don't accept any new light.

And so unfortunately, people in the 1888 General Conference session had their ears closed to the gospel that was preached with power, conviction, and beauty by E.J.

Wagner particularly, and some by Jones, I believe, but for sure by Wagner.

They didn't want to listen to what he had to say, didn't want to say amen to what he was saying, because they were just sure that he was going to go into that political topic that we disagree with him on.

Well, because they disagreed on a hot topic, they felt that you can't trust anything that these guys say.

Don't be too open to what they have to say because they don't agree with us on fill-in-the-blank topic.

Now, is that relevant today in our church?

I've seen far too many conversations from people saying, oh, don't listen to those guys.

And what's concerning to me about this is that we're assuming that because we disagree on 1 topic, that everything that this minister of the Lord has to say is now null and void, don't trust them, don't listen to their sermons.

I think that's pretty immature and insecure.

And if we have differences on topics, that's fine.

But as Seventh-day Adventists, it wasn't just the message of Christ our righteousness that we were to champion to the world.

It was also the message of liberty of conscience.

And so in the context of what's going on right now, there is some pretty hot and heavy conversations that are happening in our movement regarding the topic of racial injustice of what people view as being you know systemic racism or other circumstances that there are people who are communicating that like this is Absolutely the truth and you should not deny that there's any shred of this happening, or there's people who are denying it completely and saying, well, if you acknowledge that, then you're 1 of these people, right?

You're a social justice warrior or something else.

Like there's a lot of name calling happening in our movement right now, and a lot of jumping to conclusions and making assumptions about people that isn't fair to them, let alone the fact that it's not Christian.

You may disagree with them on certain aspects of this topic, but that doesn't mean that we need to attack people and make assumptions about everything that they believe.

So if you assume that because somebody is standing on issues of racial injustice, that immediately that they're supporting political organizations that may also have similar convictions on this matter, is an assumption that need not be made.

What if they're just a Christian who's upset about the fact that there are people who are oppressed and are not receiving the fair treatment that they deserve?

Don't they have the freedom to have that form of belief?

At the same time, just because someone may not fully understand the issues that you're passionate about, does that mean that we need to say that they don't care about people and that they're not informed, that they're just a racist for not seeing things this way?

I think that's a really unfair assumption that we're jumping to on either side of these topics.

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Put Your Sword in its Place

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