Hartland Winter Convocation 2021: The Mind Which Has Wisdom

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Hartland Institute of Health and Education

Norbert Restrepo

The Mind Which has Wisdom

It's good to be here with you and for those of you who are joining us online and even though it's a cool, kind of cold afternoon, I pray that you will, you have also enjoyed it as well as the concert that was offered at 3 p.m.

This afternoon I want to speak on the theme of our convocation, The Mind Which Has wisdom.

We have been blessed by Pastor Steve Wohlberg as he is unfolding the meaning of Revelation chapter 17.

Carl as he explained interesting and historical evidence, biblical evidence of the number 666.

And it's so wonderful to see how the Lord has given us abundant evidence so that we can build our faith upon and strengthen our faith on Scripture and the interpretation that God has entrusted to the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Now I will be sharing a slightly different angle but it all blends together and I pray that it will be a blessing.

Just bow your heads with me as we ask the Lord to be with us again.

Heavenly Father, we invite your presence once again into our midst as we open Scripture.

May you bless those who are here, those who are online, and thank you for the opportunity to open your word and to fellowship even in these times.

Jesus came to his disciples and we read in Matthew chapter 13.

I want to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 13.

And in this chapter Jesus was speaking using many different parables to illustrate the principles of the kingdom of heaven.

And after sharing a number of parables, he pauses and he addresses his disciples because the disciples actually came to him to ask him a question which we find in verse 10 of Matthew chapter 13.

The disciples came to him and said, why do you speak to them in parables?

And he answered and said to them, because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

I remember some years ago I was at a prophecy seminar and it was very difficult to understand and it was a week long morning and afternoon and it just got more and more complex, layers and layers of material that just blew your mind, impressed you a lot with the presenters, but not too much with the love of Jesus, you know.

And in 1 of those discussions after these long sessions, 1 of the questions that arose was, you know, 1 lady said, I think I'm going to be lost because I just can't understand all those layers of explanations that they're giving.

And part of the conversation, I spoke to 1 of the presenters and I said, you know, 1st Corinthians chapter 13 says that if I understand all mysteries and I'll have all knowledge and all prophecies but if I have not love I am nothing and So that was part of the discussion, and 1 of the presenters said, well, it's the other way around.

If I have all love but I don't understand prophecy, I am lost.

I said, well, so he was doing some type of mathematics with Scripture there, and then he added that in the days of Jesus, people could understand the gospel and be saved just with the simple words of Jesus, but towards the end time it would require greater effort.

It would require the ability to decipher the symbols of Revelation in order for you to be able to be saved.

That was his conclusion, And I was like dumbstruck of that type of philosophy of salvation.

You know, just the mental effort of deciphering the symbols would be necessary to, it almost sounds like righteousness by works.

But in any case, I wanted to share that with you because many times we are intimidated by the prophetic books and by the meanings that Jesus conveyed through parables and symbols But the wonderful news is that these symbols are even explained by scriptures themselves.

God is giving us the evidence of what it means, and He has further promised that He will reveal these mysteries to his people.

But there are some keys in scripture that I want to share with you this afternoon.

How we can have that mind which has wisdom, that spiritual discernment.

Christ Object Lessons, page 111, we read, those who desire to know the truth, to find the treasures of truth, must dig for them as the miner digs for the treasure hidden in the earth.

No half-hearted, indifferent work will avail.

It is essential for old and young not only to read God's Word, but to study it with wholehearted earnestness, praying and searching for truth as for hidden treasure.

Those who do this will be rewarded, for Christ will quicken the understanding." So yes, there is an effort, but this effort is that wholehearted earnestness, praying and searching for truth as for a hidden treasure.

And the wonderful thing is that Christ has promised that he will reward those efforts, but with quickening our understanding.

Along those same lines of thought, let's turn to the book of Revelation and chapter 17 that's that's the focus of the study this weekend and when we go to Revelation chapter 17 and just we will take a slight look at verses 7 and 9 we see that Jesus gave a message to the beloved John in the Isle of Patmos.

Now this message, though veiled in symbols, would be understood by his servants.

And we know that on Revelation 1, verse 1, the revelation of Jesus Christ given to John, it was a revelation to his servants, those who would hear and obey.

So part of the process of receiving that revelation had to do with being servants of God, it had to do with hearing and obeying, and the obedience would be part of a process that would enable the sermons to further understand the truth that God had for them.

You know, God's truth is progressive, and as you obey, He opens your understanding even further.

As the Lord proceeded to unveil the mystery of the woman and of the beast in the book of Revelation he used the expression here is the mind which has wisdom and I've often wondered why he used that expression Here is the mind which has wisdom in the context what we can understand 1 of the things that is quite Overt is the fact that I'm going to give you the explanation Here is the the meaning of this issue.

I'm going to give you the interpretation.

And especially when we're dealing with things from Scripture, we need that heavenly wisdom.

But this mind will be given to those who hear and obey, like we see in Revelation 1.1.

Or as we read in Revelation 14.7 those who fear God and give glory to Him will receive that mind which has wisdom.

I have seen and I'm sure that you as well.

So I grew up listening to messages and prophecy.

I remember when I was a child on Sabbath afternoons, I was living at that time, it was the year 1980, and I was living at Uchee Pines.

I was 11 years old, so you can do the math and figure out my age.

And on Sabbath afternoons, my dad would go to a home, and I remember we had to go through a little forest and we walked through a meadow, and I was looking forward to a wonderful Sabbath afternoon walking in the midst of nature.

But it was a short walk, and we would finish at the home of a brother, where we would be there as a child I felt stuck for all the afternoon while this brother would speak and talk and talk about prophecy.

As a young adult I was asked to translate from English to Spanish, and I had to travel quite a bit in South America, the Caribbean, and even in Europe to translate.

And at times I had to translate presenters on prophecy who would speak morning and afternoon for a whole week and then go to the next country and do the same again for a whole week.

You know, I would dream about prophecy and it was just all the time going through it.

Throughout all those years, I have listened to all sorts of prophetic interpretations, all of them allegedly Adventist, all of them allegedly the ultimate present truth, the last warning message, and if you don't accept it, if you don't understand it, you will be lost.

And it's interesting the amount and the variety of contradicting conclusions even amongst our people.

I remember back in 1999 a certain presenter was saying that the Sunday Law was going to come in the year 2000.

And it sounded like a very plausible presentation because the millennium was going to start.

Around that time there was a book that was very popular.

I read it all the way through, The Keys of This Blood by Malachi Martin.

Interesting book of all the geopolitical influences and so forth.

But in that book it stated that the papacy and Pope John Paul II had an agenda to govern the world.

Well, that fits within our worldview and our understanding of Revelation.

But The language of that book was interpreted in the light of quotes in the book, devotional book, Maranatha, and Selected Messages, Volume 3, that the millennium had been ushered, and the people of God were in abject poverty, while the people of the world would say, if God is with you, why are you in abject poverty?

While we're doing well, this is the millennium we were waiting for.

And based on that quote and what they read in Keys, the Keys of this Blood, they came to the conclusion that the Millennium was starting the year 2000 and if it was going to start then, then it must mean that by, you know, comparison, if you take those 2 quotes, then the Sunday Law had to come before the year 2000.

And I remember coming up to the speaker and saying, OK, yes, but that interpretation of the keys of this blood is not biblical.

And the millennium, the biblical millennium, is after Christ's second coming in any case.

Oh, because the papacy does believe that way and they do want that millennium to start in the year 2000.

Well they want it to start, but what makes you think it's going to happen and why would you present that as a prophetic message?

And you know we went back and forth in these type of arguments and then I couldn't convince him so eventually I said do you believe it do you believe the Sunday Law will be here in the year 2000 and are you preparing for it so are you ready to not buy or sell in 6 months, and he says, I have a garden in my backyard.

Well, you know, the year 2000 came, and I did have, well, the Sunday Law is still not here.

We're in the year 2021, right, 21 years later.

And the point I want to highlight is that when prophecy is presented from a speculative point of view, rather than strengthening the faith of God's people in his word, what does it do?

It weakens the faith of God's people in the prophetic message.

And I found that often the reason is because we just want to find something novel and just share it out there rather than letting the scriptures speak by themselves and the spirit of prophecy which is so plain and it's so beautiful to see the harmony of it there's no sensationalism it's just the plain truth that God is warning us about the times in which we are living So the mind which has wisdom I would suggest that is the mind of Christ and the purpose of this message is to understand how we can receive the mind which has wisdom.

In 1 Corinthians 2, if you will go with me there, 1 Corinthians 2.

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The Mind Which has Wisdom

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