Sermon given at the Fairplain Benton Harbor, MI SDA Church on January 15, 2011

<p>Sermon given at the Fairplain Benton Harbor, MI SDA Church on January 15, 2011</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

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P. Gerard Damsteegt

How Adventists Discovered Jesus’ Model of Leadership

On this beautiful Sabbath day it is good to reflect upon our Adventist heritage.

It's very close to my soul and therefore I have selected the scripture reading.

And let us just ask the Lord to bless us specially.

Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.

Now if we just return to that section in first epistle of John chapter 1.

Here, John refers to something that he has experienced in a very special way.

And this experience is the unity and success of our church.

He says, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which you have seen with our eyes, which you have looked upon, and our hands have handled concerning the word of life.

The life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifest to us, that which you have seen and heard.

We declare to you that you also may have fellowship with us And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ.

And this is all written so that our joy may be full.

And so the deacons now give you a handout, because what I say here this half an hour or so, you may lose at the dining hall or the fellowship meal.

But after the meal there is again a discussion on this topic and when you go home, again I would encourage you to prayerfully reflect upon the material that I collected because it has to do with our joy in the Lord, what do you say?

And so John was concerned to share that which he had handled, he had absorbed it, It was a part of his life.

And he felt that if he can share this, and each 1 of us has the same experience because of the sharing, then there will be fellowship and union in the church.

Now, this was the Christ event, Christ coming to earth, living there the life that we should live, dying for us and giving the gift of eternal life.

And what happened at Calvary was the victory over Satan.

Remember you know what the Lord Jesus did there.

However for Seventh-day Adventist there is something even more precious.

This is very precious but in Revelation chapter 10 we see that the Lord himself again revealed himself between, between Calvary and the second advent.

Here is that great and mighty angel coming down from heaven, closed with a cloud, and the rainbow on his head.

His face was like the sun and his feet like pillars of fire.

And if you don't believe it, you go to Revelation chapter 1 and you will see the Theophany, the revelation of Jesus Christ also there in the heavenly sanctuary.

And again in the prophecy of Daniel chapter 10 a similar event.

And it's every time Jesus intervening in human history.

And what Jesus now is doing around the 1840s is coming down and bring the second Advent movement of which we are a product, bring a life.

And he had a little book open in his hand.

He said, his right foot on the sea and left foot on the land and he cried with a loud voice as a lion roars.

You know here now Christ is launching the Advent movement.

Because the Christian Church, what happened very soon, departed from the truth.

You get the rise of the mystery of iniquity and The church went downhill very speedily.

And then through divine providence, the Lord worked with his angels on the lives of Luther and Melanchthon and Calvin and Swingly.

And again, you get a revival in the Reformation, going back again to the Word.

And again, the Word of God was infused into the people, and they returned again back to the Bible.

But what happened with the Protestant movement?

Gradually, generation after generation, again the church lost its way.

And then Protestantism became Protestant scholasticism, which is a sophisticated word that the Reformers and the grandchildren of the Reformers and the great-grandchildren of the Reformers failed to go back to the Bible, but stayed with the writings of Luther, Calvin, Knox, Swingly, and a whole debate came up.

Who is right and how should we interpret the scriptures?

And in order to break the impasse there, the Lord Jesus Christ created signs in sun, moon, and stars.

The earthquake of Lisbon, the dark day, the falling of the stars, and as a result of those great signs, the attention of human beings again, the present world was focused on the scriptures.

Here the French Revolution came up, the captivity of the Pope, all of those things and people realized that Jesus is coming soon.

And out of this revival God chose a man who was not a perfect man, but he was the best person available, William Miller.

Man very honest and when the Lord touched his heart, He went back to the Bible, studied this, and he came to the fantastic conclusion that Jesus is coming in his lifetime.

1844, the cleansing of the sanctuary, the first angel's message, and the first angel's message what was that?

Fear God, give glory to him for the hour of his judgment has come.

He and the Advent movement came about and announced to the world the final judgment had begun.

Now in this epistle of the General Conference, just a few months ago announced, it says that when you look around and you see that Jesus is coming, You see all the signs of the times.

Yet at the same time we see that the church growth rate is not keeping in pace with the world's population.

And an honest evaluation of our current evangelistic impact on the world leads to the conclusion that unless there is a dramatic change we will not complete heaven's assignment in this generation.

You know our movement has been preaching Christ will come for how long?

And finally the general conference made public a statement that if you want to have Jesus come in this generation, something dramatic has to take place.

That is a frustration of people that reached their 80s and 90s and says, you know, we have preached this message all our lives and he did not come.

Now I think I tell you if we go back to the beginning of the Christian Church.

And we see that 11 apostles, and if you include Paul the 12th, what did they do?

The book of Acts says, they turned the world upside down.

And the message that was supposed to go to all the world, you find it in Colossians chapter 1.

If you turn to Colossians chapter 1, Paul says clearly and he doesn't lie, chapter 1 verse 23.

In Colossians 1, 23, if indeed you continue in faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you have heard, and which was preached to every creature under heaven, or which I, Paul, became a minister." So here Paul says, yes, the message was preached.

Matthew chapter 24 says, and this gospel will be preached to all the world and then the end will come.

Here you find a dual fulfillment in this prophecy.

When this gospel was preached to all the world.

It's interesting that there are 2 prophecies that are blended together and here you see them that Paul died in 67 AD, decapitated in Rome, outside of the wall.

3 years later, the end of Jerusalem came.

And the Jewish nation expected that to be the end of the world.

But another message had to be and Paul says the end of the world, Christ will not come until what?

Now in those 3 years the mystery of iniquity had not come.

Yes there was the end of Paul, there was the end of Jerusalem, but he foresaw beyond it that first the mystery of iniquity will come.

Evil will be revealed in a magnificent and terrible way, a traumatic way for the Christian Church.

And the Reformers knew that nearly 50 million people perished as a result of the persecution.

You know we don't realize this but this has all been fulfilled and then God used the Reformation to bring us back to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And within 200 years and you know we our church are nearly 200 years proclaiming this message.

Nearly 200 years later, the prophetic movement of the Reformation stagnated, and you get the Protestant scholasticism, and they focused on the writings of the Protestant pioneers, and not anymore on the gospel.

And controversies developed, and controversies developed.

Are Seventh-day Adventists not in danger of repeating the same thing?

Don't we see all kinds of discussions about that pastor and that evangelist and that theologian and we read their books More than we read the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Have we captured a sense of our destiny, 7-day Adventist, to restore all truth?

And so therefore I think we as Adventists miss an important dimension and that is simply, simply and clearly that we have forgotten our heritage frequently.

You have the evangelistic meetings, the 28 fundamentals are being proclaimed, people accept it, say yay and amen, being baptized, and what do they know from our history?

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How Adventists Discovered Jesus’ Model of Leadership

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