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Mount Shasta Seventh-day Adventist Church

Jim Ayer

Silence of God

You know, it is good to be back home and it's good to be here with you and I've got quite a few stories I'd like to share, but I also want to share a sermon.

And you know I wouldn't be in radio and television if I didn't have a commercial, right?

So I want to give you a brief commercial.

Adventist World Radio, by the way, we're now in over 80 languages around the world.

Gives us an opportunity to reach almost 70 to 80 percent of the world's population, and very shortly, we're going to be in podcasting all of those 80 languages here for North America and the rest of the world too.

It opens up another almost 2000000000 potential listeners.

So keep that in your prayers if you would because any time you wake up day or night, there's somebody around the world who's listening to the program who's making a choice about Jesus Christ at that very moment.

And then this 1, wanted to give a little brief commercial.

I'm really excited about this because it's a new book, Second Chance, from a life of drugs, crime, and misery to worldwide ministry.

And the really reason I'm excited about it is because 3ABN and The Review and Herald co-published it.

It's very exciting to me that the 2 ministries got together with this and published it together.

So if you get a chance, get a second chance.

Second Chance is all about God, because God is the God of Second Chances.

You just spend hours and hours and share with you what God is like and what God has done.

But this morning I want to share 1 quick story with you, and that's about Max.

Now Max was in the South Pacific, the area of the South Pacific, and Max was a murderer.

He was a thief, he was a cutthroat, he was everything evil.

They caught up to him, threw him in prison.

Now while he's in prison, Max notices something very interesting.

You see, Max saw everybody who went to church on Sunday that they didn't have to work.

He thought, ah, this is a pretty good deal.

So Max started going to church on Sundays.

I'm going to clear the deck here in case I knock things around.

He started going to church on Sunday and he didn't have to work.

The Seventh-day Adventist didn't work on Saturdays.

So he decided to go to church also on Saturdays.

So now he didn't work on Sundays and he didn't work on Saturdays.

Although it didn't last long enough for him to really hear much and understand much because he and 2 other buddies broke out of prison.

And they headed back to their old stomping ground.

They went way up in the mountains in this area that was just known kind of as the den of thieves and evil.

And there he thought, huh, what can I do?

I've got to have a good alibi in case they catch me again because they'll probably catch up with me sometime.

He thought if I become, and he mentioned a particular religion, that won't be any big thing because pretty much everybody here is that religion.

But if I become a Seventh-day Adventist, they all hate Seventh-day Adventists, that will be a really good alibi.

So he built a church, a little Seventh-day Adventist church.

Now, under the church, he put a trap door down and he dug a big old long tunnel all the way down the mountain out to the stream in case the cops came.

Then he could sneak out and be gone and he also kept his AK-47 there and his other other armaments.

And then the first Sabbath they sat there and they thought, well, we don't look right.

So they went out and they stole 3 tithes and 3 Bibles so they could look the part and then they came back to church.

Well, they still didn't know what to do, so 1 of them preached the sermon, quote-unquote, The other 1 did Sabbath school, and the third 1 did Adventist youth services.

So they had the 3 of them, they had their little service.

Somehow word got down the mountain, it got down to this school, and at this particular religious school, there were quite a few young Seventh-day Adventists going there.

And they thought, we're going to go up and we're going to partake in the services up there.

They knock on the door and Max opens the door and says, what's this?

Well, we understand you're having Sabbath services.

But now, he doesn't know what to do, so he tells the 1, you do the church service and you handle Sabbath school, and then they sat back and they watched.

The next Sabbath though, the fellows were all dressed up and they're stolen tithes and they're stolen Bibles and they're sitting there and nobody shows up.

He gets word from down in the mountain that the principal of the school doesn't like what's going on up there and he locked all the kids in the school.

He goes down in his cellar, he grabs his AK-47, he starts marching down the mountain, and all of a sudden he looks and he says, I've got on my tie.

He goes back, he takes off his tie, he sets it down next to his Bible, and he goes down the mountain now with his AK-47, and he's so upset, he's blowing off bunches of bananas as he's walking down the mountain.

The word travels rapidly that Max is coming, and he's mad.

He gets down to the school, chain and padlock across the school gates.

Opens the gate, goes on in, he's looking all over for the principal.

And he finally finds the principal hiding under his desk.

He pulls out the principal, sticks the gun in his belly and says, where's my congregation?

You better release my congregation and if you don't release my congregation I take it that you have a doctrinal issue.

Then he says, now he says I bet you believe in hell and he says if there is a hell you're gonna be there first and you're gonna meet me when I get there if you don't release my congregation.

Well needless to say, the principal released the congregation.

And Max started having church services every single week.

And after some time, they spawn what they call a hand church.

A hand church is the main church with 5 branch Sabbath schools.

And soon they call up the mission director down in the valley, says, why don't you come up and hold an evangelistic series?

Mission director says, I don't want to come.

No, we promise you that Max is okay and that Max will be the guard and head guard over the area while you preach.

They begin baptizing people at the end of the series, baptized a whole bunch of people, but not Max.

Max waited, you see, until the very last day in case he had to shoot somebody.

So on the very last day, Max and his 2 buddies were baptized in the Adventist church.

Now it's very interesting because people there in the community said, you know, this denomination couldn't convert Max and this 1 couldn't, but if the Seventh-day Adventists can, maybe we shouldn't be as hard on them.

We should give them some land." So they gave them land to build a church right in the town.

And so Max and all the congregation could worship there.

God will do anything to speak to our hearts.

But you see, the devil doesn't want you to know it.

The devil doesn't want you to believe it.

The devil is the father of lies, and he's got an innumerable amount of lies.

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Silence of God

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