We could have gone home a hundred years ago. Why are we still here? A history of the Adventist experience will help us understand that.

GYC Conference 2022: Break Forth

<p>We could have gone home a hundred years ago. Why are we still here? A history of the Adventist experience will help us understand that.</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>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Our Desperate Need of the Spirit is Now

Ron Clouzet

01 Why Haven’t We Finished the Work?

I'm just going to tell you a little bit about myself.

I'm the pastor of the East Ridge Church in Tennessee.

The last 5 years before that, I was a missionary.

I was working at the division as ministerial director for Northern Asia Pacific Division.

So I worked in China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Taiwan.

Before that I was ministerial Director of NAD and also taught at the seminary for 9 years at Andrews.

And before that I taught at Southern for 14 years.

So we've been here and there and everywhere, and thank you for being here today.

We're going to talk about why we haven't finished the work, all right?

Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to be together.

Thank you for these people who are interested in the subject of the Holy Spirit.

And my Lord, I just pray that you may speak to us, that we may leave this place sensing that you are speaking to us and that we are understanding something about you and your plans that perhaps we didn't fully understand before.

You realize this was made into a song, an Adventist song, Oh, When I Shall See Jesus.

And that was the clarion call of the Adventist church prior to 1844 as they led – it was led in the Millerite movement, and there was a great longing to see Jesus come soon.

Perhaps the greatest days of the Adventist movement, we're talking about almost 200 years now, were those leading to October 22nd, 1844.

According to life sketches, This is what happened during those years.

They sought to be pure and ready for Jesus' return.

Believers worked for friends and neighbors and there were daily, I'm underscoring that, daily conversions.

The rich and the poor, laity and ministers all flocked to meetings talking about the second coming.

Notice the word again, that's her word, not mine, flocked.

The presence of angels and the Holy Spirit was felt at these meetings.

The Meetings ran until late in the evenings.

Personal testimonies moved people to conviction.

People praised God as they made their way home.

Can you imagine being in a sitting like that now?

I know that GYC approximates that somewhat, but there's much more here going on, isn't it?

"'There was a sweet communion with God, ' she says, "'and a glad expectation of the return of Jesus.

Worldly business was set aside, and the believers carefully examined their hearts to make sure they'd surrender all.

And that's why, and this is a familiar statement, Ellen White said, this was the happiest year of my life.

We united as a people in earnest prayer for true inward experience and the unmistakable evidence of our acceptance with God." Now, that unmistakable evidence is an echo of Methodist language.

She was a Methodist, and she was a Methodist when this happened, and Wesleyanism taught about the witness of the Spirit.

In other words, it was John Wesley who was really, who really emphasized in Christianity, Christian history, the need that if we are actually Christians, it should show.

And she's speaking about that in terms of their lives.

However, Only 12 years later, things in the Adventist Church, in a very, very nascent, very small Adventist Church at that point, had changed.

She wrote in 1856, there was this period of consecration, she was referring to 1844, that there is not now.

What has come over the professed peculiar people of God?

I saw the conformity to the world, so she answers her own question, I saw the conformity to the world, the unwillingness to suffer for the truth's sake.

So basically 2 things, conformity to the world is basically a secular spirit, right?

That's how we could translate that today, a secular spirit.

Unwillingness to sacrifice has to do with a lack of total surrender.

In other words, we sacrifice, but are we willing to sacrifice everything that needs to be sacrificed or everything that is needed?

As a result of that, James White began a series of articles, articles talking about the Laodicean Church, and the breaking news was that the Laodicean Church was not the Protestant churches that had rejected the Advent message, but it was the Adventist church itself, that we were the Laodicean church.

And that was a big revelation, but those articles, 1 after another, really produced a revival in the church, and a very important revival, and the first major revival after 1844 that lasted about 5 months, from November 56 till March of 57.

And the breadth and depth of the revival was significant.

At that time, there were maybe 1, 500 Adventists total, And about 345 of those Adventists wrote to the editor responding with heartfelt conviction about what that Laodicean message was about.

We have 22 million Adventists today worldwide.

Imagine if there was a revival and 4 or 5000000 people would have an absolute turnover of a change in their lives.

Wouldn't you say that that should really make a difference?

Well, it made a difference for a little time, but this is what happened after that.

Ellen White wrote about it many years later as to why that revival did not last.

Why that revival petered out by about March of 57.

Nearly all believed that this message would end in the loud cry of the third angel, the outpouring of the Spirit to finish the work.

You know, Revelation 18, the angel of Revelation 18.

But as they failed to see the powerful work accomplished in a short time, many lost the effect of the message.

I saw that this message would not accomplish its work in a few short months, but then she said something that is very intriguing.

God had sent angels in every direction to prepare unbelieving hearts for the truth.

So this Laodicean message that James White was writing about, God was at work outside of the Adventist Church getting people ready to accept that and to accept our Advent message.

If you go to New York City today, you find the headquarters of the American Bible Society.

And outside the door you find this statue of this man called Jeremiah Lamphere sitting there in a state of wonder.

Now who in the world was Jeremiah Lamphear?

But he had a burden for the people of New York.

Remember in the 1850s, America was growing by leaps and bounds.

Immigration from Europe was coming all the time.

And then there was an expansion west in order to, you know, occupy and take advantage of this vast nation and to cultivate it, etc.

And so The government made it easy for people to get homesteads and out there and so there was a great enormous expansion, a lot of money.

In fact, historians say that the government at 1 point had such surplus that they didn't know what to do with it.

02 What is the True Baptism of the Spirit?

Let's pray together Loving Father in heaven Thank you Lord for These brothers and sisters who have come to learn about the Holy Spirit.

We need your Spirit to understand you, Lord.

We need a special anointing of the Spirit of God to understand the things of God.

And we pray that we may understand that today, that there might be insights that will be helpful as we prepare for the last days and as there will be a great deal of deceptions regarding this period in the last days and so please guide us today we pray in Jesus name amen I'm sure that a number of you have heard of Charles Finney.

Charles Finney was probably the most effective American evangelist in 200 years.

Moody, more so than even Billy Graham in many ways, okay?

He began as a teacher and then he moved into a law firm and he was a law clerk.

He was a typical Christian of those days, which was somebody who goes to church every Sunday and somebody who hears sermons, but somebody who is not changed by anything.

All he was capable of doing is criticize the sermons.

But he went to church because everybody in those days went to church.

That he was, deep down in his heart, he feared he was not really a Christian.

And he feared that, you know, that was not a good thing.

And So he said, but I don't know how to become a Christian.

Well the Lord led him, and I don't have the time to explain that to you, but the Lord led him to an experience where he surrendered his whole life to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it took over a period of about 2 days, several hours, where he was in prayer, when he went to the woods, when he surrendered everything, he cried all his pain out, and he went back and so forth and he struggled with God.

And he speaks about liquid waves of love falling on him.

And then he speaks, He became, upon that experience, that very day, he quit his work as law clerk and became an evangelist.

The next client that he had come over, he had an appointment with him, and he says, I'm sorry, I won't be able to take care of your needs because I have a retainer from the Lord, famously he said.

And he became very effective Up and down the Hudson River in New York State, preaching in all of these places, thousands and thousands would be converted.

The man speaks about, after his experience, He speaks about reading the Bible for hours every single day.

And he says like everything appeared new to him.

It's like he had never heard these things before.

And he said that he would speak to people and people would be converted.

And he said, I have a hard time thinking of any, I'm paraphrasing, but this is what he said, I have a hard time thinking of anybody who was not soon after converted.

Can you imagine whoever you witness to, you say, you know, I can't think of anybody who was not converted that I witnessed to.

He still holds the record in Rochester, New York, for the greatest number of conversions in the history of the Christian Church in America.

A hundred thousand people were converted in 1 evangelistic series.

People would take the train, Finney would be on the train station.

The train would go by and people in the train would be converted as they went by where Finney was standing.

People would come and eat with Phinney at his table.

They would halfway through stand up and disappear and come back converted.

Many people would consider that experience by Phinney to be the epitome of the baptism of the Spirit.

Phinney was really baptized with the Holy Spirit.

Is there something supernatural that is associated with it?

Charismatics say that the baptism of the Spirit is when you finally get to speak in tongues.

That is the evidence that you have been baptized by the Spirit of God.

And now, many Charismatics cannot speak in tongues, did you know?

They try sometimes for years in despair because they just can't make it happen until it happens.

And so that's called the baptism of the Spirit.

Will we carry forward the work, Ellen White says, will we carry forward the work in the Lord's way?

Will we receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

This is what we need, she says, and may have at this time.

Then we shall go forth with a message from the Lord, and the light of truth will shine forth as a lamp that burns, reaching to all parts of the world." Now in this statement, look at the context, okay, about the reception of the Spirit of God.

That is mission state, it's a mission context.

Will we carry forward the work in the Lord's way?

Will we wrestle with prayer, with Him in prayer?

She puts it in the context of finishing the work.

She puts that in the context of earnest prayer, alright?

Let's talk about what is baptism, because we're talking about baptism of the Spirit.

So before we understand that, we need to understand what baptism is about in a more essential way.

The word baptism comes from is a transliteration from the Greek baptism which means literally to dip, to immerse, to plunge underwater.

Now you knew this, You probably understood that before you were baptized and understood that, right?

And this is a beautiful, a beautiful rite, Christian rite, baptism, Which shows what?

What can you tell from a picture like this?

Surrender, yieldedness, Death even, right?

Death, death to self, and of course, every preacher promises the baptismal candidate, at least I do, you can count on me bringing you back up.

You know, because sometimes people are a little worried about it.

That's what this shows, death and resurrection.

You know the story of the eunuch, very clear story.

Philip met the carriage led by the Holy Spirit and they started studying Isaiah chapter 53.

I accept him, I accept him as the Messiah.

Now as they went down the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, see, here is water, what hinders me from being baptized?

So they understood, even a foreigner like the Ethiopian eunuch understood because Jewish teaching talked about being a new birth from foreigners.

You know, when you became a Jew, a Jewish believer, then there was a purification rite as well that involved water.

So he commended the chariot to stand still, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized them.

03 The Difference Jesus Makes

So just want to go through this in case you were not here for previous ones.

Yeah, make sure you see the screen, okay?

Because you might want to take some pictures of it or take notes.

And this is the font size I'm going to be using for the text, for Bible text and Spirit of Prophecy, etc.

I'm not going to give away handouts or my PowerPoints or anything.

So whatever you can get, you're going to get from this session by taking notes or taking pictures.

And this is based somewhat on 1 of those, on mostly this book on the other 1, the Adventism's Greatest Need.

And some of it is on getting to know the Holy Spirit, but which is available through Amazon and ABC and so forth.

The next session, we're gonna talk, I'm gonna include a third book, the latest 1 I've written on prayer and mission and legal aspects of prayer and so forth.

Loving Father in heaven, thank you so much for each and every 1 of these folk that have come to seek to learn something and be inspired.

I just pray that you may do that for them, that your Holy Spirit may speak to all of us through this presentation that we may understand you better, your purposes better, and the work of the Holy Spirit better.

Just in case you weren't here, some of you probably do not know me.

I was a pastor in California for about 11 years, and then I taught at Southern Adventist University for 14 years.

Half of that time I was dean of the school.

Then we went to the seminary and I taught there for 9 years.

I was ministerial secretary for the division at that same time.

Then we went overseas to Northern Asia Pacific Division.

We worked in China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and we came back about a year and a half ago.

And I'm pastoring a church in Tennessee at this time.

Some time ago, there was a big civil war in Sudan.

A terrible civil war, because you may have heard about it, although it's been a long time ago in the news.

A lot of people with their arms or legs hacked off.

That was the Southern Sudan people being attacked by the Northern Sudan people.

Northern Sudan people are mostly Muslims and Southern Sudan people are Christians and animists.

And so it was a religious civil war basically.

Eventually in 2011, South Sudan became the newest country, independent country in the world.

And from there comes a story of a man who had lost his whole family and was trying to get out of Sudan in order to stay alive.

And he knew that there were, you know, refugee camps in Uganda, but he would have to walk 150 miles to get there, and in order to do that, he made a solo trip, because that's a little safer.

He traveled during the night and he slept on treetops during the daytime and that is how he survived after a few weeks.

He got there to the refugee camp and he was relatively safe.

By and by he got to know an Adventist pastor, an old Adventist minister that was also in the refugee camp.

He got to know him, he got interested in studying the Bible, he learned about the Bible from the pastor, and then he decided that it was time for him to become a Seventh-day Adventist, and the pastor baptized him right there in the refugee camp, and he was full of joy because he had now discovered truth and everything his entire world began to make some sense now that he understood the great controversy between good and evil and as a result of that he decided to go back to his country.

Now this is a tough choice, think about it, because going back is not a walk in the park, this is a hundred and 50 miles and this is under very severe conditions.

So during the night he walked, during the day he slept on treetops he made it back and he shared his newfound faith with friends relatives they were all gone they were all dead with friends several friends 7 or 8 friends and after a few months they too were ready to become Seventh-day Adventists.

So he said, oh, I know a pastor who can baptize you.

And so he walked back another 150 miles all during the night and sleeping on treetops during the daytime and found the pastor in the refugee camp and said, hey I have 7 friends who are ready to be baptized, please come and baptize them.

And he said, oh my brother I could never do that, I will not survive the trip.

And that was true, an older man just couldn't survive that trip and so no problem he walked back 150 miles to South Sudan under all that constant danger, mortal danger every single day, every hour, walked at night, slept on treetops during the day, found his friends and he says I have great news, I found the pastor and he is willing to baptize you, We just need to go to him.

So now the whole contingency of men walked a hundred and 50 miles down to Uganda under mortal threat again and made it there and they were baptized.

So, question, what do you think happened next?

That's right, they went back to South Sudan because they had received Jesus and they were full of Jesus and what matter was to share that with other people.

So they walked back to their home country 900 miles of walking throughout these months you know.

So a good question is what motivated him to do this?

And obviously, the answer is Jesus became very real in his life.

Because you could find a number of reasons not to make those trips.

Or if you started to stop, or, you know, say, well, that's just too much, it's an exaggeration, that's too extreme.

When you look in the book of John, you find that a fourth of the entire Gospel of John is dedicated to a single night, and that is the night of Jesus' betrayal.

John 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 is on that night.

And 3 out of those chapters, 14, 15, and 16 are dedicated to the Holy Spirit.

Jesus needed the support of his friends, the apostles.

That's why he had that supper with his closest associates.

Jesus was already, according to Alan White, he was already under the shadow of the cross, he was already experiencing what a wicked person would experience being separated from God.

So what he needed is the disciples to say we're praying for you, we'll be there with you, God is with you, you'll make it through, that's what he needed.

When he told them that he was about to leave, all these disciples just, you know, cried out and says, no, are you kidding me?

Don't do that, you know, why are you leaving?

So they were really worried that he was leaving.

So Jesus switched probably his plan, you know, he probably could have talked about the meaning of the cross, he could have talked about the kingdom of God, he could have talked about the love God has for fallen mankind, but when their reaction was the way it was according to John 13, then he switched that and he dedicated himself for them, to comfort them, think about that, instead of expecting comfort from them to him.

So he gave him that great gift of the Spirit, the comforter, the love and support of the Spirit, and he said in John 14 16, I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever.

You're concerned that I'm leaving, I'm gonna ask the Father that somebody will be with you.

But that word helper translated helper and comforter in other versions is the word parakletos.

Back to Menu

Series

Our Desperate Need of the Spirit is Now

01 Why Haven’t We Finished the Work?

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

01 Why Haven’t We Finished the Work?

55m

02 What is the True Baptism of the Spirit?

59m

03 The Difference Jesus Makes

55m

04 Praying in the Spirit

53m

Sound Doctrine