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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Adam Ramdin

Refreshing

It's good to be here with you in Advent Hope, Loma Linda, California.

As you may be able to tell by my accent, I am visiting you from the United Kingdom, Great Britain, England, whatever you want to call it, land of hope and glory, mother of the free, we'll take all those titles.

It's good to be here with you in America.

And I pray that as we open the Word this morning, God would bless our hearts.

Before we start, shall we bow our heads for a word of prayer?

Father in heaven, Lord, we thank you for waking us up this morning for life and for health and for strength.

We thank you, Lord, that we have this opportunity to gather together as like believers.

And we have the promise that your Holy Spirit is gathered here in our midst.

And we ask and pray, Lord, that as we open your word, that you would minister to each and every 1 of our hearts.

I pray, Lord, that each 1 of us may leave here, touched by you in Jesus' name.

In England, 1 of the things that I do is I run a center of evangelism called the Peace Center of Evangelism.

It is a training school similar to Amazing Facts College of Evangelism or the Arise School, Mission College and so on.

We run a short four-month training program in evangelism Focusing on public evangelism and personal evangelism and this is what we train the students who come last year we started It was the first year this year We're going into our second year and we we focus on what is sometimes called maybe the more traditional style of evangelism.

Evangelistic campaigns, door-to-door work, Bible studies in the homes, etc.

Now it was very interesting that about 2 months ago I read some statistics, Maybe you read them as well.

I believe they came out in US News or in USA Today, where there was a research that was done on all the Christian churches in America, and it showed that the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I forget if it was the fastest or the second fastest growing church in North America.

Anyone here read the same article as well?

It's like, wow, the Seventh-day Adventist Church is the second or the fastest growing church in the whole of North America.

And we all came to church that Sabbath, if we met with a fellow Adventist, and we patted each other on the back and we told each other that we are the second fastest growing church, or the fastest growing church in North America.

And the article pointed out that some of the reasons for our growth were we were focusing on evangelism, aggressive evangelism, and it even said that our unique lifestyle, instead of being a hindrance, was a benefit.

And so those of us who are vegetarians or vegans, we said, wow, praise the Lord, you know?

Here's evidence from a non-Adventist that we're doing pretty good and the reasons why we're doing good is because of our uniqueness.

How many of you were at last year's General Conference session?

I was there at the general conference session.

It was my third 1 I've attended, but it was the first 1 I really attended in any length.

I went to Toronto 2000, and I visited there just for a day or 2, and I remember the theme there was almost home, and I thought back, well, that was 10 years ago.

And there, as you know, if you go to the general conference session, 1 of the things that they do every evening is a different 1 of the 13 world divisions gives a report on the evening session.

And so you have the South American division and they come up and they give a report and and they'll tell you all of the great stories that have happened in their division in the last 5 years.

And so there's a strong focus on statistics, there's a strong focus on baptisms, there's a strong focus on how much we have grown and the projects we have done.

And if you went to any of those evening sessions, It was powerful to listen to some of it, because you listen, I think the Inter-America Division, on 1 Sabbath they baptize 50, 000 people.

And the whole auditorium is like, wow, praise the Lord, and there's clapping going on.

And each evening, every division gets up there, and they're all trying to obviously show how well they have done evangelistically over the last 5 years.

And it's very interesting to listen to all the different ones, you know, some of them baptized more than others and I said as a world church we baptize on average, you know how many people every day we baptize on average?

It's 2, 500 per day on average we baptize.

Loma Linda Church is what, about 2, 000, 3, 000?

So every single day, on average, the whole, you know, that many people get baptized.

Obviously not every day because we do our baptisms mainly on Sabbath, but you get the idea.

Average it throughout the year, 2, 500 baptisms per year, per day, throughout the year.

This is what we do as a world church and we're growing numerically by 1000000 members per year as a church.

And we can, you know, pat ourselves on the back and we tell ourselves we're doing good.

Fastest growing church in North America, baptizing 2, 500 worldwide per day.

Some world divisions are baptizing loads.

And yet the question is, this is what we say about ourselves.

But have you noticed that as Adventists we have this terrible weakness for wanting to congratulate ourselves for what we have done and how great we are?

Well we planned this but then this happened.

As a world church that's what's taking place and that's what we report to ourselves.

If you go to the general conference session in 2015 in Austin, Texas, You'll hear the same in San Antonio, Texas, sorry.

You'll hear the same kind of reports every single evening.

We've done this, we've done this, we've done this, we've done this, we've done this.

And you know my question is, how is it that God views our church today?

What does the Bible have to say about us as a church?

We say we're baptizing 50, 000 in 1 Sabbath.

We say we're doing all these great things and so on and so on and so forth.

But What does the Bible have to say about us as a church?

But what does the Bible have to say about us?

In Revelation chapter 3, it's quite clear that when God is speaking about our church, He uses very strong language and He simply says, you are Laodicea, you're not hot, you're not cold, in fact you're lukewarm, and I really don't like you and I want to spit you or spew you out of my mouth.

It stands in stark contrast to what we seem to so often collectively say about ourselves.

We say, hey we're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing great.

You're not hot, you're not cold, you're lukewarm, you're somewhere in the middle.

In fact, you say you're rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing and know not that you're wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.

What the Bible says about us is very different, it seems, from what we say about ourselves.

And, you know, to put our statistics in context, we baptize 2, 500 per day, 1 million per year, which is a net growth of 6, 500.

650, 000, because we lose 350, 000 each year.

However, in the world, per year, there are 140 million people born per year.

We grow by 1000000 and there's 140 million born.

56 million people die, which is a net increase of 83 million per year.

So the world population is growing every year by 83 million and we as a church are growing by 650, 000.

World population every year another 86, 83, 85 million people are born on the earth.

As a church, we grow by just over half a million per year.

So the population growth in the world is far outstripping us.

So no matter how many conventions we go to and pat ourselves on the back and say how well we're doing, we are at our current rate being left behind by the population growth in the world.

And we hear the text, and I mentioned it last night, we hear the text that we have to preach the gospel into where?

All the world for a witness and then shall the end come.

And so we train people to go out and be missionaries and go and preach the gospel and yet you see the problem that is posed.

And it's interesting if you do a study in Ellen White's writings and you type in the search not 1 in, just see what comes up.

Well she says not 1 in 20, not 1 in a hundred, not 1 in a thousand.

So that's how much we're growing and yet when you look at the actual not 1 in our converted not 1 in our the ready for this not 1 in that and it's damning damning evidence on us as a church and so what is what is it going to take for us as a people as a collective church Even though we come together every 5 years and we pat ourselves on the back and say how much we're growing yet Our growth is being outstripped by population What is it going to take for us to be able to preach this gospel to the whole world and finish the work that we?

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