GYC SE 2022 Fall Conference

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GYC Southeast

Jeremy Arnall

Michael Hasel

Felecia Lee

Stephen Lee

Jack Philips

Sabbath School

All right, I have a few questions we're gonna start off with.

And again, if you have a question, send it to me, 423-505-6380.

Before we get into our discussion time, let's go ahead and have a word of prayer.

Pastor Jack could you begin us with a word of prayer?

Father we are thankful for this opportunity to gather together to know you to be with you and to be with each other We pray that your Holy Spirit is with us as we discuss these messages that you have given to us, that we might find hope, that we might find a future, that we might find purpose in them.

So to start off, do you perceive a general lack of emphasis on the distinctive messages of the 3 angels?

I remember sitting through a church service a couple weeks ago and this pastor was speaking about the investigative judgment and I was thinking, wow, it has been a while since I've heard a message like this in church during the divine hour worship service about the judgment.

It was very Christ-centered, it was very biblical, it was very encouraging, but I was thinking to myself, wow, I wonder how much this is the case in other places.

And so I'd just like to open this question up to you.

Do you perceive a general lack of emphasis on some of these important messages of the 3 angels?

It's who will be the first person to speak.

So I was thinking, I don't think this is intentional.

I don't think it's intentional, but I have noticed since I became a Seventh-day Adventist that the messages that really blew me away, I only hear them rarely, usually just at an evangelistic series of messages, but not so much in church service anymore.

So I don't think it's intentional, I think it just has got divided where we share those messages.

Good point there about the distinction between the church service and then the evangelistic meeting.

Since I'm in missions and living abroad for many, many years, I can say that maybe the Global South could be a tad bit different than the Global North.

And even the Global North, like you pointed out, is also divided.

And so, of course, I don't know if there is somewhat of real statistics done on it, but yes, there is.

There are churches that probably lean towards less emphasis on that, and there are churches that have probably more emphasis on it.

So yeah, it's divided and it's hard to tell.

Have any 1 of you ever noticed if you're wearing a particular color and the day you go out, it seems as if everyone is wearing that color?

And there are other times when something you're interested in, for example, we were talking about San Francisco a few months ago, and then all of a sudden, everywhere we turned, San Francisco was popping up.

We'd meet people from San Francisco, And it was because at that time we had this particular interest in San Francisco.

And I have found sometimes when we have a particular interest in a topic, all of a sudden it seems to be everywhere or we're hearing it all the time.

Sometimes when I don't want to hear something, that's when it seems as if God keeps bringing it to mind.

Another pastor is speaking about this, or there's another seminar or something about it.

And there are other situations, depending on the circle that you are in, you're always hearing about reasons.

1, you have an interest, you're constantly hearing about it.

2, you don't have an interest and God is trying to nudge you and so you're hearing it, or The circle that you are in does not have that interest or the circle you are in does have that interest.

But generally, this is a topic that we do need to be speaking more about because it speaks so much into the issues and problems that we have and can bring so much hope.

Is there any more remarks or comments on that?

If not, we'll go on to our next question.

1 thing that has been, I've heard this from administrators and even from your average church member.

The Adventist Adventist may have heard of the 3 angels message.

You know, we will hear it from, you know, maybe in the pulpit at times, maybe from leadership, you know, maybe in the course of common conversation.

But something that people have noticed is that you mentioned the 3 Angels message, but when you press further to ask, what exactly is that, then there's a little bit of a fog there.

They've heard of the 3 Angels messages, but don't necessarily know what it entails.

What are some practical steps that we can do to change that in our circles of influence?

That's really, I think, I find that quite a bit.

And I have a friend actually who loves to go on hikes in this area, and when he runs into students, he asks some very probing and specific questions about that.

First of all, he says, are you going to school down in that valley down there in the school?

And they're like, yeah, he's an Adventist, but he doesn't let that on and then he says well So are you a Seventh-day Adventist then?

I'm a Seventh-day Adventist so that means you're a Protestant and all of a sudden they get kind of this blank look like, yeah?

And then the next question is 3 Angels message often, and even more blank.

So anyway, he's shared this with me a couple of times and he says it's interesting to see that.

I think 1 of the ways that we can go about this is obviously in education.

And 1 of the things that has been initiated through ASI, which is a layman's organization geared to spread the message.

They're very involved in missions around the world as well, but it's a layman's organization to promote mission and to promote these things There was a recent Development where they have decided to place posters Describing the 3 angels message in every school in North America for example, and that's an initiative that's already taken place like, I think 2 or 3 years ago.

And I've been to a couple of schools in recent years.

I was at Great Lakes Adventist Academy, I saw it on their walls there, and a couple of other schools since that time.

So That's an initiative that has been taken.

How that translates into the classroom, I don't know.

But I think that's an area that we can really expand upon.

You know, if we had, in every discipline, at this university for example, if we had ways in which to bring in that into our respective disciplines and to share that meaning from that perspective of that discipline, I think it would be very interesting to see how students would understand that from various perspectives and things of that nature.

I think sometimes we have shied away from it because It's not an easy message to deliver in some ways, right?

I mean, how do we deliver a message like that?

I think it's been articulated very well this weekend, but as we go about that, obviously, we begin with the first angel and we continue to move forward, and I think that gives us the impetus.

Stephen, If I speak in Creole, do you understand me?

That would have been so good if I actually understood what he said.

But notice that when I first spoke to him, and he responded to me in a way I did not understand, I thought if I raised my voice a little bit more, that somehow he would get it.

But the truth is, if I am speaking in a language, and he does not understand, by the way, you guys should be in our house when I'm speaking to my parents and he's speaking to his parents and you hear all of this, all the different languages.

No matter how much I keep repeating myself or how much I raise my voice, he would never be able to understand because he doesn't speak the language.

I would not be able to understand the language.

When you come to the Bible and when we read something that says, The wine of the wrath of her fornication.

The Bible is speaking in a language that is not naturally discerned or understood.

But in 1 Corinthians 2.14, it says that spiritual things are spiritually discerned and a lot of times we just think if we open the Bible we should immediately be able to understand what it says but 1 of the very first steps that we need to make when we're reading something like this and I'm speaking for myself I opened the book of Revelation and I need to be able to say, Lord, you are speaking to me in Korean.

I need you to open my understanding and help me to understand the spiritual things.

Because a lot of times we think if we say something a lot more if we raise our voices and we say it in a whole bunch of different ways that we would immediately be able to understand it.

However, that's not how the Bible works and that's not how the book of Revelation works.

So you have all of these symbols and imagery that's being used because when it was written and talking about all of these different nations, they probably would have gotten killed, you know, if a guard opened the letter and read, hey you're talking about our king and he's gonna be killed.

So it had to been put in all these different imagery to be understood.

An example I wanna give, I'm not gonna name the name of the show because I really don't recommend it, but a few years ago, it was this TV show about 2 brothers.

1 was in prison and the younger brother, some of you might know it, wanted to break his older brother out of prison.

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