ASI Southwest 2023: Here I Am, Send Me

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ASI Southwest

Seminars

Johnny Henderson

Oleg Lotca

Sharing the Three Angels Message Through Literature

It's hard to remember that today's a Friday.

Last night Oleg and I were sitting there at the booth and before the booth I remember having a thought.

I remember having a thought about, you know, I wanted to think about something.

I thought, oh man, it's Sabbath, I need to, And so I started talking to Oleg, I said, man, don't it feel like a Sabbath?

He said, yeah, I was gonna talk about some business earlier and he said, but my brain told me, oh, it's a Sabbath, I shouldn't speak.

And then, wait, no, it's Thursday, you know, so.

It's good, though, that today is Friday and that the Sabbath is coming tomorrow, but it's a good way to spend Friday together today.

Amen Amen, I want to just give a quick appreciation for to Pat Humphrey and the team the program this morning has already been a blessing and I'm just here Oleg and I will share a brief segment with you entitled sharing the 3 angels messages through literature and before we get in I'm just gonna pray and we'll jump straight.

Father thank you so much for the opportunity to study.

And Lord, I just pray that you would guide this conversation.

I work full-time for a ministry called Streams of Light.

I'm working as the director of evangelism.

And kind of before I got involved in this work, The very first thing that I ever did as a Christian was to share literature.

You know, long story short, when I found Christ, I learned about the 3 angels' messages, and I got so excited that every evening after school I would go to the gas station and I would distribute literature.

It was just the most natural thing that came to me.

And so I did that for about a year and a half just going every evening distributing literature.

And as I started studying the writings of Ellen White, and started studying the Bible, I saw a great opportunity and learned about a work called Bible working.

How many of you have ever done Bible working?

It's a very great work, you know, being hired to give Bible studies.

And you know, before, you know, I kind of missed the thing here, when I was doing this gas station evangelism with literature, I got into cold portering and I did cold porting on and off for a few years and then I got into Bible working, right?

Well, when it was, it was when I was Bible working that I learned the importance of something called the medical missionary work.

All right, how many of you have read quotes on the medical missionary work?

It's powerful work and it has a large part to play in the last scenes of this earth's history.

And so I went and got trained at Wildwood Health Evangelism, the Wildwood Health Institute in medical missionary work.

And then right after I graduated Wildwood, I got involved in Streams of Light.

And so when we were asked to present sharing the 3 angels messages through literature, we wanted to make it very clear, even though we're going to present 1 side of the story today, it's not the only way to finish the work.

It's not the only part that plays in sharing the gospel.

God has many methods, Bible working, medical missionary work, radio, YouTube, digital media, there's just so many varieties of ways and we're just going to present 1 side of the story this morning, all right?

So I'm going to start off by saying a pretty bold statement and it's this.

All of you are here today because of literature evangelism.

Now some of you say, well hold on, I didn't come through the church because someone knocked on my door.

I didn't come to church because someone gave me great controversy or steps to Christ and I totally understand that.

But my statement is all of you are still here today because of literature evangelism.

The reality is, is that God is the biggest literature evangelist that has ever come to the universe.

In fact, it is because of the printed word today that you and I are still in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

It is the only reason why you and I are still here today listening to a seminar like this.

You know, God has many ways that He communicates.

In the Bible, He used prophets, He gave visions, dreams.

But 1 other way that God likes to communicate with people his message is through writing.

And you know there's tons of Bible, excuse me, there's tons of Bible examples, But when you think about where was the first place God wrote something with his own finger to communicate a message, it's found where?

And then you kind of look down the story and then you see that in Deuteronomy, God and So sorry, excuse me God gives these instructions to Moses and he says what write them down in a book And then the book has all these, the handwriting ordinances, the book of Moses contains all these laws and was put in the side of the ark.

And then you see that all throughout the Old Testament, that copies of the Old Testament were written and given to others to study and to learn.

And then when you look in the New Testament, you see that God laid it upon people's hearts to write letters to the churches and to each other to admonish and exhort each other in the Lord and to testify of what the Lord has done.

And so you see there's a pattern over and over again in the Bible of handwriting.

And then you get to kind of the most powerful climax of the story when the full canon of the Bible has been compiled.

And then God says, unleash the printer and print this and send it to the world.

And so when we talk about sharing the 3 angels messages through literature, we first need to establish the foundation and say God is behind literature evangelism work in general.

And I will say, since we've been able to start printing, this is some statistics that I found online last night.

It says how many Bibles are printed every year, sorry, there were about a hundred million Bibles printed each year and it's projected that more than 6000000000 Bibles currently are in print.

6000000000 And more than the estimated 2.5 billion copies in print as of 1975.

And we are told that about 20 million Bibles are sold each year.

Okay, So when you look at the printed word, thank you, excuse me.

When you look at the printed word, you can see that God really is behind this, amen.

Without this, you and I would have no hope.

Without this, you and I would have no foundation, no firm ground to stand on.

So God is in the business of sharing his word through literature.

And we have 2.2 billion people that claim to be Christian now.

Do you think that number is in a large degree as a result of this?

So you look at the Great Awakening that happened and the big change in the early church when the when the shift happened from the Catholic Church hiding the word under a bushel and then the word going out into the community as it Really is and so all that to say God is behind literature evangelism.

Amen Now we as a church have We have pretty deep roots with literature evangelism, with our history, and we believe in the printing and distribution of the word, but we also have publications that contain truth that point people to God's Word.

And so we as a church not only support 100% the sharing and printing of God's Word, but also our own literature, things such as the spirit of prophecy and so on.

And I wanna share some fundamental purposes of why we are told to do literature evangelism in order to lay the framework for the rest of the presentation.

Now, I will share this, this is a long quote, but I will kind of focus on the beginning.

Why I wanted to share the purpose of literature evangelism with you.

It is, and this is why, it says, when church members realize the what?

The importance of the circulation of our literature, they will devote more time to this work.

Papers, tracts, and books will be placed in the homes of the people to preach the gospel in their several lines.

So with that being said, I don't know how your mind works, but mine is, in order to understand the importance of something, you have to know its purpose, its reason for its existence.

And so we're just simply told, if our people understood, they would get involved.

And that's going to be my purpose of sharing with you the purpose this morning.

1, it says the great object of our publications is to what?

To call men's attention to the living truths of his Word.

So is the printing of our publications, is the purpose of it to replace the Bible?

But It's to exalt God and draw men's attention to the study of his scriptures, okay?

Purpose number 3, the publications sent forth from our printing houses are to prepare a people to meet God.

Throughout the world, they are to do the same work that was done by John the Baptist for the Jewish nation.

Mark Fox

YouTube Evangelism

Well, I'm guilty of being a little over-prepared and information overloaded, but these handouts are a result of hours and hours of prayer and research, and So I think you'll find this updated and current and relevant, timely.

And so yes, in case you didn't notice, this is YouTube evangelism.

That stands for Global Online YouTube Evangelism.

So GOYE, Global Online YouTube Evangelism.

We debuted in 2015 at a time when most churches were not on YouTube but COVID has changed the dynamic COVID has helped churches, pastors, conference leaders, laymen to realize that social media outreach no longer should be on a back burner but on a front burner.

As a matter of fact, you most likely found yourself at home more than prior to COVID?

How many spent more time at home because of COVID, whether you like it or not?

Question, how many of you get on YouTube?

How many are those among us who've never gotten on YouTube?

How many have ever seen our YouTube channel, Amazing Prophecies?

Keep your hands up, I'm just trying to get a, Okay, so a number of you have seen our channel.

We believe in YouTube evangelism, otherwise it wouldn't be here right now.

And our being here actually is an amazing miracle in and of itself.

Okay, so we have witnessed in the last several years a revolution, a revolution called the YouTube revolution.

And once again, almost all of us are on YouTube.

And like I say, COVID has intensified the importance of maximizing new media evangelism.

Or I call it YouTube evangelism, but there's also Facebook evangelism, etc.

The evolution of mass media, 1300s Korean bookmakers were printing with movable metal type as early as the 1300s.

1436, German goldsmith, Johannes Gutenberg is credited with inventing the printing press around 1436.

How many are aware that in the book of Daniel in chapter 12 verse 4 it says, "'Knowledge shall increase, ' and the knowledge of technology is allowing us to harness technology to propel the gospel front and center.

But then sometimes the technology breaks down.

So all you need is your horse and the Bible, right?

So 1930s, the golden age of American radio was a period lasting roughly from 1930 through the 1940s.

Listening to the news or entertainment on the radio became an established family activity.

1950s, television replaced radio as the dominant broadcast medium by the 1950s and took over home entertainment.

Approximately 8, 000 US households had television sets in 1946.

1983 is considered the official birthday of the internet.

1997, the first recognizable social media site in the format we know today was 6 degrees created by Andrew Wondrick.

2004, Facebook was founded, for better or for worse, in 2004.

And then in 2005, finally, YouTube was registered on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Joed Karam, 3 former employees of the American e-commerce company PayPal.

YouTube is the biggest video sharing service in the world.

400 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every single minute.

1000000000 hours of content are watched every single day.

It is the most popular search engine after Google, of course.

The very first YouTube video was uploaded 23 April, 23, 2005.

The video garnered over 4 million views when it went online.

More than 1.3 billion people around the world use YouTube.

Absolutely important for us to keep in mind as we plan our outreach as a church and as we have total member involvement.

This is a way for everybody to get involved.

YouTube gets over 30 million visitors per day.

In an average month, 8 out of 10 of 18 to 49 year olds watch YouTube.

The total number of hours of video watched on YouTube each month, 3.25 billion.

80% of YouTube's views are from outside of the United States.

YouTube saw the most significant growth of any social media app among American users during the pandemic, according to the Pew Research.

And so, like I say, COVID really catapulted the importance of new media or YouTube evangelism.

Americans just can't get enough of YouTube, with 81% of adults in the US visiting the streaming platform to consume content as of 2021.

And I'm going to have to kind of skip over some of this.

So YouTube is an unbelievable opportunity for preaching the everlasting gospel or present truth.

Reasons why YouTube is making such an astounding social impact.

YouTube, number 1, ability to share your message.

YouTube has opened up, and I can testify as we debuted in 2015, YouTube has opened up a powerful communication line.

Anyone with a message to share can share that message with the world with only a few basic pieces of equipment, no costly TV broadcasting equipment, production, and airtime necessary.

Unlike Facebook or Instagram, YouTube delivers content exclusively in video format Video has a very unique and powerful effect unlike any other forms of communication It creates a unique emotional and very personal relationship between the content creator and viewer.

Number 2, ability to build a loyal audience.

YouTube is considered to be the most effective platform to build an online community and a massive audience of loyal followers or subscribers.

Both private individuals and large production companies have used YouTube to grow audiences.

And I'll just have to skip over some of this if that's okay.

Analytics tools and other marketing tools being part of the same company.

Google and YouTube share many advertising, promotion, and analytical features that can be used to help build, reach massive scale and functionality.

The analytics tools and Google AdWords can be used effectively by content creators to reach millions of users.

Now I'm probably telling you much more than you need to know, but I understand this is going to go to audio-verse, so we need to try to reach everybody.

So, the ability to transcend geographical boundaries, virtual communities are being established online and transcend geographical boundaries, eliminating social restrictions.

And I don't have time to get into a lot of this, I apologize, but let's put it this way in terms of demographics, in terms of our analytics, what countries do you think are watching our channel?

You have the United States, anybody wanna guess?

We have Australia, South Africa, UK, and little to the north, Canada.

So, anyway, There you see some breakdown of the geographical factors.

So we just have to keep moving along here.

So YouTube is used properly as a revolutionary tool for the proclamation of the everlasting gospel to every nation, tongue, and people.

While I sleep, our messages are working 24-7.

We have people engaging with us by making phone calls to us, emailing us, texting, wanting to meet us in person.

And so we can go to almost any major city and get some of our viewers to come out to hear us in person.

David Shin

Friendship Evangelism and Gaining Decisions

Let's pray together and we'll have, we'll start.

Father in heaven, thank you so much for your grace, for your love.

Thank you for the opportunity that we have to reflect on the principles of friendship, evangelism, and gaining decisions.

We pray that you would bless our conversation this morning and guide us with your spirit in Jesus name amen there's a there's a quote in Ecclesiastes that says better to go to house the house of mourning than to the house of feasting for that is the end of all men, and the living will take it to heart.

So Solomon says it's better to go to a funeral than to a wedding.

Now, if you had your pick, which 1 would you rather get an invitation to?

So why is Solomon, I mean, you see this melancholy, morose individual that just likes to go to these funeral dirges.

Well, there's something that happens in a funeral.

You come to a funeral and there's this sense of a recognition that if the Lord doesn't come, 1 day all of us will be dead.

Now I think that that's a sobering reality.

We all know intellectually that 1 day we're gonna die, but the reality is, I think emotionally, I haven't come to that point right now because I think I'm gonna get up every morning like the next morning.

But there's something that happens at a funeral.

There's something that happens in the moment that you think you're gonna die.

And I had an incident a number of years ago when I went to Africa, long story, came back to the States and there was this flu bug going around and I ended up going to the hospital after 7 days and I was sitting there and the doctor had just been to Africa and he told me, I think you have malaria.

Now, I come to find out later I had a strain of malaria called falciparum.

And long story short, I'm sitting there, almost lost my life.

Because after 7 days, you pretty much die.

So I'm sitting there, and I'm looking at my parents.

And I'm sitting there just like, I'm like, I want to get married, you know what I'm saying, right?

I want to get married, I want to have my 2.5 children, I want to drive an SUV and, you know, live in the suburbs and all this type of stuff, the American dream, and I'm sitting there and I'm like, This could be over.

And he's like, look, even if you make it, you can be on dialysis for the rest of your life and liver failure.

And you know, in that moment, it's amazing how you recognize what's important, right?

And it came down to 2 things very simple God and people That's it right God and people now I I used to do youth ministry for a number of years a bunch of hormone infested not infested wrong word infused infused individuals hormone infused individuals that didn't know elevator does not go into the top floor.

And I'm sitting there and these guys like, I mean, spirituality, God, parents, you kidding me?

And I said, look guys, let's say you're on a transatlantic flight.

The pilot comes over the airways and says, we have a problem.

And I said, hey guys, how many of you, for the last 5 minutes of your life, would watch a movie?

I said, how many of you young ladies would go to the bathroom, put on makeup, and do your hair because you want to die pretty?

I said, how many of you would call your parents, every hand went up?

Wow, we all know instinctively what to do.

So Blaise Pascal says this, he's learned to define life backwards and live it forward.

Now here's the thing, when you're going to climb a ladder, what do you do before you climb it?

You make sure it's up against the right wall.

I mean, you don't get to the top of the ladder, and you're like, oh, wrong wall.

Go through our whole lives, wrong law, wrong investment.

If in the end it's all about God and souls, because look, when Jesus comes a second time, it's the real great reset.

You know, all these conspiracy theories about resets and things like that, and that could be true, but here's the thing.

It's like our financial assets suddenly become 0 at the second coming.

And Clifford Goldstein wrote this fascinating piece in the evidence review a number of years ago.

And he says this, he says, why does God want us to do soul winning?

Ellen White says that he could have chosen angels to do this work.

Now look, who would you rather have give you a study on Daniel 9, Gabriel or me?

All right, Gabriel would be like, look, let me tell you how it happened.

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Recorded

Parts

Sharing the Three Angels Message Through Literature

48m

YouTube Evangelism

44m

Friendship Evangelism and Gaining Decisions

54m

Counsels on Lay Evangelism

45m

Gaining Interests Through Digital Evangelism

48m

Sound Doctrine