How do the current movements in our government and our world regarding freedom of speech, abortion laws, health mandates, etc., relate to liberty of conscience and our prophetic message?

Hartland Spring Convocation 2023: Righteousness by Faith and its Impact on Religious Liberty

<p>How do the current movements in our government and our world regarding freedom of speech, abortion laws, health mandates, etc., relate to liberty of conscience and our prophetic message?</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>

Hartland Institute of Health and Education

Mark Howard

Discerning the Times

I am very excited to hear all the passion about training and about mission and about proclaiming our message.

That Jesus that we just heard about, that forgave us through His blood on Calvary's cross is now in the sanctuary in heaven and He is marshalling His people to finish this last work.

And so we're going to be talking about that a little bit this weekend.

Now the theme for the weekend is righteousness by faith and its impact on religious liberty.

It started as religious liberty and its impact on righteousness by faith.

And an argument could be made either way, but my brother and I asked from the perspective we were sharing from if it could be flipped around, and I'll tell you why briefly.

Now this is not the weight of the topic tonight, but I just want to share a few things.

Religious liberty, we're going to be talking about it this weekend, but religious liberty is in essence the freedom to choose to be saved or lost.

People can choose to be lost if they want to.

The cause of religious liberty that every Christian should espouse and should champion is to defend each person's freedom to choose to be saved or lost and to use all our God-given influence and ability to encourage people to choose to be saved.

I want you to think about something with me this evening when we talk about the gospel.

You know what the word gospel means, right?

You can't separate the proclamation of the gospel.

Let me put it this way, and I've got it on the screen.

And when a person has experienced salvation, there's only 1 thing you can do.

Take your Bibles with me if you have them.

I haven't prayed yet, I was going to pray, but I like to pray before I go into the words.

I'm going to invite you to bow your heads as I ask the Lord to bless our time together.

Father in heaven, oh Father we thank you so much for the privilege we have to still have the freedom to come before you in worship on your Holy Sabbath.

Father, I pray now the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth would touch our hearts and our minds, would give us ears to hear and hearts to respond, would sweep away anything that would distract us or any human pride that would hinder us, and would tune our hearts and our ears for the message you have for us this evening.

As we open your word, I pray the Spirit of Truth would give us understanding that would work its way out into our daily lives and characters.

We ask and pray these things in the name of Jesus and for His sake.

I'd like you to turn to the 51st Psalm with me.

Now I have to be careful, we're warming up here, we're not into the message itself and I did notice that the nice young lady at the camera in the back has a sign that says, times up.

So I'm going to try hard not to see that sign.

I want you to notice what the psalmist says here.

Psalm 51, of course that wonderful repentance Psalm of David's.

The Bible says, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me, " notice verse 12, "...restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous Spirit, then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will be converted to you.

David understood that when a person experiences the joy of salvation that directly ties into sharing the good news with the transgressors and those transgressors being converted.

You can't have the gospel and just hold onto it and sit in your easy chair and say, I have salvation, Jesus is coming.

The gospel is the good news about salvation, and you can't receive it without sharing it.

The righteousness by faith experience has a direct impact on not just my religious liberty, but the liberty I want others to have to be able to choose the gospel.

And so I was excited to hear, as I said, about the different aspects of ministry here that are going on, and more will be said over the weekend.

Now our message tonight is entitled, Discerning the Times.

I don't know that it takes a lot of discernment to say the times we're in are crazy.

Some of the younger ones, I'm not sure in the context that I live in.

I mean, the things I've seen in my life, the world has changed so much, but I think it's safe to say that even if you're, you know, 8 or 10 or younger, the world has changed significantly in recent years.

What do we do with them, especially as Seventh-day Adventists who, as we believe, are living on the borders of the eternal world?

Tonight we're talking about discerning the times.

Now I'm actually sharing in this opening presentation something that is built on, it's actually very similar to something I shared at our GYC this last year.

And I have to backpedal a little bit here.

Our communications director, Andy Im, some of you may know Andy.

Andy asked me to be part of a series that they did at that GYC on, actually this was before GYC, this is prior to that, a series they did in the East Lansing Church which is his home church on the subject of religious liberty.

Now I have to confess something, I don't consider myself an expert on religious liberty.

I don't pretend to be an expert on religious liberty.

But at the same time, let me be clear about something.

Every Seventh-day Adventist should have more than just a simple working knowledge of religious liberty.

Because as we're going to get into tonight, I mean that is the issue at the end of time with the final contest all comes down to.

The whole Mark of the Beast issue is about religious liberty.

So I mean you've got to have a working knowledge of that.

So Andy had asked me to be a part of this seminar he was doing.

Now when I spoke at that particular spring seminar, our churches in Michigan were being split over issues revolving around masks and masking and closings and vaccines and these kinds of things.

Of course, you had the closings and then people.

I know there are people, at least in North America, that still haven't come back to church yet.

And I mean, I'm not going to detail everything out, but we had a lot of challenges.

Some felt that the mandates were an infringement on their religious liberty.

Others felt that those who didn't mask or get vaccinated were violating their human rights by endangering them and the rest of society and I don't pretend and I don't intend to to solve that here in this presentation.

It's not my goal, but that's what we were facing and he said you know can you speak on this?

When my brother Jim and I, this was, you had arranged with the staff here, I think a couple years ago for this weekend.

And when I heard the topic had to do with religious liberty I just didn't even want to do it.

I mean because we have, as a church, we have been so embroiled in, I've never seen the contention among Seventh-day Adventists over any other issue that I've seen with this.

But as we were able to call the staff and talk with the staff, I felt that they resonated with the same thing and that's what I'm attempting to address is what I feel is some of the underlying issue.

Now I'm going to build into it and you're going to have to bear with me because they're going to see, I'm going to tell you, there are going to be things I'm going to say that right up front you're going to be like, hold on a minute.

I know because I presented something similar now twice, but just hang with me, okay, until the time she holds up that that sign in the back that says, you know, You should be done.

Now we're not having, I don't believe we're having, hearing, sorry, much about mask and vaccine mandates now.

But while we're not hearing those, I do believe the underlying issues regarding our rights as citizens, our duty toward the government and toward 1 another, and our unique role in prophecy demand our attention.

And by God's grace, this presentation, as well as the others in our weekend will help provide some clarity.

So the title for tonight is Discerning the Times and there are 3 areas I want to address.

1 is the role of the government, 1 is the role of the church member, and then 1 is the fulfillment of prophecy in the final conflict.

Really, what our role is in the final conflict.

That's what we're going to be looking at this evening.

Discerning the Times

Transcript

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