WYC 2011: Alive Again!

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GYC West

Plenary Meetings

Chester Clark

Contrition, Repentance, Conversion, and the Keeping of the Covenant

Eugene Prewitt

Reading God’s Requirements

Andy Im

Rachel Nelson

Steve Wohlberg

Question and Answer Session

Prayer, Praise, and the Preaching of Prophecy

Christ Our Righteousness

Light Before the Final Crisis

I would invite you to kneel with me as we begin with a word of prayer.

Our Father in heaven, today we have sung, we've prayed, we've asked that you would revive us again.

And Lord, we think of those times when your spirit has moved in the past, when you've spoken through your word and you've moved upon hearts and there's been a revival, a stirring in the hearts of your people.

And today we pray that that might be accomplished again here, and now, and in us.

We ask for this not because we're worthy, but we ask because of Jesus.

Because he lived and he died, and He now intercedes for us.

And He invites us to come boldly to ask for grace to help in time of need.

Have any of you ever heard of May 21, 2011?

May 21, it was predicted that there would be at 6 o'clock in each respective time zone a massive earthquake that would herald the end of the world.

And as you know, as we know sitting here today, that earthquake never happened.

But I've had interest, I've had great interest in sort of following these predictions and following these prophecies and even following what has been said after the passing of this time.

It's a particular interest to us, isn't it?

Because at Seventh-day Adventists, we have been preachers, teachers of the soon coming of Christ.

And here is a gentleman named Harold Camping who has a family radio network, a network that's worth about a hundred million dollars around the world, and he has a worldwide audience and he's giving this message that Jesus would come in May 21, 2011.

Websites such as wecannot.com proclaimed the same message.

Now he had some followers, he had some who were believing that Jesus was going to come on October 21.

The question is, what are these people saying now?

What are they understanding actually took place on May 21, and how can they explain why the earthquakes didn't happen?

Camping teaches about what actually took place and this is what I found.

He has decided that the earthquake which was to take place at 6 o'clock and sweep across the world in each time zone at that hour was actually symbolic of an earthquake with earth being symbol of people.

You see, because in Genesis chapter 2 and verse 7, the Bible says, the Lord formed man out of the dust of the ground.

An earthquake would be a shaking of people.

So it was the excitement and the interest and enthusiasm that pervaded those who heard his message.

That was the earthquake that swept across the world.

Now, as he looks forward to the next 5 months, he says the world is actually going to end not now on May 21, but October 21, which gets even more uncomfortable for me as a Seventh-day Adventist, because it's very close to October 22, isn't it?

And I can just hear all of the pundits and the critics comparing us with Mr.

He also believes that those who were saved before May 21 are going to be saved and no 1 else.

Basically saying that the message of Revelation chapter 22, that Let him that is filthy be filthy still, and him that is righteous be righteous still.

That is the message that applies to the world now, and probation is closed.

Only those who are saved in May 21 are going to be saved when the world actually ends in October 21.

It's interesting though, If you come to the end of his description here, his explanation, he says, you should still pray though, because you never know the goodness of, who is going to be saved is simply dependent on the grace of God.

And so, this is The problem that I see, well, you see the problem too, huh?

The problem is that there seems to be an unavoidable comparison between William Miller and Harold Camping.

This has sort of troubled me, I should say, as I've heard different people comparing in the news and the media.

I've heard them comparing the great disappointment of October 22, 1844, and the whole Millerite experience out of which Adventism arose, and this false teacher of prophecy, Harold Camping.

And so I thought that this morning we would take a few moments to consider the story of William Miller and compare and contrast some of the differences between William Miller and Harold Camping.

I'm sure there are many we could talk about.

We're going to be looking at only 3 of them this morning.

But you know the story of William Miller.

We're not going to spend a lot of time talking about the story of William Miller.

But basically, William Miller was a deist turned Christian.

As he examined the scriptures without commentaries, you remember he set aside his commentaries, he took only his Bible in a strong concordance, and he determined he would study beginning at Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1, and he would study the Bible no faster than he could understand it verse by verse by verse.

And as he studied the Bible he found that it was a coherent, cohesive whole, even though it was many different books by many different authors, he found there was a symmetry and an agreement within the scriptures that simply amazed him.

And William Miller, the skeptic that he had been, became a believer in Christ.

There's a long story of how that took place.

William Miller was actually not even really yet a believer yet, but he was asked to preach the sermons.

Well, what happened is there were people who would come to his church.

He would attend the church that his family attended, And people would come to his church, and the elders who read the sermons didn't know how to read very well.

And he was a pretty well-educated farmer, you know?

And so he finally said, you know, I wish I could just read those sermons.

Now, he wasn't really a believer in what he was reading, but he was given the opportunity of reading those sermons.

And the Holy Spirit began working on his heart.

And eventually, he was touched by the Spirit.

So William Miller began studying the Bible.

And as he studied the Bible, from Genesis onward, he came to the books of prophecy, particularly first, of course, the book of Daniel.

And as he studied Daniel, he found that the symbols found in Daniel could be explained within the Bible itself.

You didn't need a commentary to understand those symbols.

Using just concordance, He could find clearly from the Bible what these symbols meant.

Daniel's a bit like the kindergarten of apocalyptic prophecy.

There are many people who try to read the book of Revelation without having an accurate understanding of Daniel.

That's sort of like beginning in calculus without taking, you know, elementary mathematics.

You're just guessing, you're just shooting in the dark.

And the way Daniel works, Daniel begins with the vision and the interpretation, right?

Isn't that the way Daniel 2 is and the way Daniel 7 is?

And the more you progress in Daniel and Revelation, the less explanation you have along the way.

Because God is simply trying to tell us in those early chapters, these are the principles of interpretation.

You look at the vision, you look at the interpretation, you say, oh, that's what that means.

That's how we interpret symbolic prophecy.

And so that's the primer, if you please, for apocalyptic prophecy, the book of Daniel.

So Daniel was William Miller's study, and as he studied it, he began to understand it.

And he saw those parallels between Daniel 2 and Daniel chapter 7.

He learned the repeat and enlarge principle.

The fact that each succeeding vision covers a similar territory as the preceding 1.

So that Daniel chapter 2 begins back here in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon, right?

And it continues all the way down to the close of time.

That's very clear from Daniel chapter 2 and the explanation, right?

Daniel chapter 7, he finds the same thing.

Instead of metals, it's now beasts or animals.

And it begins back in the time of the prophet and extends all the way down to the second coming and but it begins to give more information where, where is more information found in each succeeding prophecy?

Series

Plenary Meetings

Prayer, Praise, and the Preaching of Prophecy

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Mocking the Remnant

37m

The Inspired Word

The Inspired Word- Part 4

1h 15m

The Devil’s Lethal Deception

59m

Unlocking Prophecy

16- Messages from Beyond the Stars

1h 13m

A Worthy Life

49m

What Jesus Said

13. Peace in the Middle East

56m

The Parables

The Mustard Seed and Leaven

33m

The Final Revival

36m

Lessons from the Life of Daniel

Lessons from the Life of Daniel - Part 3

36m

The Sower

Present Truth of the Wheat and Tare

47m

Put Your Sword in its Place

45m

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

06 The Table of Showbread

1h 8m

Sound Doctrine