The Seventh-day Adventist pioneers carried their biases and preconceptions with them as they embarked on their journey as Seventh-day Adventists. However, they underwent a transformative process through divine influence to become instruments for God’s mission.

ASI Conference 2023: Revived to Witness

<p>The Seventh-day Adventist pioneers carried their biases and preconceptions with them as they embarked on their journey as Seventh-day Adventists. However, they underwent a transformative process through divine influence to become instruments for God’s mission.</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>

Transformed

Dwain Esmond

Reclaiming the Family Altar: Digital Strategies for the 21st Century Adventist Family

Today, back to the altar, I should talk to you about that.

How many of you have ever heard of that phrase, back to the altar?

Have you heard of it lately around the church, starting to gain a little bit of prominence?

Back in about a year ago, I felt impressed about something, had a concern about some things.

They sometimes talk to the wrong people or the right people.

It's got about 6 men in it, and the leader of our group challenged us.

He said, now, I want you to make a presentation for the group on something that's burning in you, some passion, some issue, something that's in your heart.

And he said, I want you to make your presentation to the group.

I knew the 1 that was burning in my heart.

I didn't want to make the presentation, but everyone else had to, so I did.

And I entitled my presentation, Back to the Altar.

My concern was simply that observing the church, traveling a little bit, observing the challenges in my own family, it seemed like we as a church were getting away from our home altars, and that certain things were in the way of our devotional lives.

And when I was finished, every 1 of my members of that group said, you must share this presentation with the church.

The Lord did not call me to share anything with his church.

And I don't feel like I should have any, I don't have any right to go tell God's church what to do about anything.

So, but they pressed me, they pressed me, especially the leader.

He pressed me, he said, Dwayne, call the president of the general conference.

And I said, well, don't you think you're reaching up a little high?

I work in the same building with the president.

When I was a young worker at Review and Herald Publishing Association, he was my president for a period of time.

And I said, 1 day the Lord impressed me really harshly.

And I said, all right, I'll make the call.

I called his office and his secretary said, Duane, can you come now?

He's got a couple of things other than Dwayne Esmond on his desk.

I was so taken aback by the invitation that I recoiled.

I said, you know, I can't come right now.

Can you get your stuff together and come on Monday?

I brought a couple of people with me because I was scared, you know, go before the king, you know, got to hold out the...

Okay, all right, he's not a king, I know.

But a couple of people, the Family Ministries directors, Willie and Elaine Oliver, came with me.

And So we went, and when I presented that passion to Elder Wilson, he sat there, he looked at me, and then he said, Dwayne, we must do this in the church.

And then he started moving all the machinery of the church for this purpose.

Then came annual council presentations, spring council presentations.

I don't know of too many bodies of the organized church that I haven't spoken to.

The church on the outside is a reflection of what the church is or is not on the inside.

The church can't proclaim effectively what it doesn't practice personally.

So what you will see today is just 1 little piece of that puzzle, and it has a lot to do with media.

Now I will tell you, I don't know, Have you noticed how kids play outside now?

When our birth was so problematic that the doctor said, I don't want to ever see the 2 of you again.

But he is training me up in the way that I should go.

So that when I am old, I will not depart from the way of the Lord.

He's training me up because this challenge is in my house.

I'm not just talking, I'm not out here whistling Dixie.

I'm dealing with a creature that I don't recognize some days.

Have you noticed how graduations have changed?

Graduation, you know, people don't really look at what the speaker is saying.

I mean, they barely get up from their phones in order to actually go get the diploma.

I mean, how will people ever, ever look to the hills?

David Trim

Transformed for Mission

It's 3.30, so let's make a start and if others come in they can join us as they wish.

This afternoon, thank you for joining me.

This afternoon as you can see I'm talking on the theme transformed for mission.

I can see 1 gentleman putting his hand to his ear.

The microphone perhaps isn't working as well as it might, so I don't want to shout, but I will raise my voice.

So I'm speaking on the theme Transformed for Mission.

First let me just share with you some resources that can be useful for you if you're interested in my topic this afternoon.

Let me share that the first half of my talk actually comes from a book that was published by Pacific Press last year called Hearts of Faith, a title that comes from an Ellen White quotation where she talks about hearts of faith.

You can get that from your local Adventist book center, and if you don't have a local Adventist book Center, you can get it from AdventistBookCenter.com.

Or if you want to look at online resources, I'd recommend, if you're not aware of the Encyclopedia of Seventh-Day Adventists, to explore that at encyclopedia.adventist.org.

That has more than 4, 000 articles and we're adding more every week on Adventist individuals.

There are also studies of Adventist organizations, institutions, and Adventist themes.

Or you can look at the website of the department that I have the honor to direct, the Office of Archives, Statistics and Research at the General Conference.

You can find resources at Adventistarchives.org, at documents.adventistarchives.org, and you can follow us on Facebook or on Twitter.

The Adventist Archives has a presence on both Facebook and Twitter.

If you're an enthusiast for Adventist history or Adventist information, then follow us on Facebook or Twitter and you will receive regular posts.

Some about Adventism today, some about Adventist history.

So a wealth of resources for you to follow up on if you find this talk interesting.

So I'm going to deal with this in 2 parts.

The first is about uniting and organizing, and the second is about going overseas as missionaries.

The thing we have to understand is that suspicion of organization was inherited by Adventists from Millerites.

Remember, Miller's message wasn't in his own thought new.

He thought it was a message of reform and renewal, that it was pushing a message that all Christians should have heard, that of the literal premillennial second coming of Christ.

By the 1830s, when Miller began preaching, most Christians assumed that the prophecies of Christ's second coming were a metaphor for the triumph of the church and of Christian values and of civilization, Christian civilization in the world.

So when Miller came along and said, no, Christ is literally coming again and he will usher in the millennium.

This is controversial, partly because mainstream Christianity at the time assumed Christ would come after the millennium, the millennium being the triumph of Christian civilization.

There would be a thousand years of peace and tranquility and civilization thanks to the triumph of Christian values.

So here is Miller saying no Christ will come again physically pre-millennially and soon and this was very controversial.

But Miller's adherents wanted to win over the members of their own churches.

They had no idea of founding their own separate denominations, though of course, in the end, they eventually did, but That was because they were driven out.

Because instead of being embraced, which is what they expected, they expected people would say, oh great, this is good news.

And instead they were frequently mocked, reviled, and driven out of their congregations.

And so their response was to say the problem is with organization itself, because the organization makes our churches hostile of heterodox views within the denomination.

People would say, this isn't good Methodist doctrine, this isn't good Congregationalist doctrine, This isn't good Baptist doctrine.

So the problem, the Millerites concluded, must be with organization itself that closes off people's minds.

And because Millerites regularly faced being disfellowshipped, they were very hostile to any structured forms of organization.

In the February 1844 issue of the Midnight Cry, which was 1 of the influential Millerite papers, George Storrs, who was 1 of the leading Millerite leaders, said, take care that you do not seek to manufacture another church.

No church can be organized by man's invention, but what it becomes Babylon the moment it is organized.

So these are the attitudes that are inherited by the people who would go on to become Seventh Day Adventists, that they inherit from the Millerites.

James White, for 1, initially called all forms of church organization Babylon.

He believed that the prophetic call, come out of Babylon in Revelation 18, meant to come out of and to reject any or all formal church organizations, structured beliefs, and creeds.

And we can understand perhaps the hostility to creeds because it was the creeds that led people to say, you Millerites, you Adventists aren't teaching good Baptist doctrine, you're not teaching good Methodist doctrine.

But why they oppose organization is perhaps a little more opaque.

Creeds, structured beliefs, organizations, all this is Babylon.

And this view was very persistent amongst the Seventh-day Sabbath-keeping Adventists who gradually emerged in the late 1840s.

As late as March 1860, I'm going to quote to you a minute something from published in the Adventist Review and at Sabbath Herald written by R.F.

Cottrell was a very prominent early Adventist leader.

Today he's largely forgotten, but in the 1850s he was 1 of the more prominent Adventist leaders alongside Joseph Bates and James White.

The second thing to note is the importance of the review.

And quite a few of the quotations that I'm going to use today come from the review.

It was what bound the Seventh-day Sabbath-keeping Adventists together.

By 1863, they themselves thought there were around 3, 000 Sabbath-keeping Adventists.

But they are scattered all across the northeast and midwest of the United States.

And we know from the columns of the Review, people will write in and say, the Review is my church.

I'm the only Sabbath keeper in my county.

I may be the only Sabbath keeper for a hundred miles.

So the review, reading the review is my church.

So the review is what actually bound this disparate inchoate movement together.

And this is what Cottrell published in the review in March 1860.

He said, even to select a name for the scattered Sabbatarian Adventist groups would be a bad misstep.

And this is why historians have to use terms like Sabbatarian Adventist or as I just did a moment ago, Seventh-day Sabbath-keeping Adventist, because they didn't even have a name for themselves until eventually they chose Seventh-day Adventists.

He said, I think it would be wrong to make us a name since that lies at the foundation of Babylon.

We want no name with the two-horned beast.

Of course, a reference to the lamb-like beast of the prophecies of Revelation.

So even taking a name is going to make you like the two-horned, lamb-like beast.

But practical experience led to a change, and there were a number of reasons for this.

First, how were faithful believers to be safeguarded from the first-day Adventist denominations that were emerging?

And This is a perhaps forgotten chapter of Adventist history, which is what happened to the Millerites after October 1844.

In fact, disappointment is probably the wrong word.

Disappointment to me just implies, well, you know, if you're outside with your child or grandchild and the ice cream van comes around and they don't have the flavor you want, that might be called disappointment.

So great, even though Millerites themselves use the term disappointment to describe what they happened, really it's a devastation because Adventists didn't think that Christ would come, they didn't hope that Christ would come.

All the evidence we have says they truly believed that Christ was going to come.

You have this horrible psychic trauma, a psychic wound that lingers with you because of what's happened.

And of course, many just said, well, that was horrible.

I don't ever want to experience that again.

And so they ceased believing that Christ would come literally at all.

But some remained faithful and said, well, obviously we got something wrong, but Christ is going to come again soon.

And in 1845, a number of those who had followed Miller came together and they organized what they called the Advent Christian denomination.

The problem is that the Advent Christians also had the dislike of organization.

And so the Advent Christians began to split.

And each movement that they split into itself soon afterwards split as well.

Because they were opposed to any kind of organization and it's hard to hold a movement together if you have absolutely no organization.

So within 15 years you have not only the Advent Christians, but the Age to Come Adventists, the Evangelical Adventists, and others.

What the Seventh-day Adventists later often refer to as the First-day Adventists because they all worshipped on Sunday.

They didn't call themselves first day Adventists, it's something seventh day Adventists call them but that's, if you were to read Ellen White for example, you'll find references to the first day Adventists.

But they have ministers going around meeting with groups of ex-Millerites.

Gem Castor

Only by His Spirit

Oh, it feels like Sabbath when we are surrounded by people who are hungry for the Lord.

I pulled this podium forward because I feel like I'm a ceremony host if I'm there.

I want to feel like this is a family worship because it is.

And before we begin our seminar this morning, as you all know that this is about prayer, and I could not speak anything else but prayer, of how God has been so good to the ministry, to His Church, and even to individual lives.

So as we begin, for those of you who are able to kneel down, please kneel down with me for a word of prayer.

Our great God, our dear, loving Heavenly Father, Lord, we give you praise and we give you thanks for you are, Lord, the reason why we're here.

And, Father, I ask in a very special way that may the anointing power of your Holy Spirit be upon us.

Lord, I ask that may I be hidden, may I not be seen, may I not even be heard, but Jesus and Jesus alone, Lord, be seen, be heard, be lifted up and exalted.

Father, I ask in a very special way that may you be our teacher this morning.

You speak your words, Lord, and may we all have a heart ready to receive your Spirit.

Be as all this in the loving and precious name of your Son, Jesus, and in the anointing power of your Holy Spirit, all your children say, Amen.

So this morning, we will be talking about a very, very important topic.

I believe that this is a driving force of evangelism, of revival, of even a personal growth.

It's about the Holy Spirit and about the importance of prayer.

So this morning, I'll not be sharing anything new.

I'll be sharing what we all know, but most of the time, we tend to forget that ministry is His.

That He is the 1 who's running this, it's not us.

And I'll be sharing for the past almost 13 years of being involved in the prayer ministry, can you believe that?

Almost 13 years that I have been going around and seeing what the Lord has been doing, especially for a group of people who are really hungry, who are really passionate to be led and guided by His Spirit.

And even just in our prayer times, Who among you here were there in the morning?

Prayer times, of course, most of you were there.

I don't know if you were able to witness ASI prayer times before, when it was like 2015, like almost 8 years ago.

It's like they say, the organizers say, it's like pulling teeth to bring people to the prayer room.

And it's always difficult to gather people to the prayer room, but as soon as those few people started praying.

And at GYC, I remember being in a prayer room that's, I think, one-fourth the size of this, and we could not even fill it.

Just imagine 1 fourth of the size of this room.

But right now, they are having a hard time looking for a room to fill us, to fit us.

And here I know for a fact that it's not because of the prayer leader.

It's only because of the Holy Spirit's moving in God's people's heart.

Because the Lord really wants to take over.

The Lord really wants to take over and he wants to see things happen in our time.

Who among you here wants to see the work of the Lord accomplished?

Oh, can you imagine how much more the desire of God to make this work done?

And so, this morning, I'd like to share these thoughts here.

First, I'd like to talk about the main character of our seminar.

And at first, friends, I don't know if you could relate to me.

I was born in a 70-year-old Adventist home, and it feels like the truth was shot down my throat.

So every topic, I just want to hear stories.

Even if I read stories before, 2 pages is too long for me.

So I did not really have the desire, any inkling, any hunger for the Word.

And when we talk about the Holy Spirit, all the while I thought, friends, that it was the most boring topic.

And friends, as I grow older, I started reading and 1 of those Discoveries that I had is this beautiful quote from from Science of the Times.

It says, in giving the Holy Spirit, it was impossible for God to give more.

It was impossible for God to and I could barely comprehend that friends because all the while I thought God is limitless God is abounding in everything and yet When God gave the Holy Spirit, it was impossible for him to give more And listen to the next thought to this gift.

Nothing could be added By it all needs are supplied.

The Holy Spirit is the vital presence of God.

So if God gave us the Holy Spirit and it's his vital presence, What more can he give?

And if you have God, what else could you need?

You have everything and listen to this, And if appreciated, will call forth praise and thanksgiving, and will ever be springing up unto everlasting life.

Friends, if appreciated, and here I realize, I would have been a happier kid.

People see me as a jolly kid, but they don't know that I was not really a joyful kid.

If I appreciated this topic of the Holy Spirit earlier, I would have been truly happy earlier in my life.

And friends, I realize as well, our church would not be sad vintage church.

Just imagine this, if we really have the Holy Spirit, if this is the focus of our thoughts, and I'll share more later about the experiences of churches really taking seriously into this.

And it says here, yet how few appreciate this gift so costly yet so free to all who will accept it.

When faith takes hold of the blessing, there comes rich spiritual good.

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Transformed

Transformed for Mission

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Recorded

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Literature Evangelism

Literature Evangelism- Part 1

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