Michigan Camp Meeting 2023: The Boldness of the Cross

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Is It Time to Fast?

Dan Augsburger

01 Is It Time to Fast

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2023 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Let me have a word of prayer before I do anything else, because unless the Lord blesses, we will have wasted our time.

Father in heaven, I want to thank you that we can come and sit at your feet to learn about fasting.

We want to understand what the Bible teaches on the subject and what Ellen White said.

We want to understand the truth, understand the misunderstandings, and of course learn how we can apply it in our lives.

I've been chosen and so I ask that the Holy Spirit would help me, please.

Help me to speak clearly, distinctly, at the right pace that everyone would understand.

Might we truly have an experience with Jesus in this seminar.

There will be a handout for every session.

If you have questions or whatever, I'll be there during much of the booth time.

On the back of the handout you'll see a QR code.

1 of them will take you to a page on fasting on my website.

My website has more than 700 pages of resources, so it's like an ocean of material.

But there's a section and there's actually the audio there from when I spoke at GYC, a link to that I believe, plus handouts and other articles and things.

And then there's another QR code because these kinds of things you can download for free from my website.

And there's a page where a lot of this stuff is available.

Just by way of introduction, a little bit about myself.

I am a lay person at this point, but I was a full-time pastor in the past.

I taught at the seminary 1 course on practical church history over the course of 10 years.

But 1 of my great interests and passions is studying the Bible and the writings of Ellen White.

And so, for example, I did a study on the writings of Ellen White on the Godhead and then a Bible study on it.

And this is about 1, 000 pages, or 2, 000 or 1, 800 pages of quotes that I collected on her writings on the Godhead.

And then I developed 5 Bible studies on the Godhead.

So when I talk about studying, I mean really studying.

Because many of us think we can do it in 5 or 10 minutes, but to really understand Ellen White you need to come to terms with the archaic language of her time, but a very broad, broad vocabulary.

So I've studied this carefully and I have, I think, a little less than 200 pages of quotes from her.

And then I also went to the trouble to carefully look at every instance of fasting in the Bible, which you have on this sheet.

And so we're going to study to look at, to see what the Bible says on the subject.

There's still a chair in the back there and maybe on this other side too.

Anyway, so we're going to try and get in depth with that, but I've already studied and I'm only sharing with you some of the remnants of what I've found.

I'll be honest with you, we can't begin to look at it with the depth that I would like.

There will be a handout, as I said, every time.

Our subject matter, we're going to be looking at 3 subjects.

And we're going to look at the Bible all the different times when they were fasting.

Have you ever wondered what it means to fast?

After that, we're going to look at what are some of the occasions when people chose to fast.

After that, what hinders fasts and what are the false fasts that are abomination to God.

And some of this is gonna be pretty painful.

We had a national fast during the Civil War that Ellen White said was an abomination to God.

They wanted to end the war and she said, oh, this is an abomination.

And so we're gonna look at some things that are also practical about what's going on in more recent.

So that will be, and then the last session we're going to look at the true fast of Isaiah 58.

The last 1 is the true fast of Isaiah 58.

In fact, we're going to mainly read from what Ellen White says on that subject, and it should be required reading for every single Adventist.

She says that actually the Fast of Isaiah 58 is a special testing truth for Seventh-day Adventists.

She talks about all the reasons people give why they can't help an orphan or help a child, and she says that God does not listen to all those excuses.

So it's going to be kind of a sobering time in many ways.

I never realized there was so much on fasting.

I never realized how little I knew about fasting, to be honest with you.

Some people think that Fasting is all about how long you can go without food.

If that's what you think, you have missed the point of fasting.

Fasting is not about a spiritual marathon to see who can endure longer than anyone else.

If you're a Catholic and you believe you can push the hand of God by way of fasting, Maybe, but that's not how we understand it.

And I say this very seriously, that there's a lot of misunderstandings.

And so people will approach me and say, you know, I've fasted for so many days, and it's like, really?

Because there's some fasting that people will die from, you know.

And Ellen White actually wrote 1 man, she wrote this man and said, Jesus fasted for 40 days so you don't have to.

And to 1 of our pioneers, Joseph Bates, she said, you're not fasting the way that God intends.

So we need to understand what fasting is all about.

So I've learned that there's more to the cycle than every dream before.

I've realized that there are many misconceptions.

I've learned that there are facts that are abominations.

And let's just read the first paragraph on our handout.

And I use line numbers so that you all know where I'm reading.

But the quotation at the beginning says, there are sins of this same character, which is oppression and lack of love, among us today, and they bring the rebuke of God upon his church." Okay?

And we still have oppression and lack of love, don't we?

She says, "...wherever such sins are found, seasons of fasting and prayer are indeed necessary.

Now I don't know about you, but there's not a lot of fasting going on in the church, right?

In most cases, and it's true in my life too, fasting is more of a private thing.

02 Is It Time to Fast

Father in Heaven, I'm so grateful that we can come together to learn about fasting.

When you study the Bible, at crisis moments, when you were doing great things through people or when certain events were being fulfilled by prophecy, the people you use often included fasting in their seeking after you and seeking to be right before you and seeking to gain information.

So Lord, it's with sobriety that we enter into this study.

We want to hear from you through the scriptures and through Father that which we've learned down through history.

And today, Gabriella will be here for the first part of our time to talk about the medical aspects of fasting.

And might the Holy Spirit be here too to teach us.

And thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name, Amen.

Gabriella is actually a dentist by training.

She's from Argentina, but she's certified in lifestyle medicine down in Latin America, in the association down there.

And I met her in Georgia recently where she had actually been spending 6 weeks tutoring a family who wants to do home-based lifestyle medicine, natural medical ministry.

And so we were fascinated by that and I asked Gabriella if she would come and share and She's involved with a project here in Michigan, so you can introduce yourself, and I'll move my computer, and you can have the floor for whatever time you need.

My brain is all time translating because I just came to United States recently.

So if you don't understand something, please tell me I can repeat and I'll do my best.

So, yes, I'm here in United States as a missionary after being more than 20 years a missionary not only in dentistry, in lifestyle too, around the world, many, many countries.

And I saw here in this country a big, big, big mission field and very challenging.

And God gave me some tools that I understand that can be helpful in this country.

His and the wife, they are like my parents here.

And so we spend great time together, running different programs in different states.

And right now we are facing a big challenge in Grand Rapids.

And the idea is to reach that city with the right arm of the body.

Health lifestyle specifically, and so we need prayers.

So what those that want to be part welcome.

We are right right now training people in different churches in Grand Rapids training people to be part of this big challenge.

What do you think when you read that word?

Is something positive, something negative?

When you think your body is getting sluggish from being too weighed down with the food, it creates it to go faster, actually.

The healing process is shorter when you spend some time of the healing process fasting.

We can talk a little about a different kind of fasting too at the end.

Just at the beginning, I'm going to start with this.

Imagine a diet that could induce beta cells neogenesis, a way of eating that could restore beta cells function in the pancreas without stem cells or medication and the risk they pose.

It has now been done in diabetic mice twice.

2 big studies showing that this is possible.

And I'm going to show some part of those studies, but those that are working with patients, diabetic patients for a long time, we see in the clinic that is working.

Now the scientists are trying to show through studies that is real, that is happening.

Now, right now, a lot of studies in human beings are running right now.

So in a few years, we are going to have more data about that.

This 1 is 1 fasting mimicking diet promotes NGN3 driving beta cells regeneration to reverse diabetes.

Maybe NGN3 is a protein that if you find in the pancreas, that is amazing.

If you find that, it means that beta cells are multiplying.

If you find that, and they found that in the process of fasting in a group of mice, so they already showed that So they already shown that is happening.

They in mice, a four-day fasting mimicking diet induces generation of insulin-producing beta cells, pancreatic development, restore insulin secretion, and glucose homeostasis in both type 2 and type 1 diabetes mouse model.

These results indicate that fasting mimicking diet promotes the reprogramming of pancreatic cells to restore insulin regeneration in islets from type 1 diabetic patients and reverse both type 1 diabetic and type 2 diabetic phenotypes in mouse models.

What they did was a plant-based diet designed to attain fasting-like effects, providing both macro and micronutrients to minimize the burden of fasting and adverse effects.

So, in day 1, the fasting-mimicking diet supplies 1, 100 kilocalories.

And from day 2 to day 5 of that study, They gave to the mice only 715 kilocalories, very low quantity of kilocalories a day.

So first day, 1, 100 kilocalories, and the rest, 715 kilocalories.

If somebody wants to have your own fasting mimicking diet, it says mimicking because it's like fasting for the body because it's low, low calories, but you're not fasting completely.

And it's amazing what is happening in the body.

They found that intermittent administration of a fasting-mimicking diet intervenes in diabetes progression, restore beta cells, and reconstructs gut microbiota in mice.

Our study has provided further evidence indicating that intermittent fasting is able to preserve or restore beta cells function.

In diabetic mice, intermittent fasting is key to restore beta cells function.

Now I'm going to show this, what I'm showing is very superficial.

If you want the whole study, it's long, both, all the 3 studies that I mentioned, very long, very deep.

If you want it, I can share it with you later.

03 Is It Time to Fast

Father in heaven, I want to thank you that in this third session on fasting, we can come and ask for your blessing.

Lord, as we have learned in the first class, fasting is spoken of throughout the Bible.

And the people that did great things for you, they were people that fasted.

So help us, Father, to study this with great interest.

Today we want to go further, we want to learn more about what it means to fast, to understand how to apply it in our own lives.

And so, please send the Holy Spirit, forgive us Lord, of everything and anything, Father, that could stand in the way of our getting the blessing.

And as I mentioned, Lord, to the class, the angels are waiting to be asked to bless us, and so we ask for that blessing.

Please, we do not want to go without a blessing.

In this class today, and I would suggest in every seminar we attend, in every aspect of camp meeting, might this be, Lord, like a camp meeting like no other, because we've sought the blessing.

Just by way of review, I was grateful for Gabriella coming yesterday, And if you go to my website, discipleheart.com, if you look in the back of your sheets, it says fasting resources.

And if you point your phone with either a QR code reader or your camera, it should take you there.

Otherwise, go to DiscipleHeart, and it'll say something about fasting resources pretty close to the top of the home page.

And you'll find Gabriela's PowerPoint is already posted there, so you can download it for yourself.

I also have Resources for today on is it necessary to fast and appropriate fasting, some articles from Ellen White.

There's also a discussion by Mark Sandoval, the former president of UG Pines, that he gave on the medical aspects of fasting at GYC at the end of last year.

So both of those audios are posted right there, so you can find that.

So there's a place with fasting resources there, and I'm adding these handouts, each 1 each day, when it's completed.

If there's anyone new here, if you put your name, I can let you know what I've posted in this regard.

But we're going to have some guests at 10 o'clock.

Stacey and Steve, I think it's Shafka, pastor and wife, who are going to share how God greatly, greatly blessed their church as a result of ongoing fasting when they were needing a new church.

They're gonna share a testimony that will be very, I think, inspiring.

So far as Gabriella shared, She tried to show us the value of fasting.

She said, fasting physically has to do with what?

She said something I'd never really thought about before.

She said, you know, you need 5 hours between your meals, but then you need a few hours for your body to rest.

That's why if you eat at 8, you should only start maybe eating your next meal at 3.

And then make sure you have 16 hours between that and morning.

And so I never really thought of the rest part in the middle of the day.

Obviously that's speaking of 2 meals a day, isn't it?

But science has shown that there's great value in that.

And something that we don't all appreciate is Ellen White largely taught 2 meals a day and this short-term intermittent fasting, the longer time at the end in our early days.

And now science is saying, we've never studied Seventh-day Adventists to see to what effect this teaching in the early days has affected them as a people.

Now this is not Adventists that are asking those questions, which I think is pretty amazing.

As you can tell, she's very sincere, and I really respect her a great deal.

A few people have come by the booth, and I invite you to come to see all the other things that I like to work on.

We want to look at Count the Ways a little bit.

We really haven't spent much time on this.

And there's a quotation there at the beginning, at the top of the page.

Wake up, brethren, wake up from your peace and safety attitude and seek the Lord that He may be found.

Call you upon Him while He is nigh in every church.

With fasting, with confession, and true repentance.

With fasting, with confession, and true repentance of heart.

And so we want to talk today a little bit about what it is, what it means to fast.

And I think 1 of the best ways to do that is to turn in your Bibles to the book of Ezra.

And I'd like to tell you just a little bit about how I study as we turn there.

I like to take notes in my Bible, and When I study a topic, I always start with the Bible.

That's where your main source of information is.

We're gonna turn to Ezra chapter 9, I think it is.

And then I go to the scriptures, I mean to the writings of Ellen White, and then whatever other sources there are.

And when I study in my Bible, I like to underline key points.

And Then I'll put the underlining in here, and then I will look up in something called the Blue Letter Bible.

How many of you are acquainted with the Blue Letter Bible?

It's the most amazing free app on the Bible that helps you.

So if you're looking up, for example, Psalms 1, it talks about, they shall be like a tree.

It will look at birds like branches and willow and sycamore, because those are all trees.

So you find things through that app on the Blue Letter Bible that you won't find in most concordances.

I was doing that for some this morning, and you'll find great blessings in that.

So let's go to Ezra chapter 8 and see what was going on with fasting here.

And I must tell you as we begin that my desire in doing this is first to look at Ezra as a man and then look at the fasting that went on.

In studying this, I have to tell you that my life has really been impacted and changed.

And I've come to appreciate 2 people like I never did before, actually Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah.

What fascinates me about Ezra was that he was a priest, but he had such a relationship with Jesus and such a positive demeanor and so much, and so happy about sharing about Jesus that he became friend with the king that ruled at that time in the empire.

And it's because of his happy Christian witnessing and his being full of the scriptures, the find of the kingdom felt impressed, I need to do something, and then he makes the second decree for the captives to all return.

Nebuchadnezzar had Daniel, then 1 of the kings later had Ezra, and then later Nehemiah comes along, And he's also the Kabir.

That means he is probably the most trusted man in all the empire.

So when we talk about fasting, we're not talking about some kind of discipline or experience.

We're talking about out of the depth of a person's experience with Jesus, they feel led to go even further in a focus seeking after God and an intentional seeking of an answer or whatever the case might be.

So this isn't about someone who doesn't care saying, well, I'll fast and get something from God.

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Is It Time to Fast?

01 Is It Time to Fast

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01 Is It Time to Fast

46m

02 Is It Time to Fast

55m

03 Is It Time to Fast

57m

04 Is It Time to Fast

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05 Is It Time to Fast

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