GYC Conference 2023: But If Not

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

I Know Something You Don't Know

Cody Francis

29 Failed Predictions from Adventists in 2008

Welcome to, if you're looking to learn something you don't know, I think you're in the right place, or at least I hope you're in the right place, hoping we can all learn together.

So this seminar is I Know Something You Don't Know, and then our subtitle or our sub point is the lure of conspiracies.

And so we're going to try to untangle a very tangled subject.

And we're going to try to untangle it from the Bible and the spirit of prophecy.

And we're looking at this meeting at 29 failed predictions from 2008, what it meant then, what it means today.

And then our next presentations, the Adventism according to CNN and Bill Mather.

Joe Reeves and I will be going back and forth.

Then we have Sunday Law Rumors and Reality.

And then we're looking at what's your, evil surmising and suspicion in the church.

And then on Friday morning, the fifth seminar, we're going to be having a Q&A session.

And so this is a slide, if you have questions, you can text your questions to that number and we will be getting them and looking them over and seeing what we'll be able to answer.

So we would love to get your feedback and get your questions there so that we have something to talk about on Friday morning.

So we hope that you will participate in that.

My name is Cody Francis and I serve as the Ministerial Director in Michigan Conference.

I'll just put in a plug right now that in the Adventist Church, particularly in the North American division, God is calling young people to serve him in ministry.

And we are always looking for those that God is calling to serve in ministry.

If you have a call to ministry or you're sensing a call, please come and talk to me.

I'd love to talk to you about it during 1 of the breaks.

But I want to go ahead as we dive into our subject, I want to go ahead and want to begin with prayer.

Father in heaven, we're grateful for the privilege that we have to come together to learn.

We thank you for the blessings we've already received as we've listened to the messages and been challenged.

And we pray that you'll be with us as we study and learn together and as we look at this challenging subject.

So I want to introduce you as we begin to some people that have interacted with recently.

So a couple months ago, I did an evangelistic series in 1 of our churches in Michigan, and we had people coming, of course, and as we had people coming and we had time to interact after the meetings were over and different times, they started to share different things with me.

Now I want you to recognize these are people that are searching, they're coming to a, I think ours was, I don't know, 20 meetings or something like that of Bible prophecy.

And so these were people that were taking time out of their schedule to come and study Bible prophecy.

And as we're visiting after 1 of the meetings, 1 of the ladies begins talking to me and she says, oh, have you been listening to so and so?

And I don't remember the name, or I give the name on YouTube.

And there's this big, and she started describing this big elaborate scheme.

And I don't even remember all of the details of the scheme.

We had just probably presented something like, I don't know what it was, but could have been the 2300 days, could have been the mark of the beast or something like that.

And what she's thinking about is this massive, what she described was terrible, of a child trafficking ring along the border and various things of this nature.

It was hard for me to be able to discuss the present, the biblical truth that we had just covered because her mind was all on this other area.

I was covering the Sabbath, this same seminar, and 1 of the things I do sometimes when we're covering the Sabbath is I give a little illustration.

I talk about how when Galileo was studying he came to the surprising conclusion that the earth went around the sun instead of the Sun going around the earth.

Now this is like 1 minute, I give this illustration 1 minute before I introduce and say and I end with the point and I want us to understand that the truth is still the truth whether you believe it or whether I believe it or whether anybody believes it, let's see if there's anything in the Bible that could differentiate those that receive the seal of God and the mark of the beast and I go right into the fourth commandment right there.

As I was going over this illustration and talking about how Galileo and I, someone calls out from the audience, it's not so.

And I was just like wait a minute here, what I can't quite get distracted because I'm about ready to cover the Sabbath right here.

And so afterward he comes up to me and he says, the earth is not round.

And I said, well that's interesting, What makes you think this?

And so he said, well, you see, and he starts going over, and I have to admit I wasn't very well versed on this idea.

And so he said, I said, well, let me give you a couple reasons.

I said, 1 reason is the Bible talks about the circle of the earth.

And so in his theory, whoops, missed that 1.

In his idea, this is the flat earth theory and you come, he says, planes never fly over Antarctica.

Well, I'd never flown over Antarctica so I couldn't say anything to that.

He said, you just run into a wall of ice.

So it's like this Frisbee with this wall of ice all around on the sides.

And I said, well, we've just been talking about the Bible, haven't we?

And I didn't want to get into a flat earth with him right then, because we just covered the Sabbath or something like that.

I said, don't you think this is what's more important?

And we talked about it a little bit more.

But these are real events that happened to me just within the last 2 months.

Another lady came to another seminar, this was a couple years ago, and she came all the way through a series of meetings.

She was in follow-up meetings, and she starts talking to me.

I don't remember what it was that made this as a catalyst, what this catalyst was, But she says, well you know the Denver airports?

She says, well there's these massive tunnels that connect Washington DC and the Denver Airport and there's these trucks that go back and forth underneath these tunnels and I'm just, my mind is spinning.

I'm thinking of the logistics of what this would take to actually do this and to remove all the exhaust and to have somebody drive 1, 500 miles, these big semi trucks.

And there was proof, there was evidence of it as well, in her mind at least.

And so there are more ideas out there that we can begin than to uncover.

You know, when they talk about, they classify different ages.

And I remember in school, I believe that they said we were in the information age.

Sometimes I wonder if we've moved from the information age to the disinformation age, because you can find anything out there.

Now, I wanna begin with a biblical story and think about a little bit.

It's a story that I believe sets the stage for some of what we're going to be visiting about today.

And in Absalom's rebellion, they had gone out to battle.

The king, David, was going to go out and they say, no, you stay back in the city.

Stay back in the city because you're worth more than 10, 000 of us and so David admonishes his generals, spare my son and So the battle takes place and Joab binds him and Joab puts an end to Absalom and then it's time to send a messenger back to David.

Now I want you to think, here is David waiting back at the city.

His kingdom is splitting apart, his son is leading it, and you can imagine he is extremely anxious to know what the outcome is going to be.

And so we pick up the story in 2 Samuel 18 and there was a watchman, or not a watchman, but a runner that wanted to run.

Now Ahimaz had done excellent service for David.

Ahimaz had given the message from the messengers in Jerusalem.

He'd hidden in the well, made it to David.

He was a runner, but Joab had said, you're a good man, I don't want you to take the message today." Ahiyamaz says, I really want to go.

Joe Reeves

Adventism According to CNN and Bill Maher

Alright, if everyone can find their seats, we will get started on session number 2.

Hope you're enjoying the first full day of GYC.

And I almost canceled the seminar because I loved some of the other titles and I really wanted to go to them.

So you're lucky I'm here and I didn't put a cancel sign on the door.

But they said that the others are being recorded so I can catch those later.

Now this is I know something you don't know, the lure of conspiracies.

Now 1 of the latest conspiracies is that this seminar is not being recorded and won't be posted.

So it's a good thing you're here in person.

So far nobody's been able to debunk that conspiracy, even though I just made it up.

So in case it's true, it's a really good thing that you're here.

And we're going to have a good time looking at some very important things.

Some of us are a bit vulnerable to accepting difficult topics.

So, as I was preparing some of this presentation part of the time I asked myself why am I doing this?

But this is so important to talk about and it has touched a nerve.

We've had a number of you coming up to Pastor Cody and myself this morning and last night.

Glad that we're having a seminar on this topic.

And it's already been pointed out in the first session, the reason that we feel that we need to talk about this and we need to open up the Bible and spirit of prophecy and ask some tough questions about this topic is because we see this compromising our mission and our message.

And I'm going to be sharing some things in this thing will be sensitive.

And I've also been documenting some things that people have been posting and saying and predictions from the last 3 years that will be in this presentation.

And I am absolutely convinced that the devil's goal is to make a false prophet out of the Adventist Church and a false prophet out of you.

Now what's happening in America right now is that there's a lot of predictions about America.

Many, many different churches, people having dreams about America, people making predictions and So there is a competition of prophets, who can be the false, or who can be the true prophet, who's the false prophet.

And the devil's ultimate goal right in 2023 is to make a false prophet out of you, towards your neighbors, and out of the Adventist church and completely discredit us.

The other reason this is so important is because conspiracy theories impact people's salvation.

And it's not because any of us will be saved or lost based on which conspiracy we believe or don't believe, but it's because we're saved or lost based on how close we are to Jesus.

And fanaticism has pulled many people away from Jesus.

And it was referenced already that many of us have sat in sermons back in the 2008 era making predictions.

I was told when I was college, you should drop out of college because you will not graduate before Jesus comes.

It's a waste of time and many of my friends did.

I ask you a question, did that positively impact their faith or negatively?

Many of my friends from that era are out of the church.

So we're gonna have to learn from some successes and mistakes in the past and we're gonna have to really focus on what Jesus is saying and his calling towards us and ask the tough questions because we cannot afford to have our mission message compromise or we cannot afford to have these things separated from Jesus.

We'll have a good time today then and we really need the Holy Spirit to enlighten us.

If you'll bow your heads, I'd like to pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you that we can be together here at GYC.

With so many great studies happening throughout this convention center of your Word and of prophetic insight, And in this room right here, during this hour, which we dedicate to you, we much need you to sort out some things in our hearts and give us openness that we can track closer with you more than ever before and not get pulled in so many other directions.

All right, these text messages, if you have a question from the last presentation, they go to my phone and I haven't gotten any yet.

So if you don't send any questions, it's gonna be a really boring Q&A panel tomorrow.

So but if you send in some questions it'll be lively.

I appreciate Pastor Mark Howard that's walking in right now.

He gave a great presentation this morning for our morning devotional.

In fact, the earlier you text your questions, the more likely that they'll make it on.

Because usually when we have Q&A panels, we get a flood of questions at the end, and we don't have time for all of them.

So the earlier you text me, the more likely it'll be in the panel discussion.

So you can take a picture, if some of you are right now, of that slide.

And if a question pops up while I'm presenting or Cody, you can text us right in the moment if you'd like.

The title for this presentation is Adventism according to CNN and Bill Maher.

I'd like you to take you back to 3 years ago.

But there was mask mandates, everybody, people weren't traveling.

We were in the middle of the COVID pandemic.

And we had just gone through a very tense election season in the United States between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and very, very tense.

In the middle of that, there was a group called Q, or they were making these anonymous drops on the internet.

And beginning in 2017, Q, also known as QAnon, dropped over 5, 000 cryptic messages.

It Seemed like it was from some government or military insider.

But this gained wide following leading up into the 2020 election.

Hillary Clinton was about to be arrested and would attempt to flee the country was 1 of the predictions.

Mark Zuckerberg was going to leave Facebook and flee the United States.

They made a lot of predictions with specific dates attached, and I'm not going to go through them, but there was a lot of false dates attached to predictions that QAnon made.

And QAnon followers skyrocketed during COVID when people sensed that there was corruption and compromise motives in the way the pandemic was being handled and it was being leveraged for people's personal corporate interests.

And so people were suspicious and QAnon really took off during that time.

1 of the key tenets of QAnon narrative was the 2020 election.

Trump would be re-elected by a landslide.

And When that didn't happen, their drops after that or their messages started falling off.

But they believed that Trump was going to be put back in office in April.

When that didn't happen, they thought it would happen on August 18, 2020.

And in the midst of this, all of a sudden there was a very bizarre connection that appeared in the media between the Seventh-day Adventist Church and QAnon.

Of course, when we look at the history of Jesus from the Gospels, we can't be surprised when false accusations are made and people revile us and say these things.

It started out with, at least the ones that I saw, with CNN on October 15, 2020, just what, 2 or 3 weeks before the election.

And CNN had this article, How QAnon Uses Religion to Lure Unsuspecting Christians.

And they go through the history of Cunanan and describe it.

And then in the middle or last part of the article they say, under somewhat similar strains, a group of 1840s Baptists called the Millerites predicted the second coming of Jesus.

When Jesus did not arrive, the Millerites were greatly disappointed, but they adjusted their apocalyptic timetables and soldiered on, eventually becoming the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Do you like our church being portrayed in that light, yes or no?

So their idea was that they were trying to understand if QAnon had a great future or not.

And they said, well, probably not, because QAnon's making false predictions, so people will stop believing it.

And then they said, well actually it probably does have a great future because the Adventists started out making a false prediction and they've grown ever since.

So Then on November 3, 2020, this narrative really took off with this article from Pace Magazine.

QAnon took a major hit with Biden's election, but it's never going away.

On the morning, the article starts out with these words, on the morning of October 22, 1844, anybody recognize that date?

Some many thousands of devout individuals throughout the US and beyond waited with collective bated breath for the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Kind of a weird way to start an article on the elections in QAnon.

They believed with all their hearts that the day had come when Christ would return to usher in the end of the world, smiting the wicked while shuffling them off to heaven to live in eternal bliss.

It was, after all, what they'd been promised by their spiritual leader as part of the surging Millerism movement spearheaded by Baptist preacher turned prophet, William Miller.

William Miller did nothing to stand in the way of those members who gave away all their worldly possession in anticipation of Christ's imminent return.

Sunday Law Rumor and Reality

Father in heaven, we're grateful for the privilege that we have to come together.

We're thankful that each of us can be here.

And we pray that you will bless us now as we look into your word and consider some of these things.

So, as we've, we've been mentioning the, we need your questions for tomorrow morning's meeting when we have a Q&A session.

So you can text your questions to that number.

So I hope we can get some more questions.

Otherwise, we're going to have to talk a long time on those 2 questions, which most of us are pastors, so that's probably not a problem.

But still, we'd like to encourage your questions.

So go ahead and take a picture and text questions.

If there's something you would have liked us to cover that we haven't, feel free to submit that as well.

As I mentioned, we're looking at Sunday Law Rumors and Reality.

Now, if you were to ask the general public, what do you think?

Do you think the general public would think that Sunday laws are a conspiracy theory?

I believe the general public probably would believe that that idea is a conspiracy theory.

Now, when you think about conspiracy theories, we've already talked about, is there a general, an overarching conspiracy theory?

We call it the great controversy, but we could call it the great conspiracy.

And so there is an overarching conspiracy, and we need to be able to dissect what is reality and what isn't.

Now when you think of a Sunday Laws, are they conspiracy?

What would be some hallmarks of a conspiracy theory?

Well, a conspiracy theory generally has some degree of plausibility, but it's not completely provable or disprovable.

So that's a general, and these are just some general ideas that I put together, it's not from anything official.

There's generally players behind the scenes with some nefarious intent.

You have, it explains events that are currently taking place.

So it brings some knowledge to things that are going on.

It confirms generally my preexisting biases.

So if we generally have a disbelief in the government, then there's going to be a greater likelihood that we're going to believe that the government was, that 9-11 was an inside job.

And so it's gonna be, it's affected many times by our biases.

And as I mentioned before, as we mentioned before, that when we, we have, we all have biases and we have to recognize that if something is confirming our biases, we need to be even extra cautious about that.

The majority will generally reject the idea.

Only a privileged group really knows what is really going on.

And frequently no amount of evidence will convince to the contrary.

I mentioned about my friend that came to the evangelistic meetings and really there was no arguing with him that the earth was flat.

It was just that was what he believed and no matter what evidence you could give, it really wouldn't amount to much.

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Series

I Know Something You Don't Know

29 Failed Predictions from Adventists in 2008

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

29 Failed Predictions from Adventists in 2008

58m

Adventism According to CNN and Bill Maher

58m

Sunday Law Rumor and Reality

1h

Evil Surmising and Suspicion in the Church

55m

The Lure of Conspiracies Q&A Panel

1h 9m

Sound Doctrine