GYC Conference 2023: But If Not

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Making Sons of Hell? The Don’ts and Do’s of Soul Winning

Aron Crews

Soul Winning for Satan? Why Our Picture of God Matters

Demonic Doctrines and How Not to Teach Them

Do You Even Like People? Why Having the Heart of God Matters

Farming, Fishing, and Fighting for Souls

Addressing Objections and Answering Difficult Bible Questions

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this opportunity to be at GYC this year.

Lord, Satan is not happy that people are here right now to learn more about you, not just in this room, but in all the presentations all this weekend long.

And so, Lord, we ask for your angels to come and your Holy Spirit.

We invite him into this place, into our hearts more specifically, to fend off the forces of darkness And to allow us an opportunity to get a glimpse of your love and to respond to that love, we pray in Jesus' name.

Okay, as was slightly mentioned earlier, the screen is a little bit tinted yellow.

We don't know why, so I do value my presentation slides and so it's kind of annoying to me, but you probably would have known unless I even pointed it out to you.

Making Sons of Hell, the Don'ts and Do's of soul wedding.

The presentation title is based upon a verse that we find in Matthew chapter 23 and verse 15 where Jesus speaking to the scribes and Pharisees, the whole chapter, he's basically blasting them.

Pointing out in love, pointing out in love critical mistakes and errors that the Pharisees and the scribes of his day were doing and practicing.

And he says to them in verse 15, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel land and sea.

In other words, you put in serious effort.

You get a ship and you go far, you get a camel and a donkey, you travel far, you go land and sea to win 1 proselyte.

You put in a lot of effort to win 1 convert, right?

We should put in effort to win souls for Jesus.

But then he says, and when he is won, when he is converted to the faith, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourself.

If you were here last night, you heard me mention, we often talk about soul winning, and we should do it, we should do it, we should do it, but we don't often talk about the danger of soul winning for Satan.

You are on the way, the trajectory for you is damnation.

You won someone and made them twice as fit for hell as you yourself are.

If we read 2 verses earlier, Jesus basically a parallel saying here, he says, For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men.

For you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

You yourselves are sons of hell, And you are now not allowing others to go in.

But not only are you not allowing, but you are actually preparing them.

You're like spreading this virus that's making them even worse condition than you yourself are.

And then he says in verse 16, woe to you, and what does he call them?

Friends, if you are ever guiding someone, I hope that you are not wearing a blindfold.

I hope if if someone is leading after you, you know where you're going so that you can lead them appropriately.

But Jesus is saying, you're blind guides.

We read in a commentary written by Douglas O'Donnell and he says, commenting on these verses, he says, you see the scribes and Pharisees are not simply wrong about their beliefs and their teachings, et cetera, et cetera, but they are contagiously wrong.

They are like the English doctors during the early phase of the bubonic plague who told the sick to leave London for fresh air of the countryside and who, in doing so, spread the disease throughout the nation.

In Hosea 4, verse 6, the Lord says, My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

Don't underestimate, He says, the importance of right knowledge.

The Pharisees were misinformed about God and His plan, etc.

And don't underestimate the danger of uninformed enthusiasm.

We come to GYC because we're fired up about Jesus and that is awesome, but we need to make sure that our zeal for Christ has knowledge.

If we run into the mission field without first knowing the right mission or the true Jesus, we are in danger of making converts fit for hell rather than fit for heaven.

He goes on, how zealous are Muslim jihadists?

Religious zeal is not an indication necessarily of truth.

Woe to us if we have zeal without knowledge.

Woe also to us if we have knowledge without zeal.

Light that is full of the right knowledge of God and heat that is full of high devotion for God.

This is why I believe that when we get to the book of James, James says in chapter 3 verse 1, he says, not many of you should become teachers.

I thought we're supposed to be doing what Jesus says.

Go, therefore, make disciples, teaching them to observe all the things that I've commanded you, right?

We're supposed to be teachers of the gospel, but James here says, whoa, be careful, be careful if you're a teacher.

For you know that we who teach will be judged with what?

The Pharisees were teachers, but they were misinformed teachers.

They had many things right, but there was something in there that they were distorting the teachings of Scripture that were preparing people more for hell than heaven.

And those who are teaching these things are going to be held at a higher level of accountability.

What's interesting, he goes on right after this in verse 2 and onward, he begins to describe the tongue.

He begins to describe the words that we're speaking, right?

The things that we're teaching, the words that are coming out of our mouth.

And then he comes down to verse 6 and he says, And the tongue is A fire, a world of iniquity.

The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of nature and it is set on fire by what?

Gehenna, the same word that Jesus used back in Matthew 23 verse 15.

And here James says we need to be careful the way that we use our tongue, the way that we use our words, just as a small thing, a tongue is relatively small part of your body, but it has power to steer the whole ship to control so many things.

And so that is the introduction to the whole series.

Making Sons of Hell, The Don'ts and Do's of soul winning.

Now here's an overview of the 5 presentations that we're going to be getting into.

Soul winning for Satan, why our picture of God matters is what we're going to be covering in this first session.

Then the second session immediately following is entitled demonic doctrines and how not to teach them.

And then later this afternoon, do you even like people?

When I came up with that title, every time I read it I just laughed.

Then the fourth 1, farming, fishing, and fighting for souls.

This is where we're going to really look at God's master plan of evangelism and look at the strategy he wants us to take for soul winning.

And then session number 5, which is going to be the only soul session tomorrow, we're going to be looking at some potential objections to some things and tackling a few of my personal favorite difficult Bible passages when it comes to sharing truth with people.

So let's now go on to soul, whoa, Yeah, soul winning for Satan.

I'm going to ask you guys a question that I've heard before and I think it's a really good question.

By a showing of hands, who thinks that it is good news that there is a God?

Raise your hand if you think it's good news that there is a God.

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Series

Making Sons of Hell? The Don’ts and Do’s of Soul Winning

Soul Winning for Satan? Why Our Picture of God Matters

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

ECYC 2012: Plenary Sessions

The Fear of God

51m

The Biblical Foundation for Adventist Education

6. The Biblical Worldview and Adventist Education

22m

Making Sons of Hell? The Don’ts and Do’s of Soul Winning

Demonic Doctrines and How Not to Teach Them

58m

Making Sons of Hell? The Don’ts and Do’s of Soul Winning

Do You Even Like People? Why Having the Heart of God Matters

55m

GYC 2011 totalChurch

Total Church: Adding to the Church

2h

Dee Casper's Weekend

05 The Spirit of the Babylon

1h 8m

Adventist Apologetics: Complex Issues, Adventist Answers

4. Worst Decision Ever: Why God Permits Evil?

47m

How Heaven’s War Became Ours

1h

The Plan of Salvation

01 The Plan of Salvation

1h 8m

Sound Doctrine