SWYC 2011: Lest We Forget

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GYC Southwest

Rick Howard

The Omega of Apostasy, Part 1

This is a long time coming for me to have kept my mouth shut about things for 6, 7 years now, really waiting until the Lord opened the opportunity up for me and many others who are involved in exposing some of the deceptions that have swept into our church over the years, things that we've all been concerned about.

And I know that if you're sitting here you're probably of that group that has really, you know, Lord Why?

And when, you know, when will you take care of this problem?

And there are a few things that I want to share that are so important for those of us who are concerned about what has happened in our church, the mingling with the other Protestant churches that God led us out of when we became Seventh-day Adventists.

For those of us who joined the church, I was a Presbyterian.

How many of you joined the Adventist Church from another denomination?

So you know you joined this church because the Lord opened your mind up to the truth that this was the remnant church, you know, and as you studied you learned like I did, that the Protestant churches are fallen, period.

Because, you know, it's normal for us to feel self-conscious, you know, when we say things you know, that we have the truth or you know, that God has laid out the true plan of salvation and given it to Seventh-day Adventists.

You know, that kind of like, oh, you kind of want to hide somewhere when you say something like that.

Remember when Jesus spoke to the woman at the well?

Now I'm sure there would have been a lot of people out there in his day that would have said, Oh, did you hear what Jesus said?

He's doing that thing that separates us from everybody again.

The feeling is that when we talk like that, or believe that way even, that we're being separatist or egotistical or self-centered, it's not right.

It is right, because when you look back in history 6, 000 years God always had a people, always had a people that were the depositories of his truth and the way of salvation.

The science of salvation was always given to a group of people that God wanted to keep separate from the rest of the world.

That's just the way it is, and that's the way it is today.

But Satan knows what we think like, doesn't he?

He knows our weaknesses, and he's going to take advantage of every 1 of those weaknesses.

Anyway, we're going to try to cover in these 4 seminars things that I just think are so important for us as Adventists to believe.

We'll start here with the Alpha and the Omega.

How many of you have even heard and read about the Alpha and the Omega?

For 10 years, my head elder, and many of you have heard his name and maybe know him, Ken Holland.

He was the editor of the Signs before Marvin Moore.

And Ken was my head elder, and whenever I would speak on spiritualism or even just kind of get into the topic, it would remind him to tell me on his way out of church as he's shaking my hand, he'd lean over and go, Rick, you gotta write a book about this.

For 10 years, Ken said, Rick, you gotta write a book about this.

And I just, it wasn't something that I took to.

And a year later, something happened that I'm going to share with you the next hour, how it all happened.

Because the next hour after this 1 will be the story of this book and how it happened and how God led in it.

And what I mentioned this morning that I learned more in the last couple of years than 35 years in ministry, it's because of this book and how I learned to wait on the Lord and how the Lord is interested in everything in our lives, everything and that if we will only learn to wait and watch and pray, he will open doors and you'll know when it happens.

And then you walk through and you don't get the terrible results when we smash through our own doors and make the way of our own choosing.

And it was a hard lesson to learn because here you are with something that you feel exposes a deception that people are falling into every day and I can't talk about it.

I got it all written in a book, but the book isn't out.

Well I tell you, when Ted Wilson was selected as president and I was sitting there at the Dome in Atlanta and I heard him say everything that was in the book, I said, praise God, now I know why you had me wait, okay.

Wait for leadership to support what's happening here.

And believe me, the leadership in our general conference supports everything that we're talking about here today.

However, don't think that leadership should move at the pace that you think that they should move.

Because, you know, if you were standing in Ted's shoes right now, you would understand that we are not in a place to question, I don't mean question, we always should question, but to be so concerned about why aren't things happening faster.

He has so many different dynamics to take care of and you just have to pray for him and just plead with the Lord to lead him as reformation and revival takes place in the church and it will, it really will.

How many of you have read the Omega Rebellion yet?

Alright, there's a section in there on what we need to do, having to do with our involvement with mingling with the other churches.

And folks, we're never going to have revival.

We're never going to have true reformation and revival in our church until we follow the counsel in the spirit of prophecy concerning our relationship to the fallen churches.

And that's going to be a hard 1, because I'll tell you, for 50 years, we have gotten more and more involved in our relationship with them for many different reasons.

Just the desire not to be looked at as being strange.

The peculiar people don't want to be peculiar anymore.

They want to be a part of the sisterhood of the Protestant churches out there.

And you can understand that on a carnal level, but we have the spirit of prophecy that tells us, and we should go at that level, not the carnal level.

We need to follow the counsel that we have that says don't have a relationship with them, pray with them, get to know them.

There is a level of mingling with the, with, you know, all of the churches that God led us out of, but not at the level that we're doing it today.

Not to invite their teachers to come and tell us how they do things or to improve our evangelistic efforts or our spiritual lives.

Those are areas that God has given us everything we need.

And if we need more, He'll give it to us, not them.

And it's because of our involvement at that level that we're having the problems that we're having today.

But, which is going to lead to something that I want to talk about, about Jesus being omniscient.

Don't feel that anything got into our church that he didn't know about or permit.

There's nothing going on that he doesn't know about, anything in the universe.

He gave that up when he took humanity but not the omniscience that he has he knows everything alright, and he is in charge of his church and he loves his church he died for it so Don't get mad at the church ever.

Don't you want to have the same attitude that Jesus has towards his bride?

So you know when you see problems in the church, remember, you know, remember Jesus knows about it.

He allowed it and He even says He's gonna allow error to come in to drive us to revival, to push us to study.

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The Omega of Apostasy, Part 1

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