SWYC 2011: Lest We Forget

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GYC Southwest

Rick Howard

The Omega of Apostasy, Part 3

Heavenly Father, we humbly come before you realizing that there's no way that we can understand truth without your Holy Spirit.

That things that are true and spiritual are just foolishness to our carnal nature.

So Lord, we pray for your spirit to come into our hearts and minds and and give us those gifts that you so freely give because you love us so much, the gifts of discernment and understanding and knowledge and wisdom.

Help us, Lord, to see truth, to be able to weave our way through the complexity of satanic deception.

Lord, if it's capable of deceiving the very elect, then it's capable of deceiving us for sure.

And we just pray, Lord, that you would lead us, because we want to know the truth.

Even if we can't comprehend it, we pray that you would carry us through to the end so that we can all share together an eternal life that you have offered to all of us.

So thank you, and we ask for your presence here this morning in Jesus' name.

The hardest thing for me, after searching for the truth for 5 years and being involved in spiritualism and mind control and spirit mediums and Hinduism and reading all of the spiritual books that are out there in the world, you know.

You get to the place where you think you know it all.

And it was so hard for me to put that aside, but I realized that I had to do it.

And it was 2 verses in the Bible that led me in that direction.

It was coming across the verse that said, there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death, you know.

And boy, the Lord took that and held it in front of me.

And then the 1 that, well, actually 3 verses, I guess, the 1 in Proverbs 3 where it says, lean not unto thine own understanding.

And then in the New Testament where it says, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby." And I realized that I was violating those 3 verses.

I thought I knew so much because I had been studying all this stuff for years and I liked it.

I was naturally attracted to the supernatural and it was happening to me and so to me it was like, that's real, it was real I didn't share it with everybody because I knew that everybody wouldn't believe it but, And, but the way the Lord led me, and this is so important, and I share this with you now, if you're dealing with other people, Bible studies, leading them, trying to bring them in into the truth, there's 1 thing that other people will not have in their life as you study the Bible with them and that is victory over sin.

Now, And you can always lead it in that direction with your own testimony.

I would say, you know, this looked right, this looked right, you know, and I understand how this looks right to you, you know.

But I know 1 thing in my life, I could not gain victory until I finally surrendered myself to what biblical truth really was.

And they may not say a word, but it will touch their heart because they know in their own life how they're struggling with sin.

They don't share it with everybody, okay, but they'll listen.

When you say that, they'll listen to that.

And that is 1 of the major tools that I use.

You know, I was a Cole Porter pastoral trainee for 1 year in the upper peninsula of Michigan.

And during that year, 30 people were baptized from the Bible studies that I was having.

I mean, I did lots of Cole Portering, but I started Bible studies with just about every, you know, I tried with every person that, you know, that I had a presentation of the Bible storybooks to, I got them involved in a Bible study, you know, and I'd leave it with them.

And, you know, you talk with them in such a way that you leave them puzzled and fascinated by your life and what happened to you and then leave them with a Bible study or something and say, hey look, if you want to do these, I'll be happy to come back and just sit down for half an hour, you know, no pressure.

I had an average probably of 12 to 15 Bible studies a week going on.

While I was supposed to be doing the Cole portering work, they were very frustrated with me.

I got in this program and the coal porter leader for Michigan, I was in the upper peninsula up there, he knew that I believed in my heart that I was being called to the ministry and where my heart was.

And it was with evangelism, with studying with these people.

And so when you have Bible studies with people, just remember that.

And use your own life and your own struggles as an example to them how God led you and continued to lead you.

And that's how the Lord led me out of that.

He would not allow me to have victory, which kept me going.

And I finally just said, God, you know the truth.

You lead me to it because I cannot figure it out you know and he did he did so anyway.

And when he led me, he led me to the church.

He led me to people, which is the subject today.

When people ask you, what religion are you?

And you say, I'm a Seventh-day Adventist.

You know, we've heard for a long time now, recently, that, you know, we're another Protestant church.

You know, We're part of the Protestant, the sisterhood of Protestant churches.

Are we a part of the sisterhood of Protestant churches?

Not if you believe the spirit of prophecy, because the spirit of prophecy says in 1844, in that era, all the other Protestant churches rejected the first and second angels' message.

I mean, obviously it involves us worshiping, but the Sabbath, okay?

The tangible thing about worship God and give glory to Him is worship on the Sabbath day that I established as a sign between me and my people forever.

So that's what the other churches rejected, all of them, just about all of them.

And believe it or not, it was the Baptist church that brought the Sabbath message to the Adventists.

We weren't Seventh-day Adventists then, we were just Adventists, but it was the Baptist who discovered the truth about the Sabbath, brought that truth to us, and we said, yeah, it's true.

Okay, as soon as we accepted it, and you'll see this in the slides here, God restored the gift of prophecy.

That's why we have the spirit of prophecy?

Because God finally had a people keeping the commandments of God again.

And as soon as he had a people that were keeping the commandments of God, he designated those people as his people in the world.

And he restored to those people the gift of prophecy.

You know, I used to wonder all the time, like, why isn't there a prophet?

While I was searching, you know, during those 5 years.

You know, since the old testament, over 2, 000 years, why haven't we had a prophet again?

And I didn't realize that until I finally, in the spirit of prophecy, Ellen White told us why.

When God had a people keeping the commandments of God, He restored the gift of prophecy.

When you have Bible studies with people, you're bringing them into a family.

And it's the family through the Holy Spirit that actually saves them.

It's not just the truth, it's not just you, it's a family.

You know, there really is mysticism, true mysticism.

We are all joined together mystically by the Holy Spirit.

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The Omega of Apostasy, Part 3

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