OYC 2011: Wellness Reformation

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Oregon Youth for Christ

OYC 2011 Seminars

Dave Fiedler

The Long Campaign: Lucifer, Lies, Love & Logic

Father, we thank you for the privilege we have of lifting our thoughts and trying to comprehend your thoughts.

We pray that you will be with us now and that you'll give us understanding and Wisdom.

We need wisdom because we're just not that smart.

We pray that you would be our wisdom and our strength and our righteousness and all that we do for you.

Title is The Long Campaign, Lucifer, Lies, Love, and Logic.

What we're looking at here is the kind of a philosophical basis for how to finish the Lord's work.

And so that's where we're going with this.

Okay, we're going to start off with a, perhaps an unusual place for a talk like this, but going to Luke chapter 10, Jesus is speaking.

And he said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

Jesus is talking now to the 70 disciples.

He'd sent them out on their missionary tour and they'd come back and they had said to him, you know, they made their comments about how even the spirits, the evil spirits were subject to them in Christ's name.

And he was talking and he said this unusual comment.

He said, I saw Satan's hall like lightning from heaven.

That's the first question we're going to look at.

When did this fall of Satan from heaven happen?

Most Adventists are going to quickly think of this verse, or these verses.

Revelation 12, 7 through 9, "...and war broke out in heaven.

Michael and his angels fought with the dragon.

The dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer.

That serpent of old called the devil and Satan who diseases the whole world.

He was cast to the earth and his angels were cast out with him." Okay.

How many people thought of that verse when I asked the question?

When we make the connection between, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

When we make that connection with this verse, we are equating cast out with fall.

It's not a, not a huge issue, but just keep that in mind.

You'll notice it's described up there as Stage 1.

And as we go along, you'll figure out what I'm talking about with all this idea of stage this and stage that.

Jesus, talking Now in a different verse here, he said, now is the judgment of this world.

Now the ruler of this world will be cast out.

We usually think of the crucifixion as being the event that accomplished this.

Okay, now the ruler of this world will be cast out.

Is that cast out the same as the cast out that we read about in Revelation 12?

Remember we kind of made a connection between fall, I saw Satan fall, and him being cast out in Revelation 12.

Well here's 1 where Jesus is using the exact same words.

He says, Satan was cast, or the ruler of this world will be cast out.

And notice here, it's a little bit tricky, because which tenses will be?

So if there's a connection, if that cast out here in John 12 means the same thing, or refers to the same thing as the cast out in Revelation 12, then we could ask ourselves, is Revelation 12 really talking about the crucifixion?

And if that's true, where does the fall from heaven before the creation of the earth all fit in?

Decider of Ages 761, Christ bowed his head and died, but he held fast his faith and his submission to God.

And I heard a loud voice saying, In heaven now has come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ for the accuser of our brethren is cast down which accused him before our God day and night." Notice the reference that Ellen White quotes.

We just read Revelation 12 7 through 9 looking at Satan being cast out of heaven before the creation of the earth.

Here's Ellen White talking about the crucifixion, obviously, and she's quoting Revelation 12, 10.

Notice here that again we have cast out and cast down.

We've got a lot of casting going on here.

Well, try to make a little more sense out of this as we move along.

After the crucifixion, Satan saw that he had overreached himself.

Satan saw that his disguise was torn away, that the character he had tried to fasten on Christ was fastened on himself.

It was as if he had the second time fallen from heaven." Really?

It was as if he had the second time fallen from heaven.

Kellogg vs. The Ministry: A Century of Collateral Damage

Father, we ask now that as we begin looking at the life and work of those who've gone before us, we ask that you would guide our understanding and our thoughts.

Give us clarity of understanding, but give us charity, because we make mistakes too.

Pray that you would help us to gain lessons that will be useful and enable us to be a blessing to someone else.

Okay This 1 is called Kellogg versus the Ministry.

And the subtitle there is A Century of Collateral Damage.

Well, you know, I don't think I read this statement until the last year I was a classroom teacher.

I wish I'd read it long before, but after 19 years of teaching in the classroom, I finally got around to reading this 1.

It says this, As religious teachers, we are under obligation to God to teach the students how to engage in medical missionary work.

That's something that if you don't do, you're in trouble.

The word of the Lord lasts forever, but human languages change.

And we're going to be looking at the term medical missionary.

The very first time Ellen White used that in a review in a Herald article wasn't until 1893.

You might have expected it earlier than that, but it wasn't until 1893.

The first time it shows up in the testimonies wasn't until Volume 6, published in 1901.

That doesn't mean that the idea wasn't around though.

It's just that she didn't call it medical missionary work.

I don't know what Oliver else, but anyhow, it's a it's a Latin word root.

It means well or good and we get words like benefit and beneficent and we'll be looking at benevolent.

Okay, it's the key word we'll be looking at.

Before it was called medical missionary work, it was called the benevolent work.

This is a term used by Seventh-day Adventists from the late 1860s on to describe efforts to help people, especially the Poor, disadvantaged, sick, and to do so in practical, tangible ways.

A synonym, another term that they used for this was Christian help work.

But in Ellen White's writing, at least, an even more common way to refer to the idea was just to make a reference to Isaiah 58.

Share your bread with the hungry, bring the poor to your house, clothes the naked.

Well, The Seventh-day Adventist Benevolent Association was formed in 1868 to foster this sort of work.

This was largely in reaction to the failure of the church to provide for a woman by the name of Hannah Moore.

If you've ever read volume 2 of the testimonies, you've read her story.

Hannah Moore was a Baptist missionary to Africa.

Came back to the United States, ran into Stephen Haskell.

She read it when she got back to Africa, accepted the Sabbath, thought her Baptist missionaries would just be overjoyed to learn this great new truth.

They fired her and did not pay for her return to the United States.

So she kind of hitchhiked her way back home, which is a little more complicated when you have an ocean in between.

And eventually made her way to Battle Creek.

Unfortunately for her, she got to Battle Creek when James and Ellen White were not in town.

Hannah Moore was in her 50s, I think, by that time.

She had some health problems from overwork, diseases that she'd contracted in Liberia.

She had some challenges, but she wanted to be with God's people and she wanted to help, but she needed a job.

She needed a room to stay in, and the problem was that she hadn't really spent much of her money on clothes, since a couple of times back when she'd been in the United States.

A lot of clothes were about 15 years out of date.

And somehow that prejudiced a lot of people against her.

So she never found a work or never found a job.

She never found a house, never found a room.

And eventually, as her money was all being used up, she wrote to former co-workers who were now living in northern Michigan, Stowe Baptists, and said, could I come and work for you?

So she went up to northern Michigan and died there that winter from tuberculosis.

And we lost the opportunity to have our first foreign missionary.

We could have had somebody who actually had, by that time, like 20 years of foreign missionary experience joining our work.

She said, In this testimony I speak freely of the case of Sister Hannah Moore, not from a willingness to grieve the Battle Creek Church, but from a sense of duty.

I love that church, notwithstanding their faults.

I know of no church that in acts of benevolence and general duty do so well.

I present the frightful facts in this case to arouse our people everywhere to a sense of their duty.

Not 1 in 20 of those who have a good standing with Seventh-day Adventists is living out the self-sacrificing principles of the Word of God.

She would later write that in the case of Sister Hannah Moore, it was shown that the neglect of her was the neglect of Jesus in her person.

Had the Son of God come in the humble, unpretending manner in which he journeyed from place to place when he was upon earth, he would have met with no better reception." And so, as a response to that, The benevolent work was begun.

By 1887, there were 37 Adventist city missions in operation.

Does that mean that 15 significant operations went out of existence?

No, what it means is that this was a rather small, informal work and that the reporting was kind of sketchy.

And the idea that 15 big operations folded that year, no, it didn't happen.

It's just that Adventists were kind of stumbling their way into this whole idea of benevolent humanitarian work.

It was, it wasn't something that we embraced wholeheartedly, let's put it that way.

For both good and bad, Seventh-day Adventist benevolent work would never be the same.

John Harvey Kellogg was clearly the most colorful character in Adventist history.

Frankly, he could run circles around most any other Adventist on matters of general intelligence and obviously medical work.

He was a little bit insecure all his life.

And it's kind of like he always wanted to be 6'1".

In fact, in his office, he had a wall in the office that was a little cubby hole cut into the wall.

And there was a wooden bench built right into this cubbyhole and mounted permanently flush with the back wall was a yardstick.

And when you walked into his office, he had very good eyesight.

Costly Words and the Value of Understanding

We left off last session with the question of the 200-bed hospital kind of hanging a little bit in our minds.

I did say that The end result was the decision to go ahead and build.

And it was concluded that perhaps the council which had said a sanitarium should never be built in Los Angeles.

The thought was that a sanitarium is different from a hospital.

So perhaps the Lord would not object to a hospital being built in the city, as he would have a sanitarium.

But there's more to the story, as there often is.

So We will pick up with costly words and the value of understanding that can come from them.

Have you ever noticed how sometimes you open your mouth and say something that ends up costing?

Maybe we say things that cost a lot of time explaining to someone why what we said didn't really mean what it sounded like what we said.

You may end up losing a friend to some of the words you said.

We're going to look at 2 occasions when someone, or 2 individuals, acting in the capacity of profit, made comments, or wrote comments, that ended up costing a lot.

Time, money, and even friends pale in comparison to what Jesus' words cost him.

It goes like this, in John chapter 2, The Jews answered and said to Jesus, What sign do you show us, since you do these things?

Jesus answered and said to them, Destroy this temple in 3 days, I will raise it up.

Then the Jews said, It's taken 46 years to build this temple, And you, will you raise it up in 3 days?" But John says, he was speaking of the temple of his body.

Ellen White offers some insight into Jesus' reasons for making this cryptic comment.

Christ did not design that his words should be understood by the unbelieving Jews, nor even by his disciples at this time.

He knew that they would be misconstrued by his enemies and would be turned against him.

At his trial, they would be brought as an accusation, And on Calvary, they would be flung at him as a taunt.

But to explain them now would give his disciples a knowledge of his sufferings, and bring upon them sorrow, which as yet they were not able to bear.

And an explanation would prematurely disclose to the Jews the result of their prejudice and unbelief.

Already they had entered upon a path which they would steadily pursue until he should be led as a lamb to the slaughter." And so Jesus offered no explanation.

I mean, the comment, you know, destroy this temple and I'll raise it in 3 days, that wasn't clear.

And those words just sort of hung in the air for about 3 years.

But 3 years later, now the chief priests, the elders, and all the council sought false testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but found none.

Even though many false witnesses came forward, they found none.

But at last, 2 false witnesses came forward and said, this fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in 3 days.

Well The Gospel of Mark gives a similar account.

Now the chief priests and all the council sought testimony against Jesus to put him to death but found none.

For many bore false witness against him but their testimonies did not agree.

Then some rose up and bore false witness against him saying, we heard him say, I will destroy this temple made with hands and within 3 days I will build another made without hands.

But not even then did their testimony agree.

You know it's a bad day when you can't get bribed witnesses to get their act together.

Not surprisingly, Ellen White has some comments on this circumstance as well.

She said, early in his ministry, Christ had said, destroy this temple and in 3 days I will raise it up.

In the figurative language of prophecy he had thus foretold his own death and resurrection.

These words the Jews had understood in a literal sense as referring to the temple at Jerusalem.

Of all that Christ had said the priest could find nothing to use against him save this.

By misstating these words, they hoped to gain an advantage.

The Romans had engaged in rebuilding and embellishing the temple and they took great pride in it.

Any contempt shown to it would be sure to excite their indignation.

Here, Romans and Jews, Pharisees and Sadducees could meet, for all held the temple in great veneration.

On this 0.2 witnesses were found whose testimony was not so contradictory as that of the others had been.

1 of them, who had been bribed to accuse Jesus, declared, this fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in 3 days.

If they had been reported exactly as he spoke them, they would not have secured his condemnation, even by the Sanhedrin.

Had Jesus been a mere man, as the Jews claimed, his declaration would only have indicated an unreasonable boastful spirit, but could not have been construed into blasphemy.

Even as misrepresented by the false witnesses, his words contained nothing which would be regarded by the Romans as a crime worthy of death.

Patiently Jesus listened to the conflicting testimonies.

At last his accusers were entangled, confused, and maddened.

It seemed that their plottings were to fail.

Christ must be forced to condemn himself." Well, in the end it was Jesus' own testimony that secured his condemnation.

In answer to the high priest's interrogation, Jesus freely admitted that he was the Son of God.

And that's what they ended up Convicting him on.

But Jesus' misconstrued statement about the temple of his body would come up at least once more on the cross.

Those who passed by blasphemed him, wagging their heads and saying, You who destroy the temple and build it in 3 days, save yourself if you are the Son of God.

Priests and rulers, with many others, taunted him with this false statement from the bride witnesses.

While he hung upon the cross it was repeated in mockery by the scribes and Pharisees and echoed by the multitude.

They that passed by reviled him wagging their heads and saying thou that destroy us the temple and build us it in 3 days save thyself.

But though misstated Christ's words were being fulfilled.

Publicity was given to them, and they were made more impressive by the proclamations of his enemies.

And so I ask, What is the purpose of all this?

Well, John tells us, Therefore when he had risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this to them, and they believed the scripture and the words which Jesus had said.

It was for the sake of those who should believe on him that these words of Christ were spoken.

Being spoken at the Passover, they would come to the ears of thousands and be carried to all parts of the world.

After he had risen from the dead, their meaning would be made plain.

To many, they would be conclusive evidence of his divinity." It looks to me that the only real gain to come from that misunderstood and misconstrued statement of Jesus was the eventual confirmation of the disciples' faith.

Evidently, in heaven's perspective, it was worth doing.

Even with The expense, the ridicule, the accusation, the whole thing.

There was a reason for Jesus' actions and comments.

Back in 1899, another prophet of the Lord made a statement that was to be misconstrued and misrepresented.

Like the words of Christ, this comment was taken up as a weapon against the Lord's messenger.

Unlike the words of Christ, the real meaning and intended benefit of this comment has rarely, if ever, been considered.

To be honest, I don't know that anyone has considered this prior to about 8 months ago when I ran into it reading some documents.

And I just made my jaw drop when I saw what I saw there.

Allen Lloyd