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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points 2nd Quarter 2024: The Great Controversy

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Finley

01 The War Behind All Wars

I'm Cameron DeVasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

Pastor Howard, we are now launching into the months of April, May, and June in our study time and our topic is that great theme called the Great Controversy.

There is, I can just tell you, in 13 weeks there's no way we're gonna get through all that could be said about the Great Controversy, but why don't you talk to us for a second about the structure of our study?

Well, you know, of course we could talk about the Great Controversy, thinking about the war in heaven, Lucifer's fall, and what have you, but this quarter is actually based on Illinois' book, The Great Controversy.

Now I need to clarify, it's based on scripture, but it's using the, for example, the book Great Controversy talks about the apostasy of the Dark Ages.

Well, there are passages of scripture that we can draw and build that from, but not the history of it.

And so they've chosen to take that book as a thematic platform to build the Bible studies in this quarter's lesson.

And another thing that I wanted to mention, well you were gonna mention something about the book.

Oh yeah, The Great Controversy has been published in a variety of different sizes and you know different covers and it's a beautiful run here, partnering with Streams of Light right here in the Michigan Conference.

In this very month there's going to be in this area of Lansing there's going to be a great distribution of literally tens of thousands, I think some 70, 000 copies of this going out to people.

And if you partner with a ministry like BibleStudyOffer.com, which we highly encourage you to do, we can give those as gifts to people who would request Bible studies, which by the way, if you're interested in being part of BibleStudyOffer.com, just go to BibleStudyOffer.com slash info, find out if it's right for you and your church.

But getting this particular resource in the hands of people is 1 of the things that at Seventh Davenist we feel this is an important thing to do because it is a Bible study on this grand theme of the Bible and it's so relevant to our lives today.

Yeah, in fact, yeah, there's just so much, so we'll see that as we draw those themes out in our Bible studies throughout this quarter.

Well, to their point, it's still a Bible study and I think that's what we're saying is because we always have the study guide itself and this is helping us the framework of the book The Great Controversy to understand the biblical concept behind it all, the principles.

In fact I mean today's lesson the introductory lesson is the war behind all wars So it's kind of an overview of this theme of the great controversy And there's more passages than I can cover in this talking points or that you could cover in your Sabbath school class like it goes Over all of the fall of Lucifer as a piece of you know, Isaiah 14 Ezekiel 28, you know the war in heaven and Revelation 12.

So there's going to be plenty of scripture to study throughout this.

So this 1 week's lesson should not be exhaustive, but it's a framework.

But we're going to get into those details as we go through the rest of the lessons in this series.

So with that, we haven't even had a word of prayer yet, and we need to go through the talk points.

Let me pray, hand things over to you, and let's do this.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this rich field of study that we have before us.

Thank you for the opportunity to study your word, to have the companion book of the great controversy, and to discuss these themes in the Sabbath school class setting.

Please, Lord, help us to understand your word and apply it in our lives today, for we pray it in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, so the talking points I drew out of this week's lesson are 3.

The first of which is number 1 the war in heaven was not strictly conventional.

Conventional war is a war of weapons and that kind of thing And there's a reason I use the word strictly, we'll get into that.

That I've drawn from Sunday and Monday's lessons.

Talking point number 2 is that sin is the expression of doubting God.

And I've drawn that from Sabbath and Tuesday.

And finally, number 3, the cross of Christ is our guarantee.

I started to put our guarantee of salvation but then it really is our guarantee of all kinds of things and we're gonna see that drawn from Wednesday through Friday.

So that's our, those are our 3 talking points this week.

Alright, well let's dive right first into that war in heaven.

This is the starting point of the whole controversy study, so what is happening there?

Okay, the war behind all wars is our lesson for this week, so let's look at it in Revelation chapter 12 verses 7 to 9.

Sure, it says, And war broke out in heaven.

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

So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world?

He was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." Okay, so there was a war in heaven, and as I put in the Talking Point, it was not strictly conventional.

Now, there's been a lot of conjecturing as to like what is the war in heaven what is the war between angels look like and do they need to resort to violence and and and physical combat well there appears to have been some level of physical because the devil and his angels were cast out I don't think they went willingly.

And I don't know what that force would have looked like but it was and we could go on to it was not something God wanted to do but in the course of the war in heaven there was a there was some kind of physical element again casting out.

Well there doesn't seem to imply that there were deaths among the angels, that they were there to be cast out, but when it came down to it, the culmination of this was a removal of them from heaven by force, that God made an action.

But the point in, when you read there was war in heaven the Greek word is the word polymous and the word means in many cases in scripture war what's interesting is it all it can have other meanings as well and in the English language we have a word that's drawn from polymous which is or polymous goes to polemic ohs where we get our word polemics and polemics is a word that has to do with the art or practice of argument argumentation or controversy so it becomes then more of a war of ideologies.

And this is what, when you begin to look at what was happening, and we're going to unpack this in this first talking point, the foundation of this war in heaven was really an ideological attack on God's character.

That culminated into the devil and his angels being cast out.

So there was a lot in this, like there was war in heaven.

So for example, if you go to Job chapter 1 and 2, which we're not going to go and read there, if you're familiar with it, you know, maybe you'll take some time in the class or what have you.

But in Job chapter 1 and 2, I mean Satan comes and presents himself before the Lord and he begins to challenge God's character.

And Job 1 and 2 takes place somewhere other than the earth, somewhere in the heavens, and so you get a little bit of insight there into the nature of this controversy over God's character, if you will.

Well, and we're going to revisit this because even in the sequence and the timing of it, you realize, well, I thought he was just cast out of heaven.

Well, yes, those are great questions and the scripture actually has clear answers about how did Satan go from being cast out of heaven to being back at this meeting in the book of Job.

And you had made the point in our preparation that as we were going into this lesson that the argument in Job was not just between God and Job.

That there were, he had an audience there.

Yes, as the Bible calls them those sons of God came to present themselves and Satan came among them So it wasn't a private, you know, one-on-one conversation in a recessed room somewhere that it was on full display So what you have here in this war is that the devil obviously was granted opportunity to present these arguments to undermine the character of God and and ultimately and this is fascinating when we look at Revelation 12, it says that Says the devil deceived the whole world, but then it says that he was cast to the earth and his angels.

So some of those he deceived were sinless angels, you know, before he deceived anybody on earth.

And the idea of deception implies something that we find as we go on in this week's lesson and beyond, that deception magnifies the reality of choice.

In other words, the reason for the deception, the reason for the devil's attack upon God was because God gave his creatures the freedom to choose and so Satan wanted them to choose his way and This says volumes in regard to like if there wasn't choice if god didn't give freedom of choice It wouldn't have mattered you can do all you want say all you want God's going to force all those creatures to do thus and so if But in the particular case of this war in heaven There had to be the the creatures themselves had to be the angels had to be able to choose or it wouldn't have mattered for the devil to give his arguments and this goes to the reality and I have it in our notes here this way that the freedom to choose was the God-given and God-protected unalienable right to borrow the language from the Constitution.

That really makes sense because there wouldn't, like, not even saying his arguments wouldn't have worked without, he wouldn't have had the capacity to make arguments, to think of them.

That personal will, that volition to choose and evaluate and do something, that, to your point, is that's the core value of God for his creatures.

I want to give them the capacity to choose, and that runs the risk of maybe they'll make bad choices or wrong choices or trick each other into other...

In God's understanding of the universe, his creation, that was that was vital, it was essential.

Absolutely, and you know some people look at that and they say well if the angels that fell with Lucifer, if they were all deceived, that's kind of not fair.

But a point that's going to become clear through this is that God always gives enough evidence to his creatures to choose the right way.

In other words, we can get tricked into doing the wrong thing, but at the end of the day, it was a choice I made.

We a lot of times were deceived by things that appeal to our carnal nature.

But it's not because it's so there have been things that I've been tricked into doing, but it's not always because it's so clearly wrong.

Like there are flags, there are red flags, but it's like now I go along with it because of, and more can be said on that, but the angels that sinned with Lucifer chose to do so.

And so the war in heaven, even if there were conventional elements, ultimately it was a war of ideologies over who, over God's character, who was right, who was wrong, who was the better ruler of the universe, was God really a God of love or was he a selfish being, And these were the things that the created beings of God were given the ability to choose.

Am I going to choose to follow Him and serve Him?

Or Lucifer said, hey, look, I've got a better way we can choose to follow Him.

And obviously by extension and application, we have those choices to make today too.

That's the whole point of the lesson is to bring to bear those that reality of choice on us.

Well absolutely and so that that takes us into talking point number 2.

Mark Howard

02 The Central Issue: Love or Selfishness?

I'm Cameron DeBasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

We're rolling now right into our continuation of our Great Controversy study guide, all about the...

Man, how to describe the Great Controversy in 1 quick sentence.

Well yes, but the Great Controversy of course started in heaven, But this is specifically looking at from the early Christian church to our day today and even looking into the future what Bible prophecy says, how this grand battle between Christ and Satan manifests here on the earth and is going to be fulfilled, I hope, soon and very soon.

Well, the interesting thing then is with a Sabbath school lesson we made this point last week as we introduced it it's not a study of the book The Great Controversy but with a lot of Ellen White's books for example will be comments on the Bible when you have this era of great controversy, you basically have the book of Acts and the book of Revelation.

I mean you can get a little bit with the book of Hebrews into the some of them, but in the Christian Church, of course all the councils of the New Testament.

Basically it's a New Testament commentary.

But it goes way beyond the canon of Scripture.

So what do you do with that in a Bible study?

Well, those principles of Scripture, 1 of the things I really like about it is the principles of Scripture, A lot of people today say, well, how do I apply those things from 2, 000 years ago?

This is a perfect example as we're drawing out those principles and applying them over the years and with a context that applies or with an application that applies, especially to our context today.

And in fact, that's what we're going to be looking at.

My little introduction statement here says, this week's lesson draws practical insights from the experience of faithful believers in the earliest years of the Christian Church.

There you go but the title of this week's lesson is called the central issue love or selfishness but and I obviously it touches on those themes but if you were to break it down simply and chronologically, it's from the fall of Jerusalem and the early centuries of the Christian Church.

What were the experience of believers there, and of course, what are the lessons we can take away?

So, I actually put this week's Talking Points together, so if you would start us off with a word of prayer, I'll walk through the lesson.

Father in heaven, we are so thankful for the privilege we have of studying your word together.

We are thankful for the spirit of truth to give us an understanding in your truth.

I do pray, Lord, that you would guide this Talking Points episode, as well as our teachers that are going to be watching this and preparing for their classes.

And Lord, for our people worldwide, as they study these subjects, that your spirit would lead us to a way to implement these principles of your word into our daily lives for we ask and pray it in Jesus name amen amen yes as I had mentioned this week's study though titled central issue love or selfishness really break boils down to a chronological study of the experience of the believers when Jesus, at the very end of Jesus' ministry, as he departs, Jerusalem falls and the Christian Church basically is inaugurated and launched into the world.

What was it like then and what lessons can we learn from our day to day?

Maybe we should interject here because you were saying that the way that that this lesson is is put together and what it covers, it'd be easy to come up with probably 10 different sets of 3 talking points.

In fact, you don't have to use, we say this all the time, you don't have to use our talking points.

There's a lot of, you may pull other points, but there's a lot of material here.

Well for example, if you, we'll come back to our talking points in a second, but if you just took the chronology and said let's look at that fall of Jerusalem experience, what did Jesus say about it, what warned his people, there's a study right there that would be an entire Sabbath school class, no problem.

Then you could go into what about the early believers who went through that and then were persecuted afterwards.

There's a study there and it's all in this week's lesson.

So you could go a hundred and each of those would be a really good Sabbath school class.

So anyway, what I've drawn out again, number 1, God never forsakes his people.

That coming for primarily from Sunday and Monday's lesson great now talk about number 2 Satan's most effective weapon isn't persecution though I'm sure that's what Christians fear a lot or the thing is it's really not his best weapon.

So that's Monday, Tuesday, and Friday's where that's coming from.

It seems to us like it would really work and it seems obviously to him at 1 point it seemed like it would really work but then when it actually unfolded it wasn't as effective as it was, and that's what we're going to get into.

And we're going to see evidence of that in the early Christian experience.

And finally, talking point number 3, Bible truth is demonstrated in personal ministry.

So that's coming Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

So let's go back to this, God never forstakes his people.

Now, when we say his people, you know, obviously all people are God's people, we're all created in his image, but he had a special people denominated, you know, in the ancient world, Israel, right?

He raised up Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, that lineage, to be his representatives in this world.

It was not just, well, you guys do whatever you want and I'll bless you no matter what.

He laid out in their ancient past the rules of the relationship, if you will.

Like, if you're faithful and obedient, you will be blessed and you will be a light to the whole world.

On the other hand, there will be consequences for your disobedience that will be seen in the history of your people if you don't remain faithful to me." So I put in the notes that the prosperity of God's people is conditioned upon obedience.

He does not just say, well, I guess I've picked Israel and no matter what they do, everything's going to be fine.

No, they had to partake in that covenant relationship themselves.

And as you study the history of Israel, time and again you will see that they chose to depart from that path of faithfulness and as a result, experience the consequences.

So for instance, I just jotted down a few key ones in the notes there.

You think of the, Lord give us a king such as all the other nations have.

And he says, it's not going to go well, but they do it anyway.

Well, then the history of a divided Israel is the record of that disobedience.

Afterwards you had the fall, the besiegement in Babylon, you know, the captivity in Babylon.

And now when we get to the meat of this lesson, we have Jesus in the early century, the first century, and what's Israel doing?

They're being persecuted or at least subjugated by the Roman Empire.

So they never lived up to that potential that faithfulness would have resulted in.

And the last thing that God does for his denominated people of ancient Israel was to send his own son.

He sent messengers and he sent prophets and he gave all kinds of...

He used to go, my servant Nebuchadnezzar, that'll help, but they don't...

And that's outlined in Luke's parable in chapter 20.

Yeah, and briefly, you know that parable, of course, that Jesus talks about how there's an owner and he sends his servants to the disobedient servant, you know, a messenger to the disobedient, and they keep beating him.

I'll send my son, surely they'll receive my son.

Exactly, and they kill him and say, ah, this is the 1.

And so through this history, perhaps it's most clearly in Daniel chapter 9, verse 24, where the prophecy is given that you have 70 prophetic weeks, 490 years, and he outlines all the reforms that could take place and when Messiah comes you could receive him and accept him and the world would be lightened with his glory.

But we know that that's not what happened.

You were looking in the Gospel of John, I think.

Well, you actually had 10 and 11 and I'm not sure the point...

I see you have it in your notes, but it came to my mind and maybe it's the same point you were gonna make but 10 and 11 says he was in the world and the world was made through him and the world did not know him he came to his own and his own did not receive him that's what I was looking for but I was thinking of verse 12 in light of what you were saying because it says but as many as received him to them he gave the right to become children of God.

So we always talk about, well, we're all children of God, but it's interesting, the scripture says, you know, he gave the right to become the children of God to those who believe in his name.

And so there is a distinction there that while God created us all to become sons of God, technically we have to be born of God.

And I think it's interesting that John, looking back of course, is written after Jesus' death and betrayal by his own people could write, he came to his own but his own did not receive him.

But for those who would receive him, so it's not like...

Exactly, so it's not like writ large I'm done with people or those people.

God, and my tie point is this, God never forsakes his people and his people are those who will remain faithful to him.

And so he's got this covenant with the nation of Israel, but even though the whole nation might reject him, those individuals within that structure or even outside of that, anyone who would be partner with him in the covenant of mercy and grace, he's gonna take as his own and protect them.

03 Light Shines in the Darkness

We continue our study of the Great Controversy.

Again, it's the theme of the great controversy it's a study of the Bible of course but it's looking at the battle between Christ and Satan particularly from the time that Christ left the earth to go to heaven after it is ascension all the way until he returns again and we find ourselves in that flow of history and what we're looking at is the history comes before us leading up to the time that we're in and to your point, even going into the future.

This time we're on lesson number 3 and it's titled Light Shines in the Darkness, but it's all about the Word of God.

Yeah, I was gonna say, you said we're, you know, it's based on kind of the Great Controversy book theme, but it's a study, I think you said it was a study of Scripture, whatever, well this week specifically is a study about Scripture.

So we're gonna have a Bible study about Bible study.

Well, there can't go wrong with that, certainly.

What I put in our description is this week's lesson is on the primacy of Scripture, the superiority of the end, the place it should hold, and the utmost, the superior place it should hold in the...

And obviously that's gonna be coming out of the early Christian experience, but it's gonna have direct application to all Christians in our day.

So let me have a word of prayer because you put the talking points together and I will let you go ahead Heavenly Father Thank you so much that we can study your word and study about your word and the importance of it in our lives as we look at sacred history and we look at Bible prophecy help us to find our place in this flow of truth and help us to be part of your people even now to give this message in these last days.

Okay, well as with our first couple lessons in this quarter, probably with every lesson in every quarter, there's always a lot more to cover than you could cover.

So I pulled 3 talking points out that could have been other ones besides these.

There's a lot of good stuff, material in this lesson.

And that is drawn from Sabbath and Sunday's lessons.

Talking point number 2, the heart is deceitful.

And that is drawn from Monday, Wednesday, and Friday's lessons.

And that is drawn from Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday's lessons.

All right, so out of the 3 talking points, Satan's a liar, that's bad.

But it does end positively that there is something to hang on to.

And yet, and yet maybe not, because the first point I have in our outline is that Satan is the great deceiver.

Of course, last week's lesson we looked at Revelation 12, it references that here as well, Revelation 12, 9, where the devil was cast out, that serpent of old, the dragon was cast out that serpent of old called the devil and Satan, right?

And so that that deception aspect of the devil, The lesson also brings out John 8, 44, where it says that, where Jesus talked to the Pharisees and says, your father, the devil, is a liar.

So this whole concept of deceiving and lying, you know, deception is, as I think we've probably pointed out on here before, but here's what you'll never hear a deceived person say, I'm being deceived.

Because as soon as you know you're being deceived, you're not being deceived anymore.

At that point you're just a willing participant.

And so we say, oh yeah right, Satan's a liar, that's obvious.

Well it's not as obvious, because there are many things, if we're buying into his lies, we don't know we're being lied to.

Yeah, And I think about that John 844 like not only does Satan use lies But he invented lying right that there was a time when there was no lying whatsoever And his his 1 thing that he used in heaven that would you know the whole war in heaven revelation 12 7 9 It's all about that deceptive you mentioned how the very first lesson it wasn't primarily a war of weapons, though they were cast out at some point, but the battle lines were about allegiances and loyalties based on truth versus error, and the idea that there was such a thing as error.

He invented that, And so Satan is a master of this particular craft of lying.

Yes, and the lesson made an interesting point on Monday.

It says Satan is called a dragon because he desires to destroy God's people, and he is a serpent because he uses all his cunning lies to deceive them.

And I hadn't thought about that before but that the bible says in Genesis Genesis chapter 3 that the Serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field or more subtle the king james says but how It's actually drawing from that like this is how you spot this guy Deception is his tool of trade.

He's got to trick people and we're gonna get into why that is.

And so in light of that I have a bullet pointed here that the Christian faith must be an intelligent faith.

And this is, you know, you run into people who say, oh Christianity, you're a Christian, oh you're 1 of those, especially, you know, somebody who is a more of an atheistic mindset or even a, maybe a Christian but leaning, you know, it's like I'm more scientific and yada yada yada, as if Christianity is dumb.

Well, and you know, I hear that I hear oftentimes that people who take the Bible Seriously or take the Bible literally or take the Bible, you know at its face value.

Well, that's a fundamentalist that that's yes Even inside the Christian Church You don't want to be an extremist who literally reads the Bible, who takes it to be an informative.

It's a guide, it's something like this, but it's not to be taken too seriously.

Yeah, people will say, I'm not 1 of those kind of Christians.

And they actually feel like I'm a kind of superior Christian, but the reality is, If that is where you are, you are an unintelligent Christian.

The reality is you don't know reasons for your faith.

And if the devil's a deceiver, and he doesn't stop outside the church.

How do you know the difference if you are not an intelligent Christian?

And so there's a quote there from Sunday's lesson, paragraph 2, that just talks about his strategy with Eve.

And yeah, she says, throughout the century Satan has used the same strategy, referring to the 1 used with Eve, he undermines confidence in God's Word, contradicts God's revealed will, distorts Scripture, and at times misquotes the Bible to his advantage.

It's interesting, this statement, it's like he undermines confidence in God's Word, the Bible, contradicts God's revealed will, the Bible, distorts Scripture, the Bible, and at times misquotes the Bible.

But the issue is how, in this statement, like what's his avenue?

He's got to get you to not know the Bible.

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Talking Points 2nd Quarter 2024: The Great Controversy

09 The Foundation of God’s Government

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