Michigan Camp Meeting 2024: As For Me and My House

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

United in Christ

Dan Augsburger

05 Christ the Cornerstone: Promoting and Safeguarding Unity

01 Christ Our Life - United to Christ

02 Christ Our Example: United to Each Other

03 Christ Our Head: United in the Church

04 Christ the Vine: Individuality and Unity in Diversity

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2024 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Father in Heaven, what a privilege it is to be able to share on the subject of unity with my friends here.

I ask that you would bless us exceedingly abundantly above and beyond whatever we could imagine, whatever we could ever hope for, as a result of our setting ourselves aside and making room for the Holy Spirit to come into our lives.

This is not only an important subject, but it's a very sensitive subject.

I ask that you would give me your words and your desires so far as what this class needs.

Please bring us into unity as we study this subject, we ourselves.

Please, and Father, I pray that there would be a revival of real unity in the church, that this might be maybe a small part of that.

I think, not because I prepared this seminar, but I believe this may be 1 of the most important things you will ever hear in your Christian walk.

To prepare for this, I read over 70 articles of Ellen White on the subject.

As you read article after article, you realize that unity is not an option, it's a necessity.

And that everyone who goes to the hospital will be in perfect unity with their brother and sister.

Unity and uniformity are 2 different things.

Some people think that uniformity is who has the strongest Bible basis or the strongest power of arguments like you know we like you do in a legal case.

You know we have a it's not a system of justice it's a it's a legal system where you use arguments and whoever has the strongest arguments wins the case that is not the case when you speak of the Bible right it's truth I was reading just this morning I'll share more with you that there are those who think that to bring this unity you need to go to a lower level she says no the truth always brings you higher always brings you a higher it doesn't take you lower so we're not looking for the lowest common denominator as we study this we're talking about truth based on the Bible as taught by the Holy Spirit.

There's also a difference between unity and individuality.

For example, In marriage, you know, there are certain roles assigned, right?

Some people like it, some people don't like it, but the Bible seems to teach that.

But many people don't realize that there's something called individuality.

And Ellen White says that the wife has an individuality that belongs to God, and she's never discerned her individuality to her husband.

And that to the husband who's rough and coarse and those kinds of things, he is not a husband unto the Lord and she does not have to submit to him.

There's much about this subject that people have never really studied for themselves And so they kind of know what it kind of heard or surmised We're going to see what the Bible says we're going to see what Ellen White says on the subject and it is unambiguous, okay?

But she says that we will be in unity by the time that Jesus comes.

And it's unity that gives us success in witnessing.

She says that Satan knows that without unity we cannot possibly succeed.

And so he does everything he can to divide us through small issues or larger issues.

But I'm going to show you in this class enough about unity, the Lord will show you enough about unity through what we read, that I think you're gonna be convicted, and I hope you become committees of 1.

I'm gonna do my best to let Ellen White speak to you and the Bible speak to you in such a way that you'll be deeply convicted about unity and will make yourselves committees of 1 to try and start a new wave of unity in the church.

Now, in terms of my background, I was a full-time pastor for a time, and then I was asked to be in healthcare administration by the church, and then I was in healthcare for quite a few years.

And then later the Lord moved me back to Berrien Springs, where eventually I was a prayer partner of Dwight Nelson's, And through that I began holding seminars that eventually became in many, many countries.

And then the seminary came to me and said, would you teach for us as well?

So I taught 1 course over 10 years on practical church history.

During that time, my boss, Jerry Moon, who wrote his dissertation, the book on Willie White, he was the editor, along with another person, for the encyclopedia of Ellen White, and said, Dan, I want you to do the research on transformation in her writings to put in the encyclopedia.

And that's when I learned to study Ellen White, believe it or not.

I had read her books and some of them are marked many times, but I'd never studied her.

And before this class ends, maybe I will teach you what I learned about how to study Ellen White.

But I was told, Dan, with your research it cannot reflect your bias, your thoughts, it has to reflect what she said and what God told her.

Remember this is saying what God said to her about what it means to die to self, well how to be transformed.

It needs to reflect that because otherwise it's not good.

You're telling people what God told you on this subject.

And so the research you do has to be very complete.

And so I collected 1500 pages of quotations and I learned how to study Ellen White.

White now and there are ways to discover all the things that she's written and it's an ocean of material, true, but there are keys to getting into it and find what you love.

So this seminar is really the outgrowth of what I learned there.

I want to give you a little bit of contact information before we begin.

There's more than 800 pages of resources there.

Anyway, there's my phone number, there's my email address, and I share that because sometimes people hear things and say, well we want to get in touch with you and I don't always know who or why or how it is.

Anyway and then this is something new danandroseauxberger.epistle.org that's an interactive newsletter and already this morning I read 3 more articles on this subject and people often say Dan would you please send me information well that's hard to do because I don't have all of your address so I want you to give me if you could send me a text message or you'll be here tomorrow right by tomorrow I'll have it set up so you can just use that address to actually you might be able to add stuff there now just by going to that address and and submit to get a I think it will work actually to get signed up for the newsletter.

It basically allows you to get it and you can respond to it again, would you send me more information.

I was just on Honduras teaching classes for 2 weeks and they asked for a bunch of stuff but I didn't have all of their contact information.

And so you have a booklet here you need to bring your booklet every time and here's our schedule The first time we're going to talk about what it means to be united to Christ You look at your booklet on page 7 there's an outline Christ our life united to Christ Christ our example united to each other Christ our head united in the home and in the church because we need to have unity at home as much as the church he says if there's not unity at home there will not be unity in the church he says that the home life and the unity of the home largely influences the church.

That's what I thought was under fire, on the fire, and the homeboy's on there, so I wrote it in there, so that's interesting that you wrote it out.

And then Christ, divine individuality, and diversity, and unity.

Ellen White makes very specific statements about the issue of nationality, about the issue of caste, and the issue of culture, black-white culture.

Nationality having to do with the French and the Germans who said they couldn't get along together, that they needed to work separately, that those people who could not understand each other, or caste, I think the Indian many times, where there's the Brahmins going straight to heaven, the untouchable, that their life is just taken advantage of by everyone everyone in between she says there's no cast we've got When it comes to the color line she says this is we're all going to the same heaven We're all saved by the same Savior We're all worshiping the same Father And she says you're going to sit side by side, and you need to have it right here.

And he was saying that back in the 1800s, when that was not a popular thing to say.

So, and then the last 1 is promoting and safeguarding unity.

The verse of the cornerstone has to do with how we are taken out of the quarry of the world and hewn, stones that are hewn, you know, that are shaped and polished.

And there's a lot of shaping and polishing that needs to take place in my life and I suggest in all of our lives.

And Ellen White makes, I was just reading this morning, she says that we've been called to search our own hearts and confess our own sins, not do that work for someone else.

She says there are those who she refers to as church tinkers, who feel led to judge and have everyone else see their true condition.

And she says, and in her day it was with some pretty extreme things, and she said they were not called to do that.

And she said in fact they're causing such problems that it's actually leveling the entire church's fault line.

So we're gonna learn some things today in that regard.

So I'm glad that you're here and we want to learn all these things together.

So let's start on the first page talking about the church and I have a verse written here.

Come visit me at the booth and I have more materials there to share with you.

Matthew 5 5 you know the verse ye are the light of the world and she says the church is to be the light of the world so we're going to be reading from line number 8 the Church is God's appointed agency for the salvation of men.

It was organized for service and its mission is to carry the gospel to the world.

If you look at line numbers, Line numbers are wonderful.

Line 10, from the beginning, it has been God's plan that through his church shall be reflected to the world his fullness and his sufficiency.

God wants to reveal to the world his sufficiency and fullness through you and me.

Line 13, the church is the repository of the riches and of the grace of Christ and through the church will eventually be made manifest even to the principalities and powers in heavenly places the final and full display of the love of God.

Now is this going to be by a great big banner across the sky God is love no I attended church where there's a nice neon sign that says God is love but if they don't see love in the members guess what it's like a $3 bill right how many people want a 3 dollar bill none okay so and then we continue line 17 during the ages of spiritual darkness the Church of God has been a city set in a hill line 20 enfeebled and defective as it may appear, the Church is the 1 object upon which God bestows in the special sense His supreme regard.

It is the theatre of His grace in which He delights to reveal His power to transform hearts." Okay?

So even though our church is defective, our church, did you hear me?

Series

United in Christ

01 Christ Our Life - United to Christ

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Holy Spirit

Transformed By the Spirit

41m

Remodeling Your Life- God's Transforming Power

10- Faithful Abiding

28m

GYC 2011 Seminar: The Movings of the Spirit

The Power of the Spirit, Part 1

53m

GYC 2011 Plenary Sessions

Fitting In To Heaven

59m

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2021: The Promise, God's Everlasting Covenant

07 Old Vs. New

27m

The Great Object of Life

52m

Transformed

Conformers or Transformers

1h 8m

Becoming Like Jesus

Becoming Like Jesus - Part 1

34m

Daniel 2

Daniel 2: Part 2

54m

Experiencing Righteousness Through Faith in Christ

1. Experiencing of Righteousness by Faith in Christ

47m

The Crisis

55m

Sound Doctrine