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

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, I thank you for the blessings that we have obtained in this classroom studying together.

And truly Lord, I know better than they do how much you have blessed.

In my own study in finding things originally I believe you led me.

I believe Lord you guided as materials were put together and you have led in the discussions and the interaction that we've had and Lord I believe that that's just a tiny bit of what you want to bless in this regard because you are in the business of doing the impossible with God nothing is impossible And I believe that's true about unity as well.

We need your wisdom, Father, please for Jesus' sake.

And Lord, we are to represent to the world something that is amazing.

A world full of chaos, harmony, and unity of people of different backgrounds, of different cultures, living in different places, such that the world will look amazed.

I believe it speaks of the angels being amazed as well at seeing how characters have been transformed.

So, bless us now, for Jesus' sake, forgive us, Lord, of all that stands in the way.

Might I be your mouthpiece, Father, so to speak, sharing what you want me to share, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else, but what you want shared, Lord.

So we're still in the Blue Book, and this is our last session, so Some of this you're going to have to read on your own, unfortunately.

But we have covered enough of the foundation that some of the things that we would come to will not be problematic.

So we're starting at line 522, And for those that are new here, we use line numbers to save time.

What about diversity as it relates to nationalities, caste, and the color line?

Starting with some biblical foundation, 1 Corinthians 1.10, Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you but that you be, how?

And then in Galatians, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all 1 in Christ Jesus.

And I often tell people that there's something even closer than human blood and human DNA.

And for those that have the blood of Jesus, we are closer than blood relatives, right?

And that should be true anywhere in the world and with people of any background.

So Paul talks about how there's not Jew nor Greek, which was significant because there was no competition between them, neither slave nor free, there's neither male nor female, for you are all one." This unity is oneness in Christ Jesus.

So, all our work in this world is to be done in harmony and in love and in what?

I mentioned to someone, I think that the unity we're looking at is something like a race car, pit crew, where everyone understands what the race is all about and the driver comes in to be there as short a time as possible and every person does whatever they do, trusting every person to do their part so they can be back out in just seconds.

That's the kind of unity where we all understand the end game, we all are following the rules, the manual, you know, and God brings it together and there's this perfect harmony.

And the body is slavishly obedient to the brain.

There's tremendous diversity in our bodies, right?

But it only works because it's obedient and if a part of the body stops functioning, what happens?

But it's interesting, I've never thought until now, but what is the key that keeps it all healthy?

It's a certain blood that's flowing all through the body, right?

What's the blood that's carrying all of it?

It's the blood of Jesus that's circulating through all of us, that gives us that same oneness and that power and that ability to keep going forward.

Our bodies are probably 1 of the best examples of what unity and diversity is all about.

We would hate to have our bodies into uniformity.

We might be chosen to be the hand or the foot or some other body part.

All our work should be done in harmony and love and unity 539 union is strength and the Lord desires that this truth should be ever revealed in how many in all the members of the body of Christ all are to be united in love, in meekness, in lowliness of mind." And that's where the unity comes.

There's this meekness and there's this humility.

544, they are to ever show courtesy and respect for 1 another.

Every talent has its place and is to be kept under the control of the Holy Spirit.

Bear in mind, 549, that the branches of the vine, there is diversity in unity.

There is an unseen, conscious, indivisible unity, keeping the bodily machinery in action, each part working in harmony with every other.

So there's this unseen unifying power that you find from all of the branches that connect to the vine.

And we are not to feel that we must speak the same things, giving the same representations and the same words, and yet there is to be unity somehow in that diversity.

White said meetings are more successful if there's more than 1 speaker, because 1 person can connect with 1 group of people and others can connect with someone else.

And she says God's plan is 2, But we've forgotten that.

We might try to see if it makes a difference in holding meetings more.

Now, what about diversity as it relates to nationalities?

There we were talking about just in general.

Now, what about as it relates to nationalities?

The context of this is Ellen White is in Europe and the Germans, well there's a man from Switzerland who's decided, I think he's from Switzerland, that really the Germans can't work with the French and the French can't work with the Germans.

And I'm going to pull this chair out just a bit more so I guess it's okay.

You know, in Switzerland they speak multiple languages.

They speak French and German and Italian and Latin or Romanish.

And the reason is because there was the Battle of Acapella and they decided that they were going to convert all the German Swiss people to Calvinism.

And they decided to just blockade the roads into the mountains and they would starve them into conversion.

And the people became desperate and so they attacked to survive.

The German-Swiss attacked for their own survival and actually Zinzendorf died in that battle.

He died in that battle, and he was actually on the side trying to convert the other people, but not in God's way.

And so the Swiss is largely Catholic because of that.

And The German Swiss and the French Swiss don't get along too well to this day.

I mean they do, but there's still a historical barrier because of what went on.

So Ellen White is actually to a group of people who have that background and probably a lot closer.

So she told them, I told them they should be constantly guarded not to build up separate interests between the different nationalities.

Some have pleaded that we must be very careful in our labor for these people have peculiarities." So they said, you know, the people from this part of Europe, they're very peculiar and you can't really reach them as well as others.

And we must be careful and the truth must be presented to them with the greatest care.

There's much more made of this than there should be, she says.

01 Christ Our Life - United to Christ

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?

02 Christ Our Example: United to Each Other

Father in heaven, I want to thank you that we have the opportunity to study what I believe is 1 of the most important topics in the church today.

Lord, we need greater wisdom than any 1 of us has to understand this subject, and we have no ability to bring it about.

But Lord, you have been gracious to provide information in the Bible and also in the spirit of prophecy that can help us to understand this very important subject.

And so please send your Holy Spirit now to teach us.

We ask that we would be forgiven, Father, of everything and anything that could keep us from fully understanding and then put within us a great desire to really understand and then to really apply what we're learning as well.

Keep us well, keep us alert, bring others coming, whatever the case might be, that truly there might be the blessing you intend.

I want to turn your attention to the screen there.

This is my website, discipleheart.com, and there's 800 pages there, and there's much there.

This page right here has downloadable study guides on many, many different subjects.

So, fasting, flourishing families, I did in Columbus, Ohio.

The Godhead I did down at Georgia Cumberland.

And Victory Prayer, you name it, and you just can click on any of these.

Like you can go, where is it, the directory.

Revival now, it's in Spanish, it's in French, and then there's a couple of others as well.

So these are all free, and they're all line numbered, so it makes it easy to discuss in church, okay?

Be sure to grab the booklet if you don't have it, as well as the white piece of paper, too.

There is an ocean of information, and there are things there that you have never studied before, I can guarantee you.

How many of you have ever really studied carefully, for example, what it means to partake of the divine nature?

Ellen White uses a term that most people don't realize.

She says we should grasp the divine nature and make it ours.

And I have 1 page where I have it in chronological order.

Goes forever and ever, the quotes highlighted so you can find the information well or like what does it mean to exercise the will.

I have a whole page on that that goes for a long, long time.

And the other page I wanted to show you on my website is Going back, go back to the homepage, welcome.

You come down where I was before, there's something called links to thousands of SGA web resources.

And most people don't even realize this stuff is available.

So there's the General Conference Revival, the BRI, the writings of Ellen White.

How many of you ever heard of Pathway of the Pioneers?

It is I think the best audio recordings of the writings of Ellen White you can find.

It's a lady down in Australia, but it's beautiful and it's free.

How many of you know that you can download and read entire issues of more than 7, 000 issues of View and Herald?

More than, I think, 3, 500 of signs of the times.

So if you want to read those, you just go like, youth instructor, here's more than 4, 400 issues.

And so I put the links there to make it easy for you.

And you just click on that and it downloads as an entire PDF.

If you go to my website, I'll give you the link on the same page.

It's Adventist Archives, but you have to kind of work your way to find it.

And then, for example, you can find all the Sabbaths and Quarterlies ever published by the church on 1 link there, also in the Adventist Archives.

And then going beyond that, There's what's called the Adventist Pioneer Library.

The Adventist Pioneer Library has all the books of J.N.

Andrews, Uriah Smith, you know, Wagner, Jones, you name it.

All of those are there as free downloads for Kindle, PDF, or this tiny file of an EPUB.

It's actually a site supported by the church.

So because people don't know that, I make it my point to let people know.

Beyond Patmos is probably the largest video site of evangelistic videos, Rightly Trained is a fantastic training 1, but those are all video sites.

And these are all links, you click on them, it'll take you there.

Spanish, French, there's Atmos World Radio, American Christian Ministries, AudioVerse, they're the links, those are where the audio sermons are.

Bible Studies, many, many different Bible Studies, Prayer Ministries, and then for those of you that have children, if you come down here, you'll find amazing facts for children, My Place with Jesus, et cetera.

1 that you'll find fascinating is down here, our little friend, where is he?

You probably don't know about the Internet Archive, but the Internet Archive has millions of free resources.

And someone has actually uploaded more than 400 complete issues of the Junior Guide there.

If you want to have something of old-fashioned doctrines and old-fashioned stories, missionary stories, there's a treasure trove there.

So I just share that, that we have probably more resources to our church members than most churches have.

Series

United in Christ

05 Christ the Cornerstone: Promoting and Safeguarding Unity

Transcript

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Sponsor

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