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Hohenwald SDA Church

Dennis Priebe

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Good evening folks Trust the Lord has been with you over the past year and is blessed We're gonna get started even though there are going to be more kind of coming in I suppose as we begin But we'll get started.

Father in heaven as this new Sabbath comes to us, we pray for your Holy Spirit to be with us throughout this entire Sabbath day.

We pray that you will help us to understand your word more clearly, and that we will be more effective witnesses each day of our lives.

All right, our schedule for the weekend, so you're kind of aware of what we're going to do, is we will have tonight's meeting, and then tomorrow morning at church time, and then tomorrow afternoon we will have 2 meetings, 1 by me and 1 by Matthew, as you remember Matthew's meetings on the animals, and he'll have 1 in the afternoon, and that will be our program for this weekend.

I'm gonna start with an editorial that appeared in our Union paper.

Elder Tom Mostert has been the president of the Pacific Union Conference for a long time.

And before he retired, he wrote this editorial in our union paper.

More and more Adventist members and some pastors are modifying their faith according to what is or is not convenient to believe and practice.

I have noticed most of the modifications are in the area of sanctification, the process of progressive development of a God-like mind and lifestyle.

Few tamper with the basic free gift of salvation.

We tend to like justification, forgiveness, and we're not so thrilled with sanctification, holy living.

He continues, A person is raised with the guilt trip of legalism hanging around their neck in the name of sanctification.

It robbed them of peace of mind and made religion an intolerable burden to bear.

But they are more enlightened now and have simply accepted the free gift of salvation provided through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In general, they hope to become more like Him in thought and lifestyle, but any worry about specifics simply destroys their peace of mind.

So if it is important, God will bring it to mind.

Otherwise, they practice sanctification only in general terms.

And then his conclusion, total acceptance of the traditional Adventist understanding of sanctification is 0.

Got right to the heart of the Seventh-day Adventist salvation problem.

We have reduced sanctification to an add-on to salvation.

Now we're saved, and then we'll talk about sanctification, which means that it's nice to have but not so essential Which makes it 0 value in terms of salvation Then he brought up health Someone decides they will believe in general healthful living but not worry about the details Since various studies show the benefits of red wine, and they like the taste and relaxation qualities of it anyway, it is incorporated into their diet, in moderation, of course.

Conclusion, when the list is finished, the incorporation of the traditional Adventist health message in their lifestyle is 0.

And I just find this an amazing assessment by a church leader.

Most of them remain silent on subjects like this.

He said intentional sharing of the Adventist faith with others, 0.

Where once it seemed important to have a modern-day prophet to warn and instruct us as we prepare for the second coming of Jesus, it is now inconvenient to accept Ellen White's pointed counsel about personal changes.

Some say she might have simply copied large portions of the material in her books.

The Church was so legalistic in the past, she probably just flowed with the times.

Now our emphasis is on salvation through Jesus, full and complete.

Total, serious consideration of the prophetic messages from Ellen White, 0.

Now I couldn't have said it more accurately than our former union president said it.

This is, by the way, the major problem of our times, our relationship to the writings of Ellen White.

These are but a few examples of a long list of thought patterns developing in members' lives.

You could add belief in absolutes, the unique mission of the Adventist church, and faithfulness in tithing.

A church whose distinctive truths have been zeroed out is left with nothing different from the community church down the street.

The unique Seventh-day Adventist message and mission is reduced to 0.

Now I'll tell you, I had a hard time comprehending what I had read in this particular editorial because it's precisely what I've been saying for the past 20 years and I have been labeled divisive and critical and pastors have been warned about having me come to their churches on various occasions.

Has a new day of honesty come in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, where this can appear from a Union Conference president in 1 of our papers and saying some things that some of us have been concerned about for quite a while.

I'm going to share another thing with you tonight.

This comes from another author that most of you are acquainted with because he is the editor of the Sabbath School Lessons, Clifford Goldstein.

Mission, not much is going to change in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

We'll continue to have phenomenal growth in some places, while in others we'll plot along, bogged down by the aberrant ideologies and internecine squabbles among us.

We can talk revival and unity until the moon shrivels, but not much is going to change." Once again, a little refreshing honesty instead of the public relation platitudes that we're accustomed to hearing all the time.

He continues, "...not much that is until the Sabbath-Sunday crisis.

I can already see eyes rolling among those who regard talk of the Sabbath-Sunday crisis as antiquated Adventism from an outdated and irrelevant context, and we wonder why growth is slow in some places.

Funny that folks should think this way, because in my 26 years as an Adventist, never has our theology about the Mark of the Beast seemed so clear and relevant.

Now, however solid the theology of the mark, it is admittedly hard to see, with the facts on the ground as they are now, how the Sabbath Sunday issue could arise, especially worldwide.

When I first joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1980, the United States faced a hostile 290 million person empire armed to the teeth with enough nuclear weapons to incinerate the world 10 times over and roll over the rubble with tanks and armored vehicles.

As long as the Soviet Union existed, the United States couldn't kick Fidel Castro out of Cuba, much less enforce the Mark of the Beast on the world.

I remember as a New Adventist struggling with the question of how, confronted with the sober reality of the Soviet Union, final events could ever unfold as expected.

What was the Soviet Union going to just disappear or something?

If the Soviet military behemoth could fall apart before our eyes, an idea that seemed inconceivable just 2 years before it happened, then final events can quickly unfurl, as we believe, regardless of how implausible they appear now.

We will wake up 1 morning, and the scenario we have talked about, preached about, and warned the world about for more than 150 years will be smirking at us with iron teeth.

And when it does, everything will change among us.

You know, I'm afraid he's absolutely right as far as the organized church is concerned, but it's got to be much different for individual Adventists.

If we wait for the Sabbath Sunday crisis to hit before making any changes in our lives, we've waited 1 sign too long.

Revival, character development, they aren't going to change when the Sabbath Sunday crisis hits.

It'll only reveal what's in our characters.

It won't change them at that time, and we need to prepare now.

Carelessness can't be ruled out by sudden fear at a moment of crisis.

Will there be no change in individual hearts either?

Well, let's take a little bit of a look tonight at some things that might be of some help.

Turn with me to the book of Exodus, and we're going to look at A little picture of what might be true for us in terms of our lives today.

Perhaps we can learn from the story of Moses and Aaron.

Didn't God know that Aaron would not be a solid leader of His people?

Didn't He know that he would cave in in a crisis that He wouldn't pull through?

Here's a statement that I'm going to read first from Review and Herald, Volume 5, page 493, it is February 4, 1909.

"...long before, the Lord could have revealed that Aaron could not be depended upon.

But for wise and holy purposes he permitted the evil to develop.

He suffered this shameful representation to come to its height.

The Lord sees what is in the hearts of men.

At times He permits evils to take place, that he may prevent still greater evils that would appear unless he permitted the designs hidden in human hearts to work out.

Men who ought to stand as firm as a rock to principle are treading in the same path that the Israelites followed.

There are men who are acting the part of Aaron at the very time when every soul should be working to seal the law among God's disciples.

They are building up the very things that God has specified should not be built up.

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