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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Daniel Vis Weekend

Daniel Vis

01 The Final Warning Revelation 18:1

Father in heaven, we thank you for opportunities like this to meet and gather and just reflect on your word a little bit.

I pray that you would send the Holy Spirit to be here in our midst.

Be especially with me, give me strength, clarity of mind, the discernment to know what to say, what not to say.

Be with each listener here, Lord, that your Spirit would interpret the words in just the right way, that it would be a blessing to each person.

And I thank you and I pray this in Jesus' name.

So we have a long history of freedom in this country going all the way back, I guess you could say farther, but going at least back to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, penned by Thomas Jefferson.

If you haven't read it in a while, it's worth looking at.

I had a member of my last church who actually memorized the Declaration of Independence, and he did a whole recitation.

It's an important document, and in many ways, that's regarded as the kind of the birth of our country, at least it sparked us on our path to independence as a nation.

Some 87 years later, Abraham Lincoln in his famous Gettysburg Address, he described that event, the signing of the Declaration, in these words, he said, "'Fourscore and 7 years ago, ' you've heard this before, right, "'our forefathers brought forth on this continent "'a new nation conceived in liberty "'and dedicated to the proposition "'that all men are created equal.'" I like that idea, that this nation was conceived in liberty.

Now, it's true we've not always lived up to our ideals, I'm not going to talk about that.

But we were birthed with this idea, this desire to fight against tyranny, to promote democracy.

And this was a major step in the history of our world because from the United States it spread around the world to many other countries.

In the great controversy you'll read that the reason that we have been blessed so wonderfully in this country is because of our love of freedom.

That's given us our prosperity and our success as a nation.

I read this little interesting tidbit, a couple little side notes before we get into the main points apparently George Washington immediately after the Declaration of Independence was ratified He took it out and read it on the steps of the Capitol Building in New York to this loud, raucous crowd that was all enthusiastic and zealous and they and immediately after they heard the words of the Declaration of Independence they ran over to a big statue of King George And they knocked it over and ultimately they melted it down and they made more more than 40, 000 43, 000 Cannonballs not cannonballs a musket balls for their rifles.

I thought wow, that's a pretty good start to this country Fledging fledging army getting its ammunition right there from a statue of King George.

Another interesting story I heard 1 time was about when they first made the Declaration of Independence, they had a printer by the name of Dunlap.

He printed like several hundred copies and they sent them out to all through the colonies and so these original copies were called Dunlap broadsides a man in Philadelphia bought a picture frame for $4 at a yard sale and he opened it up and guess what he found inside the frame He found 1 of those Dunlap broadsides.

It was worth more than 8000000 dollars How would you like that kind of freedom, you know money brings a certain kind of freedom, but that's not the freedom I want to talk about tonight Freedom is important every 1 of us.

As long as we have life, we want freedom.

Many times we don't appreciate it till it's taken from us.

But as long as we have freedom, we should remember it, we should acknowledge it, we should celebrate it.

Now, the Bible has a lot to say about liberty, and this is really what I want to talk about tonight.

If I had time, we could do a much deeper study in what the Bible has to say about true biblical freedom, but a few verses immediately come to my mind.

For example, in John chapter 8, verse 31 and 32, maybe you know the verse, some of you probably do.

Jesus was speaking to the Jews that believed on him and he said, if you continue in my word, Then are you my disciples in the deed, and the truth shall make you free.

Now clearly, this is a different kind of freedom than what I've been talking about so far, because this is not talking about a political freedom.

They were already under the bondage of the nation of Rome, and he wasn't talking about breaking free from Rome.

He was talking about a completely different kind of freedom.

He was talking about a spiritual freedom, an inner freedom, something that is incomparable and unconquerable, something the world can never take away.

Something that's not guaranteed by any constitution or by any Supreme Court or any political leader.

This is a different kind of freedom that's completely separate from political freedoms.

In John 8, 36, Jesus said, if the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.

This is an even better kind of freedom, an even better kind of liberty.

Paul said something similar in 2 Corinthians 3.

This is verse 17, right near the end of the chapter.

It says, where the spirit of the Lord is, there is what?

Wherever the spirit of God is, when the spirit of God comes into our life, it gives us a certain kind of liberty, this liberty, this freedom that Jesus was talking about.

In the context here, Paul was talking about the Jews, how they had a veil over their eyes and they couldn't see clearly And it was that veil that kept them in bondage.

And he said when that veil is taken away, when they're able to see clearly, the Holy Spirit comes in and gives them freedom.

And this is what Paul wanted them to experience, that true freedom.

It's a powerful passage, has nothing to do with government or politics, has everything to do with turning back to God.

The kind of freedom I wanna talk about tonight is something that is supernatural.

It's something that's spiritual, that's separate from the things that are going on in our world.

Something that God and God alone can give to us and it cannot be taken away by anything that happens in our political system here.

Am I making a little bit of sense so far?

You guys, by the way, do you usually say like amen or is this like 1 of those churches that just never says anything?

All right, so we need a different kind of freedom, right?

We want the kind of freedom that only God can give, that the world cannot take away, no matter what it does.

There's another verse that comes to my mind.

I'm just thinking through some that just sort of come up.

Here, Paul says to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

We should stand free in this liberty that God wants to give us.

Now I suppose you can make a case from this verse that we as Christians have some obligation to fight for our freedoms in the political sphere, especially our religious freedoms, but I don't think that is primarily what this verse is talking about.

It's not about those freedoms that we get from our political systems.

It's about the spiritual freedom that comes to us when the Holy Spirit comes into our life.

It's something that cannot be taken away by the political world.

It's that inner freedom that comes when the Holy Spirit fills us.

And that's what we need to stand fast in and not be distracted by other things, well, that are distractions.

There's a lot of people that are getting distracted by what's happening in this world and they forget that the only freedom that's going to count in the end is the freedom that God can give.

All right, I'm gonna work on you guys a little bit, see if I can get a few more amens.

I had to train my church back in Indiana.

Like, they were like just mumbling a little bit.

So you gotta help me out a little bit, okay?

You gotta remember too that it's a little past my bedtime.

This is like 10.30 for me at home, so I'm not used to preaching this late.

Anyway, turn with me and your Bible to Galatians 5.

I'm gonna look at that passage just a little bit more.

This is a really interesting passage in terms of talking about freedom.

Galatians chapter 5 verse 1 is the verse I just read.

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Let's not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage and so on.

If you skip down to verse 5, you'll see the kind of freedom he's really talking about.

02 Walking with God

Father in heaven, this little window of time has been set aside for you to speak.

I pray that you would do that, that you would come and visit us, that you would be right here in our midst.

I pray that self would be taken out of the way and only Jesus would be lifted up, only Jesus would be seen.

I pray that your message would come through loud and clear just the way you intended for each person to hear in this room.

And we ask for that miracle, we pray for that miracle, in the name of Jesus, amen.

So I wanna start by going right to our scripture reading this morning, I don't know if you have a normal scripture reading, but turn with me to the book of Genesis.

And I find this passage very interesting.

From that context, we see that Enoch was the first, was the son of Jared.

He was actually the seventh generation going back all the way to Adam.

It says that in Jude chapter 1, verse 14, he says he was the seventh from Adam.

And so if you go through the list, you have Adam, Seth, Enos, Canaan, Mahalaleel, however you say that, Jared, and then Enoch.

I find this interesting because it kinda reminds me of the Sabbath, right?

You have 6 days, then on the seventh day you have something special.

Or maybe even another way of looking at it, we've been living in this world of sin for like 6, 000 years, but the 7, 000 years we're gonna go up to heaven and get to spend that with God.

I don't know if there's anything to it, but it strikes me as curious.

Anyway, verse 21, I wanna pick up the story.

It says Enoch lived 65 years and he begat Methuselah.

So another thing we know about Enoch was that he was the father of Methuselah.

Methuselah was the man that lived longer than any other man, at least as far as it's recorded in the Bible.

In fact, he lived a number of decades longer than even Adam himself lived.

And his life brings us all the way down to the flood because when he died, that is the year the flood came.

So we know that we're talking at a period of time where things are getting very dark, very difficult in the world.

If you read the literal red books about Enoch, you'll find a number of other things.

You'll discover that he was a very godly man.

He loved God, he sought God, he served God.

And in fact, in verse 22, it says Enoch walked with God.

After he begat Methuselah, this is when he really began to learn to walk with God.

He must have intuited something, discerned something about the character of God when he had his own son.

He realized the way he felt for his son must be something like the way God loves his children.

And he began to maybe even somehow grasp that God was going to send his own son as a sacrifice for sin.

And he just got closer and closer to God.

It says he walked with God for 300 years.

That's where to put him at the age of 365.

That's another interesting number, isn't it?

365, I mean, how many days do we have in the average year?

365 days, it's almost as if, after he had Methuselah, he began getting closer and closer and closer to God, till he reached the point where He was walking with God every single day.

365 days of the year, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

He was constantly connected with the Father.

And in verse 24 it says Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.

Now we know from the line of Cain as well, as the timing of the flood, that things were getting difficult.

The very first thing Cain did is he went and established a city.

And the world started getting darker and darker, more and more corrupt, more and more violent.

And yet somehow in the midst of this dark world, Enoch was able to live a life that was so connected with God that the Bible says he pleased God, he walked with God.

Everything about his life was acceptable to God.

So finally, God was so close to Enoch, he says, you know, it's time to just take you home.

And you realize he's been there ever since?

For the last 5, 000 years or so, I don't know, I haven't added up the time, but for some 5, 000 years, Enoch has already been in heaven, enjoying the blessings of heaven.

Did you know that Ellen White had a vision where she saw good old Enoch, that's how she described him?

He was visiting some world where there are all kinds of people from other planets, other worlds, and he was walking around as if he was perfectly at home.

Good old Enoch, he's been up there for a long time.

He gives us hope that there's a chance maybe we can make it there too, amen?

He's an example for us, he's an inspiration for us.

Enoch just stands out like a light shining in the darkness.

And the fact of the matter is our world is getting darker today too.

And God is looking for people that are gonna shine brightly in these last days.

I love the verse Isaiah 60 verse 1, some of you may know it.

Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.

For darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the people.

And in fact, I wonder if it's because the world is getting so dark that God's people are gonna shine that much more brightly.

You know, when you're in a dark room, even a little candle is bright.

But whatever the case, God is looking for people that are gonna shine even when the world gets darker and darker.

James 1 27 says, pure religion and undefiled before God, among other things, is to keep himself unspotted from the world.

No matter what is happening in the world, God can keep us from being spotted by the corruption that's in the world.

Philippians 2 verse 15 says that we're to be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom we shine as lights in the world.

God wants us to shine as lights in the world no matter how dark the world gets.

He's looking for a people that are gonna stand for him at the end of time, amen?

So Dea Enoch demonstrated that this kind of life is possible, that purity can be maintained in an impure world.

And this is the kind of thinking that we need too, that no matter what the world is doing, whatever path it runs down, I am not gonna go down that same path.

I wanna stay close to God, I wanna stay connected with God, I wanna walk with God, I want the freedom that only Jesus can give to live for him.

To quote Jude, again, we may be called to pull someone out of the fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.

I mean, we live in a dark world, we're ministering, but the very next verse says he's able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless for the presence of God.

Even though we're working in a dark world, God can keep us pure, just like he did for Enoch.

So I'm excited about that, I'm encouraged by that.

And because the Bible basically tells us just 1 thing about Enoch, then we know that that has to be important, that has to be the key, because the only thing we really know about Enoch in this passage is that Enoch walked with God.

03 Walking with God

All right, good evening, everyone, or good afternoon, I guess I should say.

Super glad to have 1 last chance to share with you a little bit.

Looking forward to sharing a few thoughts transitioning from this idea of walking with God, which we've been talking about, to, as Josie said, working with God.

If we really are as close to the end of time as we say we are, we think we are, I'm sure many of us believe we are, if we really are close to the end, then something has to happen.

There is a big job, there's a big work that's still left to do.

I mean, we have barely made a dent in our world in terms of evangelism, and the work is nowhere near close to being finished.

So we have to find a way to get that job done.

And I wanna talk a little bit about that tonight.

You know, I mentioned this morning, I think, that there were a number of statistics I could have shared just to sort of illustrate the situation.

And these are just a few, they're kind of random statistics, I'm sure you have your own, but do you know that 85% of the churches in the Seventh-day Adventist denomination have either plateaued or in decline?

85% of our churches are either barely holding their own or they're going backwards.

In terms of our overall growth, we're not even keeping up with the basic population rate of growth in this country.

It takes an average of 100 people in the United States, 100 Adventists to win 1 person to Christ every year.

And half of those are gonna be gone within 12 months.

So really it takes 200 people to win 1 person that's gonna survive and stay.

Do you realize, and this was a statistic that really shocked me, that in our community, if we were to survey, I don't know maybe it's different here in Loma Linda, but nationwide if you do a survey, only 14% of the people that are surveyed are going to say that the Christian church in their community is actually a force for good.

About 30% say it's neutral, doesn't make any difference 1 way or the other.

More than 50% of the people surveyed say the Christian church is a negative force in their community.

Did you know that atheism is growing 15 times faster than Christianity in this country?

So definitely I think there's some reason to think that we should revisit this question, what is it really gonna take to finish the work, because we're not getting the job done.

And if we are close to the end, then I believe God's gonna have to show us what has to be done in order for the work to be finished.

This was really the question I wanted an answer to.

Lord, if there's something that we're not seeing, not doing, something we need to understand, Lord, just show it to us because we are too close to the end to keep going the way we're going.

Okay, there's a few less here than there were this morning.

Just more of the same is not going to cut it.

I'm actually not gonna share the main thing that the Lord put on my heart when I spent those years in North Dakota, but I have a number of burdens.

I just wanna share a few of them that might be helpful in terms of ministry.

Maybe I'll come back another time and I'll share something else next time.

I want to invite the Holy Spirit to be here.

I'm going to kneel and we'll pray that God will help us tonight.

We plead with you to send the Holy Spirit to be here in our midst.

I pray that you would be with my mind, with my words, that I could be a vessel that you could speak through, there'd be no impedance of any kind on my part to your Holy Spirit communicating with your people here.

I pray that each ear would be open, each heart would be receptive, that you would interpret this message to each person just the exact way it's needed.

That could be a blessing for all of us here.

I ask for the presence of the Holy Spirit now in Jesus' name.

So I kind of want to do just a little bit of a mix and share just a few miscellaneous things, not necessarily a single message.

But I think this topic of evangelism is important.

We call it outreach, witnessing, ministry, evangelism.

And the reason we have all these different words is because this is an important topic.

And so I think it's important to look at this topic.

We also have other words, we talk about things like finishing the work or the loud cry or the great commission or the final warning.

And on and on, we have all kinds of phrases.

We're all talking more or less about the same thing.

How is this work gonna be finished, taking the gospel to the whole world?

If you look for each of the Gospels, they all pretty much end the same way with a commission, with a challenge to take the Gospel to the world.

If you go to the very end of Matthew 28, you have this verse that says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

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Series

Daniel Vis Weekend

01 The Final Warning Revelation 18:1

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

When Lady Liberty Lays Down the Torch

49m

Antichrist: The One You've Never Known

Antichrist, Episode 6: Revealed

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Righteousness by Faith

Righteousness by Faith and the Three Angels Messages

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Last Day Events

A World in Crisis

1h 4m

Revelation 12 and the Forgotten Prophecy of Religious Liberty

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Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

17 The Judgment and 1844

1h 8m

Healing the Nations

The Bible and the First Amendment

48m

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

19 Our Great High Priest’s Victory Over Death

1h

What Jesus Said

19. Religion and Politics

1h

Norman McNulty Weekend

01 Prophetic Peril in America

48m

Freedom in Christ

40m

Sound Doctrine