North Idaho Regional Campmeeting 2012

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Bonners Ferry SDA Church

Faith That Endures

Eugene Prewitt

Truth is Quiet and Easily Ignored

I wanna spend about 4 minutes this evening looking at how to study the Bible.

You might know, I think up here in the northern woods, you have a lot of doctrinal issues.

Does anyone recognize that out here in the audience, that there are doctrinal issues in the northern woods?

And what I'd really like to do in the first few minutes this evening is give you a couple principles about how you can land on the right side of doctrinal division around you, where you are in your church.

Whom will he teach knowledge, and who will he make to understand doctrine?

That's the question we want to know the answer to.

How can you find out, that is, who is God going to teach?

If God teaches you, will you understand the truth?

Who is it that he makes to understand doctrine?

It says, verse 9, those that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breast.

If we had a baby up here, an infant, and we laid that infant on the stage here, and let her just stay there, say for a week or 2 without touching her, What would happen to her?

You know, babies are entirely dependent on someone to feed them and care for them.

And you can't fault a baby for being like that.

But if you want the Lord God of heaven to teach you, you can't be like that baby.

You can't be someone that depends on someone else to teach you what is true.

As long as you depend on someone else to teach you, you can never be certain that you'll end up on the right side of any issue of truth and error because it just really isn't so that the people that are on the right side are always the kindest, and the people that are on the wrong side are always mean.

It isn't true that those that are most studious and versed in the Bible are always on the right side, and those that are most new and naive are always on the wrong side.

You really can't land on the truth just by trying to find a middle ground or following the most apparently reliable person.

Who is it that God teaches according to verse 9?

It's those that are weaned, those that are drawn, those who are learning to study for themselves.

Oh, Excuse me, we have 1 more thing to observe here in Isaiah 29.

It says in the next verse, for precept must be upon precept, line upon line, here a little and there a little.

There is a fad in theological circles now, a fad to put down the kind of Bible study that Bible workers do.

Have you ever heard someone use the word exegesis?

And what they mean by this word, or what I would mean if I used the word, would be to find something that's in the text, what the text says, and to pull out of the text what it says.

It's better than the alternative, trying to put something into the text.

But in promoting this idea of observing what the Bible says, many today are kind of speaking in a derogatory way about comparing scripture with scripture, about taking here a little and there a little, as if by comparing 1 passage to another, you're gonna run afoul of context or of common sense, and somehow this is not God's intention.

But would you please notice in this passage, who does God teach knowledge?

Why, it's those that take here a little and there a little.

And if you want God to be your teacher, you can't just take your Bible and read, you're going to have to study.

If you want God to teach you, it won't do for you just to open your Bible somewhere in the morning, read for a while and close your Bible.

You're gonna have to take some here and some there.

If you want God to teach you, you're gonna have to work.

I think you'll see that makes a lot of sense.

If we had here, let's say our little girl, we took care of her, and she grew to the point where she was about 2.

Now, I've never had a child, and I don't know enough about the stages of the life of a child to maybe get my illustration right, but you can adjust it in your head and make it accurate.

Maybe I'm just gonna say that she's only 1 year old.

I think that'll be better for this illustration.

She's 1 and she does not know how to run.

She is really more comfortable on her knees and her hands.

Would it be kindness to her if I just picked her up and just carried her around all the time so she wouldn't fall over?

It wouldn't be kind because it would prevent her from developing any strength.

And without strength, she really wouldn't have any freedom.

Without freedom, she really couldn't have a valuable life or a useful life.

I need to let her practice if she's gonna develop any strength at all.

I'm trying to illustrate for you why God doesn't just whisper to you in the morning and tell you the answer to all your perplexing questions.

That's not how you would develop any strength.

It's not how you would develop reasoning power.

It's not how you would develop dependence.

It's not how you would become a strong person.

Those that are weaned and those that take here a little and there a little.

This verse has been very comforting to me.

It helps me understand how people that are so studious could arrive at such foolish conclusions.

Does anyone here listen to Christian radio?

Not many hands went up, so maybe it's not a relevant illustration.

But there are very apparently studious people.

I remember hearing 1 man talk about when he went to study Revelation, his first step was to memorize the book.

I've had a student to memorize the book of Revelation, but I've only had 1 out of hundreds of students.

But I've had hundreds of students that know more about the book than he did.

And I'm comforted to find some explanation, some way to understand how people can be studious for so long and yet never come to the truth.

Many will be purified and made white and tried, but the wicked will do wickedly, and none of the wicked will understand.

Do you realize that Bible understanding is not a product of years in college?

How many of the wicked will understand according to Daniel 12.10?

I hope I can just turn you off from this idea that a PhD person knows more about the Bible than someone else.

Do you realize that when a Baptist who is a carpenter studies and becomes a PhD that he remains a Baptist?

And when a Catholic who is a carpenter studies and get a PhD that he remains a Catholic, and that when a Quaker gets his PhD, he remains a Quaker.

The only exception is some of them will become atheists.

But for the most part, when someone starts out as a Presbyterian and he studies, he remains a Presbyterian.

What I'm trying to tell you is that that process of 9 or 10 years of intense Bible study has done 0 to bring these people closer to Bible truth.

It has only made them more certain of whatever they already believed.

Daniel 12.10 says, none of the wicked will understand.

So we're done with that part of the message tonight.

I'm building a, I'm trying to build a foundation in the next 4 nights that would allow you to go away from here and really to end up on the right side of every doctrinal issue, even if there's no 1 around you to teach you the right thing.

I think before we do, I'll also tell you a story.

Antihermeneutics

Our Father in heaven, I ask that you would be our teacher this evening, that you would save us from ourself, that you would make your Bible to be easy for us, And we ask for the gift of your spirit in the name of Jesus.

When my wife and I flew here on Tuesday, we left a team of student call porters in Texas, a dozen of them there, 13 workers and 2 other leaders, and they just kept working while we'd been here.

And this is The third day they've worked since we left, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, in these 3 days they've sold $5, 500 worth of paperback books at $1 to $10 a lick, sometimes 15.

And they're gonna work again on Sunday, and then Heidi and I will join them Sunday evening, so we'll be with them again for a good chunk of the summer.

The students are knocking in North America, not just my students, the students in general are knocking at 7 to 9000000 doors every year.

7 or 9000000 doors isn't 7 or 9000000 people, that's more like 20, 25 million people.

It wasn't happening when you were a child.

It's a development, and you should be thankful like I'm thankful.

A little bit more news, but this is much older.

I told you last evening that my wife and I have been church planting for 7 years.

Part of our church planting program was to sell books in the town we were trying to raise up a church in.

If you knock on someone's door more than once a year, they begin to build up a different type of prejudice against you that's worse than the original type.

And so we would canvas it about once a year.

And 1 of the ladies we met there was named Jennifer.

Jennifer bought Peace Above the Storm, That's Steps to Christ, kind of a deluxe edition of Steps to Christ.

She purchased it and someone asked her if she'd like to take Bible studies.

So we began to give Bible studies to her.

While we were giving Bible studies to her, her live-in boyfriend, the father of her little girl, found another woman and left her.

And the turmoil that caused Jennifer caused her to lose interest in the studies.

Maybe some of you can understand how that would just kind of overwhelm a baby or not yet born interest.

But before that happened, before the boyfriend left, Jennifer's mother and sister, Sharon and Destiny, had visited her by coincidence maybe, providence yes, during 1 of the studies and they liked what they saw.

So when Jennifer went through her darkness, her mom and sister continued taking studies that had originated with Jennifer.

Destiny and Sharon were baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist church, partly through a contact from someone who bought a book and never read it and started studies and then quit them.

In other words, what we were trying to do didn't work out exactly the way we thought it would, but did it work out?

It worked out for the benefit of Sharon and Destiny.

You know, the turmoil that Jennifer went through didn't last forever.

And eventually, as she saw the change in her mother and her sister, she resumed Bible studies.

And today, Jennifer is a baptized member of the Seventh-day Adventist church.

And now she's finally starting to read that book.

I'll tell you more about church planting tomorrow and the next night.

Tonight, the title of the talk in your bulletin is a strange word, I coined it, anti-hermeneutics.

You don't need to learn that word, it won't be useful to you in the future.

But hermeneutics, that's just a fancy word for correct principles of Bible interpretation.

That is, when you talk about someone's hermeneutics, you mean what are his principles for how to interpret the Bible?

William Miller famously had a set, a good set of principles for how to interpret the Bible.

How many of you are at least vaguely familiar with William Miller's principles of interpretation?

I see like maybe 25 hands, something like that.

1 of his principles, just a beautiful 1, is that when you come to a prophecy, we should understand it in a literal sense unless context demands or common sense demands that it be understood figuratively.

Do you know that the seals, the first 6 seals are metaphors or symbolic, but the seventh 1 or the sixth 1, excuse me, and seventh are, the sixth 1 is literal.

What a funny way to talk, let me start that sentence over.

5 seals are symbolic, but the sixth 1 is when the sky opens up like a scroll and the stars fall and people call for the mountains to fall on them.

When you come to the 7 last plagues, you have The first 5 are literal, but the sixth 1 there talks about frogs, the spirit of demons coming out of, have you read that there, you talk about this?

And when you go to Daniel chapter 11, you have this very literal delineation going on right from the beginning, but when you get far enough into it, you come to the daily and the abomination.

And what I'm trying to say to you is that wouldn't it be sensible to say that every prophecy is either all literal or all symbolic, that just doesn't hold for really any of the major prophecies in scripture.

Take it literal unless common sense or context demands that you take it figuratively.

And I just recommend that to you as a good idea.

A foolish or false way to find truth that will not lead you to truth.

And I have on the board up here written an illustration.

That's good because it would just make you nervous anyway.

But I'm gonna tell you what it says, for those of you who aren't in the front row.

This morning at breakfast, my wife and I were talking about the work that I'm doing here, trying to oppose some fanaticism.

I was thinking about moving this so you could see it, but it just doesn't matter, because you can't read it anyway, so I'm just gonna leave it just as it is.

And I was trying to explain something to her, and so I asked Heidi to pick 2 Old Testament stories, any 2, and she said Job and Esther.

I drew 2 lines and I labeled 1 Job and I labeled 1 Esther And then I just thought for a few seconds, and I began to draw parallel lines.

I noticed that Esther started out poor, but when she got married to the king, she became rich.

And of course, Job was born as a baby, so he's born poor, but we know in the book he became rich.

And then, you know, Job had some bad friends.

And Esther, Haman wasn't exactly a good guy, was he?

Even though he tended to like her in some ways.

But there was a point when Job was vindicated and Esther herself, she ended up having a vindication of her rights and principles and standing before the king.

And then Job was given twice as much as he had before.

And Esther, there were 2 days of retribution that the Jews had when they could get revenge on their enemies.

I could have done that with any 2 stories, and I could do it with 2 stories from 2 of you if I knew you properly.

I could do it with 2 presidents of the United States.

This is nothing, has nothing to do with Bible study.

This is to Bible study what imagination is to reality.

I don't really know that Job was ever poor.

An Enduring Love in the End Times

Our Father in heaven, I ask that you would be our teacher this evening, that you would use your holy Bible to give us instruction, that it would be a light in a dark place, and that you would give us your Holy Spirit.

I wanna tell you a story from our church plant.

In the first year of our church plant, we did a lot of door-to-door work.

We always do a lot of door-to-door work, but the first year especially, because we had to meet people we didn't know.

And 1 of the ladies that we gave a magazine to was named Ethel Bunn.

Ethel was in her 90s and lived in an assisted living apartment complex, and she was a United Pentecostal member.

Did you even have United Pentecostals in Idaho?

The United Pentecostal Church is very helpful to Adventists in terms of theology.

Let me explain to you how you can use their existence to help teach people the truth.

United Pentecostals believe that there's only 1 being in the Godhead, that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are just 1 person, different manifestations of the same being.

And when Jesus is praying, he's talking to himself.

I'm trying to help you understand the concept of United Pentecostals.

What they have in common with other Pentecostals is that they speak in tongues and have healings and interpretations and rolling and laughing and whatever else.

That's what they have in common, but where they differ, they differ strongly on this issue of the Godhead.

And 1 of their key doctrines is about baptism.

Because you know Matthew 28, baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

But when you read the book of Acts, you never see that same phraseology again.

In the book of Acts, it says they were baptized in the name of Jesus, or baptized in the name of the Lord.

Has anyone here ever observed that before in the book of Acts?

So that's the way it is all through the book of Acts.

Their belief, this is like the foundation of their doctrine.

It's not where it came from, it came from demons.

But this is the way the demons explained it, is that the correct formula for baptism is to be baptized in the name of Jesus, which is the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I'm not trying to teach you how to be part of this group, that's not it, but just listen carefully.

Then there's the normal brand of Pentecostals, which I'm sure you have in Idaho.

And They believe about the same thing about the Godhead probably that you do.

It proves, absolutely proves, that the fact that you speak in tongues and have healings and miracles can't be evidence that you have the Holy Spirit.

In other words, they accuse each other of each being the false manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

And I would just say, as Wycliffe said, or Hus, no, it was Wycliffe, then Hus, really they both had the same experience.

You know in the time of Wycliffe, there were 2 popes?

And what Hus said is they're all right when they call each other the antichrist.

And it really was a great help to those who were teaching truth in the Middle Ages to have the popes fighting each other that way.

It's a great help to you in winning your neighbors to know this little interesting fact about the Pentecostal movement and the split it had a few decades ago between these 2 alternating branches.

Is there anyone here that can understand what I'm trying to say, how it could possibly help you?

And for the rest of you, you can ask those who raised their hands, because we're done with that.

So Ethel Bun was a Bible-believing lady who lived a tortured life because her son had died without being baptized in the name, the proper type of baptism.

So her son was lost, burning in hell, and he had died young and she was old.

So he had been burning in hell already for decades, and she loved him and it made her life hard.

Can you imagine being a mother like that?

Just believing, It made her life difficult.

But when she read the Bible, she read about the gift of tongues and she knew what was going on in her church, didn't quite match 1 Corinthians 14.

You know, let everything be done decently and in order and a few other things she noticed.

When she got the magazine we gave her on the Sabbath, she read it through and she believed it and she was a Sabbath keeper the next Sabbath in her 90s.

Ethel began attending the Adventist church.

She never made it all the way theologically, but she made a lot of progress for the age she was, a lot of progress, and then she died.

And I really expect to see Ethel in heaven.

I really think for the age she was, that she made about as good a progress and about as fast as you could expect someone her age to be making.

So it didn't really increase the size of our church, but you know, to win a soul is a beautiful thing.

And to help a lady get past the grief that has tortured her life for 40 years is a worthwhile investment of a little time.

Turn in your Bibles to Numbers chapter 14.

Numbers 14 is the second half of the story of the 12 spies.

They've come back and they've given their bad report.

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Faith That Endures

Wary, Weary, Worry

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Recorded

Parts

Truth is Quiet and Easily Ignored

1h

Antihermeneutics

1h 18m

An Enduring Love in the End Times

53m

Wary, Weary, Worry

59m

Sound Doctrine