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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Fred Bischoff

Jesus Introduces the Truth

It's a privilege to be with you this morning.

What I'd like to do with you today is to do a Bible study in 1 of the Gospels.

I've entitled it, Jesus Introduces the Truth.

And we'll see as we get into the passage that we're dealing with why I've entitled it that.

How would you define the truth if someone were to ask you, what's the truth?

I know as Adventists we tend to say when someone's accepted the truth, they have adopted our view of Scripture, our view of end-time events, and the teachings that we teach.

November the 23, 1892, just a little bit short of a year after Ellen White arrived in Australia for her 9 year period over there in what some people call her exile, she wrote back to the General Conference President, O.A.

She's thousands of miles away, but her heart is still back in America, which is where she should have been.

And because of her distance, she's having to write sometimes a month before the message is needed because it takes a month for the mail to get there, at least.

Olson, he's the general conference president.

I like to call this letter her most passionate letter that she ever wrote.

But if you want to read an amazing letter, just read the whole letter.

It's a letter written to the angel of the church, if you know what we mean by that phrase from Revelation.

The precious golden links of truth are not separate, detached, disconnected doctrines.

But link after link form 1 string of golden truth and constitute a complete whole with Christ as its living center.

Not separate, detached, disconnected doctrines, but something that we could call a string of golden truth?

And Christ somehow, you know, it's a string, but it's apparently maybe a string that makes a circle.

Somehow Christ is the center, or maybe he's the the thread that goes through the middle of the string all the way around, however it's reaching.

To those who are teaching the truth whose hearts are impure and who have not been converted, Christ says, what has thou to do to declare my statutes?

Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord.

Oh what truths we have, full of power, and it is not possible to controvert these Bible doctrines.

The truth we have set before us for the past few years.

What do you think she's referring back to?

4 years before God met his people, confronted them with a message that she describes in these terms.

The truth we have set before us for the past few years is immense in its importance.

Reaching into heaven encompassing eternity.

Do you think she's trying to find words to encompass the enormity of this?

Reaching into heaven, encompassing eternity.

Satan and his confederacy of evil have made every effort to cover up, to confuse minds, to make of none effect the precious, glorious truths of God's Word.

Do you notice how she's alternating back and forth between the singular truth and the plural truths?

Perhaps there's a reality here, a dimension to what we need to grasp that has a singular simplicity and yet a plural complexity.

She says, we are living in strangely solemn times.

We are living in strangely solemn times and at the very time when the people of God should be wide awake, many are asleep or dead spiritually.

There is great need of much work being done.

Every individual member of the church should look to the captain for orders.

I hope I'm here today not because I was invited, but because the captain wants me here.

I hope what I'm going to be saying is according to his orders.

Father, as we come to look at your Word, we are not sufficient to understand what we should see.

Our hearts are not in harmony with yours as much as they should be.

We ask for your spirit to guide in what's said as we look at Scripture, as we consider history and prophecy, as we look at what Jesus called the truth.

May we have hearts that embrace it and love it.

May your spirit do this work in our hearts today, we thank you in Christ's name, amen.

The reference for that letter, pamphlet number 2, obscure little pamphlets that they published back then, out of print now, but they're fortunately on the CD-ROM.

Pamphlet number 2, page 25, paragraph 2, appeal and suggestions to conference officers, in other words, to the leaders of the church.

What I'm giving you today is actually an introduction and an overview of a 10-part series I've entitled The Truth Versus the Lie.

If you want to, those 10 parts are on my my fredbishop.com website.

I'd like to launch with John 8, the last portion of the chapter, verses 12 to 58.

You might want to refer to your scripture as well as what we're going to be doing with our slides.

Jesus here makes multiple statements about the truth.

That's why I've entitled this, Jesus Introduces the Truth.

He also references the origin of something he calls the lie.

I don't know whether you've thought about it, that there can be something singular, just like the truth is singular, there can be something singular called the lie.

Or is there multiple ways to describe these 2 things?

These 2 side by side we will find in 1 verse.

And we will see, in the words of Ellen White, that these are called the 2 principles.

I'm gonna try to weave into our study in John 8 of references to the other parts of the larger study.

Let's begin with this paragraph, which I believe has tremendous importance in giving us direction.

If we're going somewhere, we need direction, right?

Scripture is to be compared with scripture.

The student should learn to view the word as a whole and to see the relation of its parts.

I mean, years before, people used to like to, you know, climb mountains to get these type of views.

Or then when planes came around, get in these planes and go up as high as you can.

But now, you just, You're on the screen, you zoom out wherever you want to, and there it is there.

The world as a whole and the relation of its parts.

That's where that is, and that's where that is.

The word as a whole, the relation of its parts.

The more connections you make, the more you understand.

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Jesus Introduces the Truth

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