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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Scott Christiansen

Planet In Distress, Part 3

I'll just give you a real quick background by way of segueing into something else.

25 years ago, well a long, long time ago, 1962, my parents moved here.

25 years ago, I was the marketing director, 1 of a series of failed marketing directors for the Center for Health Promotion, in the building next door, working for some guy named Dick Hart, trying to figure out how to get people to purchase something that they fundamentally didn't want.

And I wasn't the only 1 who couldn't figure that out.

It turns out that people actually do want it, but not until they've paid for it and used it for a while.

And there's just no point in, there's no point of traction to make a sale.

It's something that people still haven't figured out.

Got married, which is a really good story.

And I'm not gonna burden you with a long story.

I was a youth leader up on the campus hill church, something called Young Adventist Ministries, YAM, a really bad name.

We approached the pastor and said, hey, we'd like to have a mission trip down to San Felipe, Mexico.

He said, I need a detailed budget from you, and I need, you know, you need to write it out.

He said, but be very careful, because once you put something on that budget and they approve it, you can't change it.

So we did, we were very careful, you know, van, gasoline, food, all that stuff.

And it was approved, And my buddies and I went and made up a bunch of copies, 700 copies of flyers, so that we could distribute them around campus and go.

And we went to the girls dorm and we said, well how many flyers do you need?

We had only printed 700, and we were panicked for a moment.

Because how are we going to tell guys we're going?

And then we realized that We didn't really need to tell the guys.

It was the dream trip for the men, anyway.

But anyway, met my wife, married, left here to go to La Vida Mission in New Mexico, working among the Navajo.

Went from there to Mongolia, the first country director for the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, ADRA.

And in each of the places that I went, Levina Mission, Mongolia, I saw things and experienced things which I covered last night, so I won't cover them tonight.

But I saw things and experienced things that were fundamental in forming my thinking around my book, which I guess I should pull out and flash, just so Review and Herald knows I'm doing my job promoting the book.

But from Mongolia, I went next door to China, where I saw, again, momentous things taking place in society, resource constraints that were profound, population pressures that were profound, watching the accelerating decline of natural systems and how they impacted that dense, densely populated society.

From China, we eventually returned to the US and settled in Maine, and for 11 years, I worked in the biorefining technology development sector, figuring out and deploying and trying to raise money for and do the whole thing, build models and eventually build factories that would turn trees into fuel and chemicals.

And that was fascinating and of course it had environmental aspects and I was dealing with a lot of stuff there that was germane to the book.

And then through a very strange twist of events, I left that sector, in retrospect definitely the Lord leading, but I didn't see it at the time, left that sector, finished this book, had it published, and became the Trust Services and Stewardship Director for the Northern New England Conference.

So now, somewhat astonishingly, I'm a conference guy.

But the Lord works in amazing ways and 1 of the interesting things is before I joined the conference I was trying to give this presentation in as many places as possible and some places were quite open, you know, yeah, come on, yeah, we'll take up an offering, we'll pay your gas, whatever.

Some places absolutely wouldn't hear of having me come.

The last thing we need is an end-timey guy getting the congregation all stirred up about how Jesus is coming, just stay away.

These are Adventist churches, you know, just stay away, we don't need you.

And we don't know who you are, and man, you're just 1 of those.

But when I became a conference employee, all of that stopped.

Well, you know, and the doors opened, so it's kind of strange.

I mean, I changed business cards and all of a sudden they trust me.

It's like, I don't know what's up with that.

Anyway, for those of you who Find that you wish you had seen last night's presentation.

As you've been told, it's being recorded, it's available.

But also, I'm at Mentone Church next weekend.

You've already heard the sermon, you've already heard this 1, but Friday night, if you decide you want to see the whole thing, Friday night at 7, you're quite welcome, or if you find that there's something here to recommend to others, please do.

Though it's a bit crowded over there, everyone is welcome, and there'll be a, next weekend it's 07:00 Friday night, and then the Sabbath sermon, excuse me, sorry, and then 2 o'clock after potluck is the afternoon session.

Those of you who weren't here last night, my tendency is to try and review last night, but I've done that before and it drags out and no one's happy.

I'm just going to keep going, so I'll try, you know.

Anyway, last night we went through global system decline.

We went through the systems that God created during creation week and how those are visibly, measurably, through scientific analysis, being shown to be in steep and accelerating decline.

We talked a little bit about how our society is built solidly on top of these systems that are crashing.

1 of the, OK, then today we're talking about these 2 bottom pyramids, resource depletion and complex society collapse.

These forces from these 3 different directions are each and individually driving us toward the fulfillment of prophecy.

We're seeing the fulfillment of prophecy with each of these, but together they're driving us inexorably toward the time of little trouble.

Those events that happened before the close of probation, those events that Christ talked about in our foundation text, Matthew 24, 6 through 8.

So we're gonna be talking about the decline of global man-made systems, critical systems that underpin our global complex society, oil and money.

We're gonna be talking about resource shortages, including a number of resources, perhaps several critical resources you've probably never heard of.

We're going to be talking about complex societies.

And that's a little bit like talking to fish about water.

Complex societies have 2 really bad habits.

Every 1 of them that has ever been known to exist has collapsed.

Every 1 of them, before it collapsed, went to war.

Now there may be some societies, complex societies, that we don't know about.

Maybe a few escaped this pattern, but the trend is very, very firm.

So we're also going to be talking about the destruction of false gods.

We're going to be talking about what is going on on earth in the days to come and the parallels to the Israelites leaving Egypt.

How God trounced and humiliated the gods of Egypt and what that has to do with today and the time of little trouble.

So, well, we're also, wasn't on the slide, we're also going to be talking about what we should be doing at this time in history, what we can do.

And I said last night, all of my recommendations, almost all of my recommendations are spiritual.

You won't hear about food in your basement.

In fact, if you read Ellen White, she says don't do that.

You're supposed to be relying on the Lord.

You're not going to hear about how big a gun you should be buying, you know, or how you can put the right stuff in gasoline to stabilize it so when it's really time of trouble that 5 gallons of gasoline hasn't gone bad and is still running your car.

What you're going to be hearing about at the end is whether or not you have a friend you can trust in a really difficult situation.

Because that's who we trust in difficult situations.

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Planet In Distress, Part 3

Transcript

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Recorded

Attachments

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