GYC SE 2013: Called Apart

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GYC Southeast

GYC SE 2013: The Keys to Gotham City

Andrew Allen

The Keys to Gotham City

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this time together.

We pray that you will speak to us, show us how to make this practical.

And we just thank you in advance for sending the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth.

My name is Jared Thurman, and Jason Churchill and I are excited to share with you something that we are both very passionate about, which is urban missions.

How do you reach the mass of the population?

For the first time in the last, I think it's 50 years, the majority of the world now lives in a city.

And this is unlike it's ever been before.

Used to people farmed, now hardly anyone knows a farmer.

So we live in a different world, and there's different things that need to be used of how to reach people.

And we're going to look at some of those today.

The first part is called The Keys to Gotham City, and the second part is called The Waldensian Secret.

I'm going to give the first part, lay the foundation, and Jason is going to share the second part of the Waldensian secret.

Now you're probably thinking, why in the world the keys to Gotham City?

How many of you are familiar with the Batman comic books and thematic?

Okay, that's pretty much everyone in the room.

I want to give you a little history of that, because I think you're going to see it's very practical.

Writer-artist Frank Miller has stated, Metropolis is New York in the daytime.

Locations used as inspiration for the filming or for comic book illustrations for the city of Gotham have included New York City, Los Angeles, London, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Newark, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.

Writer Bill Finger says, On naming the city Gotham City, I flipped through the New York City phone book and spotted the name Gotham Jewelers and said, that's it, Gotham City.

We didn't call it New York because we wanted anybody in any city to identify with it.

So everyone could identify with Gotham City, 1 reason being because many cities have always been portrayed as parts of Gotham on different continents of the world.

Now Gotham City as New York City is kind of interesting because the nickname for New York City was known as Gotham long before the comic books gave it to it.

Batman introduced this name in 1939, the comic books, but the nickname was popularized in the 19th century.

Having been first attached to New York by Washington Irving in the November 11, 1807 edition of the Salama Gundi, a periodical which lampooned New York culture and politics.

And we're going to see in a minute why there was the reason for this.

But talking about New York City, Ellen White makes some fascinating statements.

1 of those, the Lord desires a center for the truth to be established in the great wicked city of New York.

Another 1, those who bear the burden of the work in greater New York should have the help of the best workers that can be secured.

Here let a center for God's work be made and let all that is done be a symbol of the work the Lord desires to see done in the world.

What God wants to do in the entire world, he wants to use New York City as the model.

Now when we say the wicked city of New York, we're not necessarily talking about every person that's there.

But we're definitely throwing the people in who are involved with sex trade, and rape, and murder, and anger, and lust, and all these sins that we can bring up.

So it's not necessarily every person in New York, but there are some evil things that take place in the large cities of this world.

Sex slavery is an awful 1 I began to study more of recently.

On that concept, most recently The portrayal of Gotham City is that of a dark, foreboding metropolis, rife with crime, grime, corruption, and a deep-seated sense of urban decay.

I just want you to think Gotham City is every city.

And what is it that we can learn from this?

Ellen White makes something, a statement very profound about this culture and this climate that we're living in at this time.

In the book Education, page 228, she says, At the same time, anarchy is seeking to sweep away all law, not only divine, but human, the centralizing of wealth and power, the vast combinations for the enriching of the few at the expense of the many, the combinations of the poorer classes for the defense of their interests and claims.

That'd be the unions as an example of that.

The spirit of unrest, of riot and bloodshed, the worldwide dissemination of the same teachings that led to the French Revolution.

All are tending to involve the whole world in a struggle similar to that which convulsed France." And if you want to study What happens when cities really revolt against religion and society as a norm?

Go and look at the history of what took place in France.

And when we see these riots breaking out, That's just a taste of what that's about.

So a little more on the history of Gotham, because this is where it gets practical.

The history of Gotham, the word is pronounced Go-tem or Gow-tem.

We're going to see where that comes from in a second.

The interesting thing is that Jesus talks about a profound parable of how the world will be divided at the close of Earth's history.

And I want to tell you about the name Gotham City.

Irving took the name from the village of Gotham Nottinghamshire, England, a place that, according to folklore, was inhabited by fools.

The village's name derives from Old English gat or goat and ham or home, literally homestead where goats are kept, and is pronounced Gotem, a similar name which has not undergone a pronunciation shift.

I find it interesting that the most popular city of the DC universe, this is another statement, is known often as the capital of the world.

You go and look this up on Wikipedia and things.

New York City, known as the capital of the world.

You could throw commerce capital of the world in there.

You could throw fashion capital, obviously dueling with Paris.

You could throw all these different reasons of why New York City is the capital of the world.

For a short period of time it was actually the capital of the United States.

So this parable that Jesus describes is of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 verses 31 to 36 specifically.

It says, and before him shall be gathered all nations.

As a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats, he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

And we're gonna see that the reality of it is, we all by nature are goats.

Stubborn, naturally wanting to congregate in certain ways, and it's easy to say, well yeah, Gotham City, people who live in the big cities are goats.

When the reality is we all have these tendencies.

Without the grace of God, I would be a goat eating trash like I was.

And God has brought me and he's made me a sheep.

So we need to see that this parable that Jesus gives is for our benefit and we can't get too high and mighty to say, well, shame on those goats, but I'm a faithful sheep now.

Only by daily transformation can God keep us a sheep.

And people can easily be transformed from a goat to a faithful sheep by something that can take place in their lives.

So we need that total transformation every single day, or we go back to where we once were, eating the trash and living that experience.

Now I can tell you that this experience of being a goat and hopefully the Lord's leading me to be a faithful sheep, that it's not always easy to go on a journey of transformation.

Because a lot of times you don't know where you belong.

And I can tell you that that has kind of been my story over the last few years.

And I started to be very antagonistic to preachers that would preach a message of love.

Robert Weis

The Waldensian Secret

Father in heaven, surely you've given us a high and holy calling, and we thank you for privileging us with this opportunity to live in the last days.

Lord, we pray that we would be found faithful in calling your people out of this world and inviting them to the city in heaven, the New Jerusalem, where we will all dwell in peace and harmony.

We thank you for being here as you promised.

How many of you have heard of the Waldensians?

Okay, almost everyone has heard of the Waldensians.

The Waldensians were a group of Christians and they were heavily persecuted.

This was in the time when the Roman Catholic Church was spreading throughout Europe and they would go into cities and towns and they would conquer the city or town and they would ask everyone, do you want to accept the Roman Catholic faith?

And if you did not, then you would be destroyed.

And so the Waldensians were heavily persecuted because early on, they had the Bible translated in their own language, which was very rare back in this time, this is in the first few centuries.

And they had the Bible in their own language.

So when these Catholic priests came in and they were telling them about their faith, they saw there were some discrepancies.

They said, no, we cannot agree with some of those things.

Well, after a while, the persecution got so intense that the Walled Indians split.

Some of them started, they said, okay, we'll convert.

And so those who said no way were continued, they were tortured, persecuted, they fled to the Alps in Italy.

And they basically carved out a living in the countryside there.

They built houses from the rocks on the mountainside, They built schools, colleges, and this is where they lived, up in the Alps of Northern Italy.

Now, my wife and I had the opportunity a couple years ago to go on this tour of Europe.

It was called the Great Controversy Tour.

And we got to go to all these different sites of the Protestant Reformation.

And by far the coolest was the Alps, where the Waldensians lived.

And so we took this trip there and this is a picture of the college.

Now the Waldensians didn't have this knowledge and take it up into the mountains to keep it to themselves.

They built this little college, and this is a picture of it here, you read about this in the Great Controversy, made from the rocks on the mountains.

And this is where they would go and they would study the Bible and these things so that they could go as missionaries to the rest of the world throughout Europe.

It was basically a little hole in the rock, a huge rock table, and there would have been a Bible there in the center of the table.

And when the Waldensians signed up to be missionaries, they were basically signing their death warrant, because that's how persecuted they were.

And they would sign up to go under what was called a barb.

That was the Waldensian word for uncle and this would be like their mentor that would teach them how to execute missionary work in a successful way.

It was very interesting the way that the Waldensians went about their mission work.

We read about it in the Great Controversy here on page 71.

It says, "...to have made known the object of their mission would have ensured its defeat.

Therefore they carefully concealed their real character.

Every minister possessed a knowledge of some trade or profession, and the missionaries prosecuted their work under cover of a secular calling.

Usually, they chose that of merchant or peddler.

They carried silks, jewelry, and other articles, at that time not easily purchasable, save at distant marts, and they were welcomed as merchants where they would have been spurned as missionaries.

All the while their hearts were uplifted to God for wisdom to present a treasure more precious than gold or gems.

They secretly carried about with them copies of the Bible in whole or in part, and whenever an opportunity was presented they called the attention of their customers to these manuscripts.

Often an interest to read God's Word was thus awakened and some portion was gladly left with those who desired to receive it." Can you imagine if Seventh-day Adventists today went as rare expensive jewelry salesmen to the cities?

We would think that you had lost it, right?

Unsuccessful form of evangelism, that's not what you should be doing.

They found this rare jewelry and they would take it into cities.

Now their clothes, they had this Bible in their own language and so it was very precious to them.

They would stay up late copying these scriptures and they would sew it into different parts of their clothes, like we have pockets here that you can see.

But they would hide it in their clothing so that if they were found, you couldn't find the scriptures in them, you can imagine how long it would take to copy something like that, that would be very precious to you, and so as they're selling this jewelry, then they would look for an opportunity if an interest was aroused in spiritual things, and they would share that scripture with these people they were selling to, and they would take that scripture and they would move on.

Now if they were caught, they were basically killed, so they had to be very careful about this.

And the coolest thing, 1 of the coolest things we saw on the whole trip was this.

This on the left is a little pouch and inside of it you can see is a ring and on the top of the ring is a box.

And the inscription there in the museum in the Waldensian Mountains says it's a ring containing a miniature version of the Book of Psalms on parchment.

That little piece of paper right there is the book of Psalms written out.

It's so small that the ink was, and it was written with a hair follicle, that they dipped in ink and they wrote out a, what does it say, a miniature version of the book of Psalms on that parchment.

And this is the type of thing that they would do.

They would sell this jewelry, and it would have these little pieces of scriptures hidden inside of it.

And so the legend is that this belonged to John Calvin, but it's there in the museum.

And so this is the type of work that the Waldensians were involved in.

Now in the Great Controversy, this is a side note, it says that the Waldensians kept the Sabbath.

If you go to the Waldensian village now, they'll say, no, we never kept the Sabbath.

Waldensians don't keep the Sabbath, we've always kept Sunday.

Until my wife and I were there 2 years ago, the first time an elder, a Waldensian elder, took us around and he said we're just starting to discover that the Waldensians used to keep the Sabbath, validating the great controversy.

And so they're starting to study these things out and see that what Mrs.

White wrote about 100 years ago was true.

And so it's fascinating the way that the Waldensians would take and they would share scripture with people in this secretive manner.

Now we fortunately have some liberties in this country where we don't have to go to those extremes.

I've been a missionary overseas and when I left I didn't think that I was signing up to die and when we share scripture with someone we're not looking around you know behind us is that okay and this is the type of thing that the Waldensians dealt with but today we've been granted some freedoms and we want to take advantage of them.

And there's a passage in Deuteronomy 28 that I want to read.

If you have your Bibles, you can read it there with me.

This is the chapter on the blessings and cursings that Moses spoke to the children of Israel.

And it's fascinating here in Deuteronomy 28 what the Lord says, how He says that He will bless His people.

And it says in Deuteronomy 28 1, And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments, which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God shall set thee on high above all nations of the earth.

And all these blessings shall come on thee and overtake thee if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God." Now he starts listing the blessings.

Bless shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kind, and the flocks of thy sheep.

Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.

Blessed shall thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out." We'll skip down to verse 13.

And the Lord shall make thee the head and not the tail, and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath, if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day to observe and to do them." So God says, I want to make you the head and not the tail.

And so when I think of this passage, I think of a dog sled.

And 1 of my favorite quotes is, the lead changes only, or the view changes only for the lead dog.

You think about all these dogs running in the sled and you got some in the front, all the ones in the back are just looking at the back end of the dog in front of them.

God wants us to be the head and not the tail.

And he's given us a formula found all throughout the spirit of prophecy that will make us the head in this world.

And I want to show you today some specific applications of that formula, how A company in the world has taken this formula and they are being wildly successful with it.

And right now we're trying to catch up when we should be the head.

But before we do, I want to introduce this formula for evangelism in the cities through a video that was put together by the Beehive about urban evangelism that Elder Wilson gave at a talk just a few years ago.

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GYC SE 2013: The Keys to Gotham City

The Keys to Gotham City

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The Keys to Gotham City

55m

The Waldensian Secret

40m

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