GYC 2013: Before Men and Angels

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2013 Seminar: Planet in Distress

Scott Christiansen

01-In The Beginning

This message was presented at the DYC 2013 conference, Before Man and Angels, in Orlando, Florida.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.dycweb.org.

Dear Father in Heaven, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here, to be among people that are on fire for you, to be encouraged.

Lord, I ask that you would settle your spirit on this conference as a whole, but I also ask, Lord, that you would settle your spirit upon this room, that I may speak words that honor and glorify you.

Lord, and I ask that you would open minds to hear the message that you want them to hear.

Lord, thank you so much for this awesome experience.

I've been a missionary, I've been an adjra director in Mongolia and in China, worked among the Navajo.

Grew up in Loma Linda and that was a long time ago when I grew up somewhere along the line a teacher a Sabbath school lesson I don't know where but Somewhere along the line came this idea that sin affected the planet, the actual physical earth.

Now I don't know if that was from Romans 8.22, I don't know if it was from some of the writings of Ellen White, I don't know if it was another scripture, there are a number of possibilities, But somewhere along the line the seed was planted that sin affects the actual planet.

And that this has something to do in the mind of a kid, remember, this had something to do with the end times.

I couldn't get that when I was growing up because Loma Linda, it's ringed by these mountains up to 11, 000 feet, Mount San Gregorio, orange trees everywhere, seasonal streams.

How could sin affect these fields and these orange trees?

My earliest memory is of, well, 1 of my earliest memories, is of my mother screaming and her hands flying up.

We were in our living room, her hands flew up to her face, and she was ironing, she screamed, her hands flew up, the iron fell off the ironing board, and it landed face down on our very modest carpet and there's this smoke rising and that was my mother hearing the news that President Kennedy had been shot and I was 3 years old or about 3 years old.

I knew that it was a very bad person that did that.

And growing up, getting a little older, I remember my parents reacting to the body counts coming out of Vietnam.

Just their heads in their hands, you know, oh.

I knew sin caused death, but this idea that sin could affect the world, you know, it's too big, it's too beautiful, I don't get that.

Grew up, got married, eventually got out of the gravitational field of Loma Linda, and ended up working among the Navajo Indians in New Mexico.

My first cross-cultural experience, It was 60 miles to the post office.

It was a long ways out on the Navajo reservation.

And I got to be friends with some of the Navajo Indians, talking to some of them, and especially some of the older Navajo.

I really enjoyed talking to them, to the extent I could with the limited, you know, with the language barrier.

But 1 of the most fascinating conversations I had, and I began talking on this topic to more and more older Navajos, was their perception that the world was changing.

The peach trees that our great grandparents planted shriveled up and died when we were kids.

And we tried to plant more and they wouldn't grow anymore.

You know, the whole Navajo reservation is changing, it's becoming badlands.

The little gardens that we had when we were young, during the course of our lifetime, they just stopped growing.

Now we are entirely dependent on our monthly check from the government.

And they said, well it means it's the end of the world.

This is the Navajo understanding of what's going on.

Well I talked to some younger Navajo And I wanted to pursue this subject.

So there is a spiritual impact in the Navajo understanding between the decline of the world and the end of the world.

And the younger Navajo who were Seventh-day Adventists said, oh, absolutely.

But we don't believe it the way our grandparents do.

We believe that sin affects the world, but that it is the end of the world as Christians understand it.

There's a definite spiritual connection here and we see it happening right now.

And I'm scratching my head and going, okay, we see something here.

From there, from Levita Mission, we took a hop, a skip, and a jump, and we ended up in Mongolia.

The first church workers to enter Mongolia as adjutant director.

And I could spend the whole session talking about how the Lord worked in Mongolia, but I won't, mercifully.

Except to say that in Mongolia, I saw huge changes in the natural environment.

The Gobi Desert was marching forward, is marching forward, marching north at between 15 and 20 kilometers a year.

Especially you say, so what, in Mongolia where there's just a few million people in this large country and they're nomads you think nomads they can move so the deserts advancing so what?

Except that in Mongolia these people are nomads yes but they go to the same place every year.

They have to live about 20 miles apart because their herds, their animals, that's all they've got.

They eat the meat, they drink the milk, they use the fiber, they burn the fuel, they dung.

They live off their animals and there's so little grass in Mongolia that those animals need a huge area to graze over.

If they don't have that area, these people don't live.

So what happens in Mongolia when the desert marches north is that people who have always gone to the same place, families who have gone to the same place for hundreds of years, they'll spend 3 months here, 6 months here during the winter, 3 months here, they'll move to 3, sometimes 4 places a year.

When the desert marches north, they have to move to some place they haven't been.

And even though the population is thin, all the places are taken.

So suddenly they're 10 miles from their neighbor.

Well, in the middle of the night, gasoline gets poured on their felt tent called a ger.

People are forced to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and go to the city, you saw social stress, you saw conflict, you saw fighting, you saw death, because people were forced to move.

And so I'm looking at this and I'm going, okay, Mongolia really is changing, it's measurable, and we're seeing conflict and we're seeing hunger, we're seeing strife.

In Mongolia, while I was there towards the end of our time there, we left in 1999, snowstorms started to come.

Well I'm from Maine, you're from North Dakota, snowstorms, so what?

You know, if it's less than 10 inches, we just keep driving in it, and you just ignore it up in Maine.

In Mongolia, they get a significant snowstorm maybe once every 10 years.

Now, Mongolia is the coldest capital city in the world.

While we were there, we saw 45 degrees below 0.

And whether you do that in Fahrenheit or Celsius, it doesn't matter because that's where the scales meet, is 44 below.

But in Mongolia, remember, all of these nomads out there, a couple million of them, living off their animals, what happens is when they get a snowstorm, The animals have to paw at the ground, move the snow, and then if they find any grass, they eat that.

But what happens is it's a negative caloric effort.

02-The Consequence of Sin

Well, I don't want to start early because in the last, how many of you were here for the last session?

You know, I sat down and I calculated, we got 22 different seminars running 6 sessions each and so everybody can go to 1 session of 1 seminar, or 1 session of approximately 1 fourth of the seminars.

But anyway, last time, I usually give this seminar in a weekend.

And I'm talking for 5 hours in a weekend, in 3 sessions, and I'm used to really packing it in.

So I really flew through the last seminar and found out that I had 20 minutes to kill.

So I'm not gonna start early because I don't want to do that again.

But I'm interested in who came the farthest.

All right, I see you're shy, but you still raise your hand anyway.

Did anyone else come from outside the US?

Oh, this, I wish you were here for the first session, but this is, you have seen your country changing.

The climate and everything else and more farmland.

You get more farmland now than you had 50 years ago.

And your, your, your, your, Oh, I can come up with icebergs, but that's not it.

Your glaciers, your glaciers are going away.

Well actually, Iceland isn't, well, Iceland isn't that far from Maine, But I think Angola you still got him beat.

When I left home yesterday to try and get here, and oh my goodness, was that an adventure, trying flying on New Year's Day.

When I left here yesterday at home, it was, I believe it was 14 degrees below 0 in Maine.

You, except maybe, maybe those people out in Brawley.

People know where Palm Springs is, they don't know where Brawley is, but it's like 20 miles from you and it's horrible, right?

Well, some other people may come, may trickle in, but let's go ahead and start, and Let's start with prayer.

Dear Father in heaven, thank you so much, Lord, for this spiritual feast.

I thank you, Lord, for surrounding me with young people that are on fire, that have energy, that have vision.

Lord, I ask that you would work through this small, little modest seminar to feed those who you want to hear these words.

Lord, I ask that you would anoint my lips that I may speak what you want me to speak.

And I ask that you would have your spirit descend upon this room that you may be present and that your work may be done.

I pray for the other speakers that these blessings will be extended to them and those who are listening that your name may be lifted up and that you may be glorified.

And for those of you who were at the last session, those few of you, I apologize.

I'm gonna go through some little introduction that I went through last time.

When I was young, when I was a boy, I lived in Loma Linda, and going to Loma Linda Elementary, somewhere along the line I picked up this idea that sin affects the world, the actual physical world, and that the earth is suffering because of sin.

Now that could have come from Romans 8 22, that could have come from elsewhere in Ellen White's writings, that could have come from Isaiah, the earth will grow old like a garment.

Could have come from a teacher who was giving me this information without a specific text attached to it, or as a result of all of the texts put together that touch on this.

And I had this idea that sin affected the world.

And it's not like I thought about it every day, but it's like, how could that happen?

Because Loma Linda is ringed by these massive mountains, Mount San Gregorio, 11, 000 feet.

And all sorts of palm trees, a great place to spend Christmas, I'll tell you that much, better than Maine.

But, and I grew up, large orange groves, they're all houses now, but large orange groves that I used to play in, fields, agricultural fields that I used to run around in, all of this nature, birds and bees and spiders and gophers and snakes and coyotes and all of that, and it was all right there.

And we used to go down to the ocean and at the ocean I could stand there and I could see all the way out to Catalina Island 20 miles so I knew the ocean was huge I had no idea how big the ocean really was at that point in time but how could sin affect the mountains How could sin affect the orange groves?

This thought stayed way in the back of my mind until I grew up and escaped the gravitational pull of Loma Linda, and achieved escape velocity.

And we went to La Vida Mission in New Mexico, the Navajo self-supporting ministry to the Navajo.

Fantastic little place and I was there for 2 years and I got to know some of the old Navajo.

It's very difficult with the language barrier talking to some of the older Navajo But but I would try and they would try and we'd sometimes get a younger Navajo who would help And I talked to him about a number of things and in some conversation somewhere this idea came up.

I asked them about the changing world because they mentioned it and I kind of pursued that topic and the old Navajo told me yes the world is changing.

The peach trees that were the prized possession of our grandparents that they planted, the peach trees died when we were kids and we tried replanting them.

The peach trees that grew for our grandparents don't grow for us.

Not only that, but the gardens that we planted when we were kids every year with our parents and the gardens that we tried to keep planting as we grew up.

Even if we use water, even if we go 20 miles and get a barrel of water and water, the gardens don't grow anymore.

The Navajo Nation is turning into badlands.

The world is changing." And I said, well, what does that mean?

And they said, it means the end of the world.

This is 1 of the key signs in Navajo understanding that the world is ending.

03-More Consequences: Conflict, Disease, Famine

Dear Father in Heaven, thank you so much Lord, just for the thrill of being here, for the fascinating and wonderful people that we meet, for the conversations we have, for this rich, rich spiritual blessing.

Lord, I ask that you would make your presence manifest, not just in this presentation, but in all the others, that these sheep may be fed, Lord, and we may be all drawn closer to you.

For me, Lord, I ask that you would anoint my lips, that I may speak the words that you desire, and that your will may be done, in Jesus' name, amen.

So as I say, this is a new perspective, and It's necessary, if just launching in, those of you who have not been to other sessions, would probably be, you might get lost, might be disoriented because, because we'd be jumping into the middle of the river.

So I'm going to back up just a little bit, cover some material that I've covered in previous sessions, and then we'll get into new material, all about the great controversy.

Everything that happens on earth is affected or happens within the context of the great controversy.

Can anybody think of anything that happens on earth in any sphere?

Economic, social, natural, environmental, that is not affected by the great controversy?

If someone threw something back at me and said the amount of solar radiation that is input into the earth, you know, the amount of sunlight that we're getting from the sun, I'd have a hard time responding to that.

But everything else that I am aware of, every other natural process, certainly every social and economic process, happens within the context of the Great Controversy and is affected by it.

And all of these things have a role in the end times.

But most of us aren't aware of the fact that we're in the middle of a pitched battle.

When centuries go to sleep in the army, at least way back when, back in the Civil War, if you went to sleep on duty, you were shot.

And I think it speaks tremendous volumes to the character of our Savior, that we, this really ragtag pitiful army that He has, can be asleep, and yet He loves us, forgives us, and offers us salvation.

So, this battle is raging around us, and we don't see the battle, and we in particular don't see the real-time fulfillment of prophecy, the prophecy that we're seeing right now.

And that's what this seminar is looking at, the fulfillment of prophecy and the things that are on the horizon and the drivers behind that prophecy.

We're going to be talking about the effect of sin on the planet, on the physical world, on the natural processes of the world, on our atmospheric system, on our food production system, on our freshwater system.

And it sounds like it's an environmental presentation, and in a sense it is, but in a real sense it's not.

Because our modern society, our industrial processes, our economy, all of these things are built on these natural systems that are in steep decline because of the accumulated effects of sin.

And what we see, well I'll get ahead of myself, I'll take you through that.

So we see instability in the physical world through sin causes instability in man's society.

We see, as we get instability in society, we see increasing conflict, we see increasing disease, we see increasing natural disasters, all of which aligns perfectly with Christ's description of what will happen before he comes.

He told us in Matthew 24, 6-8, he told us in the parallel chapters in Mark and Luke.

In fact, in my next seminar at 3.15, I think, I'll be talking about the tremendous detail that he went into and how we were supposed to be watching.

So, instability in man's society causes conflict which results in disease and pestilence and famine.

This is a self-reinforcing downward spiral.

We don't see more and more and more of it here in the United States yet, and unfortunately we don't keep a close eye, most people in the US don't keep a close eye on the rest of the world.

But we see this in abundance elsewhere in the world.

And if you have an interest in looking at this more deeply, I covered this to a significant degree in session number 2, and it's going to be on audio-verse.

So, within the Great Controversy, we can see original sin, we can connect the dots to what's going on in the world now, and We can connect the dots to what's going on in the world now, and we can connect the dots to Christ's prophecy, all within the context of this enormous, amazing battle between Christ and Satan that frames everything we do and everything that happens.

Finally, and this is the point I return to time and time again, you know, this is the generation that can see prophecy being fulfilled in real time and can chart it and can graph it, something no other generation before us has been able to do.

We can chart and graph the fulfillment of prophecy, and in response to that, we're asleep.

It's not an excuse by any stretch of the imagination, but Christ said we would be, and he said we needed to wake up.

So, we can see what's going on in the world.

We don't have an appropriate sense of urgency, we don't have an appropriate allocation of our resources, whether they're financial, whether they're our time, whether it's our reputation that we put on line by inviting someone to church.

We are not putting ourselves into this battle and don't have the sense of urgency that goes along with it.

Matthew 24, 6-8, this is our anchor text, and you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, see that you are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

For nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.

All these are the beginning of sorrows." I take that text apart piece by piece, and it's very interesting, in session 5, and I touch on it heavily in session 4, the session that follows this.

So during Creation Week, and we're still in the review phase, catching people up, during Creation Week, systems, you know, things were created, all the elephant, you know, and the giraffe and the fish and the birds.

But more than that, systems were created.

And I went into this heavily in session 1.

Our atmospheric system, well, of course, our physics and God's natural laws, but our atmospheric system, ocean, thermal distribution, climate system, freshwater system, food production system, soil and its subsystems.

But these 5 in the middle that are bookended by physics and human civilization, these 5 systems, each and every 1 of them are in steep and accelerating decline.

These are the systems God created to sustain life on earth.

And when Satan, when we sinned, Satan gained dominion over the world and came between creation and Creator.

The results of being separated from God is death.

And it's not just the animals, it's not just the leaves, it's not just the flowers.

Even these astonishing, massive systems that God created are dying, because every piece of them is dying.

Things are becoming less and less and less stable.

And this is the world we live in, and the foundation of our economy and our society, and it's crumbling away.

As we get more stress, we get more conflict, we get more disease, not just from mental stress, but stress on society.

People's conditions become more and more and more deteriorated, and we see the literal fulfillment of Matthew 24, 6 through 8.

The thing, though, on this slide, All of this is going on right now in real time and we're not really noticing it here in the US.

There are 3.5 billion people who live on $2 a day or less and who don't, cannot buffer themselves from price increases, cannot buffer themselves from economic predators, cannot buffer themselves from conflict.

3.5 billion, That's 3, 500 millions, 3.5 billion that are imperiled.

But are we doing everything we can to pray for, because the prayers of a righteous man and woman availeth much, are we doing everything we can to pray for and to witness to these people?

Or are we remaining in our North American comfort?

So, the logic chain here is Satan is in rebellion, rebellion is sin, sin is separation from God, separation from God is death, and everything on earth that God created is subject to death.

In earlier sessions I went into Spirit of Prophecy and Scripture in great detail.

We're just giving you a thin foundation here.

If you'd like to go into this more deeply, they've asked me to push my book.

It's in the exhibition hall at the Adventist Book Center display, they got a lot of them.

You've all played with a child's top, spun it, and watched it.

If you manage to do it right, which I only do a little bit at a time, you know it just spun so perfectly, and it's so smooth, and it's like it's just drifting and gliding there.

You know that after a while it begins to wobble, and then it wobbles more and more and more, and then it crashes.

The earth itself, the systems that God created, have begun to wobble.

And this frames not the prophecies in Revelation.

I want to be very distinct and clear in this.

The prophecies in Revelation where God intervenes and reaches in and pours out the bowls and is a direct intervention in human society and human affairs, that's different.

But before the close of probation, where it has to be proven that Satan's system is bunk and results in death, it happens not just to humans but to the world itself.

This is a huge part of the great controversy.

And until we could begin to see the earth change within the span of 1 generation, until that happened, we didn't see this.

And even when we did begin to see it, it took a long time to connect it to prophecy.

We're just beginning to do that, and this whole concept, and my book, and everything else is very new.

Oh, no, wait, we're still in backup, sorry.

The last session I entirely devoted to global food production, which seems like, well, wait, food production and scripture and prophecy, where are you going with this?

But this is 1 of the systems that God created.

Series

GYC 2013 Seminar: Planet in Distress

04-When Did We Stop Watching?

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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GYC 2012 Plenary Sessions

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GYC 2011 Plenary Sessions

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GYC 2010 Plenary Sessions

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GYC 2013 Seminar: The Neophyte and the Great Controversy

04-The Neophyte and The Great Controversy, Part 4

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