GYC 2013: Before Men and Angels

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Most Important Book Outside of the Bible - A Deeper Look at The Great Controversy

Norman McNulty

01-The Most Important Book Outside of the Bible

Brian Hindman

02-Lessons From the Church in the Wilderness and the Reformation

04-Satan’s End-Time Strategies and God’s Safeguard

05-Standing Through the Final Crisis

06-Urgency, Fidelity, and You

03-Adventism’s Prophetic Message in the Great Controversy

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

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

Brian Hyman, he's sitting up here in the front, we are co-presenting this seminar.

We're going to be going through a lot of important material, and I think you're going to find as we go through the seminar, you're going to see just how important this book is to us today.

So let's go ahead and start with a word of prayer and we'll get right into our presentation.

Father in heaven, thank you so much for bringing us here this morning.

I pray for each seminar that's happening right now that your spirit would be poured out.

And I just pray that you will bless us in a special way this morning as we go through this message about the great controversy.

Now I have here in my hand a copy of The Great Controversy.

How many of you have gotten this book from the GYC booth?

And I would encourage all of you to do so.

You will not find that at the ABC for such a good price.

This is an excellent book and as you see from the title of my presentation, which is the title of the seminar, I believe that this is the most important book outside of the Bible.

Now that may not have always been true, obviously, but since this book has been written, for the time that we are living in today, especially for us as Seventh-day Adventists, and I believe that even for people who are not Seventh-day Adventists, outside of the Bible, this book is the most important book outside of the Bible for people living in the world today.

This is a picture, as you can see, of the great controversy, the standard edition, 1911.

It started with the 1858 vision when Ellen White put it into writing and it went through various forms of finally the 1888 edition and then finally the last revised edition, 1911, which is interesting to me.

There's people out there today that say, oh the 1888 version is better or more pure than the 1911 version.

I'm like, don't you realize that Ellen White personally oversaw the revision?

So anyway, this is the current edition that we have the LM Y oversaw 4 years before her death And I'm going to start off with a personal testimony When I was in the third grade and then I think you were in the same class with me I have a classmate way back from third grade here this morning and so time goes by but Way back.

No, it's not but back in third grade my third grade teacher issued a challenge to those of us in the class to read as many books as we could.

And I was 9 years old at the time, and so the book that I picked to start reading was the book Patriarchs and Prophets, which is the first in the series of the conflict of the ages.

And that started a lifelong journey for me since then of reading The Spirit of Prophecy.

And by the time I was 11 years old, I finally got to, it took me a while, I mean now I think I could read faster, but it took me 2 years to get through the whole series.

And finally when I was in the fifth grade I got through the book The Great Controversy and 1 of the things that I have found personally is that when you read her writings for yourself you're going to find that God's truth is found in her writings.

And as I went through school all the way on up, so many times you would hear classmates who would criticize Ellen White.

They would say, oh, Ellen White says this or Ellen White says that and I don't really believe in her.

But ironically, many of them had never read her writings.

And what I found for me is that Because I had read her writings from a very early age, I knew that what they were saying was not true.

So if you're going to make an attack against something, you need to at least know that what you're attacking, you've actually read and you can speak, not just based on what someone else has said but based on your own personal experience.

And so I'm thankful to my parents as well.

They encouraged me to continue with reading her writings.

Every time we would go to ABC my dad would buy me a new book that I hadn't yet read by Ellen White.

And so I've read through these books throughout my life.

I've probably read through The Great Controversy, oh, 6 or 7 times now.

And it's very powerful, and it's very poignant.

And you see that the messages in the book, it talks about the past, the present, and the future, and there are applications all the way through for the time that we are living in now.

So, if you've never read the book, Now is the time.

Go to the GYC booth in the exhibit hall, $3.50.

Outside of if you could get a Bible for the same cost, outside of that, that's the best investment you can make with $3.50.

So if you haven't read the book, now's the time to start reading it.

So that's just a personal encouragement, a personal testimony for what we're talking about.

And of course, because this whole theme for GYC is about the Great Controversy, before Men and Angels, The organizers of GYC wanted Brian and I to do a seminar or a presentation on the book, The Great Controversy itself, because we can talk about The Great Controversy and we're going to look at passages of scripture that also talk about the Great Controversy, but if you want the best summarized high yield version of the Great Controversy, read the book.

White is the author of the book The Great Controversy.

And I thought that as we start our presentation on this book that it would be helpful to hear from her in her own words the importance of this book.

Because see, here's another thing that I've seen.

How many of you have heard people say, well, The Great Controversy is a great book if you're sharing it with fellow Adventists, but don't give it to non-Adventists.

And be careful to not share it from up front or you name it or whatever.

You know, what's interesting is that they usually don't have backup from the Bible or the writings of Ellen White to make those assertions.

And I felt that it would be useful to hear what Ellen White herself has to say about the usefulness of the book, The Great Controversy.

And What did she think about this book that she wrote herself?

And this quote is from letter 281-1905, it's in your program booklet, and actually Jeff Marshall, the vice president for evangelism, read this quote up front last night.

The great controversy should be very widely circulated.

So, very widely circulated, that's pretty important.

And then she says, it contains the story of the past, the present, and the future.

In its outline of the closing scenes of this earth's history, it bears a powerful testimony in behalf of the truth.

So it has an outline of the closing scenes of this Earth's history.

I am more anxious to see a wide circulation for this book than for any others I have written.

For in the great controversy, the last message of warning to the world is given more distinctly than in any of my other books." Ellen White says that she was more anxious to see a wide circulation.

Sometimes we say, well, let's do Steps to Christ or Desire of Ages or Christ Object Lessons, and those are great books and we should give them a wide circulation.

But the servant of the Lord who wrote this book and all the others I just mentioned said that she was more anxious to see a wide circulation for this book than for any others that she had written.

Because in this book, it contains the last message of wanting to the world that is more distinct than in any of her other books.

Now we're going to go through several other statements.

But this tells us that if Ellen White thought that this book should be very widely circulated, just as a starting point, Is she wanting this to just be circulated to Seventh-day Adventists?

She wants this book to be circulated to non-believers.

To get it into the hands of as many people as possible.

Now I would dare say that many of you in this room know of at least or have heard of a story of at least someone who has joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church because they read The Great Controversy.

Now you might hear a story here and there of someone who has joined the Adventist Church because someone gave them a steps to Christ or someone gave them a desire of ages, and that's very possible and those are great books.

But by and large, most of the stories that I hear of people who picked up a copy of a book by Ellen White and they read their way into the Seventh-day Adventist Church, it's because they read the book The Great Controversy.

And so what I want to say to you today is we need to stop being ashamed or scared of her writings or of her books.

Because these books bring people into the truth and it contains a very distinct warning for God's people living in the last days.

Now here's another statement, this is Cole Porter ministry page 123, this whole chapter is very good and this is what Ellen White says and she has a few other books mentioned here as well, she says, in the desire of ages, patriarchs and prophets, the great controversy and in Daniel and the Revelation, which that's by Uriah Smith, there is precious instruction.

These books must be regarded as of special importance, and what does she say here?

Every effort should be made to get them before the people.

So this is also showing us just how important these books are, that every effort should be made to get these books before the people.

So that means we shouldn't be hiding them, so to speak, and not acknowledging that the books exist.

No, we need to get these books before the people.

Series

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Most Important Book Outside of the Bible - A Deeper Look at The Great Controversy

01-The Most Important Book Outside of the Bible

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

You are Needed!

3. How To Share the Adventist Message in 30 Minutes

1h 9m

GYC 2012 Seminar: The Calling - Living and Knowing God's Will For Me

Detours and Redemption

52m

The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Sabbath School

The Life of Sabbath School

58m

How to Interpret Scripture

How to Interpret Scripture: Does the Bible Really Reveal the Future? Prophecy and the New World Order

1h 2m

Making Sons of Hell? The Don’ts and Do’s of Soul Winning

Addressing Objections and Answering Difficult Bible Questions

1h 2m

GYC 2012 Evening Devotional

The Highest Honor

48m

Biblical Leadership

Biblical Leadership Part 1

1h

Bob Folkenberg, Jr. - Evangeliving: The Great Commission in Action

God’s Marine Corps and You

1h

GYC 2013 Seminar: Making Friends for Eternity

04-Making Friends for Eternity, Part 1

1h

Till I Die: A Study on the Commonality of Tears, Blood, and Sweat

Burn the Boats: Challenges to Commitment

1h 11m

Christ In Me = GYC

2. God’s Righteousness or Yours?

1h

The Great Controversies: Relativism's Beauty and Fundamentalism's Beast

On What Basis: The Beginning of Controversy

1h

Sound Doctrine