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General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Gerard Damsteegt: Spring 2013 Week of Prayer

P. Gerard Damsteegt

Revival of True Heart Religion

I'm glad to share something with the area from where I come, and that is the snow.

And so I saw this beautiful display here that you can see behind the screen about spring flowers.

They have been talking about spring flowers and how beautiful they are.

And now covered with a mantle of snow, reflecting upon us Christ's righteousness.

And yet In a few days, everything will be changed.

And I hope that the change that you will see in the next couple of days may be a change in your own life.

Because ultimately, that is what counts, right?

Lord, may the words of my mouth and meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.

When I got this invitation, and I heard that the theme was specifically revival and the Christian life, it challenged me because here in the headquarters, this theme has been resounding for nearly 3 years.

And I don't want to repeat what others have said.

Anyway, I talked to the Lord about it, and I made an outline.

That He changed this and He changed this.

And what I share now with you is the latest, what I got from the Lord.

I want to speak specifically of the revival of true heart because if your theme is revival and the Christian life, It's not revival and what the General Conference has to do, or Andrews University, or the unions and the divisions.

And unless that revival takes place, all the other things are simply cosmetic changes.

And so therefore the Lord impressed me to talk about true heart religion, and specifically here, the revival under Samuel.

And if you have your Bibles with you, and I expect here everybody has a Bible or an iPad or your iPhone with the scriptures.

If you look then in the story of Samuel, here in 1 Samuel 7, verse 2 through 13, And in this presentation, you will hear less my words and more the words of scriptures and a pen of inspiration.

We need to hear the words of inspired sources.

And so here then, it says in verse 2 of chapter 7 of 1 Samuel, so it was that the ark remained in Kiriathirim a long time.

It was at 20 years and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord.

The background information you find in 1st Samuel chapter 6, verse 13 to 20.

Remember that the people had the audacity to take the sacred Ark on a warpath.

And the protection of the Lord disappeared and they lost their Ark.

And now, after pleading with the Lord and whatever, finally, the ark came back.

And there, in verse 13 of chapter 6, now the people of Beth Shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley.

And they lifted their eyes up and saw the ark and rejoiced to see it.

Immediately they rejoiced and then they cut the ark, not the ark, but the cart in pieces and started to offer.

And then the the Levites took care of the ark and then it continues.

And my this was the greatest day of the life.

Then God struck the man of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord.

In fact it says here, the Lord had struck the people with a great slaughter.

We rejoice, we praise your name, and you kill us off.

He came back from the Philistine, the evil people, and now you're killing us?

And so they called another community and they took the Ark and there it stayed for 20 years, not in Shiloh, the center of religious activity, no.

And the people lamented and lamented and lamented.

Now what was now the solution to this crisis?

And so here we reflect upon God's choice of leadership.

Now let's first see what Samuel did as a leader.

Verse 3 of chapter 7, and Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel saying, if you return to the Lord with all your hearts, Then put away the foreign gods and prepare your hearts for the Lord and serve him only.

And he will deliver you from the hands of the Philistines.

Here it is, calling to a heart surrender.

Put away the idols, and I will clean your heart.

Then, verse 4, the children of Israel put away the bales and the ashtoreths and served the Lord only.

And that was not, that was a promise, a commitment.

So Samuel said, okay, gather everybody here together, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, everyone.

They came there together, and then they declared a day of fasting in verse 6.

They fasted the day and said, we have sinned against the Lord.

What was the sin that caused this great slaughter?

They did not have the right to look in the ark.

And yet they did, in their enthusiasm, because the Lord, and why not look in the ark?

Because maybe the Philistines had defiled it.

Yet everyone who had the audacity to touch the sacredness of God was lauded.

No matter what you like to celebrate, no matter what is the celebration that we do in harmony with the word of God or not, That is the key.

And so the children of Israel in verse 8 said to Samuel, the leader, do not cease to cry out to the Lord, our God for us, that he may save us from the hands of the enemy.

And he, the leadership of the church at that time, they cried out to the Lord for Israel.

And how did the Lord take care of all the problems and the enemies?

Here it is in verse 10, the Lord thundered with a loud thunder upon the enemy and the enemy disappeared.

What would happen to the church if we would cry together in the face of all the insurmountable problems?

And we have problems and they are big but what would happen would the Lord not take care of them?

Oh yes there's no doubt about it And therefore every day on my prayer list, I call upon the Lord to solve those.

I have no answer, friends, absolutely not.

But I know that when I cried, the Lord will answer me.

And I hope that the leadership of the church, whether it is general conference, divisions, conferences, unions, schools, that they cry out to the Lord.

Revival of Primitive Godliness

And in meditation we accept in your sight, O Lord, our Savior and Redeemer.

Today I focus on a topic that again is close to our heart in the theme of revival in the Christian life.

Many times we speak about a revival of what?

However, there are not too many times when we focus on primitive godliness, what is primitive godliness?

And so I have done some reflection and some studying and some praying.

And it's absolutely fascinating because in our near future, we will see the greatest revival of what?

Primitive godliness since apostolic times.

The scriptures focus on the final revival in the book of Revelation.

After all the calamities that have come because of the wickedness of planet earth, we find that in Revelation chapter 18 verse 1, and after these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illuminated with his glory." Not in a corner, here and there.

No, the Holy Spirit power then illuminates every section of this earth.

He cries with a mightily, with a loud voice.

And that is only when there is an output of the Holy Spirit, but this is a cry, the last cry by Jesus to a planet that is nearly finished in its course in history.

It is Babylon the greatest falleness fallen and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison of every foul spirit, a cage for every unclean and hateful bird.

And then it shows the fornication of the woman Babylon with the kings of the earth and as a result this planet is doomed.

But God has children in Babylon, keep it in mind.

And God says, come out of her my people, lest you share in her sins, or lest you receive of her plagues.

So God's Spirit moves God's people and unless they accept his message they perish.

Her sin have reached to heaven and God has remembered her iniquities.

You know friends, will you be a part of that final movement?

Are you looking forward to the time to obtain the greatest, most powerful blessings.

Yes, but today I say don't look forward, but look backward to obtain it.

The pen of inspiration has given this insight, light from the spirit of prophecy.

Before the final visitation of God's judgment upon the earth, there will be among the people of the Lord such a revival of what?

Primitive godliness as has not been witnessed since apostolic time.

The Spirit and power of God will be poured out upon his children.

In other passages, he says, hey, it will come upon us, and some of us will think that this is fanaticism.

Can you imagine God's power to be interpreted in the opposite way?

They thought they are okay, like the Pharisees, but it was just the opposite.

What they should applaud it and raise their hands to heaven for this phenomena, they say it is fanaticism.

So what is a revival of primitive godliness?

Third world, But not here, absolutely not.

A definition, and there are many definitions, and I looked yesterday, and you know, archaic.

Now basic passes, earliest and earlier, you know, that is okay, elementary, old, primal, primordial, undeveloped, undeveloped.

No, this is not something that we look forward to.

We rather like to talk about the revival of true godliness.

It focused specifically on the changes that need place in the interior, in the heart, and that's important.

Now we look more in the outward manifestation.

It is the what comes in and goes out, the primitive dimension of our faith.

And in a climate, in a target audience that is highly sophisticated, highly educated, and if you have a doctorate, you qualify more for positions like here than if you don't have it.

If you have special problems in the church, you want to have the specialist address this.

The ones who know the Old Testament, the 1 who know the New Testament, the 1 who know the theology.

You help, But the spotlight is on those who know.

And yet in spite of the tremendous knowledge that we have, in spite of what we look at it, you take then the scholarly community and on certain issues they are diametrically opposed.

The same issue, the same hermeneutical principles, and yet 180 degrees difference.

Maybe we need to look and listen to the common people.

And so this is something that I have been reflecting upon, and I am preaching just as much to myself as to others.

Because in this final revival, the spirit of prophecy mentioned, that are not so much the people who are trained in literary institutions, but they are common people from all walks of life that have no inhibition.

They are not worried what their peers will say, because they don't have peers.

Like many of the early pioneers, like the fishermen, None of the Sanhedrin people wanted to offer Jesus, and the 1 who wanted to get some information did it by night.

Friends, we have to lose our inhibitions and focus on what is primitive godliness.

And so those terms that we have defined, many look at that word as having a negative connotation.

But that is not always so if you are reading Church history and talked about primitive Christianity and primitive, that is the primitive church.

It is the church of the New Testament in its earliest beginnings.

And we know what happened to the church over time.

Paul already warns us about the mystery of iniquity, the men of sin, and all those things.

And he sets himself up in the temple of God, all those things the early church expected in the future.

There's the Antichrist coming in the future.

Let us pray that the Roman Empire will still exist and continue even if we are persecuted because after the fall of the Roman Empire, things get worse.

Now we look backward and we see what happened when the church fell and departed from its primitive godliness.

In fact, the whole Protestant Reformation is a quest to go back to the early church.

And then when the Protestant Reformation detoured, again movements arose to go back, back, back to the early church.

And so, it was in the time of William Miller, 18th century.

In the 19th century, it was clearly seen that Protestant Christianity had departed and there were people who dared to say let us go back, back to the Bible, not to the theologies of the scholars.

We don't need to hear from the pulpit the Greek and the Hebrew and the Latin.

Revival and the Present Truth

Lord, again, I ask you to pour your Spirit upon me, so that the words that I speak, the thoughts that I harbor, have you endorsement, O Savior of ours.

The present truth is extremely important.

We as Adventists have been called to share the present truth in the final moments of earth history.

And it is this truth, not an ancient truth, not a future truth, but a present truth that is so important.

And do we live the life in the shining light of Christ's righteousness revealed in the present truth.

I want to focus this morning specifically on 1 of the most splendid revivals that ever happened in the Old Testament.

It was at the sunset glory of ancient Israel, just before the Babylonian captivity and the punishment there, that here was a young child, Josiah.

And we focus specifically on 2 Chronicles 34 and 35, if you have your Bibles, and let us study this amazing story that is frequently overlooked, and yet it is so relevant for us as remnant.

Here it is, chapter 34 of 2nd Chronicles.

Josiah was 8 years old when he became king and he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem.

And then a summary of his accomplishment.

And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord and walked in the ways of his father, David.

And he did not turn his sight to the right hand or to the left, straight.

You know, very interesting, because his father was really not David.

His father was Amnon, but David was the glory, the example.

And so therefore, all the kings, when they walked in the ways of the Lord, at least they would walk in the ways of David.

If you go to the previous chapter, Chronicles chapter, 2 Chronicles chapter 33, We see here his father.

Now he was a son of Hezekiah, another revivalist, but here is the son.

He did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel.

And then in verse 6, he caused his sons to pass through the fire.

He practiced soothsaying, witchcraft, sorcery.

And then verse 9, Manasseh seduced Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do what?

Incredible God's people with all the light.

And he was 22 years old when he became king and he reigned 2 years, only 2 years.

He did evil in the sight of the Lord and then He didn't humble like Manasseh did at the end of his life, but Ammon transgressed more and more.

Now what poorer backgrounds you could have.

And yet, there were some of God-fearing people there that had an impact on Josiah.

And so here then as a result of that influence, and the guy was only how old when he started?

And then he had the conversion experience.

Actually, he had a conversion experience in the eighth year of his reign.

That was at a time when he was 16 years old.

And then here in chapter 34, verse 3, for in the age year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father, David.

And then a few years after that, what happened then?

He began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places.

It is marvelous that in a few years time, there was a tremendous change here.

16 years when he was 20 years, What did he do only after 4 years of meeting the Lord?

There it says here in verse 3, in the 12th year, he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places.

He didn't leave only pieces, but he pulverized everything and he spread it over what?

Over the graves who had sacrificed to them.

And then he started to dig in the ground to find the bones of the leaders who were leading out in this and he completely destroyed them And then he went over and over again through the country, not only there, but what does it say here?

Because Judah is only Judah and Benjamin in a small part.

And so he did in the cities, verse 6, of Manasseh and Ephraim and all of the things.

So he went through the former territories of the 10 tribes.

He went and went and went for how many years?

I tell you, for again, 6 years, he traveled digging up things and destroying.

And after this purification process, I mean that is really a reformation right?

Then in verse 8, And in the 18th year of his reign, when he had purged the land and the temple, he called people together and the house of the Lord needed to be repaired.

And He gave instruction in verse 10 to repair and restore it.

The book of the law of the Lord that's given to Moses.

There you have the Ark, the 10 Commandments, and it was not so that the people didn't know the 10 Commandments, but the book of the law, what was it?

It was a document explaining how to apply the 10 Commandments in every detail, in personal relationships, family relationships, employee-employer relationships, all of this, kingdom, all those things were specified.

You know, you can, for example, compare it in a way with the remnant church.

Remnant church, what does the remnant church have?

Satan's angry, not only because we have the 10 commandments, because many churches proclaim we have the 10 commandments.

No, we have also an explanation of how to apply those 10 commandments and deeper insight, Just like Jesus explained in the Sermon on the Mount, the little details.

If you don't like a person, hey, you know, you really have already murdered him.

If you look around and you see something attractive in the other sex, hey, adultery.

And so here then, God's remnant church have not only the 10 Commandments but the testimonies about the 10 Commandments.

In great detail how we live out, and we call it the testimony of Jesus, which is the spirit of prophecy.

So that is, you know, make it contemporary.

So that was Josiah's experience, and maybe you can also see, are we in our own experience repeating the life of Josiah?

And so here then you get a revival under Josiah.

The discovery of the sacred inspired writings and then the inspired counsels is being shared by the scribe to Josiah.

And 19, does it happen when the king heard these words of the law he tore his clothes?

Oh yeah, the 10 Commandments he knew, but how to apply it?

And then he looked around and he saw great apostasy wherever he went.

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Gerard Damsteegt: Spring 2013 Week of Prayer

Revival of True Heart Religion

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