GYC West 2014: I Am The Conflict Continues

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GYC West

Michael Tuazon

Loss

Father in heaven, we come before you thanking you for the privilege to study your Word.

And I thank you because when we ask for your Holy Spirit, you send your Spirit.

This evening we come before you acknowledging our need for you, acknowledging we're sinners in need of grace, acknowledging that we have nothing good, nothing righteous.

And we come before you asking that a miraculous transformation of heart and mind would occur, That you'll take away our stony heart and you'll give us a heart of flesh.

I pray that I'll hide behind the cross, that you'll hide me behind Christ, and that this evening they will hear none other than Jesus Christ, the second member of the Godhead speak.

I pray, oh God, that as we study, especially the great controversy, that we will see good amidst turmoil.

My good friend Cosman asked me to share a few months ago, we were given the topic and we can choose from a list of topics and the topic that immediately jumped out to me was the great controversy between good and evil for many reasons.

Give you a little bit of background about myself.

I did not come from a picture perfect family.

My family has a lot of sins, my past, and when I was born my mother went to the book of Revelation chapter 12 and verse 7 and she saw the great controversy and she named me Michael for that very reason.

She was hoping that I would overcome the past of our family, the past of the sins.

And so I come before you as someone who has been transformed only by the grace of God.

And I come before you also with a message to be able to share with you about the great controversy.

Something that I've seen in my life, something that I've experienced.

This evening we'll be exploring that controversy.

And So without further ado, let's go ahead and go into our Bibles.

I'm sure many of you have studied this book and we know that Revelation chapter 12 is the climax, it's the fulcrum, it's the apex of the book.

There's a chiastic structure in Revelation and chapter 12 is the climax.

It's the war between Good and evil, it's the war between Michael and Satan.

Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels.

And prevailed not, Neither was their place found anymore in heaven.

And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the devil.

And Satan, which deceives the whole world, he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." Those 3 verses are pregnant with meaning and to be able to fully understand what happened, it's helpful if we go to the writings of Ellen White.

And what I have done is I've compiled a list of quotes that we'll be going through from Story of Redemption and from Patriarchs and Prophet.

What I've also done is to help understand this story and humanize it, I've also paralleled some points by using the story of Saul.

Quote number 1 is where we're going to start.

It's found in Story of Redemption, page 15, paragraph 1.

They were discontented and unhappy because they could not look into His unsearchable wisdom and ascertain His purposes in exalting His Son and endowing Him with such unlimited power and control." If you read this section in the story of redemption, you will find Satan and his angels, that they have a meeting.

And what takes place is, what has happened actually before they have this meeting is God calls this meeting with all of heaven.

And He, in front of all the angels, he looks at Jesus, he looks at his son, and he tells all the angels that his son, Jesus, would be equal in power and that they would be creating an entirely new planet called earth.

And when Satan heard this he was jealous.

Why wasn't he given the same powers as Jesus?

And during this time, after this meeting, Satan gathers the angels.

And I'll be summarizing a lot of the points and hopefully trying to help us piece together this this war of what takes place Well Satan calls together all the angels and Lucifer insists that he was worthy of the same power as Jesus He calls the angels together and says, look at me, I'm the 1 you listen to, I'm the 1 you report to, I have the best voice, I'm the most beautiful, I'm the most talented.

And at this time, there were loyal angels, the story of redemption records, who says to Satan, Lucifer repent.

You are thinking of horrendous thoughts, repent.

What Lucifer then did was to the loyal angels, and I'm using the exact word that he calls them, he calls them slaves.

The loyal angels told some of the angels that they were in, then there were other angels who were in the valley of decision.

The loyal angels told them to close their ears.

And it was after this meeting that Satan realized he had a following and he went from Lucifer or light bearer to Satan, which means adversary.

At this time, the loyal angels promptly went to the father to tell him about the mutiny.

They found him in a meeting already with his son.

And they were going through the game plan of what they were going to do and God at that moment could have hurled him out of heaven, but they were, and I'm quoting, going to give the rebellious an equal chance to measure strength and might with his own son and be manifested to all.

Now I don't know if some of you have seen the trailers for the Record Keeper.

I'm not here to talk about what it means or how good it is or the cinematography, but we were, a group of us were in the General Conference in November And while we were waiting for our meals, the general conference, whenever there's a huge meeting, they can't accommodate everyone in their cafeteria.

And so a group of us, what they were doing is they said, okay, you have a list of numbers and they're dismissing us by rows.

And for those of you who can't eat your meal yet, we have a treat for you.

We have, we're going to let you watch scenes from the Record Keeper.

So I said, okay, this is going to be interesting.

And so they, they, they play the first scene of the record keeper, and I'm telling you, this movie showed some crazy violent scenes.

And as I was looking and watching at that, first off, I thought, wow, the cinematography is really good.

This looks like some of the Hollywood stuff I used to watch when I lived in Hollywood.

And the other thing my thought was, was how we play down the great controversy between Michael and the dragon.

But according to this quote, when Ellen White says that they would test might against might and strength against strength, you better believe that it was violent.

You better believe that there was a heavenly war that took place and it wasn't just words.

That there was an actual overthrow, an actual throwing out of heaven.

The first point I want to talk about this evening regarding this story was that sometimes God is going to lead you into a situation and You're not going to know why.

The reason why there was controversy was Lucifer was upset that God would talk about earth and God would talk about these plans and would not reveal it to him and the other angels.

He was desperate to know the outcome of the battle.

Excuse me, Saul also wanted to know the future.

If you know the story of Saul, he was going to fight against the Philistines.

And by the way, he had defeated them before.

He wanted to know the outcome of the battle between the Philistines.

And so what he did, of course, as we know the story, is he went and he consulted with the witch of Endor.

And Ellen White has an entire chapter dedicated to this in the devotional book, Conflict of the Ages.

This chapter is called God's Secrets, and she masterfully shows the folly when we try to know the future when God has not revealed it to us.

This is from Conflict and Courage, page 173.

Why do we go through situations in life when we may not know the future, the outcome, we may not know what's happening next?

There are many who become restless when they cannot know the definite outcome of affairs.

They cannot endure uncertainty, and in their impatience they refuse to wait to see the salvation of God.

Apprehended evils drive them nearly distracted.

They give way to their rebellious feelings and run here and there in passionate grief, seeking intelligence concerning that which has not been revealed.

But when they neglect the means that God has ordained for their comfort and resort to other sources, hoping to learn what God has withheld, they commit the error of Saul and thereby gain only a knowledge of evil.

I don't know what each person is going through in this room, but I find that sometimes in my life I'm at a place, a crossroads where I don't know what's next.

As humans, I think it's human nature, I think it's only natural, where we want to know what's next.

How many times has someone come up to you and said, so what are you doing next?

And there are many times when we want to know what's next.

We want to have everything planned out, ABCD.

And if plan A doesn't work, we have plan B.

But what I find when I study the Word of God is God brings us to these points where we don't know the next step.

And it's during this process where we don't know the next step where God learns, God refines our character and we learn to trust Him.

And when I read this quote that I read to you, where even the angels did not know what was next, they did not know the outcome, they did not know the future, They did not know what earth would look like.

God basically had a meeting with the angels and said, it's none of your business.

My son's in charge and it's none of your business.

And if God has the audacity to do that to angels.

Loss

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