ECYC 2014: Revive Us Again

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Eastern Canada Youth Conference

Seminars

Valmy Karemera

Adventism in Conflict: Church Issues in End-Time Perspective

Yesterday, as I was flying here from my leg from Detroit to here, sitting next to me was an engineer from 1 of the tech companies in California.

And so he started asking me what I do, where I live, and those kind of questions, you know.

And at the end of the day, so I told him what I did, and he shared with me what he did.

And so we started discussing about faith, life, and all that kind of stuff.

And then at 1 point, he asked me if I meditated as a way to find this truth that we are all after.

He told me in a nutshell, his definition of meditation is to concentrate on his breath.

And I told him, you know, for me, the type of meditation I do is reflect on the word of God.

And you can see that from that point on, we started to diverge our points, but the conversation continued.

So here with me, I have a piece of paper.

I have here with me a piece of paper where he took pretty much half of our flight, explained to me what Hinduism was, trying to convince me of the Hinduism.

So I saw it as an opportunity also to share with him about Christianity and especially about Adventism.

But interestingly, 1 thing he did, he started off by showing me that Hinduism believes in something called Consciousness, something that you and I would call God.

And consciousness is the energy that created nothing And then from nothing created something.

So everything that exists that was created out of nothing.

And consciousness is the power behind that.

Do you see how closely it looks to Christianity?

Because we believe that God created out of nothing and everything came out of nothing.

This statement is taken from the great controversy, page 593.

It says, in the last days, will the counterfeit so closely resemble the true that it will be impossible to distinguish between them except by the Holy Scriptures?

In the last days will the counterfeit so closely resemble the true that it will be impossible to distinguish between them except by the Holy Scriptures.

But yet without the scripture, we cannot distinguish between the true and the false.

So as I sat there, I saw How so close is the system he was sharing with me?

And then I sat there, I imagined myself, what if I knew nothing about scripture?

But as our conversation continued, I asked him a question.

So in your system, in your belief system, How do you explain suffering?

And basically his response was, suffering, it depends on how you see it and how you define it.

For example, he said, if you look at a mother having a baby, I just said a baby, amen?

If you look at a mother having a baby, There is pain involved, but there is also joy.

So his view was that it all depends on how you see it.

I say, suppose somebody is holding you on a gunpoint.

They just finished raping your wife and they threatened to rape your daughter.

It was an opportunity to share with him the gospel of Christ.

And so here we are discussing issues in the end times.

It may be your coworker that are struggling with these issues.

They're struggling with these, not only your coworker or your classmate, it may be your church member.

So if we narrow down our conversation and bring it home to our church, our church is facing so many issues, so many issues.

But as I commenced saying, a crisis can be defined in different ways.

In fact, in the New Testament, the word judgment is also, is where we get the word also crisis.

The time of judgment is the time of crisis.

So I thank God that we are living in the time of crisis.

I thank God that we are living in a time of crisis.

The time of crisis, yes, it has bad connotation to it, but it's also a good time because it is a time to do what?

It is a time not to waver between 2 opinions.

It is a time that you and I choose who we want to serve.

It is the time to choose, the time of crisis.

It is the time that you and I make a choice between God or the world, between serving God faithfully or serving God or serving the world.

This morning I was listening to the doctor they brought from Liberia who had the Ebola.

He's a Christian doctor and he's a missionary doctor.

And he gave a press conference when he was released from the hospital, from the Emory Hospital.

And he said, you know, I thank God for, when I went to serve God as a missionary, he's not Adventist, but he said, when I went to serve God as a missionary, he's not Adventist, but he said, when I went to serve God as a missionary, I didn't expect this, but I remember contracting this disease and laying there for 9 days, I believe, in Liberia, And he said, God, I want to be faithful to you.

But I want you to use this disease as an opportunity for me to glorify your name.

And you can go there, and you can Google it, and you see a YouTube video.

Robert Blais

What is Righteousness by Faith?

Just before I begin, I just want to let you know my name is Robert Blaise and I'm originally from Montreal, now I live in British Columbia and I'm part of a ministry called Unit Ministry and if you're interested you can go on our website which is unit-ministry.com.

It's a little out of date, we had a problem with our server but eventually we'll fix it and it'll be up to date.

So this morning for the next 3 hours we'll be talking about righteousness by faith.

Now as I mentioned a little bit yesterday evening, it is such a broad topic, There is so much things to talk about that 3 hours will be very difficult to cover everything.

And so we'll have to be choosing what we'll talk about.

So you might start your dinner, your lunch a little late, but I can't stop you from leaving and I'm not going to be angry if at 12 o'clock you can't take it anymore and you have to go.

So, but I want us to get as much time together so we can cover as much things together.

So before I begin anything else, let's have a word of prayer together.

Lord, we come to you this morning because you are, Lord, the source of all things.

You are the source of our lives and you are the source of our ways.

And Lord, you are the source of righteousness.

And this morning as we come to you to open the scripture and the words from the Spirit of Prophecy, we pray and ask Lord that you will guide our hearts and our mind that we may understand this very important doctrine.

And I pray Lord that you will be fulfilled today and that all that we'll be doing, thinking and speaking about will be for your glory.

Please Lord, edify your people that are here and help us Lord to do all that you require of us.

I pray and ask also that you put your words in my mouth Lord, because I cannot speak on this matter unless You, Lord, be the 1 speaking.

And I pray that You will also forgive our sins, Lord, that we may all be united and 1 and not divided and not separated from You.

And I thank You, Lord, for being faithful to us, and I pray that You will help us to be faithful to You as well.

And I pray all this in the most beautiful name under heaven and in heaven that is the name of Jesus.

So how many of you have heard of the expression righteousness by faith?

Righteousness by faith is 1 of those doctrines that is so important, it's kind of like the glue that binds all other doctrines together.

And as you're going to see as we go through so many verses today, you will start noticing that righteousness is actually everywhere in the Bible.

Righteousness by faith is not pervasive but it permeates everything.

And so what we're going to do is we're going to try to move logically and our methods will be Bible We're gonna look at the Bible and we're gonna let the Bible speaks for itself And then we're gonna console the spirit of prophecy and then we're gonna start thinking Right, we're gonna use our logic And maybe if we have time, which I don't think we will, we might look at other sources.

I hope we'll have some time at the end to ask some questions.

And I know this is a large commitment, because it's a three-hour session.

I know you might go elsewhere to look at other seminars and that's fine, but I just want you to understand that things will be moving and building on each other.

And so you will only get the whole and full pictures at the end of these 3 hours plus.

All right, okay, and we're not here to debate because if you know anything about righteousness by faith, it is 1 of the most debated topics in the Adventist church itself and also in the rest of the churches.

It is highly misunderstood and highly misrepresented from our people sitting in our pews, to our pastors, to our scholars, to our theologians, our conference presidents, and anybody has an opinion.

But what we're interested in is what the Bible has to say.

And so that's what we're going to do today.

Now 1 thing that I'm going to spend a lot of time with is defining terminology.

A lot of the differences that we have is because we don't understand what things mean.

What is the response that we usually get?

And if I would ask you, can you give me Bible for it?

Then it would be a little more difficult, right?

And 1 of the things with grace is most people will say, well it's an unmerited favor, right?

Or it's a gift from God that we don't deserve.

And then I would ask the person, okay, so grace is a gift.

And then the person will say, well it's grace.

And at the end of the day we're not going anywhere.

We just know that it's a gift and it's free.

So we need to, and we're going to look at grace by the way and a lot of other things we're going to look at tons of words and the idea is for us to get a better understanding of righteousness by faith So before we go anywhere we need to figure out.

Makes sense By the way, we'll have 9 sections all right, so we'll try to get through all of this.

So it's important to know righteousness because Jesus himself told us that we ought to seek first his righteousness, seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

We'll be moving quite fast and I know the slides will be on the screen so if you take notes of at least the references you can go back and study for yourself and you ought to do that because we will not exhaust everything.

You need to go and study these things on your own.

So Jesus tells us that we ought to seek His righteousness.

So righteousness is something that we search for.

The Bible also tells us in 1 Peter 2.24 that we should live unto righteousness.

So righteousness is something to live for.

And in 1 John 3, 7 John tells us that he that doeth righteousness is righteous even as He is righteous.

So righteousness is also something that we do.

And by doing this righteousness we are righteous.

In 2 Peter 2.21 we read, For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.

So here we read that righteousness is a way of living, it's a way of life, it's something that gives you direction.

And it also tells us that it is connected with the holy commandment, right, with the law of God.

If you're a little confused there, just please pop a hand because we're here to understand and to learn.

In Romans 6, 16-19, we read, Romans 6, 16-19 we read, Right, So in order to have righteousness we have to obey.

And the other thing is that we have to be a servant to it.

People don't like this idea of servanthood, and it's because there's a lot of stigma attached to it, which is understandable.

You serve sin, or you serve righteousness.

It goes on saying that when you are free from sin you can become the servant of righteousness.

But if you are a servant from sin, what does that mean?

You are free from righteousness, which is not a good thing.

Christ's Object Lessons tells us righteousness is right doing and it is by their deeds that all will be judged.

So righteousness is something that we do.

In First Selected Messages 225 we read, When the judgment shall sit, and the books shall be opened, and every man shall be judged according to the things written in the books.

Scripture Our Only Safeguard

Welcome back to our second session and we are going to begin with a word of prayer as we continue on to look at the issues the church is facing and scripture as our safeguard.

Heavenly Father, we come before you with the humility of mind, recognizing that Lord, we are so inferior to your word.

But we are also grateful that your word gives us meaning.

It gives us worthiness, knowing that Lord, you fashioned us.

You took time to create us in your image.

Father, as we humble ourselves before your word, teach us, guide us.

In the last session, we were talking about different issues the church is facing.

Some of you were not here, but if I may ask randomly a question, What issues do you think are more serious facing the Adventist Church?

I just expect biblical interpretation like a lot of my friends, they don't interpret the Bible as something more.

They see our president as black and white and have him be circumcised.

The thing you think is the most defining issue that faces the 7 day administration, huh?

I think there's 1 thing to interpret the Bible, but if you're not reading the Bible, what's the interpretation?

And the biggest problem would be the youth not reading, even a lot of the adults not reading the Bible.

So she says, you may interpret the Bible, but if you're not reading the Bible, what are you interpreting?

The most defining issue that faces the Seventh-day Adventist Church interpretation of the Bible, okay.

I think you're all right because any issue, no matter how minor it is, and leads someone away from Christ is a serious issue.

Some issues are bigger than others, like Biblical interpretation is a serious issue.

But I just ask so that we can gain awareness of some of the issues out there.

Certainly, most of the issues can be traced to Biblical interpretation.

That is what you will call almost a defining issue.

When you take your Bibles and you go to Genesis What did Satan tempt the first couple with?

Ask a volunteer to read for us those 6 verses, loud and clear.

When you read these verses, what do you think the devil used to deceive?

The devil used doubt to convince Eve to sin against God.

The Spirit of the Prophet says that any time God's leaders failed Him, they failed Him because they failed to trust Him.

Any time in the history of redemption, any time God's leaders, God's people failed Him, they failed Him because they failed to trust him.

And the chain of events, here we are today.

Simple, seemingly minute, but yet so potent.

Verse 4 say, the serpent say to the woman, you surely will not die, surely you shall not die if you eat of this fruit.

Think of the experience of Christ in the wilderness.

Again, we'll ask a volunteer to read it for us.

So you go back from Genesis, the first temptation is what?

And then you come to the temptation of Christ.

And we have to believe this was, you know, if there are degrees of temptation, this was the highest degree of temptation.

If there was the highest degree of, if there are degrees of temptation, the temptation of Adam and Eve was certainly great, was 1 of the highest temptation.

If there are degrees of temptation, the temptation of Adam and Eve was certainly great, was 1 of the highest temptation.

If there are degrees of temptation, the temptation of Christ certainly was 1 of the highest temptations.

I want to submit to you today that 1 of the greatest challenges we face is the doubt we have over the Bible.

And I say that and substantiate that with Scripture, because this is the same temptation that the devil uses against the first couple, the sinless couple, by the way.

With 6, 000 years of sin, he tempted the first couple with doubt, to doubt the word of God.

How Does Righteousness by Faith Work?

Lord, we come again to you to thank you for this time that we can return, Lord, from having received physical blessings, Lord, for you to bless us spiritually.

Lord, as we continue to study righteousness by faith, we pray that your Spirit will abide with us, that will give us understanding of these very important truths, that He will convict us of things in our lives that needs to change, and that He will help us to understand that You are God and that we have to be reverent and that you are the 1 in whose hand our lives are.

And so Lord, we simply come to you knowing that without you we can do nothing.

And we pray Lord that you help us this afternoon as we cannot help ourselves.

I pray that you will forgive any sins that we may have committed in the short time that we've left and that you will make us righteous like Christ is righteous And I thank you just for being such an awesome God.

I pray all this Lord, in the beautiful name of your son Jesus.

Before I continue, 1 of the things that I just want to again emphasize is righteousness by faith is not just a theology, a bunch of good ideas, it is something that is transformative, it is something that is empowering.

Once well understood and once it's something that we live by, it changes our lives because it makes us like Christ.

And so as we continue to study these things, don't just take them intellectually and be blessed spiritually, but also make them something that is an integral part of your life, that you live by it.

Remember, there is a way of righteousness, so it's a way of living.

So again, if you haven't taken my email down, please do it.

So the things we've established, we've established that righteousness is the character of God, righteousness is the standard of all character, and the standard of righteousness is the law.

The law is a transcript of God's character and Jesus is the perfect example of righteousness.

We've also established that the law is righteous, but keeping the law cannot make us righteous.

Because keeping the law is only good when we keep it, when I keep it.

But because we have fallen short of the glory of God, we become in debt and no matter how much we keep the law, we are always in debt.

All my righteousness is actually gone because of 1 fall according to Ezekiel and it is also impossible for me to keep the law and please God.

However, only the law can determine what sin is.

Paul says repetitively, when there is no law, there is no sin.

And the wages of sin is death, that is the second death, the everlasting death.

And the law shows me my need for righteousness and for Christ.

Finally, the righteousness of God is by faith, not by the keeping of the law.

Faith is not blind and it's definitely not a feeling and faith is basically knowing, believing and acting upon the Word of God.

And so the last verse we've read is Paul telling us that we are saved by faith through grace, or by grace through faith.

For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourself, it is the gift of God." Thank you.

Well you've surely heard the usual thing.

First thing is grace is an unmerited favor.

That's in First Selected Messages 331, in Fundamentals of Christian Education 457.

We read that we should continually realize that we do not deserve grace because of our merit, for all that we have is God's gift.

So grace is a gift and grace is an unmerited favor, but what is grace?

You see when we say grace is an unmerited favor, all that it tells us is that I don't deserve it.

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Time of Trouble: Who Am I?

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Recorded

Parts

Adventism in Conflict: Church Issues in End-Time Perspective

38m

What is Righteousness by Faith?

1h

Scripture Our Only Safeguard

49m

How Does Righteousness by Faith Work?

1h

Family in End-Time Perspective

51m

Is Righteousness by Faith Possible for Me?

1h

Leaving the Cities: Why, When, How?

46m

Time of Trouble: Who Am I?

1h

The Omega Apostasy

53m

Sound Doctrine