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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eugene Prewitt

Advertising for Evangelism

I am full of feeling because my experience in the last 6 weeks doing evangelism, I tell you I'm not an evangelist.

I mean, I have now, but just the last 6 weeks.

So prior to that, I haven't done Bible work.

I haven't been trained for evangelism, but I am a Seventh-day Adventist, and so in me there has been a desire to do this kind of work.

Is there a desire to do that kind of work in you?

You have a desire to do something like that.

I want to do this morning to share with you a few thoughts from the Bible, but also a few ideas that are just very directly telling you what I've learned in trying what I've been trying to do.

So if you try it, you can know those things before you have to try it.

I think you understand what I'm trying to say.

Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 5.

We're talking about advertising for evangelism at this hour.

Ephesians chapter 5, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians.

Look at verse 15 and 16 just for a launching verse.

Ephesians 15, excuse me, Ephesians 5 Ephesians 5, verse 15, see then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil.

There's a foolish way to live in an evil time.

And the Bible's very clear that we live in an evil time.

Do things get better as the days go on or do they get worse according to the Bible?

Deceivers and those that are being deceived are waxing worse and worse.

It's especially a bad time to walk as fools.

And now, Yeah, I have some specific ideas about how to redeem the time.

But first, I want to tell you a bunch of rumors.

What I have here in front of me is a list of the names of 34 people.

Only I crossed about 5 of the names out and wrote pseudonyms because of the possibility that they might actually listen to Audioverse at some point.

And well a lot of them might, but in those cases if they did I'd rather it be a pseudonym.

But for the most part, these are real first names, but no last names.

So there's at least some level of privacy here.

I mentioned him to you last night, so some of you remember Tim.

Tim is a man who grew up with a desire to do mission work.

He's listened to the Bible a lot of his life on tape because he is a serious dyslexic.

Not that he doesn't know how to read, but you know serious dyslexia just makes it hard.

So he'd rather listen, and he's listened enough where when I'm quoting a verse, he can often finish it.

Where he knows where ideas are, and I love Tim.

Tim, when he came to our meetings, he brought often his 4 children.

Shepard, I think, is 11 and Shepard stayed in the adult meetings, even though we had children's meetings for our series.

He stayed there, and Shepard was learning and listening.

We have a Q&A box that they can put questions in.

And Shepard, or maybe 1 of his siblings, because sometimes they all would sit in there, 1 of them put a little graphic in there after the talk about unclean meats that showed a pig eating really gross things and wrote, maybe I won't eat pig anymore.

And that wasn't a question, it was just in our Q&A.

I guess it was a question for him or herself in our little box.

In fact, they retired in LA from city government.

They'd been there for more than 20 years.

Raymond, at some point while he was living near you, someone gave him a paperback edition of The Great Controversy.

I know he read it because about 1 week into our meetings, he brought this book to the meetings and indicated that a lot of what we were saying, he'd heard it before in a book that he had read.

Now, he never did become a Seventh-day Adventist.

He's been, in fact, he's a deacon in a Sunday keeping church.

But I just want you to know that the book that he read, the thoughts were in his mind remembered enough that he could recognize them when he heard them again.

His wife Jolene often gets up, he says, at 3 or 4 in the morning to pray.

I had a meal with them this last Thursday night at the home of Pam.

Pam has a building named after her in our local public university.

That's because she gave 40 years of service at that university and made such an impression.

She has taught a large portion of the people that live in our town.

Because she was training people how to teach young children.

As part of that, she was teaching young children, that was part of the training program.

So she knows in our town the people in charge, their children and their grandchildren.

She lives with another lady named Julia, and so we've been to their house several times.

We've been to the home of Raymond and Jolene.

When I say we, that's typically Chad, Cruiser and I, We've been spending our time visiting these people.

Larry is married to Carol, and Carol learned just this last week that her husband has been a Sabbath keeper for most of his life.

But 15 years ago, he stopped keeping the Sabbath.

He was part of the worldwide Church of God.

And when that faith ended up leaving the Sabbath some years ago, slowly he held on to it much longer than the church did, but also he let it go.

That is, Larry never decided that Sabbath was something you shouldn't keep.

You probably know people like that who know better, but have just slid out.

When I was in his home with Chad on Wednesday afternoon, Larry said he was going to tell his employer that he would no longer work on the Sabbath, that he was going to begin attending church with Sabbath-keeping people.

I almost wish he'd waited till I was gone, but he did it right there and asked her if she would come.

And she was non-committal, but you know that evening she came to prayer meeting.

And that's what's going on with Larry and Carol.

Pat and Dean also used to live in California.

A lot of the people coming to our meeting used to live in California.

You should be sure you do good work here in California because they move out east and you should do good work.

Pat and Dean, They are lifelong members of the Church of Christ.

In fact, many of the people I've mentioned to you so far are in their 70s.

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