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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Norman McNulty

Laodicea and Romans 7

Good morning, Adamant Hope and happy Sabbath Please bow your heads with me for a word of prayer Father in heaven we thank you for the opportunity.

I Pray that your spirit would come into this room that your angels would be with us, that we would set aside any distractions in our mind of the cares of this life and just allow you to come into our hearts and to speak to us now.

As Adrian was saying in his announcements, we have GYC coming up in just 4 days or so and I certainly am looking forward to that.

It's interesting to me that this year's conference is being held in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

For those of you who are Adventist history buffs you know that Minneapolis, Minnesota is a very interesting place in the history of the Adventist Church and so I'm going to talk a little bit about that more later in the message today.

As you see from the title, the title of this sermon is entitled Laodicea and Romans 7 and you may be wondering what the connection is between Laodicea and the message to God's people in Romans chapter 7.

Before we actually get there though, I just want to take a step back and review God's leading in His church and among His people and take a look at the at the fact that we as God's people throughout history, since we became a chosen group of people after 1844, have mostly been Laodicean.

Now I'm going to read a statement from Life Sketches page 196.

It says, we have nothing to fear for the future except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us and his teaching in our past history.

Now, what we like to do is we like to look at the way God has led us, but we don't remember his teaching.

Do you remember the teachings that God has given us as a people that has led us to the point that we are now?

Sabbath Sanctuary state of the dead spirit of prophecy second coming now if you forget any of those teachings and how they relate to us as a people, where are you going to go in the future?

We have nothing to fear for the future if we remember how God led us to those points And we, with those teachings that God has given us, look to the future to see where those teachings will lead us.

Clearly God has led among his people, And 1 of the ways that he has led us is the doctrines or the teachings of us as a people.

Now, 1 of the problems though that comes with having truth, at least in our church, has been complacency.

We have these teachings that God has given us that have led us as a people to where we are today.

But let me ask you a more personal question.

With those teachings God has given us, how many of you are having personal Bible studies with people, sharing those teachings with those who have not a clue about any of them.

If those teachings are so important and if God has clearly led us as a people to where we are now, what are we doing to share those teachings with a lost and dying world around us.

That's a serious question to think about.

Now what I want to do today, I am going to take a look at the history of this church as well as the teachings.

So we are going to look at the history of God's leading personified in some of the stories of our pioneers.

And we're also going to look at the theology that forms a foundation for who we are as a people.

And I'm going to start by reviewing a little bit of history.

Now, in 1844, as I said, after that time, the pioneers developed these 5.

This is primarily Hiram Edson was responsible for the sanctuary.

James and Ellen White were convinced of the Sabbath through Joseph Bates.

Hiram Edson was convinced of the Sabbath from Joseph Bates.

And Joseph Bates was convinced of the sanctuary by Hiram Edson.

And that all happened within 5 years after 1844.

If you look at the pioneers that were leading God's movement after 1844.

Take for example James White and Joseph Bates.

James White and Joseph Bates would work extra jobs and sacrificially spend any extra money that they could earn to publish literature to share with other people.

Now this might hurt a little bit but sometimes we work extra jobs to save it for retirement.

Those people weren't thinking about retirement.

Now, what often happens when you have a movement?

You have pioneers that lead the way and you have converts who come in and they believe the message But they don't have the same level of intensity or fervor as those who led the way So what happens is you have people accepting the Sabbath message the sanctuary message?

The state of the dead the spirit of prophecy the second coming it all makes sense And the thing that they like is that they know the truth now, and they can still keep their job and make lots of money and Come to church on Sabbath, and that's about it and so By the 1850s Roughly 10 years after 1844 the intensity of the movement started to lose its edge.

Now, the best story that I have found that personifies how we as a people became Laodicean is from a story about Elder J.N.

He was 1 of the pioneers of our Adventist Church.

Jan Loughborough became baptized into the church shortly after 1844 and received a call to become a preacher in the Seventh-day Adventist movement in 1852 from Ellen White.

And as the story goes, Jan Loughborough was a very successful salesman.

He sold locks for windows on new houses, which I guess that was a lucrative business back in 1852, I don't know.

But he was making a very nice living with the business that he had.

And he was newly married and he received a call to preach and his wife convinced him that being called to preach wasn't such a good idea.

And over the next several weeks he struggled with the decision and while he was struggling with the decision he didn't make any sales.

And so the money that he had saved up dwindled away and he didn't have any money left and he still had this call to preach facing him.

And his wife came to him and said, hey, I need some money to go buy flour at the store.

He gave her enough money to buy just enough to make 1 loaf.

And she didn't realize how bad their finances had become and that Shocked her upset her she was crying and at that moment elder left for went to his room and Prayed to the Lord and said Lord.

I don't know how you're gonna take care of me, but I've decided I'm going to become a minister.

Well, his wife went off to the store to buy that loaf of bread.

And while she was gone, someone came by and said, hey, I hear you sell locks.

Would you be interested in me giving you a certain sum of money so I could buy your business?

And so while his wife was gone to the store, he was able to sell his business and that was the confirmation that he needed.

Once he made the decision that he was going to become a minister, God gave him the confirmation.

And so with that confirmation, Elder Loughborough became 1 of the most powerful preachers in the Advent movement.

And he was preaching, converting souls, baptizing them, bringing them into the church.

And him and maybe James Nellenwhite and a few other dedicated ones were doing most of the work.

And Elder Loughborough was still married to the same person that had a similar mentality.

And 1 time they went to do a series of meetings somewhere, and At the end of the series of meetings, they were done, and the way things worked back then, there wasn't systematic benevolence with tithes the way we have it now, which is a much better system.

Back then, they depended upon the members to pay them to sustain their their work and they were doing they had done a series where the people were fairly well off they had money there is no question about it When the series was done and they got paid it was a very meager sum, not much at all.

It was not sacrificial giving on the part of the people that they had been ministering to.

And right about then Elder Loughborough's wife said, that's it.

Why are we being called to sacrifice for God's work when nobody else is doing sacrificial work alongside with us?

And Elder Leffler was like, you know, it's a good point.

I actually have been thinking the same thing and I just got a letter this last week from Jay and Andrews in Waukon, Iowa and he invited me to come do some work for a period of time in Iowa.

Let's Let's take some time off from preaching and just go to Iowa.

So 1 of the most influential and powerful preachers at that time in our church left the ministry to go be a carpenter and walk on Iowa.

Now just to give you an idea of the significance of this, it would sort of be like 1 of our leading Adventist ministers that we all know, let's say Doug Batchelor, Mark Finley, you name it, 1 of those type, saying, you know what, this preaching business, it's not making enough money for me.

I'm going to go work for a Wall Street stock market agency to make a million.

And that would really be a bad witness, wouldn't it?

If 1 of your leading ministers says this preaching business doesn't pay enough, I need to go do something else and So that's what happened Now right about the same time and I'm gonna come back to elder left for right about the same time elder James white Came to Battle Creek, And he had that sacrificial spirit of giving every extra penny he had to publishing the literature and he noticed that there were stacks and stacks of magazines and literature that were not going out because they didn't have the money to ship it because many of the Adventists weren't donating their money to help pay for the distribution of the literature.

And Elder White looked around and he realized there's all these people in our church and at that time 1 of the lucrative businesses was farming and there were farmers that had well over $10, 000 in their bank account, which in our day and time would probably be 100 or 200, 000, I don't know, but it'd be worth a lot more.

So there were farmers that were independently wealthy that were not giving anything and people like James White who was barely making enough to survive was giving every extra penny he could to the distribution of the literature.

And Elder White went back and read Revelation 3, 14 through 21 and came to the conclusion, we as the Seventh-day Adventist people are Laodicea.

That was the first time that Adventists pointed to themselves and said we are Laodicean.

They had always pointed to the world outside, oh those that don't know the truth and they think they're fine but they're really not.

Now Elder White is saying, oh we are Laodicean.

We have lost our sacrificial giving, our spirit of dedication and consecration.

And so Elder White wrote a series of articles in the Review and Herald.

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Laodicea and Romans 7

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