    The presentation will explore ways in which archaeology can be a tremendous witness to Biblical truth in the secular world.     

ASI 2015: Lift Him Up

<div> <div> <div> <div> <p>The presentation will explore ways in which archaeology can be a tremendous witness to Biblical truth in the secular world. </p> </div> </div> </div> </div>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Personal Evangelism

Michael Hasel

The Stones Cry Out

Our Heavenly Father, we're reminded of the fact that when you sent your Son into this world, you sent him to a desolate part of the earth that was not open to receiving him, A place that had been preparing for him for thousands of years, but a place in the end that rejected him for the most part.

And as we have this meeting today and we talk about evangelism, we talk about the Middle East and we talk about that part of the world that still is very difficult to reach today, I just pray that you would give us your spirit here in this room, because I know that Jesus and you, the Father, are still passionate about the entire planet, including that part of the world.

We thank you for this opportunity to share in Jesus' name.

Some of you may have heard this before, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it.

I just want to do it as an illustration, and then I'll go into the subject matter for today.

I've been asked to talk about evangelism, and some of you may wonder what archaeology has to do with evangelism.

It seems maybe a little strange to have an archeology meeting at an ASI meeting, but I hope by the end of the presentation you will understand the relationship.

I grew up in Berrien Springs, Michigan, and my relatives on my mother's side of the family are all contractors and builders, and I grew up framing houses.

When I was very young, I remember sitting on the roof of my next-door neighbor, which was my uncle, the roof of his house, helping to put shingles on that house at a very young age.

And later on when I was in high school, I framed houses during the summer until I got into archaeology and that kind of destroyed the housing business for me because when you're in archaeology, you're into destruction, not construction.

But I did that for a number of years, and I wanna use that as an illustration.

You know, in this part of the world, where we live here in the United States, we build houses a little differently than many other parts of the world.

We sink in, you know, we dig trenches, footers, we put in either pour in cement or we build with block and then on top of that we build a structure.

That structure is going to stand or fall based on what?

That foundation is the key to everything else that is on top of that.

Now the problem with framing houses is that you see this stage and you see the other stages and you see a lot of progress pretty fast.

As you know, those of you who have been in the business, you see progress pretty fast, but then you leave and go to the next project and you never see the finished project unless it's across the street like this is.

You never get to go inside but you see the skeleton so to speak of the building.

I would like to suggest that today and I want to make this analogy that the Bible is our foundation for life.

And not only for the church, but for evangelism and for everything else that we do as Christians.

The Bible in academia, The Bible in our world, the Bible in our everyday life should be the foundation.

I don't know that it always is, but that it should be.

And the Bible as its foundation gives us, and I want to use this analogy, not all analogies work all the time perfectly, but I wanna use this analogy.

It doesn't give us all the details of that history.

It doesn't give us all the intricacies of what took place.

I sometimes wish that there would be more detail in certain stories of the Bible.

Do you wish that when you read sometimes?

That there would be a little bit more there that we could dig into, no pun intended.

And so what we try to do when we read the Bible is we look at the big picture.

Sometimes it's nice to buy a chronological Bible and you can kind of read it through chronologically because the Bible isn't always written in a chronological order.

But the Bible provides that kind of framework for history.

Frameworks are important and in history it's extremely important to know where you are in history, to know how that outline works in history.

Now, I've put this up, this is kind of my creation.

There's a lot of things maybe left out here and maybe the periods are not quite there, but I've put up different pillars here if you can see, and these pillars are periods of history that occur in Scripture leading down to the time of Christ.

The reason the cross is not center, it's not because the cross isn't center, it will be center in another illustration in a moment.

It's because if you look at the Bible, the Bible, its history is not quite, the history of the Bible doesn't have the cross at its complete center, right?

There's more Old Testament than there is New Testament.

There's more books in the Old Testament than New Testament books.

And the New Testament period can be summarized pretty much in 100 years, Whereas the Old Testament goes back thousands of years, and so you have kind of this skewed picture a little bit as you look at history.

But certainly as we look at this, there is a structure, if you will, and to use the analogy perhaps a little bit more, This structure provides the skeleton, the framework if you will, for the rest of history that has taken part within those periods of time.

Now the Bible is not a static kind of thing.

It's not simply a piece of liturgy that has been written or a piece of philosophy or books of philosophy that have been written.

The Bible is constituted in history and therefore it is important that history is part of it.

And the thrust, if you will, the thrust of the Bible, which is the story of redemption, is the ultimate consummation of what?

It's not simply to tell us about history, but it is to tell us about God's acts in history, and it is to give us a promise that someday there will be a new history that will be created.

Not a history that focuses on this world, but in a new world that God is planning to create in the future.

So again, the analogy may not work completely, but in my mind, the roof, the thing that everything is supporting is this ultimate goal of an everlasting kingdom.

In Daniel chapter 2, it is a rock cut out without hands that comes and smites the image, which represents human history, and then a mountain is established that, what, lasts forever, right?

So that is the thrust of what scripture is giving us.

And in this sense, history, or that is the concept of history and scripture, is not a cyclical idea.

Now if you look at Eastern religions, many times they have a cyclical concept of history, that things always repeat themselves, you know, that you kind of have this cycle of events.

And Certainly we can see that history does sometimes repeat itself and that we don't always learn from history, but in the biblical perspective, there is a thrust moving forward through time.

That thrust moving forward through time is focusing on a consummation after the fall that is real, and that is something that we all look forward to.

Now, the Bible also describes a God who works within that continuity of time.

In other words, that God has placed himself within the framework of time by sending his son Jesus Christ certainly, but even before that time God has been working in human history in time.

In other words, He works in our lives today, but he has worked in ancient times as well.

With the first act of creation, God spoke things into existence, and that happened at a particular time.

He set time in motion in creation so that there were 24-hour days and a period of 7 days.

And he celebrated the Sabbath with his creation.

That concept of God acting in history is extremely important because it ultimately resulted in the sending of His own Son.

And if you want to really think about it, that event bisects time for all intent and purposes, it bisects time completely.

We still reckon BC and AD today based on what?

And whether you're a Christian or a Jew, they do not like to refer to BC and AD, they don't like to say before Christ and Anno Domini, so they say BCE and CE, before the Common Era and the Common Era, but it still refers to the same thing.

So I have to be very careful in scholarly circles.

I don't talk about BC and AD, I talk about BCE and CE, because this is the politically correct thing to do, but ultimately we're talking about the same division, the same thing.

And God still continues to work through history and continues to work out his plan.

So this is the biblical concept and this concept is a real concept, but the fact is that this concept has been under tremendous attack for the last 200 years or more.

The idea of God's work in history and that God acted in history, the idea that the Bible is God's word has been something that is very much challenged.

We can only think of the French Revolution And we can think of the resulting philosophies that came out of that experience, or that led up to that experience, and eventually came out of that experience as well.

Religion was put aside, and a new religion was established, the religion of reason.

Man's autonomous reason became the critical point upon which everything surrounded itself and everything worked.

So no longer was the Bible the focus of human history and human thinking.

It had changed, it had shifted dramatically in the age of the enlightenment, in the age of reason, and now we are in a different age for the past 200 or more years.

And so as we see the results of that, what has happened?

What has happened is a general rewriting of biblical history over time.

In the mid 1800s, it was creation and the flood, Genesis 1 through 11, that became very much a focal point with a number of scholarly writings in England and other parts of the world that began to challenge the biblical concept of creation and the flood.

And basically that idea was removed from history.

Now when you remove creation and the flood, particularly creation, it is the foundation of everything that comes after it, isn't it?

There's other things that fall with creation.

And we don't have time to go into it too far today, but of course we can talk about the Sabbath, that's a very obvious 1.

Vicki Griffin

New! Balanced Living and Fit & Free!- Transforming Health Programming Into Soul-Winning

Well, well, well, good afternoon everyone.

It's great to see you here today and it's a blessing and a privilege to be together to explore some concepts and thoughts today.

And I look forward to interacting with you during the short time that we have together.

We have a lot of material to cover, but I hope I don't go at warp speed because then we just get nothing.

So as we begin today, let's have prayer together.

How many of you have been blessed by ASI so far.

I can't wait to hear Patsy Erebedo's testimony.

I have been told that it was really quite amazing and stunning and a lot of great things.

It's the personal experience with Jesus that we all need.

We want to help others have that experience too.

And that's why you're here today, is that you want to help others to have that experience.

Let's bow our heads in prayer and I just thank you so much for everybody moving up close so that we can be together as a family.

It's real lonely up here when the breeze blows through the chairs.

Dear Father in heaven, thank you for this time together.

We just pray for your Holy Spirit, your presence to be with us, to soften and anoint our hearts, be with my mouth, that we may dwell in heavenly places as we contemplate end time things.

Well, my name is Vicki Griffin, and I am the Health Ministries Director for the Michigan Conference and also the director of Lifestyle Matters.

My colleague Evelyn is not here because her daughter-in-law had a baby and she is with the baby and I don't blame her.

So I am here representing both of us today And as we begin today, I just want to share a little bit of my personal testimony with you as to why I'm Health Ministries Director.

People will come to me and say, oh yeah, sure, it's easy for you to tell people what to do, you're kind of thin, you look like a librarian, you know, you're probably 1 of these people that lines up all your clothes in the color, and that's true.

But the fact is that as much as I love education, as much as I love books, as much as I love all the things that God has called me to do, that's not why I do this.

I did not, was not raised in what you would call a safe home.

I was, lots of beatings and violence, so I started running away from home when I was 5.

The theology that I was raised with is that God burns people forever, and so my neighborhood wasn't safe, my home wasn't safe, no 1 seemed to care.

I was abandoned and walked in rejection and abandonment, developed a severe eating disorder by the time I was 11.

Fortunately, I loved to hide out in libraries because they were very quiet, sane places.

So my grades, mysteriously enough, always remained good.

I ran away for good when I was 17, and with terrible people, ran with terrible people.

I was without God, without hope in this world.

And I was in the throes of this, and also living with all the other stuff, you know, that runaways get involved with, all the bad people, and all the bad things.

And so I don't need you to be burdened with all of that.

I came home when my mother was dying of cancer.

And on the way to 1 of her treatments, this was in Riverside, I drove past a complex of buildings that had beautiful landscaping.

The buildings weren't so hot, but the landscaping was beautiful, and I actually remembered it and noticed it and made mention of it to a friend of mine who happened to be a Christian scientist.

And I said, you know, there's this complex of buildings that has the most beautiful landscaping.

It must be some kind of air conditioning, roofing, venting systems complex because it's seventh day Adventist.

So there must be some kind of construction thing about them.

And my friend, having somewhat of a religious background, said, no, that is a college.

And I remember like it was yesterday saying, well, anybody that landscapes like that can't be all bad.

I had absolutely 0 reason to go to an Adventist school except that I like the landscaping and I wanted to work on grounds.

So I tell people at this juncture, keep your yards, people.

Make sure your churches look beautiful because it really does say something.

The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork.

In the most chaotic world that I came out of where I don't have a recollection of feeling safe, God spoke to me through mums.

And so she told me, she said, well, you know, they're not really too fond of atheists there because I was a hard party and atheist by then.

And she said that if you want to get in, tell them the body's a temple.

But I was willing to do anything, con anybody to get what I wanted and needed.

And so I, In those days you had to be interviewed if you were a non-adventist and I went in for my interview with the president of the university, Dr.

Osmunson, and I didn't tell him about this until I had that diploma in my hands years later.

But I went in to talk to him and be interviewed to see whether I was a candidate to be on that campus.

Osmundson, I don't know too much about you people, but I really like the idea that the body's a temple.

And he put his arm around me and shook me and he said, I wish we had more young people like you on this campus.

I just thought, this has to be the most naive group of people I've ever met in my entire life.

And so, what I want to, what committee in heaven chose me to be health ministries director?

Tell me that, is what I would like to know.

So if you are praying for your kid right now, I want to tell you that God can do anything.

I mean a tender little piece of grass can grow up through concrete.

So I am so thankful that God has called me to do this work.

And I made a vow, because when I was so bulimic and throwing up a dozen times a day and about 25 pounds thinner than I am right now, my life was out of control.

And so I kept collecting all these degrees.

I repossessed cars and skipped trace on bad checks.

I got into law school and I was going to be a prosecutor.

I was going to put everybody in jail, but there was just nobody left to put me in jail because my life was out of control.

I needed a just God as well as a loving God, amen?

And so when the Lord healed me of the bulimia, when I met him as a personal savior, I met my husband at La Sierra, my precious husband who has now passed away.

And we were out of circulation, at least.

And we found the Lord together and within 6 months of finding the Lord, we were in full-time ministry for 28 of our 32 years.

We were hired as a couple to work in the Michigan Conference to create materials for saving souls, not just for increasing educational information on dietary fiber.

Taj Pacleb

How to Grow Your Church: The Motion of the Movement

Thank you so much for coming to our workshop on how to grow your church.

We're discussing the motion of the movement.

We are not just a church, but we're also a movement.

Or I should say we're more than a church, we're a movement.

And we're going to look at the intricacies of what that means from the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy, and by God's grace share some practical things that you can do in your church and the roles that you can play in your church to bring some dynamic, sustainable growth, not just growing the church but growing the kingdom of God.

And so I want to thank you for being here.

And we're originally from the beautiful islands of Hawaii, but now we live in a different type of paradise.

A little bit different than Hawaii, but we really enjoy the work that we do in doing public evangelism.

Our ministry is called Revelation of Hope Ministries, and we'll mention a little bit more about that later.

But we have lots of wonderful information to share and to cover, And so we're gonna pray and get into that.

I did have handouts that I sent beforehand to get printed, but I guess whoever was in charge of that was not able to fulfill that.

If you could check that, that would be a blessing.

For later on, it's about a 14-page handout on the science of spirit-filled evangelism, which is actually where today's presentation is extracted from a larger series that we do whenever we are preparing for evangelism in the local church.

It's entitled, as I mentioned, The Science of Spirit-Filled Evangelism, and we'll be extracting some of the principles from that larger series.

Further, let us pray and ask the Spirit that He would guide us and bless us in our study this morning.

Father in heaven, Lord, we thank you so much for your goodness and your grace.

We thank you for the privilege of being here at ASI to learn more about you and your work, but also your will for our lives in the role that you would have us to play in the finishing of this work.

And Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit would just fill this room, fill our hearts, that you would not only instruct us, but that you would inspire us to realize that you want to use us in a powerful way to change the population of heaven for eternity.

And Lord, I pray that you would help each 1 of us to catch that vision.

As we go through these principles In this workshop, we pray that you'd make our minds like a sponge, that we might soak up every blessing you have in store for us, and that our lives, that we would be more effective and efficient laborers for you, and thank you so much for this opportunity.

Once again, our workshop entitled, How to Grow Your Church, the motion of the movement.

And to begin with, I'd just like to share with us very broadly the definition of what exactly is evangelism.

You see, most people in the world and in our church today have a very shallow and unbiblical view as to what evangelism really is.

Most view evangelism as an annual event that a church has that takes place over the period of 3 to 4 weeks that happens once a year, or they view evangelism as the job of the paid professional.

But the biblical definition of evangelism is that it's neither an event nor is it a job, but rather there are 2 definitions I'd like to give you and I'll share them, back them up biblically in a moment.

But number 1, it is the lifestyle of the spirit-filled Christian.

It's not the job of the paid professional and it's not the annual event of a church.

It is basically the lifestyle of 1 that truly has the spirit of God.

The spirit-filled Christian, their whole life is that of evangelism.

And the second definition of evangelism, because the church is made up of individual Christians, therefore evangelism by extension would be the life cycle of the spirit filled Church, the life cycle of the Spirit-filled Church.

Now we will expound on this more in detail, but what exactly is the church?

The church, friends, is many things, but at least these 2 things.

And what is the chief characteristic of an organization?

The chief characteristic, just think of the word organization.

An organization is not an organization if it's unorganized.

So 1 of the chief characteristics of an organization is that it's organized, and then the church is also a movement.

And what is the chief characteristic of a movement?

And so this is what God desires his church to be.

It's not just a gathering of individuals who've been caught out of darkness, but it's a gathering of individuals who have been organized to move.

Now, You can't have movement without organization.

Organization is essential in order for there to be movement.

We're going to we're an organization and we're also a movement heading to a specific destination, heading to eternity, basically.

And by the way, wherever there is movement, there is always friction.

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Series

Personal Evangelism

The Stones Cry Out

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

The Stones Cry Out

1h 7m

New! Balanced Living and Fit & Free!- Transforming Health Programming Into Soul-Winning

1h 17m

How to Grow Your Church: The Motion of the Movement

1h 23m

Witnessing In the Workplace: Letting Your Light Shine While Avoiding HR & Legal Pitfalls

1h 12m

Sound Doctrine