GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

Answering the Angels

Kameron DeVasher

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

05 Will Heaven Be Safe With Us in It?

We went through these whole steps, and I'll do a brief review in a moment.

But everything used to be perfect in the universe.

God is determined that it's going to be good again.

So the question is, how can it stay that way if we're going to be involved in that goodness?

We're going to tackle all that after we have a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day, this Friday, this preparation day for your Sabbath.

Thank you that we get to be together here at GYC.

Thank you that we get to dive into your Word and understand Your plan, your purposes, and our place in those plans.

I ask right now, Lord, that you would bless us in a very special way.

Send your Holy Spirit to be here to speak to us, not just generally, but to individual hearts and minds.

Convict us of truth and help us to be converted to be more like you, so we can be citizens of heaven even now, this day.

Okay, will heaven be safe with us in it?" Now, as I mentioned, we're going to do a brief review.

Everything used to be perfect in heaven, and then sin exploded onto the scene.

It started in the heart of 1 man, Lucifer, 1 angel, and the disease got out and it spread.

And we tackled the first day, why would God allow such a thing?

But then we realized there was no alternative.

The nature of the rebellion demanded this response from God.

So instead of blotting him out of existence, he cast him out.

And over the last 4 presentations, we've walked through that casting out process was like a...

It's got multiple steps, but it's 1 set of motions in 4 steps.

So God casts Lucifer physically from the courts of heaven, removes him from position, the angels are expelled, and cast down to the earth, that's step 1.

Step 2 was answering all those lies that Satan had told, not just by saying the truth or declaring the truth, but when God sent Jesus, he demonstrated the truth in the person of Jesus Christ.

And through his selfless life and his sacrificial death, Christ revealed to the onlooking universe 2 very important things.

That he truly is caring, loving, self-sacrificing God, that he'd always claimed to be.

And he exposed the truth about Satan, that he really is a liar and a murderer, and he shouldn't merely be quarantined, he needed to be killed.

If Christ gained the victory, which he did, amen, Then why not just kill him right then and there?

6 seconds after Jesus died, Satan should die too.

Then Jesus resurrects, everything's better.

Well, the problem is if Satan and all of his followers died the moment Jesus died on the cross, where would that leave us?

And we noted that yes, Christ did come to destroy the works of the devil, which he accomplished at Calvary, but he also came to do something else.

He said of himself, the Son of Man has come to do what?

So it's not just the plan of destruction, praise God, it's the plan of salvation.

The plan's not complete if you're only killing Satan.

And praise the Lord, we're those wheat that he cared so much about.

Why did the owner of the field stop the servants, the reapers, from going in early to attack the tares?

He says, No, lest while you gather up the tares, you also uproot the wheat with them.

And we noted yesterday, the reason the owner allowed the tares to continue to grow was out of his concern and his love for the wheat.

Somehow it was in the best interest of the wheat that the tares be allowed to mature.

That's where we're living in this great controversy right now.

But then there's the day of harvest coming, when the Lord will come again and all the wicked will be destroyed with the brightness of his coming.

The righteous will be gathered out of the graves and into the air, and thus we shall be with the Lord.

But the great controversy has not ended at the second coming.

There's that whole judgment during the thousand years where the wicked will be judged, not to render a verdict of whether they're saved or lost, but to fairly and finally mete out the sentence and their destruction, so that when they resurrect at the end of the thousand years and they see all that was involved in the great controversy, even the wicked, not out of repentance, not out of contrition, but out of the sheer weight of evidence, will acknowledge the justice, the fairness, and the love of God.

And though they were ready to go to war to get the kingdom, they don't want to have anything to do with the king.

And God finally destroys the wicked, each 1 according to his works, then we can have a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells.

And what started perfect will be perfect again.

All right, So with that picture in mind, the real question is, well, what is our part in that now?

I assume that everyone in this room wants to be part of the new heavens and the new earth and be done with Satan and wants to be part of that kingdom of righteousness, amen?

What does this whole theory, this theodicy, this theology construct, which is beautiful and powerful and true, how does that apply to my life today?

How will heaven be safe with us in it?" Let's dive in.

In James chapter 1, we read this statement, "...therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.

Doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving whom?

Is it possible that you can be in a Christian home, have membership in a Christian church, go to a Christian school, go to a Christian conference in Florida, Be saturated in all the Christian, Christian, Christian, Bible, Bible, Bible, God, God, God, God stuff.

And still not be a transformed Christian, right?

The warning to James is don't just hear it or see it or be next to it.

He says, de-doers of the Word and not hearers only, because you could Deceive whom?

When Christ returns, according to scripture, there will be a clear distinction between the righteous wheat and the wicked tares.

Right, remember the parable, Matthew chapter 13?

The same reapers that he told not to go in early, because if you go to take out the tares, you'll also uproot the wheat.

You can't tell the difference early on, but in the last days, go for it.

Once the fruit is sprouted, it's clear, that's a wheat and that's a tare.

There will be 2 classes in the last days.

Again, Matthew 13, the servant said to him, Do you want us then to go and gather them up?

And he said, No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest.

And at the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, First, gather together the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.

While this difference will be obvious to the angel reapers, they can spot the difference.

Some tares will have deceived themselves into believing they are wheat and assume they will be gathered into the barn.

Now that seems a little fanciful, but doesn't Jesus say this exact same thing?

Matthew chapter 7, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven.

But he who, and here's our word again, does the will of my Father in heaven.

It's not just the claim of Christianity or the proximity of Christianity or the legacy of Christianity.

None of those things will get you into heaven.

It's your personal connection, not just to Christianity, but to Christ himself.

But he who does the will of my father in heaven.

Religious Liberty Teetering on the Edge

Joe Reeves

05 Should There be Free Speech in the Church?

We've been studying religious liberty in this room, at this seminar, and so glad to have you join us this morning.

I work for the Saba School of Personal Ministries Department of the General Conference.

I do not work for religious liberty, never have.

Religious liberty, we have been considering yesterday here in this seminar.

We looked first of all what will cause the next civil war.

We studied from Revelation chapter 11, the story of the French Revolution, the roots of communism, the atheistic powers and secular tyranny that has been a religious threat in many parts of the world.

And we look next to Revelation chapter 13 and apostate Protestantism, which revealed that the final blow that goes back and forth, the final blow will come from religious tyranny.

And in America, that will be promoted by apostate Protestantism.

I'll show you a few things on the Roman Catholic front as well this morning.

And so we also looked at 8 top arguments that Christian nationalists use in saying from the Bible and from American history that Christians should be the favored religion and they should rule Adventists has stood up against that since the 1880s and I read a little quote probably the shortest quote I used all day yesterday Was 1 sentence from the first edition of the American Sentinel, January 1886, which says there is no such thing as a Christian nation on Earth.

And today, I think that Adventists are getting misaligned with with parroting what we're listening to on our podcasts, on our audio books and news commentators.

I tried yesterday and I'll do maybe some this morning.

I tried to show you on the screen where to find the resources that I've been reading from because there's a lot of religious liberty questions.

I covered just a handful in this seminar but there's many many more questions that we didn't have time to address And so you need to be reading from our books Adventist History and you need to be understanding the Adventist position because it's very different than the evangelical position on religious liberty.

This is because Bible prophecy reveals that there will be tyranny at the end of the world.

And most of the Christian world, when they read about the beast from Revelation, they say, Aha, there's Islam, there's atheism, there's the globalists, there's everything.

And Adventists come along and say, No, this represents Christianity, an apostate form of Christianity that will bring the final tyranny.

In the history of Christianity we have some dark chapters.

When the Christian world started taking power in Rome, political power, and starting with Constantine, and really reaching a major climax with Justinian in the 6th century, and in the age of Justinian there was a lot of persecution and they were persecuting all religions.

You know, they burned the library in Athens so it was against the pagans.

Pagans were persecuted, Zoroastrians, but do you know who got the worst persecution?

So, anybody that studies the history of Justinian, the worst persecution was Christian on Christian.

When you want to promote or favor Christianity, well, which version of Christianity?

And then you start persecuting other forms of Christians.

And that happened all throughout the history of Europe.

John Calvin himself set up a theocracy in Geneva, Switzerland, burned Michael Cervetus to the stake for teaching against the Trinity.

And then the Puritans, they set up their theocracy in Massachusetts and other colonies in the United States.

They came to America looking for freedom, for themselves and for nobody else.

And that's a lot of people's version of religious freedom.

Religious freedom for me, but not for thee.

Adventists believe in religious freedom for everybody.

And Roger Williams, you know, if you go to Geneva, Switzerland, have you ever seen that wall?

They have the 4 big ones right in the middle.

And did you know that there's an American along that wall?

And the Europeans realized that in the story of the Protestant Reformation, there's 1 American who deserves mention and it's a statue of Roger Williams.

And Roger Williams' statue was there in the Protestant wall in Geneva, recognized as really ultimately carrying the idea of the Protestant Reformation.

And that is that if we're going to provide religious liberty for all, if we're going to stop this persecution, we have to apply it evenly.

When he arrived in Massachusetts, he was in trouble right away because he was preaching that the government should only deal with the second table of the law, the last 6 commandments.

The first 4 commandments, that was off limits for the government, including the Sabbath and including blasphemy laws.

We'll deal with that a little bit this morning.

But all across the colonies in America were blasphemy laws, not in Rhode Island.

So Adventists stand in a very unique position right now, but it's very tempting for you to forget about Adventist history and to be listening to what everybody else is saying right now and for Adventists to be what everyone else is being.

And if we do that, then listen, if Adventists don't stand for religious liberty for everybody, then who will?

If Adventists don't, don't stand in the place that God has put us, then who will?

By the way, I have read Roger Williams' most prominent book, The Bloody Tenet, that he wrote.

And it's called The Bloody Tenet of Persecution.

The reason that he believed in religious liberty, there are several reasons, but let me tell you a few.

He believed in religious liberty because he saw the religious persecution in Europe and because he was a student of Bible prophecy.

He has an address to Parliament in the first few pages of the Bloody Tenet.

He quotes from Daniel 7 and quotes from Revelation 13.

Daniel and Revelation multiple times in his book.

And he concluded, along with the other Protestant reformers, that the papacy was the Antichrist.

And because of his study of Bible prophecy, he knew that what they had done in uniting church and state was wrong and we had to establish a new form of government.

In other words, Roger Williams understood his moment because of Bible prophecy.

And because of studying the little horn, the beasts of revelation and that this Antichrist was a persecuting power, he understood that there needed to be a separation of church and state.

And in his book he said that there was the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world and there needed to be a hedge in between.

And that would later be called the separation of church and state.

And that was started with Roger Williams.

So and then yesterday we looked at, lastly, should the church accept government money?

Now, we saw that in Adventist history that when there were Sunday laws, when there was the National Reformed Association and things were really picking up on the religious liberty front in America in the 1880s and 1890s, that religious liberty fanaticism came into the church at the same time.

And people started inside the church attacking each other on this issue of religious liberty.

And that there was a controversy that was for 2 years very strong in the church about whether the church should accept tax exemption or government grants.

And this was between General Conference Session of 1893 and also 1895.

And we saw that at the end of that, the Council of Ellen White redirected the church from the direction that we established during those 2 years.

We took resolutions and voted in general conference session that we would not accept tax exempt status or we would not accept any grants from the government.

And when Ellen White's letters from Australia, she wrote a 14 page letter in 1895.

It arrived after the session in Battle Creek.

And her letter says that the religious liberty cause is sickening because there was undiscerning things that were happening and that we needed to be able to work with the people in government.

We needed to be able to accept favors because Cecil Rhodes from the Cape colony, the British colony in South Africa, was offering the Adventist Church 12, 000 acres for free and the General Conference had voted not to accept that gift.

They sent a letter to South Africa, it reached there too late and the missionaries had already accepted the gift.

But Alan White said that we needed to accept it and we needed to accept our tax exempt status.

A lot of people don't know these things which is why they need to be shared and you can read the whole story if you weren't here yesterday.

On your Ellen White CD-ROM, and if you scroll down to research documents under go down below her books there's a lot of research documents and there is a document called Spirit of Prophecy Councils relating to church-state relationships.

You go to chapter 7 and it has the whole story of what happened with our tax-exempt status and the story of South Africa between 1893 and 1895.

Let's have a word of prayer before we continue.

Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us this opportunity to understand our history, our position, the prophecies that you have entrusted us.

Help us to have our eyes open and to be fully committed to you.

There are many resources that you can use to become better educated on the topic of religious liberty.

All of the editions of Liberty Magazine are on their website, but you can subscribe and get it in your mail as well.

And I will be quoting in a few minutes from a Liberty magazine last year the New Catholic Radicals and some incredible information in that edition and every every 2 months they have some Important updates on Supreme Court cases and other other developments.

They also have a podcast on YouTube and such called Just Liberty, hosted by Alan Rynok and Bettina Kraus.

The War for Your Mind

Scott Mayer

05 The Trouble with Al

I know a lot of people have a lot of questions about this particular topic in here.

So, by no means is this going to be an exhaustive look at this.

We would be here all afternoon if that was the case.

So, as I kind of like wade through a lot of these things that our ministry has kind of done some research on and we try to field some of these questions over the past year or so, I tried to frame this in the way that might be most beneficial to you guys, especially the youngers in this audience.

And so that's kind of what we're going to discuss today, is some things that you might need to be aware of, how to use the technology.

And I'll just let the cat out of the bag right now.

But I also am very skeptical of this technology.

And I think that if I were to ask an honest question, how many of you in here have used chatgpt or anything like that?

I don't think there's a person in here that probably hasn't used it.

So we should probably understand this and understand the power that this technology has and I think that as we are coming into this final masterpiece of deception that Satan has been preparing for 6, 000 years.

We should be very careful with this technology.

Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Dear Gracious Heavenly Father Lord, we just thank you for this GYC, for all the meetings and all the messages that we have been blessed and graced with.

Lord, we honor you as our source of information.

We know that we need to be coming to you for everything.

And as we are coming into this final test here in earth's history, Lord, we just ask for protection.

We ask for guidance, And we ask for your wisdom to be given to us Lord be with this conversation today May you be with my words?

May we see a clearer picture of how much you love us and teach us how we should deal with this technology We love you and thank you in Jesus name.

Amen How many of you know that AI was talked about in the Bible?

OK, where was it talked about in the Bible?

You should be thinking about all these kinds of things.

Now, what was the trouble with AI in that scenario?

And Joshua, being someone that is very closely connected to God, that ought to make you really kind of take a pause and think about your own life.

And you know, it's like right now People are going to AI for spiritual understanding.

I really truly believe spiritual things are spiritually discerned.

I'm not okay personally with my own self, and you're going to have to make your own decisions on this, I'm not okay personally to sit there and exhaustively ask AI about spiritual things.

I'd rather learn how to dig in the Bible and get that information myself.

And so you're gonna have to come to grips with that.

And as we get into this conversation, you're going to see there is some really amazing things coming out of this technology.

I mean, I can't name another thing that we've ever created as humans that is both simultaneously 1 of the most amazing things, and simultaneously 1 of the most dangerous things we have on this planet.

That's just, it's hard to even wrap your mind around that.

And if you consider what was going on at the Tower of Babel, like, what were they really trying to do building this building?

That's really the purpose of what they were trying to build this building for, which really seems kind of like a ridiculous thing, because if you had your relatives just go through the flood and you know what God is capable of, Isn't it kind of crazy that real quick, within a few generations, man would be this ignorant or this arrogant against God?

You just watched God literally deal with man in a very severe way, and they're trying to outsmart God.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

05 Will Heaven Be Safe With Us in It?

1h 2m

05 Should There be Free Speech in the Church?

50m

05 The Trouble with Al

56m

04 How Will God Destroy the Wicked Fairly and Finally?

1h 1m

04 Should Adventists Accept Government Money?

41m

04 Hollywood’s War on God

38m

03 Why Didn’t Satan Die at Calvary, Too?

55m

03 How Not to Debate a Christian Nationalist?

57m

03 Digital Evangelism

48m

02 How Can an Honest God Defeat a Lying Devil?

53m

02 Are Adventists Wrong about Revelation 13?

55m

02 How to Avoid Deception

47m

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