Ted N.C. Wilson

General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

God’s Prophetic Movement, Message, and Mission and Their Attempted Neutralization by the Devil

We could actually have the benediction and the message will be clear.

I ask Carla to sing that simple plea, Not I but Christ, as we enter into the continued deliberations of our annual council for 2014, and also the sober subject that we will look at this morning from the Word of God.

I want to welcome all of you again to this very important gathering.

The annual council just prior to the general conference session, at which time we will be looking at many things that will be forwarded on to the session.

May all that we do be representative of Christ.

In particular, I would like to again welcome Pastor Paulson, our past president and his wife here in our midst.

I also wish to praise God and thank him for the presence of Pastor and Mrs.

And we're grateful that God has brought them through a very difficult situation.

Munger for being with us and your daughter is with you.

Munger experienced a very serious cardiac problem this past week, but through intervention he's here this morning and we praise God for that.

You know there's so many things to be thankful for.

Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.

And now a quotation from Patriarchs and Prophets, a magnificent book that has brought many to the foot of the cross as it focused upon the origin of sin and the great plan of salvation.

Pages 503 to 504, Satan is ever at work endeavouring to pervert what God has spoken, to blind the mind and darken the understanding and thus lead men into sin.

This is why the Lord is so explicit, making his requirements so very plain that none need err.

God is constantly seeking to draw men close under his protection that Satan may not practice his cruel, deceptive power upon them God's prophetic movement, message, and mission, and their attempted neutralization by the devil himself.

The Seventh-day Adventists at this 2014 Annual Council, we affirm without hesitation that God has given us a special mission for these closing hours of Earth's history.

We see this vividly portrayed in the book of Revelation.

Chapter 10 of Revelation foretells the experience of our advent pioneers as they look forward to Christ's return.

After the disappointment in 1844, an experience described as bitter in the stomach, their attention was turned to Christ's work in the heavenly sanctuary and the divine mandate to prophesy again to many people, nations, tongues and kings.

This prophetic movement described in Revelation 12, 17 as God's remnant people who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus, is constituted by 1 body of faith today.

And I don't say this with personal egotism or pride.

Only 1 body of faith today, the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Thus, it is no surprise to see Satan warring against us with unbridled fury.

Chapter 13 outlines Satan's twofold war plan to destroy God's last day people.

Number 1, an ideological war of lies and errors challenging the truth.

And number 2, firefights, outright persecution culminating in a death decree against all who defy Satan's presumed authority.

Yes, God's people are not merely victims of Satan's assaults.

Revelation 14 reveals God's counter-offensive, His remnant people demonstrating His character and proclaiming His final, last warning and appeal to the world, the 3 angels' messages.

The powerful truth of these unique messages, found in Revelation 14, would break completely the deception of Satan if proclaimed as God intends.

The message of the first angel gives the gospel to the world, announces that we are living in the time of the pre-advent investigative judgment, and calls upon every nation, tribe, tongue and people to honor God as their Creator by keeping holy his seventh day Sabbath, the very day on which we are assembled here in this auditorium and millions of Adventists around the world.

Well finally the third angel warns us in language too plain to misunderstand, not to worship the beast, the image of the beast, or receive the mark of his rebellion, which is a sign of disloyalty to God's Word.

It is little wonder then that Satan is doing everything he can to attack the Seventh-Day Adventist movement in an attempt to neutralize our influence in the territory that Satan claims is his own.

As we pray for the converting power of the Holy Spirit, for a revival of reformation and true genuine godliness, The devil opposes every 1 of us every step of the way.

In the great controversy, page 396, we're told the following.

The prince of evil contests every inch of ground over which God's people advance in their journey toward the heavenly city.

In all the history of the church, no reformation has been carried forward without encountering serious obstacles.

Though large-scale persecution will certainly come.

Currently, Satan is trying to work from the inside to weaken the church through dissension, discord, and conformity to the world.

Now let me just tell you, I'm not just preaching at you, I'm preaching to my own heart.

You see, Testimonies, Volume 3, page 434 says, Satan is ever seeking to divide the faith and hearts of God's people.

He well knows that union is their strength, and division is their weakness.

It is important and essential that all of God's or Christ's followers understand Satan's devices and with a united front meet his attacks and vanquish him.

They need to make continual efforts to press together, even if it be at some sacrifice to themselves.

You see, Satan also tries to neutralize our efforts by secular diversions such as competitive sports, internet, social media, television, entertainment, and so many other distracting activities.

He seeks to absorb people in financial deals and materialistic matters.

He uses poor health habits and lack of respect for God's natural laws, as we talked about on Thursday evening in the lead conference.

And let me just say I praise God for the powerful way in which annual council has begun with the lead conference.

Thank you, Pastor Ng for your leadership in that.

And the Council on Evangelism and Witness which will continue this afternoon.

You see, the Lord wants us to have the special relationship with Him that will counter these activities of the devil but the devil uses all kinds of things to be numb our senses.

He uses skepticism about the veracity of the scriptural origin of life and early history.

He tries to bring in controversy and discord over Bible doctrine to sidetrack our evangelistic witness by getting us to distrust and fight each other.

He urges people to move independently from the main body of the Church, but the spirit of prophecy compares the Church to a victorious army that should move together in unison.

Manuscript 37 in the year 1886 reminds us that none must act independently of the center.

An independent action will do harm and bring in disorderly state of things.

We are even warned that at the end of time, Satan will inspire individuals who will preach that reformation within the church consists in giving up our unique doctrines in order to make it easier for others to join us.

Conformity to worldly customs converts the church to the world.

It never converts the world to the church or to Christ.

Familiarity with sin will inevitably cause it to appear less repulsive.

He who chooses to associate with the servants of Satan will soon cease to fear their master.

Brothers and sisters, our only hope is an abiding faith in the Word of God, trust in inspired counsel, fervent prayer, and the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Without these heavenly compass points we would be most certainly susceptible to fall to Satan's misdirection.

The historical, critical and higher critical methods of Biblical interpretation negatively affect a clear understanding of the themes and topics of the Bible.

As we seek to know God's will through a study of His Word, We must not play strange interpretations and employ interpretive gymnastics to draw out conclusions that are not evident from a plain reading of the word.

On a recent trip to Africa, it was a great privilege about a year and a half ago to visit West Africa and to visit Monrovia, to visit the groundbreaking of our college there, which hopefully will reactivate, be reactivated soon.

But it's a great privilege to visit Africa.

I spent about 17 years of my life on that continent.

And I love those people in all parts of Africa.

I was on a trip recently back in March or so to Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, and South Africa.

I saw on this trip, on a trip there, a very interesting African saying.

When you read the Bible upside down, you will get an upside down understanding.

Great Controversy, page 598 says, the language of the Bible should be explained according to its obvious meaning, unless a symbol or figure is employed.

If men would but take the Bible as it reads, If there were no false teachers to mislead and confuse their minds, a work would be accomplished that would make angels glad and that would bring into the fold of Christ thousands upon thousands who are now wandering in error.

I have with me here 2 beautiful samples of Bibles, magnificent Bibles that have been produced for specific groups within our church, magnificent Bible here for Pathfinders.

I want to tell you thousands of Pathfinders are now finding tremendous help in this book which was produced by our General Conference Youth Ministries Department.

Beautiful helps in here, something that is precious to those Pathfinders.

It was a privilege to be at the great Pathfinder Camperee just a few days ago, Pastor Jackson, and others, many of you were there, 45, 000 plus people.

I want to tell you God is doing something special with our young people.

Well, they're both the New King James Version, so they didn't mess with the Bible.

GYC Europe 2012: The Hour Has Come

Distinct Advent Message- B1

Mark Finley

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

The Remnant

This message was presented through a partnership between GYC and GYC Europe at the 2012 conference in Linz, Austria.

For other resources like this, visit us online at gycweb.org.

Father in heaven, we just want to thank you for the opportunity of studying your word.

We just praise your name for the Bible, for the word of God.

And as we open its pages today, we pray that you'd inspire us, encourage our hearts, draw us close to you, and deepen our faith in the fact that you have a remnant movement on earth today, a church that you've raised up specially.

Richards of The Voice of Prophecy was attending a really large seminar for pastors.

Now, these pastors were not Seventh-day Adventist pastors.

And as they were attending the seminar, after the seminar 1 evening, they were sitting around and eating.

And 1 of the pastors looked at the other pastors at the table, and they began to discuss the book of Revelation.

Well, these non-Adventist pastors didn't know a great deal about Revelation, and so they started discussing about these wild beasts and these weird images.

And Pastor Richards thought that this was quite fascinating, so he just sat there listening for a while.

Sometime it's good to listen before you speak.

And 1 of the pastors spoke up, these evangelical non-adventist pastors, and he said, you know what I think?

I think it's too bad that the book of Revelation was ever put in the Bible.

I think that was too bad." And everybody kind of paused and he said, the reason why is this.

But secondly, if the book of Revelation wasn't in the Bible, we wouldn't be troubled with that cult of the Seventh-day Adventists.

You know, I thought about that when Pastor Richards told us that, and I said, you know what?

Well, it's certainly not true that it's too bad the Book of Revelation is in the Bible.

The Book of Revelation is 1 of the most precious books in the Bible.

But if you didn't have the Book of Revelation in the Bible, Seventh-day Adventists would lose their unique identity.

God has raised up a unique end-time movement, and we find that identity in the book of Revelation.

The book of Revelation has really 4 chapters that help you understand the uniqueness of God's last-day movement.

And our topic this afternoon is the remnant.

We're going to look at the remnant throughout the Bible.

We're going to look at the remnant in the book of Revelation.

But there are really 4 chapters in the book of Revelation that describe God's end-time movement.

Revelation 14 describes the message of God's true church.

Revelation chapter 12 describes the identifying characteristics of God's true church, and that's where we'll spend a lot of time.

Revelation chapter 10, I talked about the other night, it talks about the historic rise of God's true church, that God's true church would rise out of disappointment, just like the New Testament church.

And then Revelation 3 talks about the condition of the true church, that at the judgment hour, God's true church would be complacent, it would be apathetic, somewhat Laodicean.

Now, there are many young people particularly that look at the Adventist church, they look at their local church and they say, you know what, it's rather complacent, rather Laodicean.

But when you really look at it from the Bible perspective, that is 1 of the characteristics of God's church in the last days.

When you study the remnant in the New Testament and in the book of Revelation, there is no remnant that comes out of the remnant.

When you look at the New Testament, God's remnant last-day church would be spiritually apathetic, but there would be in the body of Christ, in the context of that church, those that were passionate about Christ, those that were passionate about his message.

The wheat and the tares would grow together until the what?

The wheat and the tares would grow together until the harvest.

So we're going to look at first the book of Revelation.

We're going to start with Revelation Chapter 12.

And if you have your Bible, I invite you to take it, which I hope you do.

And we're going to begin with Revelation 12.

We looked at this briefly the other evening, but I'm going to focus on the last few verses.

We pointed out that Revelation 12 is really a scenario of history from the fall of Lucifer in heaven down until the time of the end.

And in Revelation, the 12th chapter, we have these 4 vignettes.

And we studied first that Lucifer fell from heaven, Then the scene passed on.

The scene passes on, and Lucifer tries to destroy God's people in the Middle Ages.

And in each of these first 3 incidents, Christ wins, Jesus wins, Satan loses.

Christ triumphed over Satan in the powers of hell on the cross, He won.

But right now, we're looking at the remnant.

If you have your Bible, please look at Revelation 12, verse 17, and the dragon.

What are the 2 symbols of Satan in Revelation 12?

So He deceives those whom he wants to destroy and destroys those whom he deceives.

So there are 2 symbols in the book of Revelation, chapter 12, of Satan.

The serpent, he is the deceiver, but he is a deceiver with the intent on destroying.

So the dragon was enraged with the woman.

Now, in the Bible, a woman represents what?

The woman represents the bride of Christ.

And, or if you have an apostate woman, like in Revelation 17, the woman represents the fallen church, but here, the true church.

So the dragon Satan's angry with the church.

He goes to make war with the rest of her offspring.

Now, the King James Version says, the remnant of her seed.

There are different translations for that word remnant.

Remnant can be translated the rest, it can be translated those who remain.

Just raise your hand if you've got a German Bible.

Sebastien Braxton

A Solemn Appeal

Let's go in our Bibles to Galatians chapter 5.

If you're not there you can say have mercy.

The Bible says this, this is the Apostle Paul, and he says, For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.

In other words, the reason why I take you to this text is because this is the only verse in the Bible where this phrase exists.

To use the term righteousness by faith, it's all over the writings of Ellen White, but in terms of the Bible, this is the only verse where this actual phrase is used and Paul is saying in verse 5 he says we himself as well as the Galatians the church that's there in Galatia he says we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.

So the question immediately emerges, the question, What is righteousness by faith?

All right, so Paul is starting off here in Galatians chapter 5 with the only occurrence of this phrase.

Now, let's dive into this concept of how familiar are you all with righteousness by faith?

How familiar are you with, you say I'm very familiar.

How many are like, I'm kind of familiar with righteousness by faith?

How many of you are like, I have no idea what righteousness by faith is?

Now, I want to take you through some of the teachings of Jesus.

If we wanna understand something in its simplicity and in its power, the best place to go are the teachings of Jesus.

He sums up things very easily and I believe there's no greater teacher than Christ.

So let's start with the verse in Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew in the fifth chapter, Jesus's first sermon as recorded in the book of Matthew.

So first we're gonna explore the concept of righteousness.

And then we're gonna add the component of faith and will kind of just lightly land into the third angels message I'll give you a break at some point Just so your mind can kind of digest what you have heard Matthew chapter 5.

The Bible says this in verse 6 Jesus says blessed are those who hunger and thirst for what?

For righteousness for they shall be what?

Now the first thing here that Jesus establishes is that righteousness is something that should be hungered and thirsted for.

It is something that responds and satisfies a desire in the human heart.

So he says, blessed are those, not based on their name, not based on their socioeconomic status, not based on their knowledge or education or their possessions, but blessed are those who have a desire.

Now, when you hunger for something, a pain of hunger is a innate Desire that God placed in man.

Yes You were born with the ability to become hungry.

I wish I didn't have the desire for hunger I wouldn't eat if I didn't have to that's just my own personal Lord, I don't know why you did that, but he did it for a reason and it's through this that we understand righteousness Just as you and I hunger for bread or thirst for water or whatever we thirst for Jesus says you can have fostered in your heart and in my heart, a desire and a hunger and a thirst for righteousness.

In other words, Jesus by the very statement, blessed are those who hunger and thirst, there are people in the world that do not hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Only the people who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed, and only the people who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.

So, something that many of you may have no way of knowing, In that translation where the Bible says, and they shall be filled, or for they shall be filled, in the original language, in the Greek, we have kind of different voices of verbs, okay?

And what this means is this, You have what's called an active verb.

Passive verb now active and passive in Greek.

All it simply means is this is The subject doing the action or is the subject receiving the action?

So in Greek, they have a specific way of putting the verb so that when you're listening or you're reading, you know when it says Sebastian was filled with righteousness, In the Greek we say, oh, Sebastian was receiving righteousness, he was a passive, he was the object of the verb, are you following what I'm saying?

In the same sense, if it said, Sebastian filled them with righteousness.

So in the Greek, they are very particular in these verbs.

Another example of this, go to Ephesians chapter 5.

Ephesians chapter 5, keep your finger here in Matthew.

Ephesians chapter 5, we're gonna look at verse 18.

Ephesians chapter 5, when you're there, say amen.

All right, verse 18, if you're not there, say have mercy.

Alright, the Bible says here, Are you there?

Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 18, this is what Paul writes to the church in Ephesus.

He says, and Do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the what?

Now, here again, in the original language, it's the same kind of verb.

So in other words, when Paul is talking to the church in Ephesus and he says, being filled with the Holy Spirit is an action that is done to you.

If in order for you to be filled with the Spirit or filled with righteousness, there must be a filler.

If it was us who are filling ourselves, then the verb would be active in Greek.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

God’s Prophetic Movement, Message, and Mission and Their Attempted Neutralization by the Devil

1h 11m

The Remnant

1h 58m

A Solemn Appeal

2h 12m

A Moment or A Millenium?

2h

From Health to Him- Part 2

2h 25m

From Health to Him- Part 1

1h 49m

The Hour of Victory- Part 2

1h 54m

The Hour of Victory- Part 1

1h 49m

Small Group Evangelism: A Longing for the Real Christian Life- Part 2

1h 18m

Small Group Evangelism: A Longing for the Real Christian Life- Part 1

1h 59m

Engaging the Age: Reviving the Public Evangelistic Campaign- Part 2

1h 55m

Engaging the Age: Reviving the Public Evangelistic Campaign- Part 1

1h 59m

Sound Doctrine