Portland

Eugene Prewitt

Weak Men and Fanatics

My work on this little planet involves canvassing.

Have any of you ever done the literature work, gone door to door, selling Adventist books?

I see the hands of 4 or 5 that have done that.

And that work that I was doing even since I was a teenager, recently has been expanding to other parts of the planet.

In Indonesia right now we have a group of nearly 30 canvassers.

And do you know the primary religion in Indonesia?

Are any of you familiar with that nation?

It's mostly followers of the religion of Islam.

In Java especially, where you have more than half the population in that island, in the center of that island, Amazing Facts has an evangelism training school.

And those students are going door to door, selling The Great Controversy.

The Great Controversy is a great book for Muslims.

The first chapter is the destruction of Jerusalem.

And it talks about getting ready for the day of judgment.

So you can pray for your fellow workers there in Indonesia and the work that they're doing.

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there lived a man named E.P.

You might, if you've ever studied Adventist history, learned about someone named A.G.

Daniels, who was our conference president at the turn of the, well, the year 1900.

Daniels was well known earlier, in 1885, and he led out in a revival in Fresno.

I suppose that's about, I'm guessing, 300 miles south of here, I have no, really, I didn't look at a map.

So about 700 miles south of here in Fresno, E.P.

Daniels was leading out in a revival and there were some men who were from the conference office nearby.

I think you have a conference office nearby here.

We passed it, I mean not too near, but we passed it on the way here this morning.

And at that conference office, you had some men whose names you might know.

Wagner has some interesting distinction in our church history.

He was 1 of the very first men to join the Seventh-day Adventist movement after the Great Disappointment in 1844, when the brethren believed that there was no more opportunity for sinners to be saved.

And here was a sinner who wanted to come.

And the brethren didn't know how to relate to him, but eventually they let him in.

When you hear in Adventist history the name Wagner without any other qualifier, they almost always mean the son.

Wagner, as in if you heard the terms Wagner and Jones or Jones and Wagner.

Jones himself, the other 1 of that duo, those men worked in the office there near Fresno.

I mean, I can't tell you all the reasons why, but I can tell you some of the reasons why.

And I won't ask to see how many of you here aren't good at handling money, but E.P.

As a minister of the gospel in the Adventist Church, he went into debt.

And he ended up in significant debt, so significant that he resigned his position as a minister so he could do some sort of secular work, earn more money, and pay off his debts.

And when he was in that secular employment, earning some money, he got into investments, investing in mines and in lands.

And he, you know, when you're into investing, you can make some money investing your own money, but where you really make it is if you invest other people's money.

And that's also where you make it just in case it doesn't work out, because then what you lose is other people's money.

And so, if you know how to win friends and influence people, investments can really be a winner for you and a loser for them.

He knew how to touch the hearts of people, and he used the influence he had gained as a minister of the gospel to encourage people to invest in his mining business.

Ellen White, who was in California near that time, she had plainly told him that he should not get involved in the speculative type of investment.

I mean, investment often is speculative, and to invest your money speculatively, when you could invest it in heaven where there's no speculation needed, it's not sensible.

Daniels, Elder Daniels, would mention that Ellen White had talked to him when he was trying to encourage you to invest, but he entirely misrepresented her.

And in fact, he used what she had said as, If he was talking to you, he'd say, Ellen White said that this investment is guaranteed to produce.

You put a dollar in, you're going to get $3 out.

And many people in California put money in E.P.

Daniels' investment, and the way it goes with those kind of investments, some of them did lose.

Well, maybe he was, but he was a sincere crook.

You know, the kind of person whose memory plays tricks on him and he expresses things the way he wishes they were instead of necessarily the way that they were.

I'm trying to explain to you why the foreman in the conference office didn't think very highly of E.P.

And now you don't think very highly of him either, right?

Daniels was a gifted speaker and he knew how to preach about raising children.

Daniels had children, he preached about raising children, and he did a great job preaching about it.

His wife did a good job preaching about how to raise children, but they didn't raise their own children very well.

They didn't even follow their own advice.

Church Plant

The Bible Data on Health

Before I make much progress, I want to talk to you tonight about a resource regarding the intersection of health and Bible data, and that is the website audioverse.org.

Audio, A-U-D-I-O, V-E-R-S-E dot O-R-G, has lectures by nearly 40 physicians on the issue of health and its relation to the spiritual life and to Bible truth.

Lectures from everything from how to overcome depression to issues dealing with diabetes, learning how to face end of life issues sensibly, questions about diet, anyway, what's that resource?

What you have in front of you, this health in a biblical perspective, is a kind of like an outline of ideas that you find in the Bible.

It isn't the ideas themselves, because the Bible has far more information about health than what could be presented in a short lecture.

What the Bible says about health is a strong evidence for the inspiration of the Bible.

I don't know if you're aware of the history of health and science to however much degree you may or may not know, I'm a beneficiary of modern health science.

Louis Pasteur, who invented the vaccine for rabies, that vaccine saved my life.

I was bitten by a rabid bat when I was an infant.

But you go back before Pasteur, back even before the period of the Romans, and you find even the people of Europe and near the Caucasus Mountains, their ideas about health were similar to what you find in the jungles of Borneo today.

That is, in many parts of the world today, you find people that when they get sick, They think it's because a spirit has cursed them.

When they get leprosy, they think it's because someone has put a spell on them.

When they end up having a baby die, they believe that that's because the spirits have attacked them.

And they have no idea about hygiene, no idea about germs, no concept of quarantines, no concept of even how to deal with their excrement.

I've been in India, And in India, I don't know if you know this, some of you here know me a little bit, I like to watch birds.

And the way to see birds in many parts of the world is to go off the beaten path.

Because in India, the people just take 2 or 3 steps off the path, and that is where they use the restroom, beside the roads.

And because that excrement is so close to where they live and walk and breathe, many diseases that we never see here are prevalent in the part of India where I was.

What I'm trying to tell you is that a knowledge about germs, about viral infections, a knowledge about viral infections, a knowledge about hygiene and cleanliness saves us, the 6 of us here, from so much misery.

But go back to the Bible, and you'll find that when God was speaking to ignorant slaves, slaves that were leaving Egypt that had no idea about germs, had no concept of any of these things, He gave them instructions.

He told them, when you need to use the restroom, take a shovel with you.

Go outside of the camp, dig a hole, and bury it.

He told them, when someone gets an infectious illness, put them in a quarantine and watch them for several days to see if it goes away or if it's changing.

If it ends up being something that you can't cure, like Leprosy, keep them outside of the camp.

So that God introduced quarantine into the mobile Israelite camp.

Don't think that this was a knowledge that was extant outside of Israel.

Maybe those of you who've read the Bible remember the story about that little girl, Naaman's servant.

His infectious illness was right there near other people who could be infected.

What I'm trying to tell you, in harmony with what is on your paper, is that there are several evidences regarding hygiene that prove that someone with a knowledge thousands of years beyond Moses' time inspired the writings of Moses.

God made it requisite for his presence that they would take regular baths.

To you, that might sound normal because you have hot water and you take a bath once or twice a day, but there are many parts of the world today where people take baths once a week or once every 3 weeks where people don't have running water that Israelites did not have running water.

And if they had been left to themselves, that would have been a rare experience.

But God required them to take a bath every evening after, if they would have a sexual encounter with their spouse, they had to take a bath.

If they would touch a corpse, they had to take a bath.

If they would be near anyone who had an infectious illness, they had to take a bath and they had to wash their clothes.

I don't know if you can see it, but this is a level of wisdom that you just can't understand until you know what you know about germs.

It was less than 300 years ago that doctors and nurses began washing their hands before they treated patients.

Look at the second line there, evidence of God's design.

The illnesses that hurt people in America and Australia and Europe today, the primary ones are cancers and heart disease, diabetes, arteriosclerosis.

These are the biggies, and growing ones include a number of autoimmune disorders like lupus, and some illnesses like Lyme's that are carried by insects.

Those first 4 I mentioned though, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, I don't know if I even mentioned stroke, but those 4 are entirely preventable.

When I say cancer's entirely preventable, that's an exaggeration.

Cancer cells form in every 1 of our bodies every day.

Cancer cells are not rare developments in humans, they're continuous developments.

But cancer cells are eaten by our large white blood cells.

This is why, even though you develop cancer probably 20 times today, you don't have cancer.

It's because that cancer cell was promptly executed.

But when you practice a certain set of health principles, the likelihood of you developing cancer goes down dramatically.

In this magazine here, you have references.

This show, for example, just eating, excuse me, just having regular physical exercise with a certain level of exertion decreases the likelihood of a man getting prostate cancer by 74%.

For a woman, that same level of exercise reduces her chance of getting breast cancer 37%.

That means where you would have 12 ladies getting it without exercise, you'd only have 8 getting it with exercise.

If 12 ladies exercised, it would save the lives of 4 of them.

When I said 12 ladies exercise, it said the lives of 4 of them.

I mean, if 12 ladies that were doomed to get breast cancer exercised, that, anyway, I think you follow what I'm trying to say.

That original diet, you see there under evidence of God's design, the original diet of fruits, nuts and grains and later vegetables, ready veggies, I hope you don't mind that I say that, that vegetables were added in chapter 3 of Genesis, they weren't in chapter 1 or 2.

But that particular diet all by itself, if you just eat that way, the simple, unrefined diet of fruits, nuts, and grains, the chance of you eating enough to become Obese is almost nil.

To eat enough to become obese, you need refined foods, because whole grains and whole fruits are satiating.

They fill you up, and they make it hard to overeat.

To overeat, you need desserts and processed grains and fatty things.

Can any of you just imagine how hard it would be to overeat the simplest of foods?

I'm not going to ask you to think that through, you probably can't imagine it if you've never tried it for a while.

The original diet matches the needs of the body to such an extent that the person who wrote Genesis either understood how to prevent cancer, diabetes, stroke, and these other things, or else he just randomly hit on the right diet to accomplish that.

Do you understand what I'm trying to say?

That the diet that is in Genesis works in uncanny ways, only being discovered in 2014.

What about the issue of clean and unclean animals?

I'm not gonna ask you if you've seen the movie Noah, or is it called The Flood?

I haven't seen it, But if you have, I guess I am sort of asking you, the animals that went into the ark, did they all go in by 2 or did some of them go in by 7?

But in Genesis, when the animals go into the ark, the clean animals go in by 7, but the unclean animals go in by 2.

And when they come out of the ark, that is when God introduces the idea of eating meat.

Now do you see right away what happens if they decide in their meat eating that they're going to eat 1 of the unclean animals?

You have instant extirpation of the species, instant extinction.

Because if you have 2 and you take 1, you have no more breeding pairs, right?

Very apparently, God made provision so when they got out of the ark and there was no cultivated fields of grain, no mature fruit trees, no vegetable gardens ready to go.

You know, they can't wait 5 years to start eating.

Very apparently, just by what he said about who went in and out of the ark, they were gonna eat the clean meats.

But when you come to the next book of the Bible, it becomes more explicit.

You Can Love Again

Glenn Coon

ABC Prayer Crusade

14 - Gladys Finds Deeper Happiness

Dear Lord, you've promised us that we will have days of heaven upon the earth if we'll follow the simple principles of your word.

And you've promised us that it is the Lord that works in us, both to will and to do of your good pleasure.

So we come asking, we come believing, we come thanking you that we are receiving in Jesus' name, Amen.

The message of this hour has to do with how when we don't get the answers as we would like to get them, God has better answers on the way.

I probably will repeat many times during this session a statement something like this, God will either give us what we ask for or something better.

Now I will not be repeating this because we don't have enough material to fill the hour.

I will be repeating it because there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of professed Christians who have no idea that when God does not give them what they ask for in the way they expect, they have no idea that he's waiting to give them something almost infinitely better.

And so we're praying that the Holy Spirit will somehow burn this beautiful, wonderful truth into our minds and hearts.

Thus it'll be easier for us to trust in his wonderful word.

It'll be easier for us to trust in his wonderful word.

It'll be easier for us to know that when we make a decision for him, he will not let us down.

God either gives us what we ask for or something better.

Now we're going to say it again together and this time we're going to add to it at the close every time.

God gives us either what we ask for or something better every time.

This is according to God's immutable, eternal, impeccable, never-perishing Word.

Let me cite first 2 or 3 promises that say this to be true.

Ephesians 3.20 now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.

He either gives us what we ask for or what?

There are no exceptions for a child of God, no exceptions.

This is what it means to know Jesus Christ and this is life eternal that they might know thee the only true God in Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

To know him this way is to rejoice in him.

Even in trials, even in bitter disappointments, if we know that he really will do this, it'll be a lot easier to bear the trials, much easier.

Now this is the basis on which he does this.

Romans 8 32, He that spared not his own son.

He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, How shall he not with him also, what's the next word, freely give us all things?

No good thing will God withhold from them that walk uprightly.

No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

So he who gave Jesus to die on Calvary will with him, not apart from him, with him freely give us all things.

Romans 8 32 for the many of you who are taking notes.

Now there's another promise to go with it.

We want to rivet these promises in our minds so in these days of utter disappointment, when everything seems black, everything seems crooked, everything seems to be perverse, when it seems that the devil has taken over.

We'll not forget these wonderful promises of God.

My God shall supply all your need, And you don't stop there.

Now, here are 2 other texts that make clear to us why oftentimes we're disappointed.

The first is Jeremiah 31 verse, Jeremiah 33 verse 3.

Call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.

Because we ask God for something, and we do not get the something in the way, and at the time that we ask, we think God's overlooked it.

He counts every hair in that bald head, brother.

Now here's another text to go with it and this shows why we're often disappointed.

Isaiah 42 16, I will bring the blind by way that they knew not.

I'll bring the blind by way that they knew not.

I will lead them in paths that they've not known.

He said, I'm going to do in the riches of glory by Christ Jesus something that has never even entered your mind.

Just the time you think you've worn it out, it's bigger than ever, more powerful than ever.

I will bring the blind by way that they knew not.

I will lead them in paths that they have not known.

I will make darkness light before them and crooked things straight.

These things will I do unto them and not forsake them.

Now friends, in my own life, This has been fulfilled again and again and again.

I'm thinking of 2 great deep dark dismal Gethsemane experiences in my own life They were horrible absolutely horrible 1 happened 31 years ago and many people heard about this, but another 1 happened only half that long ago and it was just as deep and as dark and it seemed like it was worse.

I look back upon those 2 terrifically dark abysses as 2 of the most marvelous experiences in my life.

Because God says I'll bring you in a way you don't know.

I'm still the 1 that gave my beloved son.

And I poured out all heaven in the gift of Jesus.

Anything else I do for you is no sacrifice for me, God says.

Is it a sacrifice for God to give a man a companion?

No way, but it was an infinite sacrifice for God to give his son to go through the humiliation of his whole life, culminating in the Passion Week and finally on Calvary.

So let us know that anything that God permits to come to us, he has a divine purpose of love.

The result of that first dark, deep Gethsemane experience is what we are sharing with you, the ABCs of prayer and family communication.

We would have never been before you, never, had we not gone through that terrible Gethsemane experience.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Weak Men and Fanatics

1h

The Bible Data on Health

47m

14 - Gladys Finds Deeper Happiness

58m

13 - From Frustrated Hate...

57m

12 - Humility’s Part in Curing Infatuation

57m

11 - Why Randy and Margaret Were Remarried

56m

10 - Voice in the Darkness

55m

9 - A Cancerous Marriage Saved

48m

8 - God Breaks a Web

1h 18m

6 - Let’s Communicate

55m

5 - Trapped By The Enemy

55m

4 - Prisoners Delivered

56m

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