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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Frank Hasel

Loving God with All Your Thinking

It is a great joy for me to be with you here this Sabbath morning.

Believe it or not, for me personally, this is the first in-person Sabbath service that I participate in in over a year since this terrible pandemic hit this country here.

So this is really special to me and I just enjoy the fellowship and I just enjoy the people, the real people, not just the virtual presence of people on the screen but the real presence of real people in the room.

There's just nothing like that and nothing can top that.

So thank you for being here and thank you for joining us here for the Sabbath day.

I just come from my aunt, Lotte, Lilo Walters.

She lives just a few miles down the road in Banning, really.

And this morning we sat together and all, yesterday afternoon and evening, talking and talking and talking, and she was relating some of the stories that you could read in that special book that was announced, A Thousand Shall Fall.

Can I see who has read that book, A Thousand Shall Fall?

And the amazing thing is that it's true stories.

And she told me even other stories that are not in the book.

You know, there are many more stories that happened during that time, and I could tell you a few more if we had time to.

So it's good to remember things, how God has been active in our lives and how He has led in the past.

So if you have your Bibles with you, I invite you to open your Bibles with me to the New Testament, to the Gospel of John 8, verse 31 and 32.

The book, the printed page that you can turn and hear and feel, even smell.

You know, you might not be as fortunate and rich to afford a book so you may read on your iPhone, on your iPad.

So here's John chapter 8 verse 31 and 32.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, if you abide by My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

It is well over 1 year now that this global pandemic has hit our world and I still remember in March 2020 I was just on my way back from Ghana, West Africa, and I cut my trip short for 1 day because I heard the rumors about the virus going around.

I was able to rebook my flight and arrived in the United States and just a couple hours later President Trump closed the borders, shut down all the air traffic and everything because of that.

And ever since we have to live with this little virus and its consequences.

And it is interesting to me that no natural disaster, no tsunami, no war, no earthquake, no flooding, no hurricane, no famine has accomplished what this little virus has done to us.

It is interesting that not even a persecution, not even war ever forced us into such behavior to stay at home rather than go and join a worship service or a prayer session or whatever it is.

It has caused this tiny microscopic little virus has caused a cataclysmic global chaos.

And it has changed the way we live, it has changed how we work, it has changed how we engage with each other, it has changed how we teach.

If we are teachers in school and universities, it has changed how we even wear things on our faces.

So in my sermon this morning, I will not elaborate on the global economic and social impact that this COVID-19 virus had on our important society and this world.

Like to do with you is to reflect with you on a few principles from the Bible, from God's Word, on COVID-19 and what it means for us and how we shall react to the realities that are before us.

It has to do with the way we are thinking.

And that's the title of my sermon, loving God with all your thinking.

It has to do with how we conduct ourselves.

And there is another aspect that the COVID pandemic has brought to the forefront, I believe, that poses an even greater challenge than even the health risk that it brings along with it.

And It has to do with nothing less than truth and how we relate to it and how we engage with it.

The COVID pandemic has accelerated a shocking new reality and a social phenomenon that is nothing short of mind-boggling.

Experts are agreed that at the beginning of this pandemic in 2020, so-called fake news and conspiracy theories have spread equally rapidly like COVID-19 itself.

And it is interesting, already in February 2020, a month before it even hit this country, the Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned in Munich at the security conference there with the following words, and I quote him here.

He said, we are not just fighting a pandemic, he said, we are fighting an infodemic.

And yes, we are faced with a bewildering flood of information and disinformation that leaves many people confused and irritated.

And things that once seemed sure and secure are no longer so.

So what do we do with fake news and deepfake and misinformation and conspiracy theories that have become prevalent in this age of social media and have skyrocketed since the beginning of COVID-19.

And in the context of these fake facts and so-called alternative facts and fake truth, we sadly, sadly realize that facts alone will not convince anymore anyone of the truth.

You can pile up facts galore, and it will not do any change of thinking.

So this affects, I believe, our outreach.

And this subjectivism really polarizes not just society.

I see the same phenomenon even within our own ranks within the church.

So this situation, in my opinion, is extremely concerning because it undermines trust.

It undermines trust in health institutions.

It undermines trust even in the Word of God and how we relate to each other.

It is very interesting in 2016 the Oxford Dictionary chose the word post-truth as the word of the year in 2016.

It is defined as relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal Belief.

So it's no longer objective facts that decide a thing, it's your subjective beliefs and how you feel about the things that make something true or not true.

It is interesting that this phenomenon is really not something new.

Already in the year 1909, at the beginning of the 20th century, Gilbert Chesterton, a British scholar and philosopher and thinker, has lamented the following.

He said, men was meant to be doubtful about himself but undoubting about the truth.

He said this in 1909, and indeed modern people have become absolutely sure about their subjective self, but very doubtful about truth.

And that's the situation we live in today.

So this post-truth mindset has become a mainstay in political commentary, in society, even in the church.

And the prefix post-truth, the prefix post-indicates that truth really has become unimportant, really has become irrelevant.

Truth has degenerated into, and this was a new word for me, but it's an English word that actually exists if you look it up in the dictionary.

Have you ever heard that word, truthiness?

It has the ring of truth to it, But it is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as the quality of seeming or felt to be true, even if not necessarily being so.

So truthiness sounds true, truthiness feels true, but it doesn't necessarily have to be true.

And that's the situation we face today with many people.

Connected with this truthiness mentality, I noticed another disturbing phenomenon in many social media networks and platforms.

And that is that there are an increasing number of people getting used, and I don't know whether you have noticed that yourself, but I noticed that when I watched the social media platforms, that an increasing number of people are getting used to disseminate derogatory comments.

They use language that is even hate speech.

They quickly, very quickly, vent their disapproval, and they harshly voice their disgust, poisoning the atmosphere in which we deal with each other, questioning and doubting each other's integrity, using inflammatory words, questioning and doubting each other's integrity, using inflammatory words, questioning and doubting each other's integrity, and commenting on really trivialities that occupy our attention.

And it seems to me as if people think they have the right to comment on every single mischief and every mistake other people make, everything they dislike, and they share their disgust unfiltered, immediately, around the world.

It is really a toxic atmosphere that is promulgated on the social platforms.

Have you ever wondered why it is that people are so popular with negativity and why people have such success with fake news and fake truth.

Now it is interesting, there are some scientific studies about this.

And MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has done a major study and they found out that the dissemination of false information on the Internet is 70% more likely and successful than the spreading of true information.

Perhaps it is so because lies are more interesting and lies are more original.

It takes 6 times longer, MIT says, it takes 6 times longer to reach 1, 500 people with the truth than with a lie and with a negative information.

It is interesting already Mark Twain has pointed out and stated, a lie, he said, has circled the globe 3 times before truth has even put on its shoes.

So at a time when polarization is at its peak and truth has become a four-letter word, the question on everyone's mind is, why?

Why does evidence seem to have so little influence on people's beliefs and what can be done about this?

Since a list of facts apparently will not help us move forward, what is needed?

That is the question that is before us today.

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Loving God with All Your Thinking

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