<p>Love is an End-Time Salvational Issue</p>

<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>

Eugene Prewitt

Portland

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.

Love in the End Times

I think some of you have read that verse about how dangerous our day will be, perilous times in the end.

And when it describes the perils, it says that men will be lovers of themselves more than lovers of God, or lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.

If, though no 1 knows it, in your own heart you don't know how to love God.

What if, when you think about loving God, you can't find any way to manufacture a love for God any more than you can a love for someone else you've never met?

And I wanted to begin by telling you some stories you know.

If you want to find these stories, in fact I encourage you to turn to Numbers 14.

Numbers 14, right near the beginning of your Bible, It's almost page 100 in mine.

And they're on their way back from exploring Canaan.

They all have reports about how wonderful Canaan is, but 10 of them say that we can't take it.

They say the giants there will overcome us.

And 2, Joshua and Caleb, I see you Charles, welcome, 2 of them, Joshua and Caleb say, we can do it in the strength of the Lord.

That's the part you remember about the story, but I bet there's a part you don't remember so well.

In verse 10, but all the congregation bade stone them with stones.

And the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel.

The church wanted to stone Joshua and Caleb.

The 2 that gave the good report, what did the church want to do to them?

And when a mob wants to kill someone, they usually can do it.

But What happens in the second half of verse 10?

The glory of God appeared and that's why they didn't do it.

In verses 11 and 12, God speaks to Moses.

He says, how long is it going to be before these people believe me?

After all these miracles that I've done, how long are they going to be rebellious against me?

And then he says to Moses, I'm going to make of you a greater and mightier nation than they.

Now that's the children's story you never heard before, how God wiped out the Israelites and took Moses and made a new nation, better than the nation of the Israelites.

And the reason you never heard that story that's described there in verse 12 is because in verse 13, Moses begins to pray.

He uses a number of interesting arguments.

And if you think about the story, you'll realize he had to use interesting arguments because he couldn't say, they're such good people.

Moses couldn't say, please forgive them, they're good folks.

Although people preach like that at funerals these days, even when it's not true.

Moses, I'm gonna summarize the arguments you find between verse 13 and 19, kind of like this.

He says, father, please forgive them because your glory is at stake.

You're the 1 who took them out of Egypt, and if you destroy them now, it's gonna look like you weren't able to finish what you started.

For your own reputation, please don't destroy them.

He said, because you have forgiven them from that point until now, to be consistent, forgive them again.

He said, because you made promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, please forgive them to keep your promises." Aren't those all interesting arguments to use?

Because you promised, because of your own reputation, that is to help the heathen, because of your consistency.

If it stopped there, That would be interesting enough, wouldn't it?

But notice what he says, I have pardoned according to your word.

Suppose that you wanted to know how to have powerful intercessory prayer.

Do you think you might want to study the prayer of Moses?

A prayer that is used here and works so well.

2 chapters later in chapter 16 you have the story of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.

You know about that great rebellion or maybe you have not heard about it, but these 3 leading men, 1 of them a Levite, the other 2 not Levites, tried to have a coup, take over the control of the nation of Israel.

And God threatened to destroy the nation again.

And this is Moses' prayer in chapter 16, it's a little bit different.

He says, God Are you going to destroy the whole nation for the rebellion of a few people?

So the prayer is different and it leads to a different result.

What God says is separate from Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.

Leave them by themselves in 1 group and everyone else in the other and they did that and then the earth swallowed up group a Because Moses prayed that God would spare group B Now in effect the argument in Moses's prayer is quite a bit different than it is in chapter 14.

Because Moses' prayer nearly says that the people aren't so bad.

When he says, are you going to destroy everyone for the rebellion of a few?

Doesn't that prayer nearly indicate that the larger part are better than the few?

Well I'll tell you, by the end of chapter 16, Moses finds out that it really wasn't true.

Because when they go to bed that night, the people of Israel begin talking, and the next morning they come and they say, this is in the 40s of this verse, chapter 16 in the 40s, they say, you have killed the people of the Lord almost as if Moses had power to open up the earth and do what happened and Then they're ready to kill Moses and Aaron this time.

It's all the people You know the people aren't any better in chapter 16 than they are in chapter 14.

But again, God appears and a plague begins to destroy the whole bunch of them, just like God threatened to do.

This is where I hope that you will learn a lesson.

Because Aaron is a very weak character in Exodus.

You know Aaron, he's the 1 that makes the gold in what?

And then he says that he just put the gold in the fire and the calf came out.

I don't know if you've read that, but that's about what Aaron says there.

And I know something about this church, even though I don't know much about it, but I know that as a church, at least some of you are aware of apostasy among leading persons somewhere.

That's why I want you to think about Aaron.

Because Aaron was a leader in apostasy in Exodus.

And here in number 16, you see that Aaron had gone through such a transformation that he takes a censor and runs into the people and stands between the living and the dead.

That is Aaron puts his own life on the line to bring an end to this judgment and proves that his character is different today than it was in the past.

Can you let someone like Aaron be a different man today than he was in the past?

By chapter 20, the people are upset again.

And in chapter, why don't you turn there because you're so close.

Numbers chapter 20, And we're going to look at verse, oh, verse 6.

Back to Menu

Series

Portland

Love in the End Times

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Weak Men and Fanatics

1h

Love in the End Times

37m

Sound Doctrine