Cults: Seventh Day Adventists

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All right, tonight, long delayed for many reasons, but at least we're starting. Tonight we're gonna look at, in general, cults, and what do we think about when we think of cults, and how can we process cults theologically, personally, when we meet people, how to evangelize, and then
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I'm gonna try to get into the Seventh -day Adventist if we have enough time later, and then afterwards we'll head on over to Rhoda Springs.
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First of all, thank you to Pastor Steve when he did Mormonism, and Pradeep did Hinduism.
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I wanted to do this one first, but really there wasn't much I could do. I could preach Sunday morning, and then by Sunday night
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I was just not feeling well at all. I feel much better now and feel stronger than riding the bicycle, so thank you for your patience.
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Tonight, if you're looking for a verse -by -verse message through a book of the Bible, we're not going to be doing that. This is kind of family
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Bible hour. If you wanna have a verse -by -verse sermon, you can go to YouTube and listen to this morning's sermon, or you can pull up another sermon verse -by -verse, but tonight is going to be a little different.
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Why are we even doing this series, you might ask? Well, number one, for introduction, I want you to know the truth, because when you look at error, it's going to force you to understand what the truth is, and we're gonna look at the truth in this series, and it's gonna help you say,
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I know what I believe, and therefore it's easier to see the negative things that people use when they contradict the
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Bible. A second purpose is I want you to be equipped to evangelize. At the end of the series, whenever we end the series,
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I want you to be able to meet anyone in any cult, any atheist, anybody that's caught up in something that's not real
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Christianity, and I want you to be able to talk to them about the Savior, and sin, and repentance, and the response of faith, because once you figure out that there are really only two religions in the world, one religion that says it's by your good works you get to heaven, or by your good works plus something else, maybe
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God's grace, and then the other religion that says it has to be done completely by God, that will make it very easy for you and separate all the cults.
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I did find some funny cults this week. I had been watching Heaven's Gate documentary on HBO Max, I think.
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These are some real cults that I found in my research, and they're funny. They're meant to be funny, but they're true.
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The Cosmic Yo -Yo Church of Evolutionary Oneness. What would you say if you met somebody who was in that cult?
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Get a new name is what I would say. Fat Worship of the High Cholesterol Order.
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Holy Order of Our Lady of Perpetual Motion. And I thought this was telling the
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Church of God, the totally indifferent. Or, what if you were at the largest gathering of Satanists, 50 miles that way, held in Boston, Massachusetts?
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The largest group of Satanists ever assembled, and they have things like un -baptism rituals where they'll take pieces out of the
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Bible, burn them up, and become un -baptized. So there's all kinds of cults.
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What will you say to them? I want you to be able to pick up your Bible, since I know you know it, and then say, this is the good news found in 1
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Corinthians 15 about Christ died. According to scriptures, he was buried, and he was raised, according to scriptures.
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And that he, matter of fact, appeared and ascended. The third reason we're going to do this series is because I want you to be thankful because if the
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Lord hadn't intervened, you'd be in a cult. Or, for those like Pastor Steve, who used to be
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Mormon, he'd still be in a cult. I mean, why is Pastor Steve no longer in the Mormon cult?
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Because he's smart, I think he is smart. Because he's handsome, well. But you think about where we would be.
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I mean, I watch those Heaven's Gate people, and I think, worshiping Doe and Tee, the two leaders of the
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Heaven's Gate cult, it's just ridiculous. And so I want you to be thankful that you're not in some cult somewhere, worshiping some man who calls himself
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Jesus. Fourthly, why are we doing this series? Because the Bible makes a priority about heresy, and, sorry, let me rephrase that.
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It makes a priority of warning you about heresy. Jesus said, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
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You will know them by their fruits. Jesus also said in Matthew 24, see to it that no one misleads you, for many will come in my name saying,
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I am the Christ, and will mislead many. Remember Paul in Acts chapter 20, speaking of these false teachers, be on guard for yourselves for all the flock, among which the
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Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
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I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.
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And from among your own selves, men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them.
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So those are some of the reasons why we're going to do this series. We'll get into our
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Bibles here in just a moment, but so that we're all on the same level. If I ask you the question, and it's a real question, not rhetorical, what is a cult?
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What would you say? Who would answer the question, what is a cult? What's a cult?
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Anyone want to take a stab at it? Am I allowed to say that, take a stab at it?
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Yes, Kim. Okay, man -made religion, good. Because every cult is a man -made religion, right?
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Anyone else? Okay, I found a few definitions.
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A minority religious group or sect. A manipulative mind control religious movement.
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A heretical new religious movement. A destructive faith group or doomsday group like Jonestown or Branch Davidians.
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From a Christian perspective, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart writes, they write, a cult is a perversion, a distortion of biblical
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Christianity, and such rejects the historic teachings of the Christian church.
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How many people remember Walter Martin? The Bible Answer Man. Just one, a few do.
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And he wrote a book, his most famous book, and it was called, any guesses? The Kingdom of the Cults. Here's what he says.
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A cult is a group of people polarized around someone's interpretation of the Bible, and is characterized by major deviations from Orthodox Christianity, relative to the cardinal doctrines of the
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Christian faith. Particularly the fact that God became man in Christ Jesus.
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And so if I can put my own two cents in on this, I think there are sociological cults.
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That is to say, people that try to control behavior. Here's one of the ways people control behavior.
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Anthony, come into my office, Cappabianca, and then tell me all your deep, dark sins. And then if he wants to leave the church sometime,
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I'm going to expose you, you're stuck. That's one way. Sleep deprivation. There's ways sociologically to control people.
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But my definition of a cult really is a theological issue. So if I said to you,
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Seventh Adventism is a cult, I'm not saying I think they do weird social things, sociological things.
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I'm saying that if you add human works to Christ work, then you're theologically aberrant, you're heretical, and I'll just call you a cult.
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So I have to be measured in it, because if someone says, are Roman Catholics in a cult? That kind of sounds weird if I say yes.
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If you mean mind control, if you mean socioeconomic control, I don't mean that.
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I just mean that if you're going to add your works to the Lord Jesus's works, then in my mind, you're a theological cult.
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So before you call people cult members, you might want to say they're like a theological cult. I think that's the best, because people are either saved in a cult's mind by human achievement, or by human achievement with some divine grace.
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And we know that the Bible teaches that we can't offer anything to the Lord for our salvation, because nothing we do is perfect, because Adam sinned and fell.
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Therefore, God, the Holy Perfect One, only accepts perfection, and that's found in the
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Lord Jesus and his life. You might ask this question tonight, with a little more introduction.
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Why do you think people join cults? Anybody have an answer to that, that they want to throw out?
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Why would someone even join a cult? It seems so strange, yes. Okay, because people want to be told what to do.
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And in one sense, I get that, because we're all creatures under the law, and God made us to obey him, and we're to love
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God and to love neighbor, and so there's nothing wrong with us wanting to obey God. They just don't want to do the work, and they just want somebody, a leader to say, you do this.
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Okay, I like that. Anybody else? Yes? Charismatic leader. Okay, a charismatic leader, who's a smooth talker, who's influential, who's...
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I'm trying to think of a synonym for charismatic. Help me now. Engaging. Engaging, that's right, okay.
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Gregarious. Gregarious? No. Yes? Okay, so for the sake of the recording, we're created for community.
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We are made for fellowship, are we not? And so you can get a false fellowship group anywhere you'd like, and some of them even aren't bad, right?
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If you want to go to the VFW and have fellowship, if you want to go play poker someplace and have fellowship, if you want to go do goat yoga,
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I don't recommend that. You can get groups, and you rally around a common cause, but everybody wants to be part of a group.
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I think that's built into our system, that God knows we need to be with other people, and so it appeals to that.
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To piggyback on one of the answers, cults provide firm answers, yes and no.
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This is right, you do this, this is wrong, don't do that. There's no gray area, they don't have to worry about some of the things in Christianity, like chapter 14 and 15 of Romans, where there are gray areas, and how do we proceed with preferences and things like that.
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This is right, this is wrong, that's what cults do. I think cults often meet felt needs.
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People have identity crises, they have emotional problems, they have loneliness, they want to be accepted.
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One writer said, a person does not usually join a cult because he has done an exhaustive analysis of world religions, and has decided that this particular cult represents the best theology available.
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Instead, a person usually joins a cult because he has problems that he's having trouble solving, and the cult promises to solve these problems.
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And, or, people get into cults because there's a woman or a man that someone's attracted to, and so that woman or man in the cult says, come and take a look at this.
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When I was younger, I lived with a few roommates in Newport Beach, I must have been 24 at the time, 25, and my roommate,
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I didn't really know him that well, he said, you know, Mike, there are the Hare Krishnas down the street, they give you free meals on Sunday night, and we're poor people living in Newport Beach, 24 years old, let's go down to the
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Hare Krishnas, and have some free supper. I'm like, no way! I grew up Lutheran, and I knew enough that these people were weird, and if you have a bald head and some hair coming back out here,
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I never knew that 30 years later, the men's bun would be where it's at, but I said, there's no possibility that I'm gonna do that at all.
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Additionally, I think people want to follow after their own desires. Let's look up some Bible verses, go to 2
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Timothy 4, verse 3, after all, this is a Bible teaching church, we're just doing some introductory things with the cults and this topic.
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Why do people get into cults? Why are they, sheep without a shepherd, attracted not to the ultimate great shepherd, the
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Lord Jesus, but to something else? And if we're not careful, all of us could follow our own desires, our own heart with kind of a
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Disney theology, and many people are in cults because they want to be.
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Look at 2 Timothy 4, verse 3, Paul writes to Timothy, essentially on Paul's deathbed, his last letter that he writes, verse 3 of chapter 4, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.
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They want that. Yes, Satan blinds, Satan deceives, Satan's like an angel of light, but also in addition to that, there are people that want to be told what to do, want to have a teacher after their own desires.
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And of course, with all the kind of crazy sex cults and things like that, you can figure out why people might want to join such a thing.
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And then lastly, I would say people join cults because God has set eternity in their heart, and they know they want to be part of something, and they're made to worship, and they want to go worship with someone.
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Let's take our Bibles and do a little survey of the New Testament warning us, so we don't just think, we're the church that's against everything.
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I don't want that to be the case at all. Let's just have a little survey, and you can follow along with me. First, let's go to 2
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Corinthians 11, and what I want you to do, is I want you to see that false teachers are expected to be found within Christianity, according to the
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New Testament. Not these weird heaven gates things, but right in the midst of what
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God is doing. And of course, if Jesus loves the church and died for the church, does Satan hate the church?
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Arch enemy of the church? Yes, of course. And so we're going to just do a little survey of what the
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Bible teaches about cults, so that we can understand, or false teachers, so we can understand this is not something that we can just ignore.
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2 Corinthians 11, 13 -15, for such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.
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And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
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Therefore, it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their deeds.
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And of course, I know you're a literate congregation. These are plurals. These are false apostles, deceitful workers, false apostles.
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Go forward in your New Testament to Galatians, please. Chapter 1, verses 6 -9.
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Of course, I know you know this well, but this is just a good reminder that we need to be on our toes because Satan hates the church.
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I'm sure Satan hates Bethlehem Bible Church. Galatians chapter 1.
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Again, looking to verses so that we can be reminded that false teachers are an issue and that we ought not to just say, we're never going to address false teachers because we're only going to teach the positive things.
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That's not how the New Testament was written at all. Galatians 1, 6 -9. Paul said,
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I'm amazed that you're so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is not really another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
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But even though we are an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.
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As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you receive, let him be accursed.
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Let's go to 2 Peter chapter 3 and I want you to see the same thing. The truth is proclaimed and Satan loves to mix it with error.
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He wants to replace it with error. I think almost every New Testament book talks about false teachers.
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And of course, it's our habit here on Sunday mornings to proclaim the truth, but we still have to be warned against error.
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2 Peter chapter 3 verses 1 and 2. This is now, beloved, the second letter
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I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets in the commandment of the
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Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles. And so he leads into what's going to be discussed later.
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And if you jump down to verse 15 or so, and regard the patience of our Lord to be salvation, just as also our beloved brother
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Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand.
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Here's my point. Which the untaught and unstable distort, twist, wrench, stretch on a rack, torture.
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And so, beloved, as they do the rest of the Scriptures to their own destruction. You, therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, knowing about these false teachers, be on your guard lest, being carried away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness.
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So tonight, I'd like to talk a little bit about Seventh -day Adventism. When I first moved to Lancaster, how do
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I pronounce it? Lancaster? Lancaster? By the way, I have a British voice on my
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GPS that knows how to say Worcester. Because if you just have the English lady, she doesn't know what she's talking about.
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Worcestershire sauce. She doesn't know what to say. But now I, you know, they know how to say Leicester, Lemonster.
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So just pick the British version and you're going to be fine. I went to the Clinton Shaw's down the street.
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And I thought, this is kind of interesting. There's all kinds of soy products here.
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There's like fake chicken nuggets and fake corn dogs, fake all this stuff.
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And I'm like, it just seemed like the packaging was kind of weird. It didn't seem this kind of California foo -foo stuff.
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And I'm like, what in the world is going on? I can't understand why they would do that. Except down the street, about one mile was a place called
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Atlantic Union College, the New England home of the Seventh -day Adventist.
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And I thought, now I get it. And so what happens with the Seventh -day Adventist? If you think about what's in a name.
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If I were to tell you, and I did this with the kids a lot, driving down the street. It says United Methodist.
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What should go through your mind? Oh, Methodist. They have a lot of methods because John Wesley said, to live the
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Christian life, it's very methodical. If you saw a press meeting, and you went to a Presbyterian church, and you said, what are
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Presbyterians about? You'd say, oh, Presbyter, elder. They have an elder leadership.
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That's Presbyterian. And most of the churches that are Presbyterian in our day have a nice little rainbow flag there.
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I guess they love the Noahic Covenant. I don't understand that. If you're driving down the street and you see a
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United Unitarian Universalist Church, what do you say to yourself? You say
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Unitarian is no Jesus, Jesus isn't God, and Universalism, everybody goes to heaven.
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I don't even know why they meet. Would you want to show up?
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I guess false fellowship group comes back. And so if I see Seventh -day Adventism, just break down the word.
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Seventh -day. What is the seventh -day? Saturday. Today is the first day of the week, the
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Lord's Day. So it's a Saturday. And what's Adventism? Advent.
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So they focus a lot on the soon return of Jesus, which of course, I don't mind that at all, but they worship on Saturday.
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As a matter of fact, years ago, I took a group of men, some of you men, to the Seventh -day
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Adventist Church on a Saturday because I wanted our men to understand what was going on. And so we walked into that church building and they said on Saturday, happy Sabbath, happy Sabbath, happy Sabbath, happy Sabbath.
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And to this day, I remember them not having a smile when they said happy Sabbath. And so I regularly try to say to myself,
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Mike, make sure you smile. If you get up here to lead hymns or praise music or serve communion, we should try to smile.
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And I just remember the testimony of them handing me a brochure saying, happy Sabbath.
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Now that doesn't make them wrong, that's just always stuck in my mind. And on that little brochure, it had sundown and sunup on the
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Sabbath because you don't want to do things on Friday night after sundown, and you can't do them until Saturday night on sundown.
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So they were real believers. And of course, this comes from the Old Testament where Israel was told what to do and what not to do on the
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Sabbath, right? So I just got back from Israel, we have a Sabbath, a Seventh -day elevator, and you have the tourism elevator.
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So if you go to a Shabbat, a Sabbath elevator in Israel, and there are 20 stories to go to, 20 floors in the hotel, don't go on the
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Shabbat elevator. Why? Because every button's pushed, because it's work to push the button.
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So make sure you go on the other elevator. I was in California two weeks ago, and I went to Maddie's apartment, and there was a refrigerator that was there for her and her roommates.
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It's a brand new refrigerator, and actually it has a Sabbath button on it. Have you ever seen a refrigerator with a
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Sabbath button? I never have in my life. And so you push the Sabbath button, and then the electricity doesn't really work, and it's kind of like slow, slow, slow defrost, and it's not quite defrosted by 24 hours, and then you can just push it and it goes back again.
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So very, very fascinating Shabbat. So the name, Seventh -day
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Adventism, means they worship on Saturday and they long for Jesus' return.
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And by the way, I'm not after what particular Seventh -day Adventists believe.
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How could I track all that down? I'm after the official documents of the Seventh -day Adventist Church and what their leader,
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L .N .G. White, believed. So are there Seventh -day Adventists who are Christian people?
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If they are, it's in spite of what L .N .G. White teaches. Are there Roman Catholics that are real believers?
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Yes, but it's not because of what Roman Catholic Church teaches. It's because that believer believes the real gospel and they just happen to be in the
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Roman Catholic Church for lots of reasons. Should they leave? The answer is yes. And so I'm not saying everybody that attends is damned.
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I'm not saying this, that, or the other. I'm just saying that I wanna teach you what they believe.
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And since we live around a lot of Seventh -day Adventists and they like to promote good living through food, we wanna talk about that tonight.
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So cults, source of authority, savior, salvation.
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Wesley, you said something to me at the door today. You have a good memory. And so when I first taught this to you 20 years ago, what'd you say to me this morning?
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For 20 years? All right. By the way, how many young people have sat underneath Wesley's high school,
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Sunday school? Steve, you have? Okay, yeah. Is he a good teacher?
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Is Mr. Blackstone a good teacher? Should we let him keep teaching or shall I fire him? He's a good teacher.
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Okay, good. It's hard, by the way, to be a pastor and let your children be in Sunday school.
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Because I know the Sunday school teachers are trying to figure out, what did I teach my children, what did I not? And does your daddy speed on the freeway or what, right?
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They ask these questions. And of course the story goes, the true story that I was here the first week,
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February 1997, no, no, April 1997. And they went around the room.
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Haley was in kindergarten. Do you have any prayer request? And Haley raised her hand and she said, yes, I have a prayer request.
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For who? For whom? For my dad. Well, what's the matter with your dad? He's on drugs.
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And I was on a Zithromax pack for bronchial infection.
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And so it was true. I was on drugs.
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Source, Savior, salvation. All you have to do is when you think about Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Satanists or whatever, what's their authority, final authority?
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What do they say about Jesus? And what about salvation? And then methodologically, we are going to use the source, the living word of God to tell them the truth about the eternal son who takes on human flesh and then how they receive the benefits of Jesus by faith.
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So if you remember, what's their source of authority? What's their view of the Savior? And how are they right with God?
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You can break down everything. You don't have to memorize a lot of other things. So let's first look at the source of authority.
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First of all, on the positive side, what we believe, listen to some of the things that the
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Bible calls itself. Jeremiah 23, is not my word like fire, declares the
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Lord. Jeremiah 23 goes on, and like a hammer which shatters a rock, fire, hammer.
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For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any what? Two -edged sword, rock, hammer, sword.
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For you have been born again, not of seed which is perishable, but imperishable, that is the living and abiding word of God.
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So it's like a seed to quicken the soul. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave
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Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.
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Like a labor to cleanse, a rock, a hammer, fire. Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
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Psalm 119. It's like a light to show us the way. Revelation chapter 22.
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I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God shall add to him the plagues which are written in this book.
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And if anyone takes away the words of the prophecy of this book, God shall take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city which are written in this book.
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So what about the Seventh -day Adventism's claim that Ellen G.
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White's writings are authoritative? The leader of the Seventh -day
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Adventists was a woman named Ellen G. White. Now, every quote that I give you is going to be from their material.
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If you want the quote, fine. One of the things I don't wanna do is misrepresent them at all. I want someone in the
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Seventh -day Adventism to say, you know what, I disagree with you, but when you quoted Ellen G.
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White, you were right. Matter of fact, I taught this lesson probably 20 years ago and I did not know it, but the two people in the front row who visited that night for the first time were
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Seventh -day Adventists, which is very interesting. So I don't want to misrepresent anything because when we evangelize, it's not our goal to glorify
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God and does not God like truth and we don't have to manipulate. Why would I wanna manipulate using factual error when it comes to the gospel?
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No, I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna misrepresent them. In the old days, by the way, when the college existed,
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Atlantic Union College, there was a theology class and one of the assignments was for the students, the
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Seventh -day Adventists, to go to a Sunday church and visit. So I probably met 15 people that came and they said, you know, we're from Atlantic Union College, we're
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Seventh -day Adventists, would it be okay if we visited the church today and sat in our worship?
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And I said, of course not, this is for Christians. No, of course, I said, we'd love to have you.
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And then I made sure to talk about free grace even more and sovereign grace even more and Pastor Steve knows when you do a home
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Bible study and you have a visitor who's an unbeliever, well, we might talk a little bit about topic at hand, but we switch gears and we talk about sin and the
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Savior and salvation and faith alone, et cetera. One of the writings says this,
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Seventh -day Adventists hold that L .N .G. White performed the work of a true prophet during the 70 years of a public ministry.
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As Samuel was a prophet, as Jeremiah was a prophet, as John the Baptist was a prophet, we believe that Mrs.
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White was a prophet to the church of Christ today. Now, the good part about L .N
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.G. White's writings according to the Seventh -day Adventists is you don't have to look up Greek and Hebrew words and all these old -fashioned stuffy words.
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Seventh -day Adventists according to their writings, this is the grandson of L .N .G. White, are uniquely fortunate in approaching the question of inspiration of the prophets.
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We're not left to find our way drawing conclusions from writings of 2 ,000 years ago or more and have come down to us through varied transcriptions and translations.
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With us, it's almost contemporary matter. We've had a prophet in our midst. It's generally granted by the careful study of her works that the experience of L .N
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.G. White was no different from that of the prophets of old. She wrote in the
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English language so we're not confronted with the problems of translation. They believe that she is the authoritative source of truth.
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Their Dallas statement writes, her writings are a continuing and authoritative source of truth and provide for the church comfort, guidance, instruction, and correction.
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Now, I don't know about you, but you can pick up a Bible tool and it's called a commentary. And even if you think of the word commentary, the root word is what?
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Aria, of course. No, it is comment. And it is men, women too, write comments about the
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Bible so you can understand the Bible better. Well, did you know
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Seventh -day Adventist Church teaches that L .N .G. White writes a commentary on the Bible and it's an inspired commentary?
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It's God breathes. For years, Seventh -day Adventists have called Mrs. White's writings an inspired commentary on the
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Bible. In 1980, the church published The Pillars, a book defending the denomination's distinctive doctrines.
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In this book, popular Adventist pastor Vendin invites his readers to study 15 facts.
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Here's fact number 14. We have an inspired commentary that was given for the purpose of settling the disagreements among uninspired commentaries.
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What would you do if scholars disagree? Do you have to become a better scholar than the best in order to settle the disagreement in your own mind?
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No, let me repeat. God has given to our church an inspired commentary to settle disagreements.
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What do you do if the MacArthur Study Bible says this and the ESV Study Bible says that and the Reformation Heritage Bible says that?
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What do you do? Well, we don't need any of those because we have Ellen G. White. By the way, sometime go down the street to the bookstore of the
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Seventh -day Adventists. And you can go in there, and I just want you to know, pastorally speaking, please don't buy any books.
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But they sell herbs, food products, and stuff like that.
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So the interesting thing is when you go into their bookstore, it's like Morningstar, except it's for Seventh -day Adventists. You get the weird smells of the cumin and other things.
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And then you have all these books on Ellen G. White. And so sometime as a field trip, you can go and just kind of see that it's almost exactly right.
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There's the section with all the CDs and praise songs. And then you've got this thing that's just a little off called
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Ellen G. White. What did Ellen G. White say about her own writings?
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This is interesting. What did she say about her own writings? I mean, I think to myself, there's some books that I wrote 15 years ago, and I'm thinking, those books need to be rewritten.
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I just don't really have the time to do it. What did she say?
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Those who are reproved by the Spirit of God should not rise up against the humble instrument. It is
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God and not an erring mortal who has spoken to save them from ruin.
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Ellen G. White says that about her own writings. She said, the power of God would come upon me and I was enabled clearly to define what is truth and what is error.
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As the points of our faith were thus established, our feet were placed on a solid foundation. I would be taken off in a vision and explanations would be given to me.
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I was given illustrations of heavenly things and of a sanctuary so that we were placed where light was shining on us in clear, distinct rays.
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How many lies do you have to tell before you're a false prophet? Can you turn your
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Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 18? And I just want you to realize that I think it was a good thing that Ellen G.
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White was not alive during the days of Israel with false prophets. Deuteronomy chapter 18.
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She said she was going to be raptured when she died at her home in St. Helena, California in 1915.
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She said that England was going to come and attack America's north in the Civil War. Never happened.
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She said Israel would never be reborn. 1948, she might look up that.
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Deuteronomy 18 .20, but the prophet who shall speak a word presumptuously in my name which
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I have not commanded him to speak or which he shall speak in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.
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And you may say in your heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken? Verse 22, when a prophet speaks in the name of the
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Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken.
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The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You shall not be afraid of him.
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True or false? The Spirit of God will leave you as a believer if you sin. False.
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Let's take our Bibles and look up Ephesians 1, please. She taught that if you grieve the
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Holy Spirit, you cause him to depart. If I just look quickly at my
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Bible and say, what does Ephesians say? Of course, we don't want to grieve the Holy Spirit.
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Left to ourselves, we lose our salvation, of course, but the Lord is kind and good and what he starts, he finishes.
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Remember Paul's praise and blessing and wonderful eulogy of the triune
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God in Ephesians 1. Verse 13, in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, were sealed with the promise of the
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Holy Spirit, a promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.
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And then go down to chapter four, verse 30 of the very same book. This is the passage she refers to and I think she should probably keep reading.
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Probably one of the best hermeneutical things you could ever do is to keep reading in the Bible, verse 30 of chapter four, and do not grieve the
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Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
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Now, let me quote again Ellen G. White and I want you to tell me the other reason why this is a blasphemous statement.
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Here's the quote from Ellen G. White, Oh my brethren, will you grieve the Holy Spirit and cause it to depart?
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What are the two errors there? Will you grieve the Holy Spirit and cause it to depart?
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Corey? Called him an it, right? And he, the
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Holy Spirit, is a person and he's not an it. He's not a force, he's not an it. And the second problem is the one we just talked about.
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You can't have the Holy Spirit leave you because once God is with you and he will abide with you, he's not going to leave you.
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Oh, please, that we could somehow make the
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Holy Spirit depart. Uh -huh, that's good. You should have taught that in the class that you almost taught this morning.
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That would have been good. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless, when
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God chooses us, we know that he's going to follow through. How about this?
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This is kind of interesting, especially in light of our culture now. Here's what Ellen G.
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White said. Every species of animal which God had created were preserved in the ark.
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The confused species which God did not create, which were the result of amalgamation, were destroyed by the flood.
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Since the flood, there has been an amalgamation of man and beast as may be seen in the most endless varieties of species of animals and in certain races of men.
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That'll get you canceled. Rightfully so. Did you know that the
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Tower of Babel was built before the flood? Tower of Babel, chapter 11 of Genesis.
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The flood, chapter 6, 7, 8, and 9 of Genesis. Ellen G. White said, the Lord first established a system of sacrificial offerings with Adam after his fall.
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This system was corrupted before the flood by those who separated themselves from the faithful followers of God and engaged in the building of the
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Tower of Babel. Do you know after Satan sinned, he was offered forgiveness in heaven?
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I mean, you know, if I was teaching like on No Compromise Radio with Steve and we would say some of these comments like this,
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I'd probably just look over at him with some of these things and I would probably just go, she's on peyote or something.
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I mean, this is like an acid trip. How do you just come up with these things? It's just like this verbal diarrhea where you just make stuff up.
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God in His great mercy bore long with Lucifer. He was not immediately degraded from his exalted station when he first indulged the spirit of discontent.
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Long was he retained in heaven. Again and again, Satan was offered pardon on condition of repentance and submission.
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Did you know Jesus died for angels? According to Ellen G.
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White, to the angels in the unfallen worlds, the cry, it is finished, has a deep significance. It was for them as well as for us, the great work of redemption had been accomplished.
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And lastly, because this is just all, I'd rather be talking about Mary's magnificence than this.
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It takes seven days to get to heaven. Did you know that? Your loved one dies, it takes seven days. We all enter the cloud together and we're seven days ascending to the sea of glass when
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Jesus brought the crowns and with His own right hand placed them on our heads. Big picture, dear congregation, if you accept the person as a leader who's a prophet and they add extra biblical things, they better not contradict the
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Bible or you're going to be in big trouble. How do we have to do it around here? What did Pastor Steve and I try to do?
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And Scott and Pardeep and all the other Bible teachers. What do we hide behind? The Bible says, the
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Bible says, the Bible says, this Bible is our final authority.
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Are there other authorities in the world? Is the government authority?
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Do the elders have some authority here? Do dads have authority at their home? There are other authorities, but this is the final authority.
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Everything has to be judged against the Bible. And when people start saying things like this, I have Seventh -day Adventist friends, and they'll say, well, you know what?
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Let's have some kind of joint mission for West Boylston and Lancaster. Do you think we can have a joint mission with such people?
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I want the Seventh -day Adventist leadership to say, Ellen G. White is a complete cuckoo, and we say no to all of her teachings and it's the
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Bible alone. Then I would want to talk with him. But short of that, I mean, I remember
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Luke had to have a hernia operation and he was really pretty young. And so they came in and they said, okay, son, we've got a challenge for you.
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And it was a little, I don't know, tablespoon worth of pink liquid in a little cup tasting like bubble gum.
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And the anesthesiologist said, we've been having a contest, who can drink this the fastest?
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And so we want to see how fast you can drink it, and it's called Giggle Juice. And you just have to drink it really fast and see how fast you can drink it.
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And it was like anesthesia before he got the real one.
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Yeah, that's right. And so there's Luke, you know, you tell a boy, young person, all right,
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I'm going to drink this. And so Luke takes it and he guzzles it down and the timer's on and everything. And the doctor's like, oh, you almost beat the record, but not quite.
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And like instantly, Luke is like this, I did it, good dad.
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And then, you know, the child goes across that red line and you're just like, Lord, please take care of him. I mean, really, you can't make this up without some kind of theological
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Giggle Juice. It's just one lie after another, after another, after another. The source of authority is the
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Bible. And once you say, I have a leader who has a prophetic gift and can add to the
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Bible, then all this other stuff comes out. If you meet someone who's a
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Seventh -day Adventist, I wouldn't even bring up half this stuff because I'm going to go straight to the issue of who is the
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Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is for next time.
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So overall, we come humbly, gratefully, hiding behind the
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Bible, and our main goal when we evangelize, we're not better than people.
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We'd be in their situation as well, but we want to free them by proclaiming the truth.
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By the way, don't you really sense a freedom? Don't you feel a freedom? Don't you have a freedom?
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Knowing that you have peace with God, not doing anything to deserve it, resting in the finished work of Christ.
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It is finished. He paid it all. It can't be taken away. This morning when I said it, I was not exaggerating.
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Not one single sin will ever be held against you. Did you know that? Every sin for the unbeliever will be held against him or her on judgment day.
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But for you, Christian, Jesus paid it all. All to Him I owe. And we have nothing to worry about but rest.
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And when we do sin, let's repent of it. Of course, to fear God means to run away from sin and to run to God's laws to obey them and honor
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God. But we are a privileged people. And when I see people in the Seventh -day Adventist church, here's what
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I think of. They're enslaved. They're enslaved people. And they're not going to rest because we're gonna see for them to stay saved, it is work, work, work, work, work, work, work.
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How much work is enough? Answer, more. Somebody just came to my office just in the last week, a young person, and they drew a picture of me.
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And of course, the pictures of me are always with this pulpit thing down like that. And I think they had heard me say that I like to put pictures of me up on my wall and tape them up there.
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And so this particular young man said, I better put my name up there because they didn't write my name on it.
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And I wanna make sure if you post it on No Compromise Radio that my name shows. Okay, no problem.
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And again, it was a really bad picture. It didn't look like me.
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I think I've only had one picture from someone who looked like me. And I won't tell you who it was, but they're pretty artistic.
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And they even had Kim sitting over here in the far right and she had a hat on. I thought, no, this is really good.
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But why did I accept that picture? I mean,
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I was happy, I look skinnier, but most stick figures are skinnier. Why would anyone accept that picture?
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Because if you accept the child, you accept their less than perfect works, right?
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And so our works, even sometimes with bad motives, we don't wanna go serve in the coffee ministry.
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We don't wanna serve with the chairs. We don't wanna serve with the kids. We know we should, and we just go do it anyway, but our heart's not all there.
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Guess what? The Lord God Almighty accepts those less than perfect works because he accepts you.
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And that's not how cults run because the cults run on a gerbil wheel.