Raw Questions Relevant Answers

Adventism

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

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Series Code: RQRA

Program Code: RQRA000023A


00:01 I don't understand.
00:04 Why did this have to happen to me?
00:08 I feel like I just can't make sense of things.
00:12 I need answers.
00:15 Where is God?
00:21 You know, it's a really cool truth
00:24 that throughout history, throughout biblical history,
00:28 God has had specific people
00:30 that he's given a specific message
00:32 for a specific time.
00:34 Welcome to Raw Questions Relevant Answers.
00:36 This is a program in which myself
00:39 and my two friends here,
00:41 Michelle Doucoumes and Dee Casper,
00:43 are endeavoring to give some relevant questions
00:46 to some very raw...
00:48 Relevant answers rather to some very raw questions
00:50 that we have.
00:51 And today, what we're going to be talking about
00:53 is the question of Adventism
00:56 and its place in history, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
01:01 So basically, we believe that God has given
01:05 a special message to our church for a specific time,
01:09 and that's what we're going to deal with today.
01:11 And our first question comes from a young man
01:13 aged 21 in Tennessee,
01:15 and his question is, "Why does Adventism matter?"
01:20 I think that why Adventism matters
01:22 is that as you've mentioned,
01:24 God has had an intention of communicating a message
01:27 and a truth to the world, who He truly is,
01:30 what His ideal is for a man, and what God intends
01:34 His people to know and to share to ensure
01:36 that Christ can come again.
01:38 And from His early church until what we see now,
01:41 this is what we believe that God is intending
01:43 in this particular movement,
01:44 that there is a message given...
01:47 First of all, let's say that the movement
01:48 has prophetic origins,
01:50 that God, throughout the Bible,
01:53 I believe, has this implication
01:54 that there is this movement coming.
01:56 So we see it in Daniel 8:14
01:58 that there's a message of a judgment,
02:01 an investigative judgment that's to be given to the world
02:04 and a soon coming Savior that's going to be shared about
02:07 in Daniel as well.
02:08 We see this in Revelation 10
02:10 and we also see it in Revelation 12,
02:13 and the message that this movement
02:14 is giving in Revelation 14,
02:16 what we call the three angels' messages,
02:18 preparing the world for a soon coming Savior
02:20 by preaching the everlasting gospel,
02:22 the beauty of the character of God
02:24 that we're living in the context
02:25 of a current tense judgment
02:27 that perceives the second advent.
02:29 There is a system
02:31 that's causing great harm on earth
02:32 regarding the truths that they're sharing,
02:34 there are misrepresentations of who God actually is
02:37 and what's to come.
02:38 And lastly, there's a way that God wants to be worshiped
02:41 and He wants His people to be ready,
02:42 so God kind of has a blueprint here,
02:44 Revelation 14, and what that message is.
02:46 And Revelation 18 is something very similar.
02:49 The character of God needs to be known to the world
02:51 in contrast with a false picture
02:53 the character of God being shared
02:54 by a counterfeit system.
02:56 Revelation 12:17,
02:59 the Bible looks down prophetically
03:01 till the last days of earth's history,
03:03 and it says that "The Dragon or Satan
03:07 was enraged with the woman..."
03:09 Which if you study talks about the church
03:11 being analogized to woman,
03:13 "And went to make war with the rest
03:15 or the remnant of her offspring
03:17 who keep the commandments of God
03:18 and have the testimony of Jesus."
03:21 And it's that idea again that God has people
03:25 and Satan isn't happy about that.
03:27 Why does Adventism matter? I don't know.
03:30 Maybe we should ask Satan, it must matter somehow
03:33 because obviously, the devil is not happy
03:36 with God's church.
03:37 Now does this mean that Adventists
03:39 are the only ones that are God's people
03:41 or there is no one else?
03:43 In John 10, Jesus talks about the fact
03:45 that he has sheep in many different folds.
03:47 Yes.
03:48 So it's not an exclusive thing in that regard.
03:52 At the same time,
03:53 God has always used a special people
03:55 for a certain purpose throughout history.
03:58 You know, there were the Jews, before that, there was Abraham
04:01 and the patriarchs going down through history
04:04 after the life of Christ, there were the disciples,
04:07 there are people like the Waldensians
04:09 who kept the Bible alive during a very corrupt period
04:12 of Christian history, the dark ages,
04:15 there were the reformers
04:17 that we've talked about in some episodes
04:18 like Wycliffe and Hus and Jerome and Martin Luther,
04:22 God has always been working with the people
04:25 just for a certain purpose.
04:27 Not because they were better
04:28 but because God needed them at that time.
04:30 Well, and one point in this is that,
04:33 you know, the Jews were the special people of God, right?
04:35 Right.
04:37 But God never intended them to be a secluded little people
04:40 away from everybody else that would never interact
04:42 and that they were the only ones saved
04:43 and that the Gentiles weren't saved,
04:45 that was what the perverted God's
04:48 instruction to them into,
04:50 but God never intended that, and I think it's the same way.
04:52 You know, the other thing too
04:54 that I want to speak to this question,
04:56 you know, I was raised in the church,
04:58 you know, I'd been, most of my life, in the church,
05:01 I spent some time away from it, but in all this,
05:05 it's easy as an Adventist young person to,
05:10 I guess, not really understand the real importance
05:13 of the message that God has given us,
05:15 you know.
05:17 I know, for me sometimes, it's easy to just,
05:19 you know, tune out of it, think it's just normal.
05:23 But the beauty in the power
05:25 of the message that God has given us is that
05:27 it's specifically to prepare us for Christ's coming.
05:30 You know, of all generations,
05:32 God has specifically given to this generation
05:36 a message that He's coming soon.
05:37 Biblically speaking,
05:39 we're living in the investigative judgment,
05:41 the thing that's happening immediately
05:44 before Christ's second coming.
05:46 And that's powerful.
05:47 I mean, Abraham, Isaac Jacob, Adam and Eve
05:50 all looked forward to the day that,
05:52 you know, we have the opportunity of seeing
05:55 of Jesus' second coming.
05:56 So why does Adventism matter?
05:59 It matters because Adventists, the advent of Christ
06:03 is specifically a movement all about preparing the people
06:07 for the second coming of Christ.
06:09 And what's the purpose of the second coming?
06:10 It's not a "I'm coming, and you better get it right."
06:13 The whole purpose of the second coming
06:14 is a wedding.
06:15 Yup.
06:17 The whole reason why Jesus is coming a second time
06:18 is because of what He did the first time.
06:20 He came and bore the sin of the world and died,
06:23 placing a value on you that you cannot deny,
06:27 that He values you beyond His own existence
06:29 if that's what it takes.
06:31 And the reason He's coming a second time
06:33 is to redeem what He's paid for.
06:35 If you paid $1,000 for a fancy television
06:37 at a store,
06:39 you're going to come back and pick that thing up.
06:41 You don't pay that high a price for something
06:43 and not desire to be with it.
06:45 And Jesus even implies this in John 14,
06:48 when He is using the second coming language,
06:50 He says, "I'm leaving."
06:51 He says, "Let not your heart be troubled.
06:53 You believe in God, believe also in Me."
06:55 And He says, "In My Father's house
06:56 are many mansions.
06:57 If this were not so, I would have told you.
06:59 But I'm going to prepare a place for you.
07:01 And if I go and prepare a place for you,
07:03 I will come again and receive you to Myself
07:06 so that where I am there you may be also."
07:09 So as Seventh-day Adventists,
07:11 one of our message to the world is
07:12 there's a God in heaven who longs to commune with you.
07:15 Yeah.
07:17 The reason why Jesus is coming back
07:18 is not to catch people off guard,
07:19 it's to bring them home.
07:21 Right.
07:22 And the message in the investigative judgment
07:23 is basically trying to prepare our people
07:25 to be ready for the second coming,
07:27 not to scare people away from God,
07:29 the judgment's actually good news.
07:30 Yeah.
07:32 God is so desperate to be understood
07:35 that He's making it clear to the all-looking universe
07:36 that He's investigating
07:38 before he renders a final judgment.
07:40 And that final judgment, at the end of time,
07:42 is God literally recognizing and honoring the decisions
07:44 that you made and that I made.
07:46 Yeah.
07:47 And I have one quick thing to that too.
07:50 We're preparing for Jesus to come,
07:52 we want Jesus to come,
07:54 but sometimes I think, as Adventist young people,
07:57 we still think, "Well, don't lots of churches believe
08:01 that Jesus is going to come?"
08:02 And that's true, and God needs all of us
08:04 to work together for that purpose.
08:06 But it's also the case
08:08 that God wants to be seen for who He is,
08:11 and there's been a lot of confusion
08:12 about God through the ages.
08:14 It's true.
08:15 I mean, not that many centuries ago,
08:16 they believed that you could pay for remission of sins.
08:19 Yeah.
08:20 And all sorts of crazy things where God has been working,
08:23 and I believe through the advent movement,
08:24 to help people see who God is.
08:26 It's not just scattered doctrines
08:28 being right or wrong.
08:29 Right.
08:30 But how that system goes together
08:32 to paint a God who cares, who loves, and who comes.
08:35 Well, even on that note, I don't want a God that roasts
08:38 and toasts people for all eternity.
08:40 Right. I don't want a...
08:42 How can I love a God
08:43 that is going to sit up in heaven
08:46 in His high and holy state while, down on earth,
08:49 throughout ceaseless ages of eternity,
08:51 for the sins of a small lifetime,
08:55 He's going to roast and toast them for all eternity?
08:57 And it's not a biblical doctrine.
08:58 No, it's not, and that's the beauty of Adventism
09:00 is that as a movement,
09:02 it has a harmonious system of doctrine
09:04 that puts the character of God
09:06 in its true sense, like you were saying,
09:08 and it shows the beauty of biblical doctrine.
09:10 Yes.
09:11 I think that this is the reason
09:12 the Seventh-day Adventist church exists.
09:14 Yeah.
09:15 To vindicate the beautiful picture
09:17 of the character of God
09:18 and to prepare our people to be ready
09:19 for the second coming of Jesus,
09:21 that's the whole point of all the things
09:22 that we believe.
09:23 It's not isolated, you know,
09:26 don't have anything to do with each other,
09:28 every single one of the things that we believe
09:29 as a Seventh-day Adventist church
09:31 are individual components of the big picture,
09:33 the character of God.
09:34 I kind of refer to it like those...
09:36 You ever had to do paint by numbers as a kid?
09:38 Yup.
09:39 So we believe there's about 28 colors we need to use
09:41 to paint the most beautiful picture of Jesus imaginable,
09:44 and that's what we believe what we believe
09:46 and what our intention is
09:47 that Christ is the central pillar
09:49 to everything we ever have believed
09:51 and want to believe as a movement.
09:53 And that we want Him to be the grand central truth.
09:56 Coming from outside of Adventism,
09:57 both of you were raised within the movement,
10:00 from coming outside of Adventism,
10:01 what brought me in was recognizing
10:03 that this picture of God makes sense to me.
10:06 Yeah.
10:07 Now I grew up in a cultural Baptist sense,
10:08 but I wasn't really rooted in any doctrine.
10:10 But I remember whenever I would hear
10:12 what was being shared,
10:13 I would look into my Bible and I'd recognize,
10:15 "I've never heard that before, but that's what the text says."
10:19 "And I've never heard that before,
10:21 but that's what the text says."
10:22 And it began to be clear to me that the things of God
10:26 do not always harmonize with the things of men,
10:28 in fact, a majority of the time, they don't.
10:30 Yeah.
10:32 But it does harmonize with logic, with reason,
10:34 and with the longings of the human heart.
10:36 Yeah.
10:37 And the picture of God that Adventism communicated
10:40 the more that I learned
10:41 resonated with the love for God I had in my heart.
10:44 I could find a system of belief and doctrine that resonated
10:48 with the gorgeous picture of God
10:50 that saved my soul in the first place,
10:52 and I realized not only can I believe that,
10:55 I want to believe that.
10:57 And if I had to be in a situation
10:59 to talk to someone else about what I believed,
11:01 I could do it in a way that I wasn't ashamed, right?
11:03 Like I don't have to feel like, "Man, I really hope
11:05 someone doesn't ask me about this particular component
11:07 of what my church believes."
11:09 Like I'm actually okay with what my church believes,
11:11 and that's why I'm here, and I think it's been a gift.
11:14 So actually, that kind of segues us
11:16 into our next question which comes from...
11:20 I have to find it here on the page. Oh, man.
11:22 Okay, this question is,
11:26 "How can we learn to lovingly take a stand
11:29 for Biblical truth in a society
11:31 where the concept of truth has become so relative?"
11:33 And I just want to say, first off,
11:35 it's really true that our society has become
11:38 so relative in its thinking
11:40 that we place all things in the realm of opinion
11:44 and then judge all opinions as equal to one another.
11:47 But I just want to first say, there is truth, there is...
11:51 It is so, can I say, relaxing and restful to the soul
11:57 to know that there's truth and that we can ascertain it?
12:00 Yes. Right?
12:01 John 14:6, Jesus says,
12:03 "I am the way, the truth, and the life."
12:06 Not just a truth or one of many truths but the truth.
12:10 And that's huge,
12:12 and in the context of Adventism,
12:13 it doesn't mean that we're saying
12:15 that only Adventists will be saved
12:16 or anything like that, but we are saying
12:18 that there's only one way to salvation,
12:20 and that's Jesus Christ, that's what He said,
12:22 and knowing that gives something to stand on
12:26 in a very relative and shaky world
12:28 where everything is shifting and changing.
12:30 Yeah.
12:31 And I think one of the reasons why relativism sounds appealing
12:34 is because accountability is something
12:35 we're not a fan of,
12:37 and two, in our attempts
12:39 to meet a standard that was given to us
12:42 while failing, it's better to just not have a standard.
12:44 Yeah.
12:46 And there are many people even in our own movement
12:47 who we realize that God expects a lot,
12:49 we believe the Ten Commandments are relevant and necessary,
12:52 but if we haven't done a good job of communicating,
12:54 that the power of God is available to us
12:56 through the Holy Spirit to keep the law,
12:59 then it just seems hopeless
13:01 and relativism sounds pretty exciting to me
13:03 because I don't have to worry about accountability
13:06 'cause I tried to be right with God
13:07 and I failed on my own.
13:09 Not knowing that the Holy Spirit's power
13:12 was an alternative.
13:13 Where I could actually be getting the very things
13:15 that God asks of me,
13:16 God is willing to provide power to walk in.
13:18 Yeah.
13:20 You know, another point with that too is...
13:22 I'm blanking on what book I've read this in,
13:25 but it was a statement that said
13:27 the leading cause of skepticism in the world
13:30 is the love of sin.
13:33 We shy away from the truth because we love sin.
13:35 So the question is
13:37 how do we share the message of truth
13:39 in a culture that kind of rejects the idea of truth?
13:43 I think the biggest thing is to give it in a way...
13:46 show it in its true beauty.
13:48 You know, go to people
13:49 and win their hearts to the love of God,
13:51 and when somebody's heart loves God,
13:53 they will want to prove the truth,
13:55 but if all they see is a vengeful God, maybe not.
13:59 Well, unfortunately,
14:00 this is all the time we have left.
14:03 But I just want to thank you for tuning in.
14:04 If you have more questions,
14:06 please feel free to reach out to us on Facebook,
14:08 Raw Questions Relevant Answers.
14:10 God bless. Take care.


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Revised 2018-09-24