Runaway Train I

here this evening uh thank you so muchfor joining us tonight and as I'm sureas we head a few minutes more we'll havemore people coming in but we want tothank uh Dr Conrad Vine for being heretonight he's our guest speaker tomorrowuh president of Adventist AdventistFrontier missions and so tonight I justwant to welcome you here we're going todo a couple songs and then we're goingto go right into the presentation solet's bow for a word of PrayerFather in heaven we thank you for thisopportunity to be here tonight um togather together and to be able to shareyour word and your message and fatherprepare our hearts and our minds for uhwhat Dr Conrad Vine will be sharing withus thisevening father we live in a day and anage where things are changingrapidly where things are wrapping upquickly and father you want us to be apart of this last movement for yourpeople people father help us to be ofgood courage and of good faith andstrong and courageous father as we seethe things around us might be changingmaking it more difficult or at leastmore of a psychological challenge todecide to really stand for you fathergive us strength tonight with your HolySpirit bless us now as we also sing acouple praise songs to you for we askthis in the precious name of JesusAmen let's start with song number four32 there should be some himels aroundyou if you want to grab those we won'thave the words on the screen tonight butstart with 432 shall We Gather at the[Music]river shall weat theriver where Bright Angel feethave with this Crystal TIforever flowing by The Throne ofGod yes we'll gather up theriver the Beautiful the beautiful Riverwith the Saints at theriver that flows by The Throne ofGod on the margin of theriver washing up his silverspray we will walk andworship all the happy golden dayyes we'll gather at theriver the Beautiful the beautiful[Music]River gather with the Saints at theriver that flows by The Throne ofGod here we reach The Shining Riverlay we every burdendown Grace our spirits willdeliverer and provide our robe and acrown yes we'll gather at theriver the Beautiful the beautifulRiver GA with the Saints at theriver that flows by The Throne ofGod and soon we'll reach The ShiningRiver soon our page willcease soon our happy Hearts willquiv with theMel of peaceyes we'll GA at theriver the Beautiful the beautifulRiver with the Saints at theriv that flows by The Throne of[Music]God and until we reach that shiningRiver let's sing our second praise songtogether number 301 nearer still nearermay that be our prayer as we knowperilous times are ahead but we have aGod who is faithful to not leave us orforsake us[Music]amen stillnearer close to thheartdraw memyor sopreious ThouArt fold me oh fold me close to thybreshelter me safe in that[Music]ofShel mesafe in thatHaven ofRestnear tonearernothing Ibring not[Music]aning toJesus mykingonly mysinful now contheart grant me theC thy blood[Music]gr me theCLE thyblooddoartnear stillnearer Lord to bethines with it fies[Music]Igladlyresign andall of hisPleasures p and hispride give me butJesus myLordcrucified and give mebutJesus my Lord[Music]crucifiednearer stillnearer while life shalllast till safe inglory myAnor isthroughendlessages to[Applause]bemyor stillnearer totheeNearer My saorstillnear to[Music]theeamen and just want to say thank you toVelma for playing on the piano and Joyceand jelle for helping to sing andtonight we have the pleasure of havingall the way from Michigan uh Dr ConradVine presenting to us tonight therunaway train and I'm um I'm sure we'reall here very excited excited to hearwhat he has to say and may the Lordbless you tonight as you present thankyou for beinghere sure this is on can you all hear meback there yes all rightso um I've only been to Florida I thinkonce before my life I was at Tampa inSeptember last year and uh this morningI was out scraping my car of theice and um in Michigan around this timeof the year you're inomed in ice whenyou come out to your car and you have tospend about 20 minutes gradually youknow scraping it away and trying not todestroy your windscreen wipers which areFrozen to the windows and so forth thequick and easy way of doing it is pourboiling water over your windscreen thatdoesn't do your vehicle any good soanyway it's a pleasure to be down withhere with you in Florida and thosewatching on L we give you a warm welcomeas well um I want to thank PastorHernandez for your gracious welcome andbringing me down here and I'll bespeaking here tonight and also tomorrowum tonight I'm going to be speaking uh atopic called The Runaway Train and I'mI'm going to be talking about umessentially the exercise of power um invarious ways uh tomorrow morning we'llbe speaking about um missions in theSabbath School class and then um there'sanother sermon in the worship serviceand uh that will be uh related to uh Coand conscience and then we'll be talkingin the afternoon about persecution andsome other topics as well so we can goas long as you want to tomorrow becauseI my flight doesn't go home till Sundaymorning all right so we have timetomorrow and uh so I look forward tosharing this time with you to getting toknow you and I just want to say it's aprivilege to come and share withbrothers and sisters on a Friday NightLike Thisum you live in a very lot of cars aroundhere notice that driving around a lot ofcars around here a lot of stop signs andum so where I come from in Michigan youknow you almost never stop for anythingum because there's hardly any cars onthe road so um let's bow our heads andinvite the presence of the Holy Spiritamong us tonight our dear heavenlyfather I want to thank you for theprivilege of uh entering these Sabbathhours with these dear brothers andsisters here in Florida father I want tothank you for for their witness here inthe city of North Naples and I prayfather as we share this time togetherthat your holy spirit will speak throughme and you bring conviction to each ofour hearts father we are to have anintelligent faith and an articulateFaith uh father we we are to be able togive reason for the faith that we haveand to answer um for Our Hope in Jesusas our Lord and savior so Lord as wespend this weekend together may we growin our understanding and in our faithand may our faith grow deeper roots andmay our witness burn brighter for youthank you Lord for hearing and foranswering this prayer in Jesus name Iaskamen so um I'm going to assume that manymany of you in here tonight our 7dayAdventists know something about how thechurchWorks what I've discovered in the lastthree years during the covid pandemicyou know I'm a I'm a pastor and I'veworked for the church in many capacitiesall around the world what I'vediscovered in the last three years isthat many members actually have verylittle understanding how the churchfunctions beyond their localcongregation uh many members know whotheir conference president is once youget beyond that um who your unionpresident is um what the role of a unionexecutive secretary is um how thedivision functions what the division isa division of and so forth uh for manymembers um before the pandemic this waskind of somewhere out there but itreally didn't affect our lives very muchwhat we found during the pandemic wasthat decisions taken by remoteadministrators can have a profoundlynegative impact on your life anddecisions can be made uh thatessentially strip you of your religiousliberty overnight and you had we had noidea that people had the kind ofauthority to do that kind of thing so umI think it's really important for us asAdventists to understand how ourworldwide Church works and it's it'simportant to discuss this because thereare pros and cons to every organizationand I've spent most of my life aroundthe world as a missionary and I can tellyou that if you're in a country such asBenin in West Africa um where Society isis is not chaotic but it's not far fromchaotic um the church structure providesa Haven of stability and transparencyand order in an otherwise chaotic worldand you have different people fromdifferent ethnic and religious andtribal backgrounds can meet and sitaround a table as Brothers and Sistersin Christ and pray together and come todecisions together so when you're in themission field the structure of thechurch is an incredible blessing and Ibelieve God has given us the structureof the Adventist Church which is one ofthe reasons why we Now operate in Idon't know 180 200 countries around theworld and the by far the the widestspread Protestant movement and you arein history um but on the other hand umhere in the United States where we havean established Adventist presence inmost parts of the country um people havekind of gotten used or we've got allgotten used used to just coming to ourlocal congregation and we don't givemuch thought to the hierarchy and whatit does and it what its functions areuntil you get caught out by somethinglike the pandemic and so uh about a yearago well it was about a year ago the15th of January I preached a sermoncalled an appeal Sam nobility maybe someof you saw that sermon and as I jokedlast week when I preached in my homeChurch of Village sermons pre sermonsChang lives and my my life changed everafter that sermon For Better or ForWorse for richer or for poornow um the in that sermon I wasquestioning the exercise of Power by ourchurch leaders and um what I believe wasan an an an illegitimate use ofauthority to make a statement thatessentially stripped Adventists of theirreligious liberty objections to employermandates now um we were essentially inharmony with uh the papacy came out withtheir statements in July 21 a bunch ofProtestants nominations came out withtheir statements in August and Septemberand we came out with our statements inearly October or 21st of October uh 21and we were essentially in lock stepwith all the other Protestantnominations and the Roman Catholicchurch and we were in lock step withfouchy and with the mainstream media umwhich is not particularly great companyto bewin so um I want to explore tonightU and what what the church issued waswas a statement on Adventist NewsNetwork which is the official onl onlinenews network of the Adventist Church andI want to explore tonight um howstatements are being made in our churchthese official statements because whenwe get baptized as Adventists we onlyagree to the 28 fundamental beliefsthese are the core doctrines of thechurch I know there's one on God theFather God the son God the Holy Spiritum the godhead um the family the natureof man creation the Sabbath the familyum the the pre-advent judgment all thesekind of things these are our 28fundamental beliefs and when as a pastoryou you you you study with somebody toprepare them for baptism you do not gothrough the official statements of thechurch or the guidelines of the churchyou go through the 28 fundamentalbeliefs so we as members we we agree tothose essential teachings from scripturebecause you know we believe thateverything should be driven by scriptureonly to discover um some years laterthat we have these official statementsout there and those official statementscan be quite problematic for us and inthe case of the the co pandemicstatement um it impacted Adventists AllAround the World in a very very negativeway so um we're discussing here officialstatements but in reality we'rediscussing the exercise of power or youmight say the the uh the illegitimateexercise of Power by those who thinkthey can issue such statements so umwe're going to this is our journeytonight and I'm we're not going to stayhere too long tonight because I know weall get to bed it's Friday night butwe're going to go look at the CuriousCase of the official statements what arethey what do they cover where and thenwe're going to look at have a briefanalysis of those official statementsand then we're going to come to someconclusions all right so um this thismay appear to be kind of um boringadministrative stuff but this stuff haslife-changing consequences for regularmembers and it's important that we havean awareness of these things because atthe end of the day uh in the recent ppmic it didn't matter what denominationyou were a part of it was you on yourown whatever your decisions were it wasbetween you and God and you and youremployer and you know whether you werevaxed or not I really don't care you canall still be in the Lamb's Book of Lifebut the point is that um statements byofficial organizations do impact ourlives and sometimes in a very negativeway so let's look at the The CuriousCase of the official statements theAdventist Church so um let's remindourselves now according to the blackbook whenever I put BB on the screen nowit's on my notes it's not on the screenokay so the Adventist Church has um haswhat is known as as the Black Book whichis is a very thick book it's it's theConstitution and working policy of theGeneral Conference I'll bring a copy ofit tomorrow with me to church it's avery very thick book and with everyGeneral Conference session it getsthicker and thicker and thicker and soonwe're going to probably have two volumesof this um but anyway uh that that blackbook or that's the general conferenceworking policy and Constitution um in uhthis this says that theological mattersin including the definition of of whatwe believe as an organization as achurch are entrusted to the generalconference insession this is really important that umwe do not this church here does notDefine theology for the worldwideAdventist Church nor does nor do thechurches and so Florida nor does theFlorida conference nor does the SouthernUnion nor does North American Divisionbut as we are a worldwide church we onlyDefine theological beliefs for theentire world church when the wholechurch comes together and votes on thesein a general conference session and forthose of you who don't follow thesethings a general conference sessiontakes place every 5 years and every partof the world sends delegates to thatsession and in that session um you havea lot of EX officio Representatives soyour union president would be an exofficial representative to the sessionbut ideally and this is the attempt thatis made every time every 5 years themajority of those representatives arelay members so we don't just have likeprofessional theologians coming out withthese statements when we Define ourfundamental beliefs there's a processthat can take maybe 15 years and and thegeneral conference is asked by thesession to to to prepare a new umfundamental belief on on on a topic andthen they prepare a statement and thenthat goes to all the 13 World divisionsthey send it out to all their unions andthere's a process of five years ofdiscussion back and forth within theunions and the divisions then it comesback to a like a preener conferencesession of the executive committee andthey say is this ready or do we stillneed some more time to discuss this andif it's not ready it goes out to theunions for another five years and so thethe point is by the time a statementcomes to the general conference sessionwhich is held every 5 years and includesrepresentatives of members from allaround the world that statement has beenlooked at by th thousands of eyes um uhtheologians pastors um lay members andeverybody has come to a basic agreementon this so we have a very inclusive andvery participatory process by which weDefine our organizational beliefs andyou know some of the the the thedecisions and the discussions about thewording is very very preciseand these things um are very importantbecause a one word here or one wordthere can have profoundly negative andunexpected consequences for somebody onthe other side of the world so it's veryimportant that we as a World Church whenwe Define what we believe from scriptureand we study a topic together it's veryimportant that we take the time foreverybody and every part of the world tohave its say because different peopledifferent cultures interpret the sametexts in very different ways and this isreflected in our constitution this is GCwpm that's the general conferenceworking policy manual section B5paragraph 6 says that the de thedefinition of denominational beliefs isentrusted to the general conference insession now when you and I were baptizedas Adventists we only agreed and Irepeat this we only agree in ourbaptismal vows to uh that we agreed tothe 28 fundamental beliefs of theAdventist Church you know one time onepoint it was 7 27 now it's 28 I'm surein the future it'll be 29 or 30 as wegrow in understanding of scripture butwe only agree to the 28 fundamentalbeliefs and it comes as a shock to manypeople there's a bunch of otherstatements out there that we mostmembers are really have no idea evenexist many pastors don't know thesethings exist um but if you go toadventist.org um there you have ascreenshot of it there adventist.org andyou clickon beliefs on the home homeage you'vegot the official beliefs those are the28 fundamental beliefs but you've alsogot official statements guidelines andother documents and so the the theseother um things have been voted byvarious bodies of the worldwide churchand your average member has no idea thatthese exist and I'd encourage you to goback and read them for yourselves it'simportant that we have an intelligentand an articulate faith and that we canthink these things through for ourselvesI know God did say come let us reasontogether in Isaiah 1 and verse 18 thereso we have these official statements andI want to reflect this evening on the onhow those official statements came intobeing in the past now why those officialstatements um why those officialstatements umissued well I'm missing some there weare okay can you all read that on thescreen okay so it says there so when yougo to the official statements page ofour website it says there from time totime the 7 Adventists find it importantto articulate their understanding ofcertain important topics in light oftheir understanding of biblical valuesand teachings below is a collection ofthose statements on issues ranging fromreligious freedom to assault weapons sowe actually have about 59 of theseofficial statements sitting up there onthe website and if you've never readthem I would really encourage you to gohome maybe not tonight but sometime inthe next few weeks and read throughthose official stat maybe print them outsome of them are are very short some ofthem are quite lengthy they all havescripture references to do with them andmost of them are quite well writtenhowever this introduction of theofficial statements um from anadministrative perspective is actuallyvery slip is actually very slipperylanguage because it implies some kind ofRepresentative legitimacy from thedelegates of the executive committee orthe Adcom representing the worldwidemembership but in reality these officialstatements are increasingly being issuedby smaller and smaller groups of peopleand not only are they uh issued bysmaller and smaller groups of people butincreasingly they have no lay input andit's all General Conference employeesissuing these statements um so if thisis like the Coura of the ad of the RomanCatholic Church issuing statements thatare normative for the entire RomanCatholic worldwide um um communion so wehave this um smaller and smaller groupsand we're going to see how those smallergroups came about as we go through ourtime this evening nowthe constitution of the GeneralConference the of the Adventist Churchand our bylaws and our church man manualour fundamental beliefs they actuallyhave no provision for officialstatements anywhere in them now you'dthink given that uh the officialstatement that was issued during thepandemic you'd think that there was somekind of mechanism or legitimacy in ourconstitutional bylaws or our fundamentalbelief s Church manual for the for theme there would be some kind of mechanismor legitimizing authority for officialstatements but none of these documentssay anything about official statementsso official statements have just kind oflikeappeared and we start issuing thesethings but there is no mechanism thereis no authorization for this there is noprovision for this anywhere in ourconstitution or in our bylaws or on ourfundamental beliefs or in our church atworking policy manual and so this thisis kind of a problematic thing it's avery significant red flag because theConstitution says that the definition ofdenominational beliefs is reserved forthe general conference and session aloneit is not up to any other body in thechurch to start issuing statements thatbecome normative theology for the restof the Adventist Church it has to bedone in a general conference session ityou know Andrews the Seminary AndrewsUniversity in Michigan cannot issuenormative statements on behalf of theworldwide Church um that the the theSeminary down in is in in thePhilippines they cannot issue normativestatements on behalf of the administchurch I can't do that this congregationcan't do that that is reserved when thewhole church comes together in a generalconference session so let's turn to amore detailed analysis of the 59official statements so first of alllet's take a look at theirSource only two of them were issued by aGC session of the 59 two of them wereactually voted by the delegates theywere number one that was a peace messageto all people of Goodwill that was votedin Dallas at the general conference in1980 and there was one voted number 55the statement of confidence in thewritings of LG white was issued in SanAntonio in July 2015 but these are theonly two official statements that wereactually voted by the worldwidemembership so that means there are 57other statements that kind of came intoexistence by other means as we're goingto look at now in a bit more detail umofficial statement number 56 that's thestatement ontransgenderism um it simply appears onthe general conference website withoutno reference to the issue issuingauthority um it it appears with noindication of which committee or whichofficers voted for it and when you lookat these official statements you willsee that all of them have at the bottoma description of where this was voted soyou know the date it was voted whichcommittee voted it and often it willtell you who the members of thatcommittee were okay but the statement ontransgender just kind of like levitatesinto existence mysteriously and you'releft to wonder how exactly this thingcame into existence um so there'sthere's the mystery of thetransgenderism statement um nine ofthese official statements were simplyissued um by the then General Conferencepresident after consultation with thevice presidents of the generalconference and so um the these includethe statements on drugs on racism onpeace the ban on the sales of assaultweapons to civilians on pornography onhomelessness and poverty on chemical useuse and dependency the war in Congo andthe war in Iraq and so um nine of thesestatements were issued unilaterally bywhoever the general conference presidentwas at the time after Consulting withthe vice presidents of the generalconference and this one here officialstatement 41 which is an affirmation ofcreation was prepared by the organizingcommittee the international faith andscience conferences you may say wellwhat exactly is the organizing committeeof the international faith and scienceconferences and I would say having spentmy entire life working for the church Ihave no idea what thatis so this is another statement justkind of exists now much of what's in thestatement I have no problem with butyou'd think that if we're issuing umeffectively doctrinal statements thatsomewhere there will be some layparticipation and there will berepresentation from around the worldwidemembership um but the the organizingcommittee the international faith andscience conferences um go and do somedetective work of your own I can'tfigure out who where or what thisorganization is but it's up on ourwebsite as an officialstatement then we have um okay so onenumber one official statement number onewas voted at the 1980 GC session threenew official statements were issued atthe 1985 GC session by the then GCpresident following consultation with umthe vice presidentswe also find that in1987 um this one here number five sexualbehavior was voted outside of a regularGC session by the then GC executivecommittee and uh this is a particularlyinteresting one we'll come back to thatin a few minutes but 24 officialstatements were approved by theexecutive committee now what is theexecutive committee so the generalconference meets every 5 years and inbetween those fiveyear GeneralConference conference sessions we havean executive committee and the executivecommittee meets twice a year once inApril that's called Spring Council WellSpring meetings and one in Octoberthat's known as annual Council andthat's where um the union presidentsfrom around the world they all meet andthere's about 200 and some unions aroundthe world so they all meet they're theofficers of their unions they they arethe the majority on the executivecommittee and uh they in in the springmeetings they generally review the auditreport for the previous year but themajor meetings or the fall meetings theannual Council where they vote thebudget and priorities for the followingyear for the general conference and souh we find that um 2 24 of thesestatements were approved by theexecutive committee and 23 of theseofficial statements were issued by theadministrative committee now theadministrative committee is an internaladministrative committee that dealsprimarily with the internal operatingfunctions of the general conference andit has nowhere in its terms of referencedoes it say that it has the authority toissue normative statements on behalf ofthe World Church um it's just not thereand so um we find we find that when theadministrative committee which iscomprised of departmental directors atthe general conference they startissuing these official statements youstart to question the legitimacy of thatbecause there's no lay representation uhthere is no representation really fromaround the world it's all peoplecentered in Silver Spring Marylandheadquarters of the worldwide AdventistChurch and so um the but as I saidbefore the the right to issue statementson behalf of every Adventist worldwideis not included within terms ofreference of theAdcom so um I'm just looking at myslides here and they don't correspondwith my notes here so anyway we will wewill try and rectify that in the futureall right but anyway um we then come tothe issue of of of chronologically whenthese things were issued so okay numberone was issued at the 1980 GC sessionthree new official statements wereissued in 1985 by the then GC presidentfollowing consultations with the vicepresidents in 1985 um that GeneralConference president was a manal ElderNeil C Wilson in 1987 uh for the firsttime we issued an official statementoutside of a general conference sGeneral Conference session and it wasnumber five on sexual behavior now thiswas voted by the executive committeewith minimal rather than majority layrepresentation and it makes no referenceto the existing fundamental belief thatdeals with sexual morality which R runsthe risk that the official statement onsexual behavior is in competition withor in disagreement with the fundamentalbelief on sexual behavior and thosethings don't necessarily correlate withone another so you have these twostatements the fundamental belief andthe official statement that are runningside by side and the problem here isthat the official statement doesn'tnecessarily Overlake precisely with thefundamental belief so um at the 1990General Conference session Elder uh NeilWilson um issued another fundamentalanother official statement four of themactually he simply issued themunilaterally uh they were the banonsales of assault weapons to civiliansbut when you look into the detail ofwhat it actually says it doesn'tactually call for the ban of the sale ofassault weapons to civilians it talksabout to those who are um who are havemental health problems okay uh so it'snot a challenge on let's say the SecondAmendmentuh a statement on pornography astatement on homelessness and povertyand a statement on chemical use misuseand dependency now in these 1990 umGeneral conf uh official statements wefind these ones here that President NeilC Wilson issued we find that there is noreference to the fundamental beliefs ofthe Adventist Church the previousstatements contain some reference to theofficial statements to the fundamentalbeliefs but in from 1990 on Wards westart to see that statements are beingissued without reference to thefundamental beliefs and parallel to thatwe start to see increased secular andProgressive ideology influence withinour official statements so um you knowour general conference is based inSilver Spring in Maryland and it is notsurprising that if you live near theWashington swamp sooner or later youstart to think in harmony with theWashington swamp um so what we find isthat um with these new few um officialstatements we we're no longer seeing anyreferences to our fundamental beliefswhich are based on scripture um but wesee increased influence of secular andProgressive Ideology Now when the churchspeaks it needs to speak from the Bibleand the Bible alone you know asProtestants the difference manydifferences between us and Catholics butas Protestants we base our faith not onthe teachings of men but on the word ofGod and we also believe that everyperson has the right and theresponsibility to read the script forthemsel and that the holy spirit willguide you into all into sufficientunderstanding forsalvation okay now nobody's going tounderstand everything in the word of Godin one lifetime okay but the radicalReformation which was practiced by theanabaptists back in the day at the timeof Martin just after Martin Luther theyheld to the idea that um that we musteverybody must have the Bible in theirlanguage and they must be able to uhthey must have the right to read it andrespond to the promptings of the HolySpirit according to their conscience andwe as Adventists follow in that radicalreformation footstep and so you know I'dencourage you tonight to be reading yourBible for yourself and asking the holyspirit to guide you into understandingand asking the Lord to lead you into hiskingdom which he will do for anybody whocomes to him with faith okay but so whenthe church speaks as a whole it needs tospeak from the Bible as its onlyfoundation and what we're finding insome of these official stat statementssay we're no longer referencing our ourfundamental beliefs which are based onscripture but we see um we see moresecular influence coming into this amore secular ideology we also see in inthis process that's been going on since1980 to the 1990s and early 2000s isthat whilst the first official statementwas issued by the general conference insession that is with representativesfrom all around the world there has beena steady move away from the session tothe executive committee and also to theAdcom itself which is is a smaller groupthat means it's away from layrepresentation away from layparticipation and it's now becoming therealm of senior administrators alone andwe're also starting to move away fromthe scriptures and we're starting toadopt secular sources within ourofficial statements this is problematicokay this is profoundly problematic nowin December of 95 we issued astatement uh at the Adcom voted officialstatement number 22 which is known asthe dangers of climatechange and um this was under thepresidency of Elder Robert Falen it wasvoted by the Adcom and it said there theworld membership of the 7 AdventistChurch requests that the governmentsconcerned take steps necessary to avertthe danger they were talking aboutclimate change well there's aninteresting statement because the Adcomdoes not have the authority to speak onbehalf of the worldwide church it's veryvery simple they cannot simply say thatthe world membership requests this notone lay member voted forthat okay so this is problematic now umthe does not speak on behalf of theworldwide membership and they wererequesting the world governments um tofulfill what was known as the agreementreached in Rio de Janeiro that was the1992 convention on climate changebecause that had just been voted by theworld governments the Rio climate changetreaty and so we issued this statementafter that event asking the governmentsof the world to move forward with theimplementation of the Rio treaty so thisofficial statement requested theimplementation of the United Nationswhat was known as the agenda21 which earned the Applause of the ourGodless globalist secular Elites despitethe fact that such requests of worldgovernments to unite in implementing aglobalist agenda would surely appear torun counter to the biblical end timeunderstanding of Endtime Global powersuniting to persecute God's people and soin this statement we requesting thegovernments of the world to unite tofight climate change and as as you ifyou follow this in the news you knowthis is a profoundly problematic issuebecause um we are probably going to haveyou know um the governments many actorsin the world today are pushing forcoordinated um climate emergency actionwhich would probably involve um Sundaylockdowns climate lockdowns and once youhave Sunday lockdowns for climate issuesit very quickly becomes a moral issueand as Adventists we understand that thefinal crisis is over worship and trueworship and the whereas the fourthCommandment teaches us to remember theSabbath day to keep it holy thereligions of this world say keep anyother day holy Sunday or Friday or someother day but not the Sabbath day and soin this official statement on climatechange we essentially aligned ourselveswith um the secular agenda of the UnitedNations and the Rio climate changetreaty again this is something that'sprofoundly troubling and if you want todig deeper into this go home and Googlethe agenda 21 or the Rio climate changetreaty and just understand what exactlywe were committing ourselves to be apart of okay and these United Nations umagendas tend to be very far ranging suchas for instance um reproductive Healthwe as an as a church we are generallypro-life uh and yet once we startcommitting to the United Nations agendawhen the United Nations talks aboutreproductive Health they're talkingabout abortion on demand so we have tobe very very careful when we think aboutallying ourselves and linking up withwith these United Nationsagendas okay so official statementnumber31 um is the next one uh this wasvoted um in 1998 and it's on meeting thechallenges ofSTDs that was voted by the executivecommittee and it includes the followingwords it says and if you can't read I'llread it out for you it says at timesfamily members and pastors teacherscounselors Physicians and others inhelping professions may find themselvesworking with individuals who despitestrong counsel refuse to turn fromsexual decadence and live by God's highstandards of morality in such casesthose entrusted with Ministry may as alast resort Council specific individualschuse contraceptive and prophylacticmethods such as condoms in attempt toprevent pregnancy and reduce the risk ofspreading life decimatingSTDs now you may paraphrase that in thesingle in this single sentence memberswhen they sin sexually should becounseled to at least do so responsiblythat would be a paraphrase of what wehave voted in this particular statementokay if you boil it down to the essenceof what it says is that if your membersare going to sin at least councel themto do it responsibly you have safe sexif you're going to have immoral sex haveit safe sex whereas as pastors fromscripture you would say you only engagein that kind of activity within acommitted marriage and not outside ofmarriage so nowhere else in our churchdo we ever counsel members to sinresponsibly nor do we ever counsel themusing the latest medical or socialadvice or ideologies and once again wesee the progressive screep of secularhumanism into our official statementsand so I I would encourage you um youknow to go home not not tonight butsometime in the coming week and uh printout all these statements and just to gothrough them line by line just to findout what we've been committed to by oursome of our church leaders and theCommittees over the years it's kind ofinteresting what you find in there thenext one uh is in 2015 officialstatement number 54 um statement onimmunization this is an interesting oneand it says there uh the Advent weencourage um so uh it says at thebeginning of that statement it says thatthe Adventist Health message Healthemphasis is based on number one biblicalRevelation two The Inspired writings ofEllen G white the co-founder of ourchurch and three on peer reviewedscientificliterature now I don't know what youthink aboutscience but scientists are just as proneto bias as anybody else and science isno longer The Pursuit Of Truth it is thepursuit offunding okay and if you want to knowwhat the conclusions of a study aregoing to be before you read the studyjust look at who's funding the studyit'll give you a good idea of what theconclusions are going to be you know ifa tobacco company funds a study on thelink between lung cancer and tobacco youknow what the long the study is going tosay before you've even read the studyall right scientists are these daysSimply Hired Guns and they will producewhatever study their their fundingagency is offering them I may soundcynical but it's the truth okay scienceis the pursuit of funding and if youwant to keep your funding going in amodern Western un University you've gotto tow the line with modern ideologiesall right and so um this statement hereum says that we're going to be basingour health emphasis is based on on onscripture on the writings of sisterwhite and peer reviewed scientificliterature which as we've learned overthe last three years is often not wortha paper it's written on is driven byfunding or political priorities and byscientists pushing a certain agendawhatever that agenda may may be on agiven issueso um now the statementclaims here the conclusion it says weencourage responsible immunization orvaccination and have no religious orfaith-based reason not to encourage ouradherence to responsibly participate inprotective and preventative immunizationprograms so our 2015 immunizationstatements is based on the what was thencurrent peer-reviewed scientificscientific literature alone because westate in the in the in the statementthat the Bible has nothing to say aboutthis so if the Bible has nothing to sayabout immunization then this statementis entirely based on whatever the thencurrent peer-reviewed scientificliterature stated on the topic and as weknow peer-reviewed scientific literatureis here today and gone tomorrow theprocess of science is you make ahypothesis you evaluate today's dataagainst the hypothesis and if the datadoesn't match the hypothesis then youshould change the hypothesis what wediscovered in the last three years is ifthe data doesn't match the hypothesisyou squash the data that was ourexperience globally in the last 3 yearswe have a hypothesis but but the datacan never be compared against thatbecause if it questions the hypothesisthen uh the data must be wrong ratherthan the hypothesis so we kind ofabandoned the scientific method in thelast three years so this statement wasbased on peer-reviewed scientificliterature alone which is not inspiredby God it is constantly changing and isproduced by scientists influenced moreby the pursuit of funding and theirongoing careers than by The Pursuit OfTruth so this official statement whichimpacts Adventist worldwide is thusbased entirely on secular God rejectingever shifting profit-seeking andcorporate driven scientificresearch that's what it's based on nowI'm aware this is probably beingstreamed live this presentation and umI'm probably going to get into troublefor saying these things but it's thetruth you just got to read thestatements and think about them for afew minutes and you realize that we havetied ourselves to the the pharmaceuticalindustry in this statement which issomething that I would wholeheartedlyreject and if you were to ask themajority of members worldwide we'd sayit's better to have no statements on inimmunization and leave it to theconscience of every parent as to what todo with their children and every childin every situation is unique and so uhbut that is our statement onimmunization now however if you justjust compare this um according to ourworking policy manual and ourfundamental beliefs it says thereum says there the nurture and spiritualgrowth of new Believers must beaccomplished on the basis of the Bibleand its what Authority exclusiveexclusive so our constitution says thatour teachings and the nurture of ourmembers is based on the exclusiveauthority of the word of God but what wefind is our official statements aremoving ever further away from the wordof God and replacing it with profitdriven peer-reviewed scientificliterature as in the case of thevaccination statement this isinconsistent if there is nothing in theBible about vaccination then have nostatement onvaccination if there is something in theBible about vaccination or principlesthat you may deduce from the scripturethen include them in a statement butdon't base your statements on peerreviewed scientific literature becausethe history of science is that today'scertainty is always replaced bytomorrow's certainty and tomorrow'scertainty is replaced by certainty nextweek yes brother FirstCorinthians chapter 6 tells us Paultells us that the body the Temple of theHoly Spirit yes it is in the Bible yeahas I said there are principles you candeduce from scripture yes and your bodyis not your own before you werepurchased at a price uh so we our bodiesbelong to Jesus Christ and we are tohonor him by how we use our bodies thatis why as Adventists we encourage ourmembers not to take not to use drugs notto use alcohol not to use tobacco uh toget regular exercise to get rest in goodnutrition and so forth because when wehonor our bodies we honor our creatorand so that is so how I use my body asan expression of worship just as much aswhat I say in church or what I think inmy mind okay so um if if I give a if Igive um a truck to a fivey a toy truckto a 5-year-old boy for Christmas and helooks at me looks at the truck then hesmashes the truck repeatedly on theground to break it that sends a messageto me as as the Gift Giver yes but if ifmy 5-year-old boy receives that truckand he looks at me and says thank youDad and then he Treasures it and goesand keeps it in his box by his bed allthe time keeps it in pristine conditionthat tells me that his relationship withhis father is very good so when we lookafter the bodies that God has given uswe are honoring him and we are showingthe world that we are in a trustingloving relationship with our heavenlyfather and so how you use your bodieswhat you put into your bodies um how youuse or abuse your bodies is to a certainextent a reflection of your walk withyour heavenly father so I'd agree withyou brother the Bible says nothingexplicit about vaccination but there areplenty of passages in the Bible whereyou can deduce clear spiritualprinciples for how you use your bodieswhat you put into your bodies and howyour body reflects your walk with yourheavenly father so um this this umpassage from our um Constitution statesthat the Bible is to be the exclusiveAuthority by which we grow new membersum which would imply that statementssuch as that on vaccination shouldsimply be set aside because it statesthere is no Biblical teaching onvaccination therefore you shouldn't havea statement if if all the nurtureBelievers is be based on the exclusiveauthority of scriptures alone so theofficial statements as I said beforeintroduced online by um this statementhere uh which we've which we've alreadyread and so 7 the Adventists find itimportant to articulate theirunderstanding of certain importanttopics in light of their understandingof biblical values and teachings againso this is um biblical values andteachings not peer-reviewed scientificliterature and not um secular scientificresearch and below is a collection ofthose statements on issues ranging fromreligious freedom to ass weapons so umthe 2015 imization statement violatesthis Preamble within our constitutionbecause it explicitly claims there areno direct biblical values or teachingson the topic and it's based onpeer-reviewed scientific literature andthus should be logically be withdrawn orset aside if we're to follow ourconstitution now it won't be set asideunless the members rise up around theworld and say we want to takeen down butit's important for us to be able to saythese things and understand these thingsand uh pray that God will indeed bringthese statements into harmony with theteachings of scripture so if we were tojust do a brief analysis of what we'veseen so far since 1980 the officialstatements have come to enjoy a parallelexistence to our fundamental beliefs thefundamental beliefs are voted by membersof the World Church drawn from everycorner of the globe every 5 years theytake between five and 15 years to putthose fundamental beliefs together andin the in those General Conferencesessions the majority of the delegatesvoting are lay members that is peoplewhose jobs are not on the line dependingon what way they vote okay they are laymembers originally voted at a generalconference session the first officialstatement over time the officialstatements are now being issued bysmaller and smaller and smaller groupsof individuals uh one is issued simplyby the Communications Department uh oneis issued a few are issued by the Officeof the President some are issued by thepresident of the GC in consultation withvice presidents some are issued by theAdcom some by other unknown departmentsor in the case of the transgenderismofficial statement it simply appearswithout any indication as to its sourceand so what we find is rather thanhaving a worldwide participation in thisprocess the process is getting narroweddown and narrow down and narrowed downand narrowed down so let's put itanother way theological decision- makingis being concentrated in fewer and fewerhands that becomes problematic for aworldwide Church furthermore theofficial statements are moving fartherand farther away from the fundamentalbeliefs in the Bible as their foundationand they're now increasingly influencedby secular by humanistic and politicallyProgressive ideologies and theyincreasingly exist with that with no layparticipation and no Democraticlegitimacy within the decision-makingprocesses of our church now what is theadvantage for the church leaders ofhaving these official statements theadvantage isthis um it takes a long time to get anew fundamental beliefvoted so there were some people umPastor flowers and his wife they wereasked to WR to upgrade our statement onmarriage and if I remember right theyspent 10 to 15 years at the generalconference negotiating with the churchleaders members from around the world onan upgraded definition of marriage atthe end of it nothinghappened okay why is that because allaround the world we you know marriage inHolland is understood very differentlywith very egalitarian society tomarriage inNamibia and there very very hard foreverybody to come to a basic agreementon some core text on what is marriageand so uh even though we do have astatement on marriage which is a verygood statement um the World Churchwanted to upgrade it and in the end Ithink basically never did that becauseuh maybe they did I don't think they didbut we have to look in you know the theum the histories of the MSS and personPersians to find that out wouldn't we ifit's actually been voted but it took 15years and almost no progress was madeit's very very hard to come to agreementwith a worldwide church with multiplemillions of members speaking everylanguage Under the Sun is very hard tocome to that kind of conclusion howeverhaving that kind of process in placemeans that when you do have afundamental belief it's generally beenvery well thoughtthrough and it's worth taking the timeto get it rightit's worth taking the time to study thescripture so that people in southernAfrica and Latin America and SoutheastAsia and the northern Europe and theAmericas that we can all say okay thisis something that we can all agree on isa clear teaching of scripture it's worthtaking the time and just as important asthe fundamental belief itself is theprocess of studying that fundamentalbelief as a world church so if we'restudying a topic as a World Church allaround the world we're all growing inunderstanding as a World Churchokay so the process is just as importantas the final product and that's why thefundamental belief process is soimportant for our worldwide Church umknow other other Faith communions havedifferent ways of doing it's in theCatholic church when the pope issues anencyclical or a papal bull he's oftenspeaking ex cathedra that means he'sspeaking from the official teachingOffice of the church and this is Dogmathat means you must accept it and he hasPap infallibility so the pope can say xy and z and that's the new defdefinition of what the Bible teaches ona given Topic in the Adventist Church weinvolve members from all around theworld are involved in that process andtakes many years of discussion andprayer before we can come to a finalconclusion two very very different waysof trying to understand what the word ofGod says for us in our modernera and so the but through the officialstatements mechanism our church leadershave gained a very handy mechanism toeffectively issue um theologicalstatements that that leg speak on behalfof all members and have profoundlylife-changing authority over me Memberslives without the need to go through thelong drawn out fun fundamental beliefprocess it's arunaround we have a fundamental beliefprocess but we need we want a statementtomorrow and we're not going to wait 5years or 10 years to get a newfundamental belief defined so we'regoing to issue an officialstatement and that official statement iseffectively normative theology for thewhole church and members don't knowanything about about it they weren'tinvolved in the process they weren'tasked whether they want that kind ofstatement they weren't consulted in theproduction of the statement thestatement is post on the adventist.orgwebsite which 99.99% of members havenever been to in their life most don'teven know it exists and yet employersknow that exist and your governmentknows that exists and your college knowsthat that exists and those statementsare used against you as happened duringthepandemic and so rather than goingthrough the fundamental belief processthese official statements are kind oflike a a quick and easy way for churchleaders to issue a statement on an issuethat becomes theologically normative forevery Adventist around the world itmeans that um our statements areincreasingly reflecting the globalistand ideologically Progressive Outlook ofthe General Conference leadershipthey're increasingly excluding layparticipation in the decision-makingprocess now this process ofcentralization of theological decision-making power it culminated in theOctober 21 reaffirmation statement nowthis was um for those of you who don'tknow um the 2015 we issued thevaccination statement and then inOctober 21 we issued the what we callthe reaffirmation statement and it wasallegedly reaffirming what we said inour 2015 statement in our 2015 statementon vaccines we essentially said that theBible says nothing on this topic so weleave it to the conscience of eachmember that's what we essentially saidwe didn't we didn't recommend it as suchbut we said it's so you and yourconscience whether you get vaccinated ornot so when we issued a reaffirmationstatement you'd think from the titlethat we were simply reaffirming that westand by the good conscience decision ofevery member that's exactly what wedidn't do what we said was after youknow you know every if you're a lawyeryou'll know that you know in every youknow 20page ruling there'll be onesentence that will be the Crux of thewholematter is that right yeahand lawyers at least in England they usethe Latin phrase Ober adicta which meansin Latin it means other words the other19 pages and 10 paragraphs are justnoise but the Crux of the decision isonesentence and that reaffirmationstatement the first page had a lot ofnice fluff about um you know vaccinationis according to the conscience of themembers etc etc etc and we don't enforceit or mandate as a church all this kindof stuff that's all very well and goodbut when the moment it comes to mandateswe said Adventists have no religiousliberty objections to employermandates that's pretty much exactly whatit said and that's the key sentencethat's the sentence has been used byemployers around the world to say toAdventists get vaxed or lose your job toUniversity students take the vax as anAdventist student your church says youhave no objection to this if you don'ttake it you're going to be thrown out ofUniversity if you're a nurse and yourProfessional Licensing body says youneed to be vaccinated against covid umthen the the the licensing bodies willsay you cannot serve as a nurse youcannot get your professional licenseuntil you get VX speak of this sentenceand that one sentence the Crux of thewhole statement um has caused immensepain and suffering to Adventist allaround the world and it still does eventhough the employe mandates you know thefederal mandates have passed fromJanuary 22 when the Supreme Court struckthem down many employers still havethose mandates in place and it's kind ofa hit and miss as to whether they willhonor your religious liberty exemptionrequests or not but this statement ofthe World Church effectively throwseverybody under the bus if you do have aconscience-based reason not to take youknow a genetic modification therapywhich is essentially what it is um sothis this um statement in October2021 um this the process of ofcentralization and excluding lay peoplefrom the decision-making process reachedit climax in October 21 with thisreaffirmation statement it was issued onthe Adventist News Network website notby any formal committee with thedelegated authority to so act but if youlook at the actual statement it says itsays it's issued by the the worldwideChurch by which it says later is theofficers the president secretary andtreasur of the GC I was issued by thehealth ministries director the generalconference office of legal council and LIND University president and the um thepublic affairs and religious libertydirector a handful like five or sixindividuals issued this statement nowthe claim is it was voted by Adcomwhether it was or not it's kind ofirrelevant because Adcom doesn't havethe right to issue theologicallynormative statements for Adventistworldwide that's a fig Leaf to try andget some kind of respectability but thiswas a statement that was issued withprecisely zero input from any memberworldwide zeroinput nobody was askedbut you woke up one morning and appliedfor religious liberty exemption to amandate and your employer says oh we'veseen the statement on the adventist.orgwebsite you have no religious libertyobjection so we're going to deny it thishappened to people all around the worldand some countries where the mandateswere you know enforced with industrialfervor such as Canada not only did youlose your job but the the the governmentin Canada denied people unemploymentbenefits once they lost their jobbecause of thisstatement so you lost your job and youwere denied unemployment benefits andsome people lost their homes wentbankrupt because of this this statementhad profoundly negative consequences forAdventists all around the world had thestatement said something like this werespect the public health authorities inevery country but we uphold the right ofevery Adventist to make a decisionaccording to their conscience that wouldhave been muchbetter even then you'd question do theyhave the right to issue the statementand I say no and many advs around theworld say no and so this is really not adiscussion about what the statement saysthe really the the heart of thediscussion is do they have the right toissue the statement in the first placenow if it is determined that they don'thave the right to issue a statement thenthere'll probably be class actionlawsuits against a general conferencefrom adventage worldwide who lost theirhomes lost their jobs so they're nevergoing to admit that they didn't have theauthority to issue the statementsbecause if they did they'll probably gobankrupt with lawsuits that would followso um but but we can still discuss itbecause we still live in a free societyand in a church we're encouraged tothink for ourselves and I would say heretoday as I've said many times and manyAdventists around the world agree thatthis statement was a politically correctstatement but it was democraticallyunrepresentative it was organizationallyillegitimate according to ourconstitution is biblically incoherentand it's a theologically indefensibleaction taken by a small group ofAdministrators most of whomunelected you might say our own versionof the Deep State or the permanentpoliticalclass these are rough sounding words butthey're thetruth in this statement our currentChurch leadership arrogated untothemselves assumed the right todetermine what the holy spirit is or isnot allowed to impress upon yourconsciences here in NorthNaples now you may say I'm happy forthem to do that but I would say no theydon't have the right to do thatno man can tell somebody else what theHoly Spirit has impressed upon theirconscience but having said that we mustthen live according to ourconsciences we can't say it's not enoughjust to say you can't tell me what theholy spirit is or is not allowed to sayto me we must live in the light that Godhas given us and we must grow in thatlight and seek ever greater light soit's not enough just to say you can'ttell us what to do we have aresponsibility before God to search thescriptures and walk in the light thatGod gives us and to live according toour conscience and so um it's not it'smore we can't just be rejectionist inthis we have to be positively engagedwith scripture seeking God's Will andseeking to live in the light ofscripture on a daily basis and so um wecannot do that when you have statementsout there that are um assuming the rightto override your conscience Vis A youremployer or your University or yourwider Society this statement whichassumed the right to determine what theholy spirit is are not allowed to say tothe conscience of every Adventistworldwide it caused immense suffering itcaused economic catastrophe it causedtermination of employment it caused lossof professional status and employmentand educational opportunity um peoplelost custody battles over this they losttheir unemployment benefits over thisthey completed college and then werethrown out of their chosen professionbecause of this and it's left a sense ofdisillusionment and abandonment amonginnocent members worldwide all the whileit was protecting our Healthcareinstitutions and the 21 21 billiondollar a year of annual Healthcareincome we earn in the United States hereand gaining Applause from our GodlessGlobalElites that's what wedid and we the members were simplyadministrative roadkill in the wake ofthese decision-makingprocesses now in Islam the Ayatollahclaim the right to speak for God theword ayat Allah Allah is is the Arabicword for God and and ayat is a verse inthe Quran is an ayat a chapter in thesuran is called a Surah um but the wordayat means a word and so ayat Allahmeans the word of God so the ayas as wepronounce in English the ones who rulein Shia Islam they hold that theAyatollah speaks for God until thereturn of theMessiah so what they believe is afterMuhammad the the Sunni Muslims believethat um that's 85% of Islams theyMuslims they belied that after Muhammadthere was no more prophetic gift but theShia who were descended from that theirleaders were Muhammad's grandsons theybelieve that the prophetic gift extendedBeyond Muhammad down through 12 rightlyguided um cifs and then the last of themwent into a cave in carala in Iraq inabout 850 ad and they're waiting for hisreturn and until he returns to guide thefaithful and prepare them for the returnof Jesus the world is Guided byAyatollah that is they speak the word ofGod when the Ayatollah speaks that isGod speaking that's why they have atheocracy in Iran because they're a ShiaNation now the in inia Islam theAyatollah allegedly speaks for God inthe Catholic faith when the SP when thepope speaks ex cathedra that is from theofficial teaching Office of the churchhe is considered to be infallible and tobe speaking for God now we have a GCAdministration that also presumes theright to override what the Holy Spiritmay impress upon your mind and thereforethat when they speak it is God speakingthis is a terrible terrible developmentin our Protestant Faith this was done byreleasing the October 21 reaffirmationstatement that stripped every member oftheir legal protections and Liberty ofconscienceworldwide and in usurping the role ofthe holy spirit in the in our lives nowyou may say why is this such a big dealwhy are we talking about it today wellsimply this um in our church legitimacycomes from two or three sources from theBible from precedent or functionalsuccess now we've established aprecedent here we've established aprecedent that if a small group ofleaders can issue a statement thatoverrides your conscience on oneissue then they can do it again that'sthe problem the pandemic may be over butthe precedent has beenestablished and precedent is hugelyimportant if if it's been done once andpeople can get away with it it will bedone again so the next time we asmembers and as a worldwide Church face aglobal catastrophe or crisis of somekind there is a very strong possibilitythere will be politically correctstatement that once again overrides theconsciences of the members worldwide andsays this is what all Adventists dobelieve and they can't believe otherwiseand they have no religious liberty orconscience based objections to whateverthe wider and Godless Society is EXP expin of them in that particular time thisis a terrible precedent that has beenset and that is why even though thepandemic is you know fading in thebackground um we must not think that thethe damage that was done during thepandemic has gone away the fact thatthat statement is still up that it'sstill exists is going to be used onceagain to hurt Adventists um with apolitically correct official statementin the future so that is why we stilltalk about this that is why we stillpray about this that is why if you havea your conference president to yourchurch here speak to your conferencepresident about this and say you know asmembers we would like that statementtaken down um sometimes we feelpowerless as members because we feellike how do we affect the worldwidechurch and as an individual memberthere's almost nothing I or any of ushere can do about it but we can talkabout it and we can keep it as a liveissue and we can Lobby our leaders whoare supposed to represent our views atthe decision-making Committees of thechurch we can Lobby them so theyunderstand this is what the members wantto see happen so but ultimately that'sin God's hands and the good news is isthat those statements even though theypurport to determine what the HolySpirit can and cannot say to you we allknow that's utternonsense the holy spirit is Sovereignand will speak to your heart and myheart and God is not going to say to usin the day of judgment did you followthe official statement ondemonization he's going to say did youlive according to your conscience andthe light that you had that's thequestion question Romans Chapter 2 saysthat on that day of judgment it is umthe Gentiles who do not have the law ofGod and Paul talks about theirconflicting thoughts either accuse orexcuse them which means that in the dayof judgment uh when when God knows thethoughts of your mind and the thoughtsof your mind and your wrestling with thevoice of the Holy Spirit through yourconscience will tell God whether you'rehonestly seeking to live according toyour conscience or whether youconsciously squashing the voice ofconscience that's when your innerthoughts will either accuse you on theday of judgment or excuse you on the dayof judgment so what's important is notso much what the church says you shouldbelieve is the fact that you liveaccording to your conscience and forthat you must answer to God and only youcan answer to God for that so our timeis always up here tonight and this hasbeen kind ofum I I hope it's been somewhatinteresting um so we return to ourfundamental beliefs and to our baptismalvows we agreed to the fundamentalbeliefs as members but no member hasever agreed to any official statement inany baptismal vow they are nevermentioned in any baptismal vow worldwidetherefore is my contention that noofficial statement can be consideredbinding upon any member unless and untilit has been voted by the worldwideconstituency in a general conferencesession which is the only place wherethe determination of belief can takeplace for our worldwide church and thatis the only Authority that can issue istheological statements on behalf of allthe worldwide church and so my belief isthat until that time comes all of theofficial statements need to be set asideor withdrawn until the worldwide churchcan vote on each of them in a casebycasee basis some of them can simply beset aside the statement on the war inDar for clearly was contingent uponthere being a war in Dar for there's nolonger a war in Dar for we can set thataside some of them are just mood musicand fluff we call upon people ofGoodwill to work for peace yeah yes yesyes we all agree to that but some ofthem have profoundly troubling contentssuch as the commitment to the un'sclimate change agenda and you that maybe the next landmine we step on becauseas the UN pushes ahead with its lootwith its climate change agenda and umthe push for um poverty eradicationwhich isn't a bad thing in of itself butit's coming from a secular Viewpoint orit's push for Global reproductive HealthCare by which they mean global access toabortion on demand that's what they meanby that um so these things are going tocome back to bite us they're going tocome back to haunt us whether we like itor not and so this is an important issuefor us to think about as members and Iwant to encourage you you know I knowyou all have your own prayer lists butstart praying about these things becausethere is going to come atime when even though you're a member ofthe sth Adventist Church you're going tohave to answer for yourfaith not what the churchteaches we're going to have to answeranswer for what youbelieve and for you to know from thescripture what youbelieve uh that's why it's so importantto make your faith your own to startreading the word of God for yourself ona daily basis I'd encourage you to readyour Bible through every year you on myBible it's four pages a day okay andthat gets to the Bible every year thatjust kind of drenches your mind with theword of God but in addition to that tobe studying specific topics so you knowwhat the word of God says and you havean answer for your faith all rightbecause uh as we've seen in the last twoto three years um when the forces ofEarth are marshalled against you um andyou know the dominant narrative appearsso overwhelming you really need to knowwhat you believe if you're going tostand up for something you need to knowwhy you believe it and what you believeand um how you came to thatunderstanding in order to be able togive an articulate and a credible answerto anybody who asks you about your faithso um even though these officialstatements are in place and they'rehighly problematic and the process isgetting more and more centralized andautocratic um I want to encourage you tomake your faith your own because nobodycan take that fromyou okay just to conclude um when I wasin Iraq in2015 there was Isis was killing anybodythey could get their hands on and I wasin Northern Iraq and city of irel andthere was um a lady there she was um amarinite which is kind of offsho of theCatholic Church she was sitting in in apublic park and she lost her family losther possessions and she was sitting on amat under a tree and uh I asked her herstory and she told me her story all herfamily were being had been killed byISIS she lost her home in mosul and shewas sitting under a tree in the nextcity over where the Christians foundrefuge and right next to her she had astatue the of Mary about this size verysmallnow um I could see the grief in her eyesshe just lost her family and losteverything in this world I wasn't goingto say well you know what does the Biblesay about idols and statutes the secondcommandment so I asked her to tell meher story and she told me her story andso I said well what does that what doesthat statue of Mary mean to you and shesays well she says they can take myfamily they can take my children theycan take my home she says but they can'ttake myfaith and it's important that you have afaith that's going to stand the test oftime and stand the storms oflife so if there's anything else you getfrom this evening's program is to readthe word of God for yourself feed yourmind on the word of God and take a stockof how much time you spend on you knowYouTube NPR Netflix movies all that kindof stuff and start replacing that withthe word ofGod and uh you will find that the thecharacter transformation that Godpromises it comes through the washing ofthe of the washing of the water of theword as the Apostle Paul puts inEphesians chapter 5 there he talks abouthow how Christ purifies the church andprepares her for the second coming andhe talks about the washing of the waterof the word so running the word of Godthrough your mind in the morning is justas important as having a physical showerin the morning you're cleaning your mindand preparing it for what lies ahead somake your faith your own no matter whatthe official statements are on the theyare problematic and um you know willthey ever change I don't know but makeyour faith your own so that if you evercall to answer for your faith you cansay this I believe and it's found inthis part of the word ofGod so let's bow our heads and we willclose with prayer Heavenly Father wethank you for this evening we spenttogether here Lord we see that in thelast three years our world changed inmany and in unimaginable ways father wesee that things we thought we could relyon turned out to be dust father we seethat institutions we thought we couldtrust were built on a pack of Liesfather we saw that people who claims tobe to love democracy yearn for a tasteof totalitarian power and they love toexercise that authoritarian power overtheir fellow citizens and father we sawhow quickly our society is divided intothe ingroup and the out group into theinfavor group and the demonized groupand father we saw how quickly each oneof us was left on our own to make ourown personaldecisions and father in that in thatcrisis of last three years each one ofus had to make some very personaldecisions on our own knowing that wewould have to live with the consequencesone way or theother I thank you Lord that you broughtus through that crisis I thank you thatwe're still here tonight father wegrieve with those who did lose their Lovloved ones to thepandemic and I pray father as we preparefor the final crisis when consciencewill once again be um a matter of publicdebate I pray that we will grow in ourfaith that we will deepen and broadenour understanding of your will for us Ipray that we will put down deep roots inyour word that will stand the test oftime and the accusations of a hostileWorld father we put down these rootsbecause we know there is a time oftrouble coming such as never has beensince nations came into existence but wealso know father in that same promise ofDaniel 121 and2 that Jesus will stand upto deliver his people so father tonightI pray that each one of us our nameswill be found in the Lamb's Book of Lifeand that Jesus when you come again eachone of us will be ready for you to saythis is our God whom we have waited forso father dismiss us now with yourblessing watch over us with your angelsspeak through us with your spirit andmay the love of Jesus be heard in allthat we say and be seen in all that wedo in His holy name we pray pray amenoh[Music]