But it’s what’s coming in on the back of that amendments to the Human Rights Act, amendments to the Criminal Code that
really cause a lot of concern. And that mandate will bring this country into new territories that no other
nation has entered. When the drawing of the Holy Spirit empowers us to use our liberty of conscience to choose Christ,
we experience true freedom. If ever there was a time to be re-evaluate what the Constitution is,
what it protects, and what it provides for, it would be now. If God didn’t call up someone just like
him, we would not have America today. We certainly would not have the freedoms that we have today. We are living today
in an era of misinformation, cancel culture, coercion of conscience, and
intolerance for those who deviate from the established orthodoxy.
Uh thank you very much, brother Chris, and uh it’s a privilege to come and share with
you here on this beautiful Sabbath day. I really appreciate the words of the prayer he uh he just uh prayed a few
moments ago. Uh because I think those who are involved in a fight know this to be true. You may be involved in a
righteous battle, but the fact that you’re in a battle can have a a negative effect on your soul.
And when you fight a righteous battle, you may turn to old shoe leather on the inside. And you don’t want that. And so what he
just prayed now is very personal for me. That in the midst of the fight, you retain a Christlike character. And you
ask the Holy Spirit every morning to fill your heart so that the weeds of anger that have grown up overnight will
be washed away by the roundup of the Holy Spirit. Pardon the analogy. Uh so
we give you a warm welcome to those who are gathered here today and what a joyful day this is. And for those of you
watching online, we give you a warm welcome. We pray that you’ll be blessed as we share this time together. Uh this
is one of the highlights of the year for me. The next major highlight I’m looking forward to is the opening of AMI on the
20th through the 22nd of August this year. And it’s like basically we started out with like a one-day program, then it
expanded to a two-day program. Now it’s up to a three-day program. And there are speakers coming from all over the
country because a lot of people want to show their solidarity and that we stand for gospel truth. And so I’d encourage
you to put that in your calendars. 20th through the 22nd of August. It’ll be a Thursday, Friday, and a Sabbath event um
here in Berin Springs at the opening of AMI. Uh today though, um I’ I’ve entitled my my sermon True and Free on
my notes. It’s called Striking the Flock. And when I first wrote this sermon two weeks ago, it was called
Following the Good Shepherd. And so this sermon has gone through a number of evolutions. And I started out
with a sermon that I had put to one side. It was on Jesus as the good shepherd in John 9 contra in John 10
contrasted with the Pharisees as the bad shepherds in John 9 who say that we follow Moses but we don’t know who this
man is and you presume to teach us and they drove him out. And so when Jesus comes along as the good shepherd um as
as in in John 10 he says I’m the good shepherd in contradistinction to the bad faithless shepherds. And so I prepared
that sermon and it was ready to go and the Holy Spirit gave me a sense of um holy uneasiness about this. And it
happens to every preacher where you’ve got a sermon ready to go then the Holy Spirit says no no no save that for some
other place you need to do something else. So this week on Thursday that sense of holy unholiness was kind of
that’s the c the stone was in my shoe. I was saying Lord I need to sit down and write a sermon if you want me to do something else. So I sat down and I
wrote this sermon out. And uh so I offer it today with a sense of well Lord if this is what you want me to preach this
so be it. Uh when I finished writing this sermon I looked back and I thought Lord you really want me to preach this?
And the Holy Spirit said yes brother Vine this is what you’re going to preach. And so I offer this to you today, not because it’s what I wanted to
preach, but because it’s what I’m convicted to share with you today. And so our sermon is entitled True and Free.
And you see my contact details on the screen there. And this is going to be our journey this morning. Uh we’re going
to it’s a three-part sermon. We’re going to talk about Adventism arrives. Then we’re going to talk Adventism splits,
then Adventism repeats, and then we’re going to come to our conclusions. That’s our journey in our sermon today. After
our introduction, Adventism arrives, Adventism splits, and Adventism uh
repeats. So that’s the journey we’re going to go on today. So what do we say in conclusion? There’s a passage from
Matthew 26. It’s a quote from the Gospels here. Jesus spoke, this was in the upper room just before he was
arrested. And Jesus said this to the disciples. He said, “Then Jesus said to them, you will all become deserters
because of me this night. For it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be
scattered. Quoting there from the prophet Zachchariah in the Old Testament. And what happened that very
night is the shepherd was struck. Jesus was the good shepherd. He was struck. He was arrested and the flock scattered.
And what we find throughout salvation history is that when the flock is struck, the flock never hangs together.
The flock is always scattered when the shepherds are struck. We see it all the way through salvation
history. We see the way through Protestant history. We see it in the last 200 years in the struggle against
totalitarian regimes of various kinds. But when the flock when the shepherd is struck, the sheep are often or always
scattered. So go with me back to Central Asia. Uh this is a map of the Union of
Socialist Soviet Republics. And when I was growing up, I lived in England. It
was a time of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and the Iron Curtain. And I looked at a map of Europe and I said,
“Who do I want to marry a girl from?” or “Where do I want to marry a girl from?” And I looked at the map of Europe and
said, “Well, I don’t like ladies from that country, but I do like ladies from that country.” So, I learned in 10 languages, I love you, I want to marry
you just on the off chance because, you know, guys tend to make their minds up
very quickly. And I only remember it in one. It was Norwegian. evil mayday which
means I love you, I want to marry you. And um so I learned it in 10 languages and I never thought of learning
languages on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain. Well, the Iron Curtain came down and I married a lady from
behind the Iron Curtain. But um anyway, here is a map of the Union of Socialist
Soviet Republics. We normally look at maps from the perspective of Britain is zero. That’s a Greenwich mean time and
everything is either west or or east of of Greenwich but in London. But this is a map as the Soviets would see it. And
you see on the far left of the screen there, you’ve got Belarusia, you’ve got Ukraine, you’ve got the Baltic regions,
then you’ve got the Caucuses on the on the bottom left there. And and right about 6 7:00 on the map, as you see,
you’ve got the the central Asian republics. We used to call them the stands and the bands. Taz, Tajikistan,
Turk, Menistan, Usbekiststan, Kazakhstan, and Azabahan. It’s where I spent many happy years of my life. And
there is a a clearer picture of the former Soviet Union there. And you see Kazakhstan, that large blue lump down in
the middle there. Kazakhstan is about the size of Western Europe with uh just a few million people living
in it. It’s basically empty space. And just south of Kazakhstan, you’ve got the
smaller stands. You’ve got um Turk Menistan. And the golden color version you have there um this doesn’t show is
um Usbekiststan. And I’m going to speak today about a story that happened in Usuzbekistan
um which is still a nation to this day. There is a typical city of the era. Uh pictures of Soviet apartment blocks and
uh those smaller apartment blocks with five levels are called Krushchovski. They were built from the time of Nikita
Kushchoff onwards. I see some nodding heads here. I used to live in Krushchovski. Um they have the steps
when you go up them the worn cement um steps. They’re never quite even. And you got to look very carefully where you go.
When I was living in them, uh the electrics that were at the entrance, you’d have a a bird’s nest of electrical
wires and your wire was one of those and you touch your end on other wires to see if there was any electricity or not. And
when you got up into your Kushchovski, the heating was on very very hot because it was communal heating and the
government provided heating as a matter of social good. And so in the middle of winter when it’s well below freezing,
the windows are open and you’re walking around in a t-shirt because it is so hot. The radiators are boiling hot
within those old Kuschovski. And actually many of my family members have spent their lives in those Kuschovski
apartments. But I want to go back to March 14th, 1978. And there was a knock
at the door and 20 uniformed men burst into a small Kushchovski apartment. It
was a two-bedroom apartment. This was a standard Soviet department. They came from the Kugaba, the KGB. They came from
the ministry of internal internal affairs. They came from the state prosecutor’s office. With insults and
threats, they pushed the family into one of the two bedrooms. And then they started to tear that apartment apart.
And they didn’t just search as we do in the West. What do they bring with them? They brought crowbars. They brought
spades. They brought axes. They brought sores. They brought mine detectors. They brought a metal hoist. They brought
probes. They brought powerful lighting. They brought cameras and firearms, radiators, generators, and handcuffs.
They smashed up into the ceiling. They demolished the chimneys. They ripped up the floors. They pulled down the
interior walls. They went outside and they dug 2 m down onto the ashfelt paving. They dug up the entire courtyard
where the family had a few um vineyard, a few grape plants, vines, and they parked their car. They indeed opened up
the sewers and sent people down to inspect the sewers. They were taking that apartment apart brick by brick,
cement block by cement block. The family protested about this and they were told by the officer in charge, his name was
Herman Pon Pon Mario. He said to them, “I just have to say the word and the world will turn upside down.” He
threatened the family and in that family there was an 83year-old man who was frail and his son who was also in poor
condition. There was his daughter-in-law and lady called Dena Vladimir Roa Lechina. The
son’s health was frail and from that day on he had daily heart attacks and migraines. They dragged the 83y old man
and his son off for interrogation. The daughter-in-law was a brave lady.
She decided to protest about this. So she wrote a letter that you can still find stay on the internet to Leonid
Ilitch Brev who then was the secretary general of the USSR. He was in that role from 1964 to 1982. Those were the years
when the USSR basically stagnated. That’s when the USSR just stagnated
where no advancements took place and social rot started to be seen um everywhere um socially and economically.
She protested the illegal behavior of the Kagaba, the KGB, but she was simply ignored by a hostile bureaucracy. In
March 1979, that 83y old man was put on trial. The the court abandoned any sense
of neutrality. The USSR was going to get their man. The defense attorney insisted
that the defendant’s words be included in the official record. The official charges were, and I quote, inciting
citizens to refuse to participate in public life and fulfill their civil obligations. Quote, running a
conspiratorial organization. quote living on the means of believers i.e. hy
quote disseminating knowingly false fabrication slandering the Soviet state end quote. He was accused publicly of
joining with the most famous dissident of the Soviet Union, Sakarov, Soljniten,
Olaf, Ginsburg, Hodorovich, Gregoreno, and other. And the star prosecution
witness, get this, the star prosecution witness was a former Adventist now
turning on his brethren. The world responded. Maybe you remember
the name Andre Sakarov. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.
He was in 1975. He was a dissident. He was a nuclear physicist. He was
promoting um human rights around the world and in the Soviet Union. Andre Suckerov protested publicly about the
arrest of that 83y old man. He wrote to President Carter and received no
response. He wrote to the Pope and received no response. He wrote to world leaders and received no response. But he
documented the letters he sent to show the world that the world didn’t care about human rights in the Soviet Union.
Andre Sakarof fought for that 83y old man. The General Conference did not
fight for that 83y old man, but Andre Sakarof did.
And that old man, he was sentenced almost immediately to 5
years in a strict labor camp in northern Siberia. Before he was brought away, his
daughter-in-law Dena brought warm clothes for the adult man. But the authorities turned her away. A couple of
months later, in the tundra of Siberia, his body gave out. His race had been
run. He had fought the good fight. He’d kept the faith. But who was that old
man? You see his picture on the screen, a name that is mostly lost to Western Adventists today. Some of you are
familiar with him. His name was Vladimir Schulov. He was born in 1895.
He was arrested by Stalin’s secret police in 1931 and he was confined to
labor camps for most of his adult life. He was a leader of what what we they
called at the time the True and Free Adventists. They were a group within Advent. We’ll go over their history in a
few moments, but they refused to bear arms in defense of the Soviet Union and they’ve refused to enter into any
official relationship with the Soviet Union itself. Shelv himself was a deeply
learned man who defended pacifism by quoting from the early church fathers. He was fluent in the writings of origin
and Tatalian. He formed close ties with other human rights campaigners across the Soviet Union. A fellow Jewish
prisoner in Siberia, a man called Avam Shiffrin, described him as a man, quote, with an intense expressive face whose
eyes quote were dark and peaceful and literally radiated tenderness. End quote. According to Shiffrin, his fellow
prisoner, I quote here again, “Pastor Shelkov’s entire guilt lay in his rejection of war. Pastor Shelkov paid
dearly for his bloodless fight for human rights. Throughout his life, he led what we now call the true and free
Adventists. But who were this group and why were they so hated not just by the Soviets,
but by the official Adventist church? So, let’s look at some history here. Adventism arrives in what we now call
the Russian Federation or the Soviet Union. We’re going to delve into some history here. on the on the screen there
you see a map of southern Russia and Ukraine and the northern um caucuses
region. Adventism arrived in uh what we now call Russia in the 1880s and the
first converts were not Russians but they were Germans. They were ethnic Germans who settled in what we now call
the Ukraine and the regions of the Vular region, the Vulgar River. and the the the dark blue line that he goes up and
then northeast that’s the vulgar river and they settled along the vulgar basin.
You see the city of Vulgarrad there on the screen. That’s the red spot. That what used to be called Stalingrad, the
turning point of World War II. And the the ethnic Germans settled along the Vular River and west across what the
country of Ukraine is today. And that’s where those Germans had settled. There were strict laws in the Russian Empire
against proletizing Russians and against proletizing Orthodox. But the German
settlers were neither Russian and nor were they Orthodox. And so the government didn’t really care about the
first evangelism among German settlers in the Ukraine and German settlers in the vulgar region.
Those Adventists or those people who did try and proletize with the Russians, they were punished by strict fines. They
were sent into internal exile in Siberia or across the caucuses. And so the first
Adventists in the Ukraine and the first Adventists in Russia were actually German immigrants.
Some of them left and they came to America where they joined the Adventist church in the early 1800s. And from
actually from 1879 onwards um German Adventists in America were mailing
Adventist literature back into into Ukraine and into the vulgar region of Russia. In 1882, moving forward in time,
there was a Menanite book seller going doortodoor. He was employed by the British and Foreign Bible Society. His
name was Ghard Pek and he was shown an Adventist pamphlet called The Third Angel’s Message. It was given to him by
a German neighbor in a German village in the Ukraine. He realized this was a sedicious book in the eyes of the
government, but he read it in the secrecy of his own hoft. And then he became an Adventist. From reading that
one pamphlet, he was convicted about the third angel’s message. So he wrote to the publishers in the United States and
he requested them to send additional literature. He started then giving out not just Bibles for the British and
Foreign Bible Society, but he started giving out Adventist literature as a freebie as he went from door to door.
And so the Adventist message spread among Germanspeaking villages of modern day Ukraine and the vulgar region. In
1886, this man arrived in the country. His name was Ludwig Conrad. Now, I know he’s a he’s a uh he’s a um a
controversial figure in Adventist history depending on where he went later in life, but in 1886, he’d been sent by
our general conference to establish the Adventist work in in Switzerland and central Europe. And while he was living
in Switzerland and making journeys up into Germany, um he realized that the German Adventists in Russia were writing
to their German relatives in Germany asking for help. And so he said, “Well, maybe I can help.” So in 1886 um Ludwig
Conrad he traveled to Odessa um in south southwest Ukraine today on the Black Sea coast and he traveled there and he met
up with brother Pek and together they journeyied across the Crimea. They went into across the Ukraine they traveled up
the vulgar region and the vulgar river and they went down into the Caucus’ region. They were visiting groups of
Sabbathkeeping Germans preaching, baptizing and encouraging those converts. And the first Russian converts
came in a baptism in a town called Berdabalot. Conrad himself was then promptly arrested and charged by the
local police by spreading Jewish heresies and proitizing Russians which was against the law in the Russian
Empire. The young Russian man who he had welcomed into the church, however, came forward and testified that he’d left the
Orthodox church 11 years before and he hadn’t actually been baptized. He joined
by profession of faith. And because he hadn’t technically baptized this young Russian, Conrad was released, having
spent 40 more days in prison. Because he couldn’t speak any Russian, brother Pek decided to stay in with him in prison as
his translator, and they spent those 40 days together. By 1889, there were scattered Adventist
congregations all across the Ukraine, the Vular region, and southern parts of Poland. Today, the Adventist movement
grew in this part of the world through faithful preaching, through secret house church groups and under the the the
curse or the the the the hostile um light of persecution when new believers
were exiled and many were into Central Asia. They joked that the government was
paying for the missionaries travel fairs and wherever the Adventist prisoners went, house churches started wherever
they went. And we tend to think of America as a large nation, but we’re only
four time zones. Yes, East Coast Pacific, Hawaii’s out there, but just the mainland is four time zones. Russia
is almost 12 time zones wide. It’s huge. So when they exiled you to central
Siberia, you could have been nine time zones away. Just to put that into perspective, that’s being exiled from
Berian Springs to the country of Jordan or Saudi Arabia. That’s as far as it is today without modern telecommunications.
And so the Adventists were scattered through persecution in the 1890s under the Russian Zar Nicholas II. But
wherever they went, they started churches. And before long, the number of
Russians in the church outnumbered the number of Germans within the church um in that part of the world. And what was
so um attractive about Adventism to the Russian believers? There were a number of features about Adventism that
attracted people. The first was the fact that we’re part of the radical reformation. The idea that every man,
woman, or child has the right and responsibility to read the word of God for themselves, and God will speak to
you through the word of God sufficient for your understanding so you can receive salvation.
And so that idea was was a revolutionary idea in in a in a country where people
went to an Orthodox church and the priest would stand in his back to the congregation and mutter words in old
Slavic which nobody spoke at the time and that would be the religious service. The people would just observe the priest
speaking in another language. And so the idea in Adventism that you study the Bible for yourself that went a long way.
The services were in the Russian language, not in the old Savonic language of the Orthodox Church. The
Adventist preachers emphasized the need for a personal devotional life, for personal holiness in a society where
alcoholism was rife, and the ability and the possibility to pray for yourself.
I want to encourage you today, read the word of God every day, talk
with your heavenly father every day and pursue personal holiness.
You know, this is part of the gospel message. We have the freedom to do it in our country now. Don’t neglect those
freedoms. Don’t take them for granted. And the other thing the Adventist church
offered was when a member was persecuted, the rest of the church rallied around. There was fellowship.
There was support. You could trust your brothers and your sisters to stand by you and stand up for you. And if you
were arrested, your brothers and sisters would go and lobby with the police, lobby with the governor, do all they could to get you arrested. The
Adventists were not afraid to stand out in public and take a public stand for their imprisoned relatives. and my
brothers and sisters in Christ. I saw this uh when I was in the the Kitvan autonomous republic in the mid 90s.
That’s a zone between Armenia, Turkey and Iran. And the church there was mostly babushkas, grandmas. And I
realized that many of the men had had been disappeared by the KGB. There weren’t hardly any men in the church.
And what the church kept kept the church going was a bunch of these grandmars who looked soft and cuddly but were as
fierce as pitbulls if you touched anyone in that congregation. and they would go fearlessly to the KGB officers and
demand the release of their sister. And the KGB thought, what are these old grandmas going to do? They weren’t a
they didn’t think grandmas were a significant threat. So, they let the church members go. There was nothing like having a fierce grandma on your
side. And we saw that during the Soviet Union. By 1890,
the first general meeting of Adventists in the Russian Empire was held in a town called Egenheim. It was a German village
in the caucuses. There were over a hundred delegates in attendance. One of them was a man called Tearful Babenko.
He was a convert from Stavropole just north of the caucuses today. He was ordained as an elder and he was sent off
to pastor a Russian church, but he was immediately arrested and sent by the Zarist authorities to the other side of
the Caucus’ mountains. The town where he went to though was the end point for the coach routes for the stage coaches. And
so he decided to give Adventist literature to every stage coach that arrived in town and every stage coach
that left town. And those stage coaches went all across the what was then called the Russian Empire. And the Russ the
Adventist literature spread through that act of persecution. I want to tell you something here today brothers and
sisters. But what we saw in the pandemic was the whole world turned on a small minority and that the world did not know
existed before 2020. And all of a sudden what that minority stood for was known through the whole world. Not because of
what they said, but because of the hatred heaped upon them in the mainstream media. And what’s going to bring the Adventist
message to the end of the world at the end of time is not just what we preach. It’s the fact that we’re true to what
God has given us. And the persecution of those who will not receive the mark of the beast means the whole world will
know there is a group of people that don’t receive the mark of the beast. And why don’t they receive the mark of the beast? And what do they actually
believe? And why are they willing to accept economic coercion and ultimately the death penalty? There’s something
about those Adventists who are proclaiming the end of the beast, the mark of the beast. Persecution is not
necessarily a bad thing. And I can tell you from personal experience, and I know
from my experience that lawyers in the GC and the division watch these sermons that um thank you for the persecution.
There is no greater advert for a preacher than to be persecuted. And there is no greater advert for a pastor
than to be banned because everybody wants to hear what you have to say. you become the forbidden fruit. So uh what
happened then was 1905 Sar Nicholas II there was social upheaval in Russia.
People wanted modernization. So a new social contract was offered and in that
contract um that social compact thesar agreed that there will be religious freedom within the Russian Empire and
and denominations other than the the Orthodox church were allowed to be registered. And it was in that moment
that churches like the the Baptists and the Methodists and the Adventists received their registration in Russia in
1905 and 1906, long before the Soviets came along. So the Adventist church was
officially recognized by the Saris authorities in 1906. Membership grew to over 40 congregations and over 2500
members. They were now producing their own literature from their own publishing house. And by the eve of World War I,
there were almost 6,000 Adventists with many of the pastors being trained not in
Russia but in Freedenau in Germany because many of the original pastors had been German. And even when I went to um
the central union which was based in Kazakhstan in the mid ’90s that the union president was a man called Pastor
Schwartzkov, I thought that’s not a Russian name.
So I asked around and there were about 60 pastors in that union and 58 of them
were Germans and a few years later they’d all immigrated to Germany and left the
church with almost no pastors in that part of the world. So there was a frantic training program for elders and
new pastors because so many German heritage pastors had gone back to Germany after the collapse of the Soviet
Union. But anyway, when World War I began, many Adventists were deported to central Siberia into labor camps run by
the Zar because they were be viewed for they were problematic for two reasons. One, they were German and two, they were
a revolutionary sect. The pastors were imprisoned and you see some pictures there from some of those labor camps.
And most people did not survive the Tsarist labor camps. The Soviets did not invent those camps. They were in
existence long before under Zar Nicholas II. But many of those pastors died in
those camps. And just as in Germany, so as in so in Russia, the church was split
on the idea of conscription. And in Britain, the church said, “We are conscientious objectors. We will not
fight in defense of an empire.” And so many Adventists spent World War I in Britain in labor camps. My
great-grandfather was the first Adventist in my family. He was baptized just before World War I. He was a dock
worker in the south coast of England. And uh when World War I began, which was a war of empire, he joined about 40
Adventist men. And they spent World War I in a hard labor camp.
But in Germany, the church split and the official German church said, “We support fighting for the Kaiser and we support
working in the the ammunition factories on the Sabbath because it’s your patriotic duty.” And so that a group was
kind of forced out that we now know them as the reform Adventists. And the same split happened in Russia. In Russia, the
Adventists were split. Do you fight for the ro Russian Empire against the Germans or do we hold to the position of
conscientious conscription? And so the split started appearing in 1914 through
1917 during the the last three years of the Russian Empire. But when the Bolevixs came to power, Lenin released
most of the prisoners of conscience. We think of Lenin as being one of history’s monsters. Yes, he was. But he was there
were some things he did that endeared him to the Adventists. One of the things Lenin did was in a decree issued on the
4th of January 1919. He gave exemption from for Adventists from military
service on the grounds of liberty of conscience. That was Vladimir Lenon. He
gave the Adventists exemption from military service. He said, “You don’t have to fight in the Red Army. Uh we
will give exemption for you.” And so for many Adventists, Lenin was for many years held in very high regard because
he upheld their liberty of conscience. Many political prisoners and prisoners of conscience were released from the
Tsarist prison camps. And uh Lenin gave Christians the opportunity to evangelize
openly and to hold private religious classes, at least initially.
Lenin’s comment about the Orthodox priests who were marching with the Bolsheviks. He called them useful idiots
because many of those Bolshevik priests were holding up banners talking about equality and equity and freedom and
stuff like this. And they marched with the Boleviks. But after the Bolshiks came to power, many of those pastors and
Orthodox priests were imprisoned or executed or sent to Siberia.
So Adventists were given permission by Lenin to establish collective farms. Adventists established seven collective
farms in modern day Ukraine approved by the people’s commissariat of agriculture. Those collective farms
became very very productive but they aroused the jealousy of the atheist officials. By 1928,
there were almost 14,000 Adventists in the Soviet Union. But trouble trouble
was coming both from within and from without.
So we’ve looked at Adventism arrives. We’re going to look now at Adventism splits.
Under the Zars, key Adventist doctrines led to conflict
with the state. And those are the three key doctrines you see on the screen. The first key doctrine was this, the bearing
of arms to defend and kill for an atheist state. The Adventists believe
that if you are to be that we are not called by God to kill in the name of a state that denies the existence of God.
We were not going to defend an atheist state and they viewed that as a breaking of the sixth commandment. The second
reason that the Adventists had problems with the with the Soviets, and this is as Lenin is dying and Stalin is coming
into office, was the fact that when you swear a military oath, you’re yielding control of your conscience to your
commanding officer. And if you look in the um North American
Division Chapency Department, they use the same arguments even today about military service here even here in
America that when you sign a military oath, you are handing over control of your conscience to your commanding
officer. And the problem with that is is that the greatest commandment and the first commandment is you love the Lord
your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. You’re breaking the greatest commandment by yielding control of that
relationship to your commanding officer. The third reason why the Adventists had trouble with the Boleviks or the Soviet
Union was the desecration of the Sabbath day uh in military service. And so for
these three reasons, there was a there was a division within the church in Adventism in the early 1920s 1924
through 1928 are the years when the split became more and more obvious to everybody. Now when the Adventist church
was received its legal recognition in 1906 under the Zar, they sent a very carefully worded um letter of greeting
to the Zar, they promised to render to Zar Nicholas II whatever belongs to Caesar that is taxes and tribute, fear
and honor. But while simultaneously pledging to render unto God that which belongs to God, but they didn’t define
in the letter what belongs to God. But now the split was becoming more and
more open among the Adventists. From 1924 to 1928,
the central issue was this. Should Adventists um accept conscription into
the Red Army, an army that was being used to kill Christians, an army that was being used
to wipe out the Orthodox faith, an army that was being used to run large um
concentration camps, one of better word, labor camps all across Siberia. the the Bolevixs and the Communists merely took
over the Tsarist prison camps. They were already in existence. And so the
AllRussian Council of Adventists in 1924, they met and they said, “We’re not
opposed to this in principle serving in the Red Army, but we’re going to leave it to the individual and the
individual’s conscience.” And they said, “If you do choose to serve, we recommend you serve in the medical or in the
construction units.” And so that was the first position in 1924.
They expressed and I’m quoting here gratitude and sincere support end quote to Lenin. And the advent the all
adventist all union congress of adventists in 1924 promised support for quote the only progressive government in
the world end quote. Their focus was on that which they had in common with the Soviets not that which divided them from
the Soviets and the Soviet ideology. They believed they could win friends by condemning the injustices of capitalism,
the the the power power greed of imperialism and the decline and the moral declenion of the established
churches of the west. And they supported the communist reordering of society because insarist times Russia was a very
sick society. But the splits were finally revealed in 1928. There’s the picture there of the
all union congress of Adventists. It was the the sixth All Union Congress. it met
in 1928. Those are the Congress members. That’s a rare picture of that particular
group. And in this particular group, under pressure from the uh Marxist authorities, this Congress of Adventists
declared that all members are now subject to conscription regardless of their conscientious objection or not.
This new position was then backdated to 1924 and they also decided to expel all and
any Adventists who were who refused to sign up to fight for the Red Army.
1928 there’s the Sixth Congress.
And so they did that. They expelled the Adventists who wouldn’t serve in the Red Army. And thus the true and free
Adventists were born. They are called true in their own wording because they remain true to the fourth and sixth
commandments, honoring the Sabbath day and refusing to kill in defense of a godless state.
They’re also free because they refuse to register their congregations with the atheist persecuting Soviet authorities.
They claimed that if they were to register their authorities, they would be subject to the dictats and the
commands of the atheist authorities. Shelkoff became the leader of the true and freeze from 1954 onwards and he
argued that in the west we talk about the Catholic Church, a union of church and state. In the Soviet Union, they had
a union of church and state, but it was atheist ideology and state combining together to persecute those who are
faithful to Jesus Christ. And so that these two Adventist groups existed side by side from 1928 all the way to the
collapse of the Soviet Union. the official Adventists and the True and the Freeze. Now, there was they had their
ups and their downs. There were questions about some of the theology about the True and the Freeze. I recognize that. But these two groups
existed in the Soviet Union from 1928 all the way through to 1989.
The official Adventists, they had their troubles with the government. When Stalin did his purges, he rounded up the
entire Leningrad congregation and sent them into exile. Many pastors were exiled, many were imprisoned. the the
the uh the official Adventists, they had their problems with the state. However,
they would send their children to school on the Sabbath and if required, they would serve in the Red Army if they were
conscripted. The True and Freeze, however, they faced the most brutal persecution from Joseph Stalin. They
were arrested on mass. They were exiled. They were sent to die of starvation or
torture in labor camps. Some were simply executed. Uh children were taken from their parents. They were forced into
Soviet orphanages. Homes were ransacked for illegal literature. Young men were imprisoned for refusing the oath of
allegiance to the Soviet state. But despite this persecution,
the True and Freeze flourished. They didn’t just survive, they flourished.
The more intense the Soviet persecution, the more the True and the Freeze were were aggressive in their evangelism.
They established printing presses from Vladivosto all the way west to Russia and then west into Belerusia and south
into Ukraine. They distributed Adventist literature all across the Soviet Union
and the Soviets kept trying to find the source of this literature but they couldn’t find it. They taught their
faith to their children which was illegal under the Soviet Union. They ran local charitable ministries. They ran
underground house churches. They refused to swear oaths of allegiance to the Soviet state. and they refused to send
their children to school on the Sabbath day. And in case you’re thinking this is ancient history, if you go to the
country of Vietnam today, that split is right there in front of your faces. Today, there is an official Adventist
church in Vietnam and they send all their children to school on the Sabbath. And there’s the underground Adventist
church in Vietnam. They’ve been supported by ASAP Ministries for many years. And they are five or six times
larger in number than the official Adventists. And the key issue is do you send your kids to school or your young
people go to university on Sabbath or not? Somebody very close to me, I won’t
mention her name, but somebody very close to me became an Adventist as a teenager after the collapse of Soviet
Union and uh she was living in a Muslim nation and the professor didn’t like her
and scheduled the final exam on the Sabbath day and he says, “I know you can’t take it because you’re an Adventist.” And so that person who shall
remain nameless, she said, ‘Well, I’m going to be in church on the Sabbath day. I’m not going to take the exam. And
so that person went to church on the Sabbath day. And on the Monday went into the university and noticed that she had
the top marks in the exam. Was that an angel?
I’m not sure what the academic dishonesty policy has to say about the work of the Holy Spirit,
but she passed with flying colors an exam that she never took because she was chose to worship God on the Sabbath. And
you know, in back then in the early ‘9s, if you didn’t take an exam, you had to retake the entire academic year. And
many of the friends that young person had to retake multiple years because the exams would be scheduled on the Sabbath.
And even here in America, I just saw recently exams have been scheduled on Sabbath in one of our state and our
young people are being forced to make that decision. I forget which state it was. It crossed my radar this week. This isn’t just something that happened 30,
40, 50 years ago. This is rearing its ugly head in America today.
So finally, under Brev, the Soviets decided to stamp out the true and freeze once and for all. and they unleashed the
KGB in a campaign of unparalleled persecution in 1978 to 1979.
It was in this context that the final arrest, trial, imprisonment and death of
pastor Vladimir Shalov took place. I don’t know what you were doing in
197879. My recollection of 1980 is the Olympics
in Moscow. That’s what I think of when I think of 1980.
Some of you don’t remember 1980. Maybe you’re too young to remember it. Maybe you’re too old to remember it. I don’t know.
But I remember 1980 for the so the Olympics in Moscow and the the uh the refusal of many
countries to participate because the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I didn’t realize growing up in England
that brothers and sisters in Christ were paying the ultimate price in that moment for their faith.
And so we talk about these things today because it’s important that we do not forget what our brothers and sisters
have been through and we don’t forget the primary lesson which is that persecution doesn’t wipe out the church.
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. And what of the general conference in
that time? Well, Elder Neil Wilson was the president of the general conference. You see his picture on the screen. He
personally took control of building a functional relationship with the authorities of the USSR. I guess the
idea was if we engage positively these people, we can help them move in the right direction. I guess that was the
general idea. And so in 1979 when the Soviets were bit persecuting the True
and Freeze bitterly and trying to wipe them out and trying to figure out where
those printing presses were distributing all this Adventist literature in the Soviet Union, Elder Wilson penned an
open letter to the Soviet Adventists in 1979. And this is the letter here. And he said
this, “The General Conference can recognize only one Adventist organization in any country. This would
normally be the one recognized by the authorities. We encourage all who consider themselves to be 7th Adventists
to identify with the recognized body of believers. Interpretation. If you’re in the true
and freeze, you’re on your own. We want nothing to do with you. We will
work with the official Adventist church who send their children to school on Sabbath, etc., etc., but we will have
nothing to do with the true and frees who are upholding the Sabbath and refusing to break the fourth and the
sixth commandments. During a subsequent visit to the Soviet Union, Elder Wilson established a close
relationship with Constantine Khv, then the chair of the USSR Council of Religious Affairs. And during two visits
to the US in 1986 1987, this uh Soviet um official visited our world church
headquarters and several of our major educational and institutional institutions. This all resulted in the
creation of the first Adventist seminary in Russia just outside of Moscow now called Zoxky. That was the fruit of that
dialogue. Adventists returned the favor by participating when Mikail Gorbachoff
held the international forum for non-uclear world and the survival of humanity in 1987 and Mikail Gorbachof
was trying to talk about nuclear disarmament the start treaties and he realized the Soviet Union could not keep
up with the west and uh so Neil Wilson pointed out to him that the people who
are supporting Reagan the most are the Christian rights and they’re concerned mostly about the treatment of Christians
in the Soviet Union. So if you show more grace and compassion and give more liberty to the Christians, President
Reagan will lose his political power in America. That’s the argument that was used by Elder Wilson at the time. And I
don’t see any problem with that particular argument. I think he was accurate in what he said. But what did
the Adventists do from the late 1980s to encourage cooperation with the Soviet Union and the opening up of human rights
in across the nation to all the people of the Soviet Union. We disavowed Ronald
Reagan’s characterization of the Soviet Union as an evil empire. We offered cooperation to the Soviets in the areas
of science, education, and medicine. We praised Soviet religious liberty. Can you believe it? We praised Soviet
religious liberty in our Liberty magazine. And we awarded Khf um a
citation honoring as quote a spokesman for human rights, promoter of religious freedom, end quote.
Subsequently, we also received permission to open a publishing house, a world uh Russian headquarters and a
medical clinic in Moscow. Well, history moved on. Do any of you
any of you remember this event here? The Berlin Wall coming down. It was it was
an epoch shaping event. It was it shaped the entire world as we know it today.
The Soviet Union today is gone. Not the ideology that’s alive and well in our
universities. When somebody says, “I’m a progressive,” what that means is I share this Marxist
ideology. That’s what it means. We’re progressing towards a Marxist state. So here in America, almost half of our
voters are voting for these kind of things. But today, the Soviet Union as a
political entity is gone. The true and free Adventists are almost no more. The
memory of them is fading into our collective consciousness. The torture, the exile, the executions, the
starvation of the labor camps is no more. The required Sabbath education for children exists in pockets of the former
Soviet Union, but it’s mostly gone. The oath of allegiance to a god-hating atheist church state is now gone. There
are no longer any true and free congregations, no longer any true and free conferences or congresses. What you
also notice is that there are no books in the Pacific press that recognize or celebrate the True and Free Adventists.
They’ve been whitewashed from our history because they weren’t the official Adventists, even though they paid the heavier price for their faith.
The True and Free are simply ignored, washed from our history by our official journals because they didn’t bow to the
Soviet state and they wouldn’t accept the compromises made by our leadership throughout the USSR.
This isn’t distant history. While working in the 90s for Azab Adra and Aabahan, I met many people both from the
official Adventist church and the true and freeze. They were struggling to come to grips with the fact that the the
oppression has gone and we really are brothers and sisters in Christ. But three generations of bitterness and
vitriol were still in the air and you could sense it wherever you went. Many
people back in the 90s were still grieving over lost friends and family to the Soviet regime. It was a time to
remind brothers and sisters like that as Psalm 116:15 says that precious in the
sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. In moments like this, you simply meet
with people and say, “God is going to have to sort it out in the final judgment.” And as David said, 2 Samuel
24:4, he says, “Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great. Let me not fall into human
hands.” We look back at this history not with any sense of condemnation and say one
group is better than another because none of us or very few of us have had to make choices like that.
You don’t know in advance how you’re going to stand and what you’re going to decide when a totalitarian state comes
after you or comes after your children. And so we look back at the this painful history from the Soviet Union.
We recognize that there but for the grace of God go each one of us. The vast majority of Adventists in the
Soviet Union made the best decisions they could with what they could and when
they could. Nobody is to be condemned, particularly those who live in relative comfort and luxury, for how Adventists
responded to the threat of torture or rape or execution or lifelong exile to
Siberia. To work in the frozen camps to be worked to death, to have your children forcibly taken from you and
never see them again to face death by starvation, untreated disease, brutality
or execution. We cannot sit today and say, “I would have been in that group or I should have been in that group.” And we can’t
criticize any of these people with hindsight because we’ve never had to walk that mile ourselves.
But we can learn from their stories. I used to sit down and listen to the stories of these Adventists in the
former Soviet Union. And you sit down next to a grandma and you’d ask her to tell you her story and she would tell
you the most incredible story of faith under fire and courage and conviction.
One lady, I still recall her as the rat lady. We hired her in Adra. We were
feeding about 800,000 people a month. We had about 60 large like Walmart warehouses across the country filled to
the brim with flour and oil and beans from America. And the rats there, they were as big as the warehouses. And they
were enormous rats. This was before GM rats came into existence. But we had our own GM rats. And this lady was expert at
killing rats. And why was she so good at killing rats? Because in the early 1960s, she became an Adventist in
Moscow. And the authorities were so upset with her. she was a true and free that um they took her children from her
two newborn daughters, twin girls and they took him into a Soviet orphanage and they exiled her from Moscow to Baku
in the capital of Bak Aabjan and the job they gave her was killing rats in the metro and that’s what she did for the
next 40 years till the Soviet Union collapsed not knowing where her daughters were if she’d ever see her
daughters again and she survived the worst that the Soviet Union could do to her and when the Soviet Union collapsed
she went off on a search for her daughters and she tracked them down. They were both married live married
ladies living in the modern day city vulgar stalingrad of World War II. And
she told me her story and there were tears on her face. They were not tears of anger at the Soviets. They were not
tears of bitterness what God had allowed her to go through. They were tears of joy that God had restored her to her two
daughters. She made it through. She survived the wor one of the worst regimes of the 20th
century and her family was now intact. And so there were tears of joy on the
rat lady’s face. Her name was Nina Sga. I think she’s passed away now. If you want to know what it was like to work in
one of those camps and wrote a book. It’s only a very short book. The size of steps to Christ is
called a day in the life of a Vanderisvich. This charts what it’s like to be a prisoner in a Siberian labor camp. The
prisoners are called ze. It’s kind of slang for a prisoner in Russian. Ze z e ks. And this this story is from what
happens from the morning bell to the night bell and everything that goes through his head as a prisoner in a labor camp. I’d encourage you to read
it. Children, if you think your chores are bad, take a look at this book.
The other book is in the first circle, which describes what it’s like to be a life prisoner in in one of Stalin’s
camps. So the church divided. So I want to talk now about Adventism
repeating. Jesus said it this way. He said, “You will all become deserters because of me
this night.” Matthew 26:31. I will strike the shepherd and the sheep
of the flock will be scattered. This prophecy was fulfilled that night, the night of Christ’s betrayal, when the
disciples fled from him. This prophecy of Christ has been repeatedly fulfilled all the way through the last 2100 years.
Whenever the leaders are are struck are struck by the godless regimes, the flock is always scattered. We saw it in
Germany. We saw it in in the Soviet Union. We see it in Vietnam today. And we saw it in CO.
History doesn’t directly repeat, but it does rhyme because we’re still fallen human beings.
We’re prone to the same temptations and we’re prone to the same mistakes.
So, I want to talk today about where we are as an advent movement here in North America for a few moments.
And it’s going to be it’s going to become clear where I’m going with this. There is a divide in front of our very
eyes between official institutional Adventism, what I’m going to call here
today, the true and free Adventism. On the one side, official institutional
Adventism is a legal denomination with legal recognition and all the tax benefits thereof.
But I believe that sooner or later there is going to be a true and free Adventism once again. Not a denomination, but a
movement. It may start as a lay reform movement within Adventism today. people who go to
their regular Sabbath morning churches on Sabbath morning but who meet on Friday nights or Sabbath nights or
Wednesday for prayer, Bible study and fellowship. I believe there is coming in our church
the possibility of an underground movement without legal recognition because the divide is getting so st so
huge between the institution and faithful members. In official Adventism
the members will be worshiping in conferenceowned buildings and churches like just down the road from here. In
true and free Adventism, we’ll be worshiping in private homes or in public facilities. And more and more of my
preaching is in public facilities or in other churches. We see this divide happening in front of our eyes. Official
Adventism is burdensed by the love of money. They’re burdened by the need to protect assets and multi-billion dollar
federal revenue streams. True and free Adventism, on the other hand, is burdened by the love of Christ
to warn and prepare the world for the second coming, regardless of the temporal cost. Official Adventism has
legally subjugated itself to the United Nations goals, spirit, and objectives.
We’ve heard a lot about this recently. I encourage you to learn more about this. Um, but we have legally subjugated
ourselves to supporting the United Nations goals and objectives. Uh Dr. Hoffman is going to speak about it this
afternoon, the concept of the greater good. But if we think about the universal declaration of human rights,
um, one of those articles guarantees freedom of religion. We say, “Praise the Lord.” Article 29.2 29.3 says, “Excuse
me, you have all these rights, but they’re all subject to the common good.” So that means you don’t have religious
freedom. And we have signed up for that as a general conference, as a world church. We have signed up to the concept
that the governments of this world have the right to override what the Holy Spirit tells you. That’s the official
position of the Adventist Church. When you look at the implications what we signed the true and free Adventism
have not subjugated themselves to the United Nations goals but they have submitted themselves to the word of God
alone as directed by the Holy Spirit through the convictions of the conscience. The official Adventism
believes that the General Conference ADCOM has the spiritual authority and the legal right to deny religious
liberty to the members and the uh true and freeze believe that
no man can override the convictions of the Holy Spirit on the conscience of another. We uphold liberty of conscience
and the greatest commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. The official
Adventist position actually issues official statements that closely mirror the United Nations positions on current
issues. Increasingly, if you want to know what we think on a social issue, don’t study the word of God as an
Adventist, wait for the UN to issue a position statement and then we’re going to echo it a few months later. We’ll
sprinkle in a few Bible verses to make it look good. But we are increasingly reflecting the attitudes of the United
Nations which is comprised of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, atheists, animists,
Satanists, and the papacy which is the antichrist. The true and free position uh true and
free Adventists aren’t interested in the official statements of the United Nations. They’re interested in preaching the three angels messages, announcing
the second coming of Jesus Christ, the good news of his return, and inviting all people to be ready for Jesus when he
comes again. Wouldn’t it be nice if the only message from our church globally were that Jesus is coming again. He’s
coming for his own and you can be in the Lamb’s Book of Life. It’d be wonderful if that were the only thing coming from
our church rather than garbage about all these other UN these statements that parallel what the UN is coming out with.
Official Adventism, her public positions reflect those of the United Nations, which includes the Antichrist. and true
and free Adventism, our public position should reflect those the positions of scripture and the spirit of prophecy.
Just as in the uh the story of the Soviet Union where the debate was over the fourth commandment and the sixth commandment, we have the same struggle
going on in Adventism today. In the official Adventism, we celebrate the breaking of the sixth commandment. When
we have conferences celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk, regardless of what you think about him, when we are
celebrating the murder of a public official, when we quote scripture from Galatians 6 and say, “Do not be
deceived. God is not mocked. As a man seweth, so shall he reap.” When we celebrate public murder, we are
celebrating the breaking of the sixth commandment. And the claim to be the remnant of God hangs hollow because the
remnant keep the commandments of God. But when you celebrate the breaking of the sixth commandment and you’re going
to choose to perform abortions sometimes in your hospitals, it kind of gives the lie that you are keeping the
commandments of God. The true and free Adventist position, however, upholds the sixth commandment by rejecting all
murder, whether it be political assassinations, police brutality, or happening within the womb.
The true and free Adventists, sorry, the official Adventists, they
encourage the breaking of the seventh commandment by having pro-LGBTQ events in Adventist institutions and messaging
in Adventist pulpits. As we celebrate today, not in our own building because
we’re not allowed to be here at Lom Minda the School of Religion. They’re celebrating not a religious liberty
Sabbath, but a sodomite Sabbath. They are promoting LGBTQ lifestyle. They’re
promoting books that say we have to reinterpret all the Bible so that homosexuality and samesex sexual
activity is not considered a sin in the eyes of God. Those preachers don’t get banned. Those preachers don’t get called
out by the hierarchy. Your tithes pay for the church leaders who sit on the in on the board of Lolinda University
Medical Center. That’s where your tithes go. the general conference president, the vice president sit on those boards
and those events still go ahead. We are openly and publicly with a
progressive wing of Adventism celebrating the breaking of the seventh commandment.
I’m trying to be kind here this morning, but this is the truth.
Bible faithful true and free Adventists say, “No, we uphold the seventh commandment. Every person who was born
in this world is worthy of salvation. But we reject the sexual revolution and the moral degradation of the LGBTQ
movement. Official Adventism promotes the breaking of the 10th commandment by promoting
critical theory or cultural Marxism which is based on envy. True and Free Adventism upholds the 10th
Commandment by rejecting critical theory and the Satanist Marxist ideology that’s
flooded our nation and flooded much of our North American division institutions.
Official Adventism silences truth speakers. True and free Adventism in the
21st century seeks out truth speakers. In official Adventism, nobody’s allowed
to question, criticize, critique, or call for reform among our administrative elites. As the Pharisees said to the man
who was born in born who was born blind in John 9, “Do you presume to teach us?”
And they drove him out. It’s almost a direct parallel with what is happening today. Do you presume to teach us and we
will drive you out? The true and free Adventism on the other hand believes that God has given us a straight
testimony. The straight testimony in second selected messages consists of reproofs and warnings. It is to be given
to the Leodysian church which is lost unless it repents of its spiritual
self-sufficiency. Let us be clear about this. The messages to the seven churches are given to the
angels of the seven churches. The the Christ holds the seven stars in
his hands. End of revelation one. Those are the leaders of those seven churches. The message to the church of Leodysia is
to the angel of the church of Leodysia. Which means this is a lead a message directed at the leaders of the Leodysian
church. And it’s saying that you are in a lost condition now. Unless you repent, I’m going to spit you out.
So there is a there is a sincere message to be preached because God is not willing that any should perish. And we
are not willing that any should perish. And so true and true and free Adventism today upholds the right of the spirit of
God to speak through sermons that are fearless and speak to the times in which we live. Official Adventism believes
that tithe belongs to the conference regardless of whether they uphold biblical truth or not. True and free
Adventists believe that by tithe belongs to Christ the head of the church and it is to be returned wherever the the Holy
Spirit directs the returner of that tithe. Conference preachers in official
Adventism are preaching timid, safe servants that soothe their affluent, sleepy saints.
True and free Adventism seeks for present truth preers and speakers who are fearless for the times in which we
live, who call for personal repentance and receiving the righteousness of Christ, Christ in you, the hope of
glory. There’s a clear divide taking place within our worldwide church. I’ve just
laid out some of it for you here today. Those divides have always happened in Adventist history one way or the other.
They’ve happened throughout salvation history. There were 7,000 plus Elijah wouldn’t bow the knee to Baal back in
First Kings 18 and 19. And there most of the people bowed to the bales of their time. And there is a divide taking place
within our movement today. And I must choose where I stand and you must choose where you stand.
Nobody wishes for a new true and free advent movement again. I love our Adventist movement. I was born into it.
But this may well happen again. It may well be necessary again. Why? Because in
our NAD, it is dominated by progressive and institutional loyalists. And in our
church in North America, there are two sides of the coin. There are Bible faithful Adventists over here, and there
are progressive and institutional Adventists over here. We are living on different planets. We’re on different
worldviews. We are held together by a common financial structure and the progressives now weaponizing that
structure against the Bible faithfuls. This is not sustainable.
Spiritual bulcanization will ultimately lead to organizational bulcanization
and financial bulcanization. I’m not promoting this. I’m just saying this is
what history teaches us is likely to happen. Coexistence is possible if the
progressives were not to weaponize the structure against preachers who are faithful to scripture. The current
situation is unsustainable. Unless there is repentance among our leaders and return to the pure faith
that has been passed down to us, I believe that God will call a new lay movement within Adventism to be faithful
to the calling God gave us as a movement. We began as a movement. We evolved and became a respected
denomination. We become so inshed with the financial and legal structures of our world that we’re now
indistinguishable from the wider world. But before Christ returns, we will be a
faithful movement once again. The only question is how. The only question is when. And more importantly, are you
going to be part of that faithful movement? That movement will be true to the gospel and they’ll be free of UN or
federal control. There will be true and free Adventists before Christ comes again. So we come back to our
conclusions here this this morning. February 1987, Elder Wilson spoke before
a global conference in the Grand Hall of the Kremlin that was speaking about nuclear disarmament and human rights.
And he he quoted from a French philosopher called Jacques Elul and this is what he said. He said this, “Whatever
the position adopted by the church, every time she becomes involved in politics, on every occasion, the result
has been unfaithfulness to herself and the abandonment of the truths of the gospel. Every time she has been misled
to act reasonably, either toward revealed truth or incarnate love. It would seem that politics is the occasion
for her greatest falls, her constant temptation, the pitfall the prince of this world incessantly prepares for her.
And I would agree with every word of Elder Wilson there. That when you mix when you mix politics with the church,
the gospel is diluted. When the church tries to influence the state, it is the state that influences
the church. And when we tie ourselves and subjugate ourselves and bow down legally and
obligate ourselves to uphold the goals of the governments of this world, inevitably it will lead to spiritual
decline within our movement. So what do we do on this religious ley
Sabbath? The first thing, three things I want to encourage you to do is first is this. Bow down.
Bow down in your hearts right now. Bow down by your beds tonight and choose who you will serve. Amen.
Covenant, whom you will serve, God or mammon? Will you be a Bible faithful
Adventist or will you be an institutional Adventist? When the final crisis comes, will your
heart, will your mind be true to the gospel? Will you be conscience be tied to the word of God and subject to the
word of God? Will your conscience be subject and uh and to the UN or federal control?
Choose today who you’re going to serve. Second thing I want to encourage you is to stand up. That is live out your
faith. Don’t be a seventh day Adventist. Be a 7-day Adventist. Live your faith
from Sunday through Friday as much as on Sabbath. Let the world know that you serve a risen savior who’s coming again.
That he’s transformed your life. He’s special for you in your life. And you want other people to experience the
grace and the goodness and the mercy of our heavenly father. Stand up and live out your faith. Don’t put your hide your
faith under a bushell. Put down roots in the word of God each day. Know for yourself what you believe. Let your love
and your witness shine ever more brightly for Jesus Christ. Oh that we were all known today for being true and
free Adventists. And thirdly, speak out.
There is a petition online right now. You can see it. It’s on faithfuladventist.org. This is a well-written document. There’s
pages and pages of resources. Adventists around the world are signing this. In the first three days, there were over
200,000 views of the video that went with this. Adventists are realizing that we’re in trouble here and it’s our
responsibility to speak up. And this is not a petition to the general conference. This is a letter to the
United Nations Secretary General saying we have nothing in common and we we never agreed to be a member of the
United Nations and we want you to cut off that relationship. It’s a letter directly to the United
Nations and it explains the three angels messages and explains the Sabbath and explains the law of God and it explains
human sexuality and says in all of these areas we cannot bow to the United Nations and its goals or its ethos or
its principles or its objectives. So I want to encourage you today to take a look at that petition faithful
adventist.org. Let your witness be heard. Sign it online. Let stand up and be counted. Read the resources. stay
informed and share with others. Jesus is coming again. And when Jesus comes
again, there will be a faithful remnant waiting for him. They are true to the gospel. And they
are free of government control. I’m a member of the Adventist church.
I’m a privileged to be a member of the Adventist Church, but in my heart, I’m also a true and free Adventist.
My first loyalty is to Christ. and the thoughts of my mind and the directions of my heart are to be
directed each day by the spirit of Christ and not by the fallen dictates of the United Nations.
So bow down today in covenant before God. As for me in my house, we will serve the Lord. Stand up today and let
your light be shine. Let your light be seen in your community that you are unashamedly a 7th day Adventist and
you’re going to bear the Adventist message wherever you go. And speak out. Speak up. Let the world know that you’re
in agreement that we have nothing to do with the fallen kingdoms of this world.
Bow down, stand up, and speak out. We today tell the stories of the true and
freeze in the Soviet Union. When we get to heaven, maybe they’ll
tell our stories as well. Maybe for eternity, your stand today
will be subject to study and research. that in a world that says we will not have this man to rule over us, there was
a group of Adventists in Beron Springs or you watching online who said we’re choosing for Jesus above all else. We
will be true to his gospel and we will be free of all government control because our consciences are captive to
the word of God and the word of God alone. May God give us the grace, may give us the courage, may give us the
fortitude, may give us the sense of purpose that we may live as God intended for us to live in earth’s final days. We
weren’t just born in Earth’s last days. We weren’t just born into Earth’s final
days. We were born for Earth’s final days. When God wanted a people who would shine for him in Earth’s darkest hours,
it was each one of us here today. God sees something in you that maybe you don’t see in yourself. But if you bow
down, God will fill you with his spirit. And if you stand up, he says, “I’ll be with you wherever you go to the end of
the age.” And if you speak out the promise of Christ as words will be given you from on high that the world will
know that there is a coming savior. May that be each of our experience for his name’s sake. Amen. Invite you to bow
your heads with me for a closing word of prayer here. Our heavenly father,
we thank you. We thank you today for the freedom we enjoy here in America.
Father, we thank you today for the spiritual heritage that has been passed on to us. Father, um doctrines that are
true in scripture, but Lord, as Pastor Kelly said, knowing spiritual truth does not make
you a follower of Christ. Father, I pray today that we will not just know truth, but that Jesus, as the
truth, will live in each one of us. That Jesus, you will change us and shape us from the inside out. You I pray that you
will shine through us in earth’s darkest hours. That all the world may know in the gathering gloom there is a coming
king. His name is Christ and all may be in his kingdom. I pray, Father, this be
our experience for your name’s sake. Amen.