Born to a Battlefield — Ty Gibson

to be here with us how many of you were here not here but how many of you were at Myrtle Beach for our evangelism summit earlier this year and back in January and many of you had the opportunity of hearing his messages those of you who came to the evangelism summit the imaginal ISM impact that we've now done for the past three years and what a powerful message that he had you know it might interest you to know that when Ty Gibson was just 18 years old you know he he encountered the truth of God's existence at that time because before that you know he really he could really fathom the reality of a God who would you know when he saw a world that was filled with so much suffering and violence and you know he ty was completely opposed to the idea of a Supreme Being in other words in his mind he said if God really exists then why would all of these things be happening in this world but Ty's conversion to love Jesus was based upon nothing other than the love of Jesus and when he realized how God's love was so amazing it opened his mind to the joy of sharing God's character in many public seminars and in print and in media and one of the books that I've had the opportunity of reading I've not read all of Ty's books but one of the books I've read is a God called desire and it talks about a God who is so in love with each of us and it helps us understand the pain in the heart of God when he sees the suffering of his people we're glad to welcome him this evening and as we have done each evening when our camp meeting speaker comes up to speak we're going to have a prayer blessing upon him so ty come on up here he's going to have the message called born to a battle field tonight and and before he shares that message from God's Word we're going we're gonna pray too high not only for you but we're gonna pray for ourselves and and you know folks you know how we pray for ourselves we sing that song at the end of my prayer we all sing that song it's a prayer song spirit of the Living God fall afresh on me because it's you know as as God uses Ty's message we want him to speak to our hearts and and so we're gonna sing that song spirit of the Living God you fall afresh on me so join me in a season of Prayer as we dedicate this message to uplifting Jesus name father in heaven we are so grateful to have pastor ty Gibson here with us for this camp meeting Lord you have blessed him with a wonderful message that he's going to be presenting tonight called born to a battlefield and father this fits with the theme of the great controversy in which we are in and and where we realize Lord that you love us so much that you want to rescue us from this battlefield and so lord I'm asking your special blessing upon pastor ty as he opens your word and shares your love with each of us this evening we ask for this in Jesus name and as we pray for for this message to be received Lord this is our prayer spirit of the Living God fall afresh on [Music] spirit of the Living God fall afresh on me break me melt me mold me and feel me [Music] Spirit of the Living God fall afresh on me amen man oh man where's that boy on the guitar with the voice is he gone did he leave oh he didn't yeah I was gonna say don't leave I listen to you sing you need to listen to me preach [Laughter] wait a minute did I just call him a boy you know you're getting old when you begin referring to a full-grown man as a boy time has just elapsed hasn't it I want to I want to tell you something Nathan because I was so blessed by that song I want to tell you two things about music that that I find interesting years ago I read a philosopher who was an atheist and he was working through all the philosophical and rational arguments in favor of the existence of God he was thinking you know what I need to follow the evidence wherever it leads I need to be honest I need to just look at the evidence maybe God does exist and he began working through all of the very you know highfalutin academic teleological argument for the existence of God the cosmological argument for the existence of God the ontological argument for the existence of God he went through all these intellectual arguments and he came away still an atheist and then he reported in what I was reading he reported that there was one piece of evidence that he finally considered that persuaded him of God's existence and he said it like this he said if music alone were the only evidence on the table I would believe in the existence of God his reasoning was that music is a very high form of math I mean those who are classically trained you know that music is in fact math isn't it music is math you could say it this way that music is emotionally rendered math you just Nathan you just did something mathematic whether you knew it or not and because it's math it brings a sense of emotional order I don't know about you but if if life is going sideways for me if I just get alone somewhere and listen to beautiful music it changes everything for me moves me in a positive direction well I said there's two things I want to share with you about music that first one is just that music is evidence of God's existence because people could not vocalize that kind of beauty that kind of love that kind of emotion if we're merely evolving animals none of that would have arisen in our consciousness that's the first thing I want to share with you since you're a musician second thing has to do with our actual theme as was mentioned I was not raised with any kind of belief system I was raised in Southern California in a very postmodern secular worldview I did not believe in the existence of God I didn't have access even to a Bible I didn't know anything about the Bible I never heard of the Ten Commandments that's how secular my home was I knew about the rock band Genesis but I didn't know about the book of Genesis that's how secular my home was alright and my mother and my girlfriend became seventh-day Adventist Christians they became believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and those two ladies conspired against me on my behalf I saw them whispering over there about me and they determined that they were gonna convert my dark soul and they tried everything they tried to get me to read the Bible from every angle they could and then you know what happened Nathan my mom and my girlfriend knew that I loved music so much this is the kind of teenager that I was I I would buy the albums and I would pour over the lyrics every I knew all the lyrics to all the songs that I loved album after album after album of lyrics and my mom knew this my girlfriend knew this so my mom walks up to me one day and she says ty um the Bible is full of song lyrics I said really that was my first interest in Scripture more song lyrics to examine where show me and they opened to the Book of Psalms and they said this this is just an old word for songs Psalms are songs this is just a whole bunch of song lyrics Ty and I began reading the Bible because my mom tricked me into doing it because I loved music so much because I loved music so much man I was blessed by that song you need to you need to take that gift and glorify God over and over again thank you thank you for sharing that would you pray with me one more time I know we've prayed but but the truth is that just this morning I woke up on the west coast in the state of Oregon we've been an amazing world I preached on Sabbath at my church woke up this morning in Oregon at 3 o'clock after sleeping for two and a half hours got on a plane don't feel sorry for me I feel great flew all across the United States and just landed here and drove like a demon to get here in time and I did got here in time tried my slides I'm really excited about the message this theme is very near and dear to my heart as you're gonna see in a minute my conversion was largely based on the premise of this great controversy theme this great controversy lens through which we can make sense of the world and I want clarity so bad right now I want God to use my mind and my tongue and I want the Holy Spirit to be upon your mind and to say things to you that I won't even say I want the Holy Spirit to speak to you and to bring clarity to your mind and clarity to my mind as well so would you pray with me one more time Father in heaven you are so amazing we give you praise and honor and glory tonight you are the king of the universe and you have done something in the person of Jesus Christ that not only has achieved our personal individual salvation God you have done something that will ensure that that sin and evil and suffering will never ever ever raise its ugly head again you have won the war against evil in the person of Christ and father we want to understand how you've done this and we want to align ourselves with you with your agenda we want to be partakers of the victory that Jesus gained at Calvary so father please please Lord clear our heads right now and fill us with the indwelling Spirit help us to see things Lord as they are help us to see things from your perspective give us clarity Lord give us power tonight in Jesus name Amen well I need to begin on a kind of dark note if you'll turn your eyes to the screen because in fact we live in a dark world if you haven't noticed we are living out the aftermath of a nightmare that is still in process I say aftermath because it all began a long time ago and we're living in the wake of something that happened a long time ago and we're experiencing the impact of that series of decisions that were made now we live in a world in which you can't go a day without encountering some kind of horrific some kind of horrific encounter with evil every one of us finds ourselves at various times in our lives just overcome with a sense of how absolutely horrific this world is I mean you can't go a day any more without becoming aware that something horrible and heinous some manifestation of concrete evil has been released upon some group of human beings oftentimes children Kevin Carter I don't know if you know him but he is one of the most celebrated photo journalists in history Kevin Carter was South African and he made his photojournalism career by doing something nobody else would really do he would go into war zones in Africa he would crawl on his belly sometimes so far that his clothing would begin to get holes in it in order to position himself in places like this where there is gunfire whizzing by over his head and bombs going off and he's just snapping photos taking it all in taking it all in taking it all in he wasn't taking photos of sunsets and beautiful animals frolicking his claim to fame is that he was going to the darkest most horrific scenes in human history and snapping photos of what was happening to the human beings they're the Warriors in some of these countries came to know him and they would just let do his work to tell their story don't shoot in Kevin Carter's direction just let him crawl along and snap the photos so he can tell our story to the world now he became famous with a photo that I'm going to put on the screen it's gonna be hard for you to look at this is a photo that everyone in this room is probably seen at some time or another because this photo won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize this photo captured a scene that now you and I were at a distant a distance from this same we're looking at it on a screen well you have to you have to remember somebody snapped this photo Kevin Carter is right there he's right there snapping this photo in an African war zone which has precipitated not just the war but the war has precipitated a famine and this child is in the process of breathing its last breath and a vulture is waiting for the child to die in the background Kevin Carter won an award for this photo and he couldn't process it he didn't want the award he couldn't understand why people were giving him some kind of acknowledgment for the photo rather than becoming very activated to bring relief to this part of the world he said things like I didn't I didn't take this photo and bring it to the world to get an award I took this photo to show you what's going on in this world so that we can do something about it well Kevin Carter after winning the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for this photo wrote this note he said I'm really really sorry the pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist he was 33 years old when he wrote that note and then he took his own life he couldn't process how horrible things had become in the world and that he had to witness it up close and personal he was experiencing inside of him the tension that I myself grew up experiencing a very deep visceral tension between pain and love if you were to ask me as a kid growing up even as a teenager well into my 20s hey ty how would you define life I would have said to you life is pain it's just suffering there wasn't a person in the world who could bring a smile to my mouth except for my mother and the only reason she could make me smile is because she was the one that I grew up witnessing undergo terrible abuse at the hands rather at the fists of men who didn't understand the dignity and Worth and value and equality of women to men and if you would have asked me hey ty what's life all about I would have said it's just pain pain and more pain but the pain was in the context of a deeply held love for my mother I was a mama's boy I love this lady she was incredible there was nothing nothing nothing like being in the presence of my mom for many as a kid even as a teenager I loved her in ways I could never explain to you and she was suffering suffering and suffering now I didn't believe in the existence of God because of her suffering I thought wow if there's a God certainly he wouldn't be allowing this kind of thing to go on he would do something about it he would intervene but that's just my that was just my process of reasoning is we're going to see tonight that is the process that many people move through as they observe what's going on in this world now I loved my mom and at one point I knew that if there were no God and all we are is evolving animals I knew that pain had to be natural and that love of the quality that I felt from my mother could not really exist I knew that so I opened my mind just a little crack maybe just maybe there could be a God in the universe I was experiencing before I even knew what to call it as a teenager I was experiencing the angst of what the philosophers and theologians in classrooms and universities call theodicy now in this word you see two words if you look carefully you see Theo which is the word in Greek for God and you see Daiki which is the Greek word for justice so the word theodicy was coined by a philosopher to encapsulate the idea okay okay if there's a God where is justice if God exists why is there pain and suffering in the world why do men get away with the kinds of evils that they perpetrate on one another if God exists why doesn't he do something why doesn't he intervene World War two is a case in point you're not gonna like this I told you it was going to be dark at first I didn't pick the theme of this camp meeting this is a statement from a World War two death camp survivor who went in to that concentration camp a believer in God but man oh man his faith was tested and after what he saw he realized that his theology had to be something more than theology that is explained from pulpits he said to those who would listen to him he said listen whatever you have to say about God you better be able to explain it while standing on the edges of a pit of burning children you better be able to make sense out of what you believe in the face of evil if you can't make sense out of what you believe in the face of what's really going on in the world then your faith isn't going to be persuasive for the people who really know what it's like to suffer in this world so theodicy what is theodicy while it was articulated so clearly by a greek philosopher named Epicurus some 300 years approximately before the time of Christ this is sometimes referred to as the epicurean riddle are you ready for it here is the one question to rule them all I'm going to suggest you that there is no more important vital pressing question than what Epicurus articulated 300 years before Christ and I would suggest to you that in one form or another you have asked this question as did I as a child growing up here's the epicurean riddle either God wants to abolish evil and cannot please track with him either God wants to abolish evil and cannot or he can but he doesn't want to are you still with him or you understanding what he's saying either God wants to abolish evil right but he can't or he can and he doesn't want to he goes on if God wants to abolish evil that is but cannot then what would you conclude well God's powerless I mean if God wants to end evil but he can't you have a power problem yes or no yeah God God I mean so what is God I mean what what what's the use of a a powerless God that's what he's essentially saying so so if God wants to end evil but he cannot he's powerless okay he reasons further if he can abolish evil that is but he doesn't what want to he's wicked I mean if you stand by and watch children die of starvation on your front lawn are you not culpable that's what he's saying you would be wicked to have food in store and not to share it with the hungry that's what he's essentially saying so then watch this he concludes if God can abolish evil if he can if he has sufficient what power okay if he if he can abolish evil and God really wants to if he's inherently good right here's the question why then is there any evil in the world this is the question of theodicy this question was the premise of my conversion to Christ this was the question that pressed so heavy on me as a kid and as a teenager that I could not accept the existence of God unless his question were answered in a way that was satisfactory why why because listen the reason I couldn't believe without this question being answered is because I couldn't accept either a powerless God or a wicked God it was much easier for me to believe that we're all merely material creatures evolving animals that would just explain why we're all so brutal and mean to one another and then I don't have to have the mental and emotional stress of trying to figure out how God could preside over and watch all of this and do nothing there are a lot of people in our world who are atheists on this premise they're not atheist because they have read the Origin of Species on the Origin of Species by by Darwin that's now they're not looking at biology and saying Oh many people are atheist because they listen listen if God exists come on come on look at the world certainly certainly you can't believe in God with the kind of stuff that goes down on this planet well that's where I was at as a teenager now what I want to share with you is that this is what is sometimes called by philosophers and theologians the problem of evil quote-unquote you can just google the problem of evil and countless academic papers will come up this is this is talked about in classrooms around the world this is the problem that needs to be resolved philosophically rationally on even an emotional level in order to believe in a coherent manner it's the problem of evil and it is a problem it is a problem now I'm going to suggest to you that every person in this auditorium tonight and every person on the planet believes one of five things it's not as complex as we'd like to think there are seven point whatever seven point five billion people on the planet well there aren't seven point five billion belief systems everybody on the planet basically believes one of five things you right now tonight you believe one of these five things or a messy mixture of two or three of them because you haven't thought long and hard enough about it but you believe some combination of these ideas or you are sold out to one of them as your survival mechanism okay so here they are I'm gonna leave them on the screen as we work through them and I'm give give the the the most minimalistic definition of each one because each of these worldviews answers the question in some way why is there evil in the epicurean riddle why is there evil in the world okay the first worldview which is becoming increasingly more and more popular in Western developed cultures like the United States of America and and Western Europe and and wherever there is a lot of education and a lot of money and materialism you hear in that word you hear matter so it's very simple what is materialism materialism is the worldview it's a belief system that says all there is is matter there was a big bang and matter spread out in all directions in a massive explosion and over the last thirteen point nine billion years from the Big Bang everything that is came out of that material explosion materialism sometimes it's called naturalism there is no spiritual dimension there is no such thing as right or wrong good or evil there's no moral dimension to reality we're just matter we're just evolving animals so how do you think materialism answers the question why is there evil and suffering in the world well it's just natural process get over it you don't need to falafels philosophize about it you don't need to have some kind of coherent belief system you are not fundamentally different than a lion a tiger a dog or a bunny rabbit there's nothing unique or wonderful or weird going on you don't have to have an answer we're brutal because we are and there's no moral aspect to it there's no right there's no wrong you do whatever you can do to get ahead you love the bumper sticker lead follower and get out of the way because I'm coming through survival of the what fit us this is a materialism okay the second world view is called pantheism this is this is like Scientology which is a new Hollywood hip version of pantheism this is this is Buddhism this is large segments of Shintoism and even parts of Hinduism pantheism you hear the word theosis again right what is theö again God what is pan these guys are on the cameras and some directors probably saying hey right now pan left or pan right you've heard of even though it's gone out of business now Pan American Airlines you've heard of a pandemic what is pan pan just means all so what is pan theism God is all in all is God there is no third person personal God to which you could pray or that might feel feelings or intervene in your life it is a religious or philosophical form of materialism so when pantheism looks at suffering like when I was in Calcutta years ago the little children who were dying of starvation with their little bloated stomachs you couldn't look at them and not want to help them so we're like emptying our pockets then giving them everything we have this group that was with me and somebody stopped us and said why are you doing that you are interfering with their karma their suffering because they ought to be suffering let them suffer they deserve it they should be suffering and if they endure their suffering well they'll be reincarnated next time to a higher level with less suffering suffering is just part of the natural process it's just the way things are get over it you don't need to worry about it you can just be completely emancipated from feelings of sensitivity and you can live your life not caring about anybody because suffering and evil are just the way things are there's nothing you can do about then now we're getting a little closer to home there's deterministic theism now you hear the word Theo's I'm Theo again is God so now deterministic theism this worldview posits the existence of a personal God a Supreme Being but you hear the word determine right so what does it mean to determine something well it means to cause something to be to determine something what is deterministic theism deterministic theism is the idea that everything that ever happens is caused by God you say oh I don't like that idea almost everybody you know believes it it's sometimes called Calvinism it is the idea that a car accident occurred and somebody says there must be a reason God must have a what plan a child is wronged and violated abused by an adult and she finally grows up and the pastor says God has a plan it has his sovereign will that that happened to you give God praise and glory and honor he knows what's say it best it is the common theological orientation that came out of Plato and Aristotle who then passed it on through their writings to Augustine who passed it on down through the ages in Catholicism straight into the Protestant Reformation with John Calvin who formulated it into a predestination theology that says God predetermines our predestined who's going to be saved who's going to be lost and you have no choice in the matter not only does God predetermine who's saved and who's lost the once saved always saved doctrine is the lay version of that you would be familiar with not only does God determine who saved and who's lost and you have no say in the matter he predetermines every outcome everything that ever happened to you was the will of God because he's sovereign over all then there is appeasement theism this shows up in most pagan belief systems down through history you find in most cultures in in bygone ages human sacrifice for example this is the idea that the reason suffering occurs is because God is angry he is primarily defined by anger and wrath and he is pretty much always in punishment mode and God's anger can only be satiated satisfied placated by suffering so sometimes God goes into an emotional explosion and sends a tsunami for example and countless people died in the tsunami and Christians around the world say well there was a pornography ring over there so he killed God killed all those people and we have it's on television it's you know our insurance policies tell us that if something happens that's not explainable by natural causes it was an act of God so we don't cover that all of this shows up in the way we process and live our lives appeasement theism that's the prominent view down through the Middle Ages that's why people could burn human beings at the stake in the name of Jesus because there was a connection in their theology between God and the perpetration of violence on human beings that is the origin of purgatory and eternal torment it all arises out of this appeasement worldview ah but there is a fifth thing that some people believe and it even sounds better without an explanation we could just say it and it'll have the right ring to it we can just close with prayer and say there is this other thing we can believe called benevolent theism this is the idea this is the idea that God is not primarily defined by control and power and determining all outcomes and God is not primarily defined by anger although the evil that we do to one another would legitimately make God angry no God is in his almighty omnipotent power and in his legitimate just anger all that is true of God his justice his anger everything that is true of God is in alignment with benevolence with love with goodness so in this worldview we basically realize that benevolent theism forms a logical train of thinking now follow with me now this is this is where it starts to make sense benevolent theism has embedded within it the idea of freewill so if God is a God who is primarily defined by goodness of character if God is is fundamentally good if God is love then of necessity your logical next step would be to say well he must be in favor of freedom rather than slavery he must be in favor of freedom rather than control now freewill is a pretty serious matter isn't it and so there develops from benevolent theism the freewill perspective of God's character there comes out of that what we could call the warfare world view now the warfare world view is what seventh-day adventists believe if we know what we believe I'm going to emphasize that the warfare worldview has for its premise a very simple but profound little combination of concepts that feed one another ok there's so much explanatory power here this is I would suggest to you the master equation this is the thing behind the thing behind the thing behind the thing that makes sense out of everything if you use this as your premise you can make sense out of pretty much everything it doesn't mean you won't hurt it doesn't mean you won't shed tears it doesn't mean that you won't have agony in the face of suffering but it does mean that on some kind of fundamental level you won't know that ultimately everything's going to be okay in the universe because God is good now watch this love necessitates freedom if I'm free to love you necessarily I am free what not to love you back you could love me and I could say what to your love no thank you love by definition has to be able to go one of two ways we all know this we all know that coercion and love can't occupy the same emotional space we know that you try to do a marriage like that and you begin to grow apart to the degree that you impose control on your spouse your spouse will naturally just receive and back up to the degree that you grant freedom your spouse will lean in voluntarily to your love this is the way the world operates because a God of love made the world now check this out if love necessitates freedom freedom necessitates risk there has to be the potential to say no and this is where we get what seventh-day Adventist call the great controversy worldview which is the theme of this camp meeting this is a unique perspective on the world that makes sense out of everything and it makes sense in such a way that God's character is completely vindicated and exonerated and you can legitimately with your free will love him even in the face of suffering it's so powerful once you wrap your mind around it so the great controversy perspective forms what one theologian has called a unified field of clarity a matrix of clarity a way of making sense of the world in such a way that you can remain sensitive in such a way that you could keep on living in such a way that you don't have to self-medicate you can make sense out of the world in such a way that you don't have to take refuge in determinism and simply conclude that God causes all the evil things in the world as well as the good things you can run from that theology into the arms of a God who stands opposed to child abuse and hunger and devastation and war this is by the way why we find in Adventism this shows up in so many ways why are a lot not all but why are a lot of seventh-day Adventists conscientious objectors well because the logic of our great controversy premise causes us to believe at some level that God is fundamentally against violence and so we don't want to participate in violence we want to participate in healing so this shows up in our belief system everywhere once you see it so it's it provides it provides a unified field of clarity or let's say it this way it gives a lot of explanatory power this was the premise of my conversion the moment I realized that God is love and that love necessitates freedom and freedom is risky the moment that dawned on me I thought that's plausible I could worship in a door and align myself with a God who hates evil who stands against it but free will he has to honor in order for evil to work itself out of the human system in a way that it will never repeat for all eternity future as soon as that dawned on me as a teenager I was like yes I can believe that I went to my mom I went to my girlfriend as soon as it Donna Mae I said I said I get it I believe I believe in God and my mom said quit being sacrilegious you do not I said no mom seriously my girlfriend was like this no you're you're you're you're playing around you're joking I said no I get it my mom said you get what and I began to explain the love freedom risk idea my mom began to cry and she said there's no way you could explain that if God had not revealed it to you and she so she allowed me to be converted so I was born again and was baptized in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit so the great controversy was the premise of my conversion the concept the idea of love freedom risk love freedom risk love freedom risk whoa it just makes sense out of everything now watch watch how it makes sense out of everything I'm gonna suggest to you for the sake of achieving the best possible clarity in the shortest amount of time although we have I think four nights together by the way all the ideas are connected with one another because you came tonight you have to come the other three you can't you can't come to one and not come to the others okay so I'm gonna suggest to you that this great controversy idea is unfolded in Scripture in four brilliant beautiful clear series of ideas or narrative scenes storyline scenes there's something unfolding Dominion it'll all make sense in a minute I'm just giving you the you know the aerial view Dominion abdicate chené warfare and victory okay this is how the theme unfolds let's start with Dominion this is so brilliant wait till you see what scripture says about this you're going to I know you're Adventist you may feel a little Pentecostal urge tonight you may want to even get vocal and say wha praise the Lord or something like that it'll feel unnatural for you as a seventh-day Adventist but you go ahead and do it if you feel like coming on okay Dominion is based on the idea that God is love okay so watch how this develops this is the truth that defines all other truths everything we believe at some of the evidence by the way there are no doubt visitors here tonight and those watching that are not something they have Adventist praise God we're so glad that you're sharing this Bible study time with us you are sure welcome to be here and we think that this is going to make sense and I'll just tell you a little bit of secret I wasn't a seventh-day Adventist either but it sure makes a lot of sense you might want to just follow through night by night whoever you are and see if it makes sense to you this is amazing watch this so if God is love you can logically see that God must be a particular kind of God right love is a premise it dictates a particular kind of orientation what kind of orientation does it does it dictate watch this so this God said let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them have what what's that word say it out loud dominion over what all the earth everything the fish the birds the land animals plant life everything so God created in His own image now we look at this this idea that we were created in God's image and the word image says a lot to us we say things that are true like well that means we were created in the character likeness of God to think and to feel and to behave like God that's true but in this context there's also another aspect to it we were created listen this is so good let this register we were created in God's locational image vocational image God is a particular kind of God he has freedom over his realm God is a the ultimate free moral agent so rather than creating slaves or robots or machines God said let's make people who will operate like we operate let's give them Dominion let's just give them charge let's give them stewardship let's create the world create human beings and let's just turn the whole thing over to them this is amazing watch this this is from psalm 115 verse 16 david contemplating this idea says the heavens are the lord's heavens but check this out but the earth he has what's that word given to human beings now think of the Lord's Prayer our Father which art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done where on earth as it's done in heaven are you beginning to see this is a biblical paradigm this is a lens this is the way the Bible perceives reality the Bible perceives reality like this because God is love God is not a controller but rather a delegator you find this all through the Bible what about in the Book of Daniel where you have these holy watchers some kind of angelic beings and they go and they see that Nebuchadnezzar is spinning out of control and they say what shall we do with them they don't go straight to God and say tell us what to do with him they say we're gonna put him out to pasture and make him a vegetarian for seven years that'll cure him that was a decision the scripture says in Daniel a decision a judgment a verdict of the Holy watchers of these angelic beings they have delegated power God has given them a Thor don't you love the fact that God's not a micromanaging control freak don't you love the fact that God said hey let's let's create mankind in our image let's create this beautiful planet with potential it's not all done there's one little beautiful spot called Eden and he tells him now you be fruitful and multiply and what subdue the earth tame the wilderness and make it beautiful like Eden this is amazing God operates on the premise of shared power according to the great controversy worldview God operates on the premise of shared power he's not a power mongering kind of God he is a God who shares power God designed human beings as free agents or as self determining creatures the heavens even the whole heavens are the Lord's but the earth he has given to us now you can begin to say hey wait a minute so when we pray thy will be done on earth as your will is done in heaven you can very clearly see that not everything going on in the world is the what will of God of course not God never ever orchestrated or planned or caused the abuse of a little girl or a little boy it is not in the heart of God to arrange matters in such a way that children forty thousand a day in this world would die of starvation that's nowhere in God's heart he is of one prophet says to pure eyes to behold iniquity he hates evil he stands aligned against it and he's looking for an army of freewill agents who will align themselves with his will in order to bring to pass his will on earth as it's done in heaven so God is loved therefore God gave Dominion but check this out he gave Dominion well that included some risk so abdication abdication means to give up a position of authority now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made and he said to the woman has God indeed said you may not eat you shall not eat of every tree of the garden and the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden notice what's going on here this is a conversation about freedom God said you can't and she's trying to recover she said no no God said we can but just not this one watch this but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden God has said you shall not eat of it nor shall you touch it lest you die God has her best interests at heart she's trying to hold on then the serpent said to the woman you will not surely die you're not going to die for God knows that in the day that you eat of it your eyes will be open and you will be like God knowing good and evil what's going on here he was essentially misrepresented the character of God he's essentially said to Eve God is restrictive you may not eat of every tree of the garden what kind of God is this to say no to you about anything number two he's not trustworthy you can't believe what he says you will not die I know he said you will but you won't God's a liar he's restrictive he is a liar an the whole reason why is restrictive and a liar is because he's got a monopoly on a higher state of existence that you could actually enter into if you would just venture out from his will because God knows that in the day that you eat of this tree you will be elevated to equality with him and he sure doesn't want that he's selfish he's restrictive he's a liar and he is self-serving he doesn't have your best interests at heart so that was the premise on which the fall of mankind occurred but if you read the story you discover that the fall of mankind the fall of humanity was more than a moral fall it was a moral fall they committed behavioral acts of sin yes but it was more than a moral fall because you know the context now let them have what Dominion so it was more than a moral fall it was also a governmental fall in other words the fall of humanity was an abdication of dominion over the earthly realm God had given in to their charge the devil deceived them led them into sin not just to get them to commit behavioral wrongs in an isolated moment he was taking the world out of their Dominion he was becoming the new Lord of this world so we find in the book of Job a snapshot of how this works now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord some kind of heavenly Conclave beings coming together from all over the universe to meet with God and Satan came also among them notice this at this point you have to say what makes him think he can come to this meeting well watch this and the Lord said to Satan from where do you come notice it's a point of origin question it's a question about territory it's a question about location he doesn't say what are you doing here he says where do you come from why a where question because he's there he explains from a particular where so Satan answered the Lord and said from going to and fro on the earth and walking back and forth on it this is a poetic way of saying the earth is my realm I own it it's mine and I'm here in this heavenly to represent my territory in the universe I'm here with a perfect right to be here because I am the one who rules planet Earth then the Lord said to Satan have you considered my servant job that there is none like him in the earth a blameless and an upright man who fears God and shuns what evil God says ah not so quick you think you have dominion ah and you you've pulled something here but I have individuals who are not in alignment they're not in a lot in loyalty to you I've got individuals like job for example have you considered him no you haven't job is my man you're not my man that's between the lines God in the person of Jobe has a stake in the earth God in the person of Jobe is holding territory in the world that's the context the war between good and evil is a territorial dispute we're gonna learn tomorrow night that you yourself I myself your home your children your frontal lobe is a territory under dispute don't miss tomorrow night watch this this is Jesus now his in the world he's been born in Bethlehem he's grown up into adulthood he's led into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil and watch that you're just gonna be blown away now when you see the connection in this great controversy theme it all makes sense then the devil taking him up on a high mountain showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment so pictured there standing there and Satan is like check this out all of this all of it all of it why is he showing him all of this the world the kingdom the world all this authority all this authority I will give you I will give it to you and their glory for this the whole world all its authority has been delivered to me and I can give it to anyone I want just the audacity is unbelievable but what is his claim the whole world is mine because it was delivered to me he is referring to some historic event when was it given to him and who gave it to him God didn't give it to him because it wasn't God's in the primary sense to give because the heavens even the whole heavens are the Lord but the earth he gave to human beings and then human beings what gave it to Satan and now he claims authority over it so that throughout the New Testament even from the mouth of Jesus there is an acknowledgment that he does in fact have some kind of pull some kind of authority over the world he's called in John 12:31 by the Lord Jesus himself the devil is called the ruler of this world in 2nd Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 4 he's called the god of this age or or or or this period of time in other words his days are numbered but there is a period of time an age that he is presiding as a kind of usurper a God who is not a god but he is the god of this age check this out Paul calls him in Ephesians 2 to the Prince of the power of the air that is not it's not saying he's in charge of the oxygen supply although if you go to Los Angeles you would think so okay if saying he is the Prince of the power of the prevailing moral culture what the Germans call the zeitgeist the spirit of the age the advertising industry what you see on billboards and magazine covers in commercials he's the one that's behind the scenes orchestrating people to think only of themselves and to want more and more and more at the expense of others having less and less and less he's the instigator of greed he lives on Wall Street he is pushing the buttons of Corporate America and the corporate world he is leading people to amass more and more and more and to care less and less and less about anybody this is what Ellen White calls the get get mentality versus the give give mentality he is the Prince of the power of the air and scripture says straight up in a single sentence John in 1st John 5:19 the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one just hear that words sway there is a general inclination that is present in our culture in our world there is a leaning and the leaning is towards selfishness and self-indulgence and me and mine and forget you and it's all about me and mine and not about you and the devil is the one who prompts all of that so Dominion God gave Dominion human beings in our first parents abdicated the throne of the world they gave the devil the world which leads to the eruption of warfare on planet Earth planet Earth has become in the wake of the abdication by our first parents planet Earth became a war zone we're all born to a battle field you know why the world looks like a war zone because it is a war zone now this is amazing right after the fall of mankind the first gospel promise is actually a declaration of war God says to the devil in the presence of Adam and Eve I will put enmity hostility between you the serpent in the context here and the woman the devil and human beings in their lineage I will put enmity hostility in their hearts against your ways your regime your principles your manner of governing I will put hostility in in them against you between your offspring and hers there will be two lineages through history not merely biological lineages not biological lineages at all this is talking about two moral tracks down through history to spiritual tracks to theological tracks and there's going to be a war down through history and he the eventual offspring of the woman some singular hero is going to be born some warrior is going to land on earthly shores there's going to be there's going to be a reversal of the usurpation of this world so God promises that this offspring who's coming this is the first messianic prophecy this is Jesus he's coming and he's coming as a warrior and he's going to crush your head under his heel and you will strike his heel in the process in other words he's coming and he's going to destroy your kingdom you will wound him in the process but he'll survive you will not this is the great controversy so genesis 3:15 constitutes what we might call a declaration of war by the God of heaven he's not giving up this territory he created the world he gave human beings dominion over it we gave Dominion to the devil and God says I'm gonna intervene on your behalf I'm gonna come myself in human history I'm gonna show up in human history and I'm going to vanquish the powers of darkness and when I do I'm gonna give the world back to you the meek shall inherit the earth God's gonna take it back and he's going to follow through with his original plan the heavens even the whole happens are the Lord's but in his grace he's gonna say okay let's start over let's start over here you go and he's going to have a little Eden spot again called the New Jerusalem and he's going to say okay now go out from there and beautify the whole world on the premise of the sustainable principle of love and giving let's start over he's gonna give it back to us us the likes of you and me have you looked in the mirror recently you're insane every one of us is dysfunctional from the from the word go we don't deserve another breath of air let alone for God to himself gain the victory on our behalf and then out of sheer grace give it all back to us this God is amazing genesis 3:15 constitutes the declaration of war by the God of heaven and so we pan out what do you mean war well there's a war going on skipping forward in the narrative all the way to Revelation we find that war broke out in heaven war broke out in heaven we're gonna learn in one of the nights to follow that it was a particular kind of war it was a Palermo's kind of war it wasn't a war that clashed you know swords in midair or laser beams being shot at one another in space it wasn't bombs and guns all of that would come later but the war that broke out in heaven was a political war it was Apple mo swore it was a war of words and ideas and concepts and ideologies it was a it was a war of governmental structures God governs by love and freedom and Satan governs by control and he causes pain and suffering so it's gonna be a particular kind of war so war broke out in heaven Michael and his angels fought the dragon fought back this clash of ideologies and philosophies took place but then whoa the war broke out in heaven but woe to the inhabitants of the earth because the devil has come down to you and that's where we were in Genesis 3 this is Revelation chapter 12 making a retrospect observation the we didn't see in Genesis 3 in Genesis 3 we just have the serpents is there in the tree in the garden and temptation in the fall occurs now we pan out we say oh wait a minute John is showing us that this war actually broke out in heaven and it had its origins there and that's how the devil showed up on earth he was cast out he's come down to you having great wrath because he knows that his time is short so scripture says of this war for this purpose the Son of God was manifested for what purpose haha feel this you guys why did Jesus come to this world for this purpose he was manifested this is why he came that he might destroy the works of the devil that he might destroy the entire kingdom structure of darkness that he might extinguish evil and suffering not be the cause of it not be the one who participates in it God has aligned himself against evil he's bringing it to an end it's not a permanent fixture in the universe it's not an ongoing eternal principle the only ongoing eternal sustainable principle is love all evil and suffering has an expiration date on it it's coming to an end it implodes on itself it is in fact completely unsustainable and Jesus came into the world to set in motion the principle of self-sacrificing love that would eventually overcome evil and extinguish it from existence so we come to the victory that Jesus gained on our behalf which we'll talk about in detail on a future evening so Jesus comes into the world and check that this is how he's talking he's here because genesis 3:15 said he was coming there was a declaration of war so Jesus shows up in Luke 11 II he tells a little story he tells a little parable he says well when a strong man fully armed not with guns and bombs and swords and knives but with ideas and concepts and governmental structure with a way of being when a strong man fully armed guards his own palace his goods are in peace this is so brilliant watch what Jesus is doing he knows the devil is listening and then he says this but when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him he takes from him all his armor in which he trusted and he divides the spoils what did Jesus just say Jesus says listen there is a strongman who has come to the world and taken over but I'm here now I am going to I was gonna say kick some butt but I shouldn't say that I am here now I am here now he's strong he's power for the whole world is under his sway he's the ruler of this world he's the god of this age he's the Prince of the power of the air but I'm here now I'm here now he's strong yeah he's strong I know how strong he is I made him he's strong but Jesus in his little story says but now a stronger than he has arrived and I'm going to take from him all his armor in which he trusted the entire psycho edifice of his evil I'm gonna take all of that from him and when I get the world back I'm gonna divide the spoils I'm gonna give it back to human beings I'm gonna give it right back to the people it belongs to this is amazing isn't it now Jesus says following up now is the judgment of this world and now the ruler of this world is cast out he was in now he's out he was cast out when and I when I am lifted up on the cross of Calvary will draw everybody back to me they believed lies about the character of God but I'm about to give a definitive revelation of the love of God that will pull people voluntarily in their freedom back to me as loyal subjects not because they have to but because they want to because they're drawn I'm gonna draw them back they may be loyal to you now Satan but just watch what's about to happen and then Paul follows up by saying having disarmed the powers and authorities the devil and all his empty disarmed them he Jesus made a public spectacle before the whole universe of the Satanic Kingdom he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them by the cross Jesus doesn't fight with deception and force the devil's armor his weapons are weapons of the flesh they are weapons that are carnal their weapons of Lies and violence but Jesus comes and he never he never takes up violent means against the kingdom of darkness what does he do he gives his life for his enemies and in giving his life for his enemies Jesus conquered the kingdom of darkness in principle the cross was the fatal blow to Satan's Kingdom in that it refuted Satan's misrepresentation of God's character Jesus proved that God is love in the most beautiful selfless sense imaginable you look at Calvary and your heart is drawn to him you say if God's like that I cast my lot with him if God loves me like that if God loves my neighbor if God loves my enemies as much as God loves me if God is love in the most beautiful sense imaginable listen everything's gonna be okay right now we're writhing in agony we're hurting but I'm telling you that by virtue of the victory that Jesus gained at Calvary a beautiful quality of love has been released in to operation in our world I know it because it's in my heart I felt it it pulled me to him when I was a teenager by virtue of what Jesus did at the cross the victory is certain it's just a matter of time the victory is certain the fact is five million years from now five million years from now all of our troubles in this world are going to be like one night in a bad hotel thanks for your time tonight [Applause] you

Channel: CarolinaConfSDA

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Rating: 4.7551022 out of 5

Keywords: camp, meeting, lake, junaluska, carolina, conference, north, south, seventh, day, 7th, seventh-day, adventistis, waynesville

Id: hDO1T-KZ_LI

Length: 75min 27sec (4527 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 06 2018