Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Are there things worth dying for?

Some people think thrills, social media attention, are worth it.

The rest of us grounded folk see things like Family, protecting someone, the gospel of Jesus as worth dying for.

Yet we believe that, how do our lives reflect our beliefs?

When we change the perspective we may want to go back and change our answers.

Are there things you are living for, worth Christ dying for?

what are we living for?

We can find that in how we spend our money, time, focus, web browser history, the apps we mostly use, etc.

The stories in Acts of the early church show a people who were totally committed to God and what He did through them.

They understood the gift of Christ’s death and ordered their lives around that high value and reflected on what they were doing in comparison, if it was worth it for Christ to die so they could be free to engage in such and such.

How much is our church like this?

Like the way the church was then in total commitment to Jesus and spreading the gospel.

Not even close enough for a vegan cigar.

In fact, we can’t really find any church today of any denomination like that of the early church.

It seems as though the church has lost its vigor and first love.

This quote about sums it up.

“If God were to take the Holy Spirit out of our midst today, about 95% of what we are doing in our churches would go on, and we would not know the difference.

Yet if God had taken the Holy Spirit out of the midst of the first Christian community, about 95% of what they were doing would have ceased immediately."

- Carl Bates, president, Southern Baptist Convention.

Although he was writing it about churches during his time and denomination, it very well applies to SDA then and now.

Be not dismayed.

We are not alone.

The early church lost its way.

So they were the first.

By the close of the first century, the church had lost its first love.

(,) With the apostles gone, a lot of life and power left as well.

During the second century the Sabbath was lowered to equal footing with the alternate day of rest, Sunday.

And the person of the Holy Spirit was losing its presence and became a distant notion in the church like a wind or breathe, with no relevance and influence.

By the sixth century the church had fully apostatized.

Tradition trumped God’s word, it became an empire.

Then the church went into hiding for 1200 years.

During those dark ages, the Spirit was devoid in large part.

However, He did move in the hears of those who would allow Him.

Examples are the protestant reformation, the pietist movement in Germany, the Methodist movement in England, and the great awakening in America.

But full recovery of the Spirit would not be seen until the 19th century.

The second awakening and the Millerite movement

Hope was seen during the second great awakening which began in 1794, led by Isaac Backus and his initiative called the “concert of prayer”.

He was a baptist minister who was moved by the accounts of the Holy spirit’s movement during the first great awakening.

He sent out a plea for prayer to ministers of every denomination.

Soon Monday’s were set aside for prayer and revival ensued all over the nation.

For the next 50 years there was evangelistic growth that some have said was like no other time in the history of the nation or the world.

This seemed to be God’s way of preparing the way for the Millerite movement.

This movement became the climax of the Second Great Awakening and it became a worldwide phenomenon rooted in the study of Bible prophecy.

From 1840-1844 thousands were expecting Christ to return, and Ellen White remembers it as the happiest time of her life.

The work of the Holy Spirit during those short years was working so well that the Lord could have returned shortly afterward, Ellen White believed.

So many were having their hearts melted and changed by the Spirit.

Over 100,000 alone in New England were preparing for Jesus to return during those years.

Yet, few of those Adventists survived the Great Disappointment of Oct 22, 1844.

Some lost hope, others recanted belief in Jesus, while others took up fanatical beliefs that brought shame to Christianity and lawsuits to themselves.

Forty years afterwards, Ellen White wrote that she believed Christ could have returned sometime after 1844.

Her reason is quoted here.

“If all who had labored unitedly in the work in 1844, had received the third angel’s message and proclaimed it in the power of the Holy Spirit, the Lord would have wrought mightily with their efforts.

A flood of light would have been shed upon the world.

Years ago, the inhabitants of the earth would have been warned, the closing work completed, and Christ would have come for the redemption of His people.” - White, GC 458.

The third angel’s message, which calls for the

It had not been proclaimed by the time of the disappointment.

Although, several dozen Adventists were keeping the Sabbath, thanks to Rachel Oakes and her methodist pastor, most did not.

They accepted the spirit’s work on the second coming message, but not about the Sabbath, even to the point of writing a paper a few days before Oct 22, 1844, refuting the need to keep any day holy.

Of course the Spirit would try again to wake up the people.

then based on the

the 19th century.

Led by

Message to Laodicea

The few who survived the disappointment remained faithful and studied and prayed.

They were sure they had the dating right but erred on the event.

Thus the Spirit blessed them and over a short time the faithful remnant accepted God’s light and found many fundamental teachings such as the Sabbath, ministry of Christ in the Sanctuary, non-immortality of the soul, and the Spirit of prophecy.

Then as the Sabbath became most important, it crowded out attention to nurturing the believers in Spiritual growth.

The members became less willing to engage in outreach.

They became Laodicean, carefree, wordly.

Just like other Christians around them.

During this era of economic and industrial growth in America, Adventists were distracted like everyone and many moved out west to strike it rich with Gold and land settlements.

They lost their vision for mission and the return of Christ.

Then in 1855 Ellen White wrote that she had a vision in which she saw that the Spirit of the Lord has been dying away from the church because God’s people had trusted too much to the strength of argument.”

Then over about a 1 year period in 1856 - 1857 348 articles were published in the Review and Herald by scholars and lay people alike indicating that the Laodicean message was applicable to those who professed the third angel’s message in their day.

This was seen as a small revival to regain the passion the church once had.

But it was short lived.

By 1859 White was writing about why the Laodicean message was not heeded by the church.

She wrote that, “I was shown that the testimony to the Laodiceans applies to God’s people at the present time, and the reason it has not accomplished a greater work is because of the hardness of their hearts..” - White, Testimonies, vol 1, 186.

The problem was with the believers expectations, not with God.

God was preparing the church, but many were impatient.

The Laymen’s Revival

Even though the SDA church wasn’t helping with the third angel’s message en mass, God sent the Spirit for the church, without regard to denomination.

For example, there was the prayer meeting revival as it is sometimes called.

On September 23, 1857, at the Fulton Street church in downtown New York, Jeremiah Lanphier had been hired as a missionary to reach the businessman of the city.

Not knowing exactly how to do that, he printed handbills, announcing noon prayer meetings, with the title,"how often should I pray?"

That first day he was joined by six men.

Within a month over 100 people came.

Six months later, 50,000 people were meeting every day at noon for prayer in churches all over New York and in other cities! Factories began to blow lunch whistle at 11:55 AM to allow workers to dash to the nearest church for prayer, and then the whistle would blow again at 1:05 PM.

By February 1858, conversions in New York city alone were seen at a rate of 10,000 per week!

Newspaper reports throughout New England revealed no unconverted adults in many towns.

Estimates are that the 1857-1859 revival brought over 1 million people to conversion in America.

Recent research has shown that the prayer meeting revival had a universal impact although it lacked a central organization.

This awakening spread to numerous cities in the eastern seaboard, the south, frontier west, as well as Canada, Ireland, British Empire, Jamaica, south India, China, Japan, Indonesia, Uganda, South Africa, Scandinavia, Germany, and Ukraine.

God was awakening the world to receive the third angel’s message but the shockingly sad point was that the remnant Church had not responded wholeheartedly to the Laodicean appeal made in 1856 in 1857.

The church's failure was an unwillingness to persevere in faith for Christ to accomplish the deep work of repentance in their lives in order to fit them for the loud cry of the third angel.

Had the Church surrendered thoroughly, Ellen White believed Christ would have come.

Ten years after the Laodicean message was meant to turn the little flock, Ellen White wrote: "God's unwillingness to have his people perish has been the reason for so long delay."

How much longer would the church be asleep in the light, while the world was asleep in the dark?

Good news, in his infinite love for the lost, god would try once again to wake the church.