September 21, 2023 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Ted N.C. Wilson, President, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
Greetings, friends. Today we are going to consider the importance of choices that we make. The power to choose is a gift God has given to all of His created beings. Rather than manufacturing automatons or robots who simply do as they are told, God gave us the incredible gift of choice—the freedom to love our Creator and follow Him, or to reject all He is and go our own way. He’s given us the freedom to love, or to hate; to choose life, or death.
We see the power of choice coming into play all the way back to the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit.
When wickedness filled the earth and God determined to destroy it with a flood, He graciously gave everyone on earth the opportunity to choose life. For 120 years, Noah warned the world of the coming flood. But in the end, only Noah and his family chose life.
The Bible tells us that “By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward (Heb. 11:24-26).
The challenge of Joshua, “Choose you this day whom ye will serve,” (Joshua 24:15), and the pleadings of the Lord through His prophet Ezekiel, echo down the chambers of time to us today: “‘Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die . . . For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies, says the Lord God. ‘Therefore turn and live!’” (Ezk. 18:31, 32).
While on Earth, Jesus Himself cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37), and yet how few chose to follow Him.
Through the ages, God has sent His messengers to proclaim the way of life, encouraging all to “take up their cross” and follow Him.
Friends, as we have been reading through the wonderful book, The Great Controversy, we have seen how God’s people, such as the Waldenses, Wycliffe, Huss and Jerome, Luther, Zwingli, Tyndale, and even young children, have encouraged people to follow the Scriptures and choose life.
Such was the case of William Miller and others who, in the mid-19th century, were proclaiming the first angel’s message of Revelation 14: “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water” (Rev. 14:7).
In chapter 21 of The Great Controversy we read, “They had sought to awaken professors of religion to the true hope of the church and to their need of a deeper Christian experience; and they labored also to awaken the unconverted to the duty of immediate repentance and conversion to God” (p. 375).
According to Miller, their intention was never to separate people from their existing denominations, but rather to “convert souls to God, to notify the world of a coming judgment, and to induce [people] to make that preparation of heart which will enable them to meet their God in peace” (p. 375).
When Miller first began preaching the Advent message, it was generally accepted by churches because the message tended to strengthen members in the faith. However, before long, the ministers and religious leaders of the well-established churches rejected the message of a soon-coming judgment and the return of Christ. No longer was the message allowed to be preached from their pulpits, nor were members even allowed to talk about the Second Coming. This placed the Advent believers in a very difficult position—“They loved their churches,” wrote Ellen White, “and were loath to separate from them; but as they saw the testimony of God’s word suppressed and their right to investigate the prophecies denied they felt that loyalty to God forbade them to submit” (The Great Controversy, p. 376). Some were disfellowshipped, while others chose to leave their churches voluntarily. By the summer of 1844, about 50,000 people were no longer members.
As the prophetic message was rejected by these churches, a spiritual darkness descended on them that was widely noticed. Speaking of this descent, a Professor Finney of Oberlin College said, “The spiritual apathy is almost all-pervading, and is fearfully deep; so the religious press of the whole land testifies . . the churches generally are becoming sadly degenerate. They have gone very far from the Lord, and He has withdrawn Himself from them” (The Great Controversy, p. 377).
Commenting on this, Ellen White wrote: “Such a condition never exists without cause in the church itself. The spiritual darkness which falls upon nations, upon churches and individuals, is due, not to an arbitrary withdrawal of . . . divine grace on the part of God, but to neglect or rejection of divine light on the part of men” (The Great Controversy, p. 377).
She goes on to say, “He who deliberately stifles his convictions of duty because it interferes with his inclinations will finally lose the power to distinguish between truth and error. . . . Where the message of divine truth is spurned or slighted, there the church will be enshrouded in darkness; faith and love grow cold, and estrangement and dissension enter. Church members center their interests and energies in worldly pursuits, and sinners become hardened in their impenitence” (The Great Controversy, pp. 378, 379).
Friends, the message of the first angel of Revelation 14 that was first proclaimed by the early Advent believers is crying out again today: “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the earth and springs of water” (vs. 7). This message is followed by two more angelic messages recorded in the same chapter. Are we choosing to listen to these last messages of warning? Are we choosing to share them with a world in desperate need? What choices are we making today that will last for eternity?
As we consider these questions, I invite you to pray with me just now.
Father in heaven, we ask in a very special way that you will come close to each one who is making a decision. A decision to follow you completely. Help us to make the choice to accept the message of the first angel. The second angel and the third angel of Revelation in 14 verses 6 to 12. Help us to realize that you are calling us out of confusion and Babylon and into the true worship of God. Help us to make the right decisions and choices in our lives so that we can spend eternity with you in Jesus name, we ask it. Amen