The Best Protection Against the Beast
by Debbonnaire Kovacs
For the next few months, Adventist Today will be featuring an interesting new book by Dr. Ervin K. Thomsen, proposing a very different way of looking at one of our Adventist marker Bible passages—the three angels’ messages in Revelation 14. The main focus of his ministry on the three angels’ messages is that "the best protection against the beast is the genuine worship of the Lamb." We will be posting one chapter per week, beginning with the title page and contents, just to whet your appetite!
Educated in Denmark and England, Dr. Thomsen has been a pastor since 1967, leading churches in Michigan, Arizona, California, and Texas. He received his D. Min. degree from Andrews University in 1977.
AT asked Dr. Thomsen to explain for himself what his interest is in the three angels’ messages, and why he wrote a new book about them.
Because I have spent about 30 years in proximity to Adventist healthcare institutions, I have always been intrigued with Adventist healthcare, and I have often wondered, why could we not copy some of the best practices of hospitals in our own churches? You can read about it at this link – “A comparison between hospitals and churches.” (read page 2 of this brochure).
https://streamofhealing.org/mss/Revival+Reformation-Brochure-II.pdf
About 15 years ago, an Adventist physician in my local church commented that “doctrine is just like medicine; in the right dosage it can do a great deal for the patient, but in the wrong dosage and given for the wrong reasons, it can injure and even kill the patient.” That remark became a turning point in my practice of ministry, because I realized that far too many of us had dispensed doctrine as if it were the cure-all for people’s problems. Of course, we don’t want to dispense with doctrine any more than a physician would say that anatomy and physiology no longer matter, but our primary concern would be to bring healing to the patient. No physician would assign reading in the JAMA to his patients. Our primary mission as a church is not to build people’s faith in correct doctrine, but to connect them with the Great Physician, Jesus Christ.
The best and most effective evangelism is still the one-on-one approach as we mentor others into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.
At the present time Ervin Thomsen is the speaker for Healing Stream Ministries (https://streamofhealing.org/ . He has taken “The Victory over the Beast” seminars to numerous churches, conventions, camp meetings for the past nine years, including a camp meeting in New Zealand in 2008.
