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.
This sounds like a book we can learn from. I like his comparison of medicine and doctrine. I look forward to reading more.
Dr. Thomsen appears to take, dare I say it, a balanced approach to evangelism.
I hope he slays the beast. The beast has been used to scare people into keeping the commandments to avoid eternal burning hell. Is that the best use of the apocalyptic messages?
What would Adventism be without apocalylpticism? Would we be left only with proclaiming "God so loved the world." Would it no longer be unique but just "like all the other churches"?
"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."
Wow! Another breath of fresh air into the white-washed sepulchre filled with decaying flesh.
Can't wait to read what I hope will be a new look at these 'key texts of Adventism".
I absolutely LOVE that physician's comment about administering the Gospel in appropriate doses. Learning to give the "right dose at the right time" is an essential lesson that can be learned only under the direct and intimate guidance of the Holy Spirit. Too often we our presentations are focused far more on what we think people need or want to hear instead of understanding their needs and ministering God's redeeming power in the light of their needs.
I agree. Doesn't God's own activity through Israel and then the Church demonstrate that He always meets people where they are at, and then provides knowledge in 'doses' pursuant to notions of progressive revelation and present truth?
If you look at Jesus, He got to know 'sinners' first. He became their friends. Isn't weird that the person who was sinless, who alone had the right to codemn sinners, was the person sinners most wanted to hang out with? It seems only after a relationship was formed, and in steps, that Jesus began to change the sinners' lives.
Jesus also talked in parables, often which He didn't quite explain in full to everyone. Interestingly, it was only to the select 12 disciples that He fully explained the parables afterwards. Not everyone was Bible-bashed with the same knowledge at the same time.
Something that has intrigued me about the parables is how the common people understood them. After all, he was talking to them in terms they understood well. Several of the disciples were fishermen. So, why would we expect them to understand a parable from agriculture with the same intimacy as a farmer? In a imilar way, I'm an MBA who works for the Army. I tell people "my thumbs are brown" instead of "green" as a way of describing how little I understand of agriculture. So there are aspects to some of the parables that I don't understand, either. So that stimulates me to study and learn more of those meanings.
There you are, Ervin …
Welcome to A-Today, not that you are likely new to the experience.
The last paragraph the editors quoted by way of engaging us certainly caught my interest …
"The best and most effective evangelism is still the one-on-one approach as we mentor others into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ."
I could not agree with you more with regard to the primacy of one-to-one evangelsim. Having studied and practiced mass communication, having been exposed to numerous evangelistic series, and having observing a great many online ministries, there is little hope to be found in preaching, let alone less personal media ministries.
Truly looking forward to the first installment!
Bill,
I'm so glad to see that you understand the importance of one-to-one relationships in evangelism. God has given us similar understandings from our different experiences in mass communications. God may use the media to stimulate interest, but it is when we get personal that we grow in our relationship with God and help others do the same.
I keep telling people here that my church has grown the fastest since we quit doing public evangelism. That's because of the number of ministries the Holy Spirit has created in our church and their effectiveness on the personal level. God has moved us from a focus on theology to being the body of Christ in the model of a body with all its various parts working together. That has transformed us into a soul-winning organism that grows believers like I have never seen anywhere else. Instead of telling people what they need to believe and hoping they will agree, we invite them into the fellowship where they are loved and nurtured so they will begin growing and producing fruit for the Kingdom of God.
William,
Looks like you've got the facts well worth reporting in an A-Today article on your church's success in sharing the gospel of Jesus one-to-one. I'd like to read it. And I'm sure conference presidents and ministerial directors of conferences would welcome it as well.
I sure would like to know more about how you not only encourage, but free your members to directly fill the pews in your church? And by free, I mean free them from the fear of having to say something to a neighbor.
I'd be interested in your sermon plan over time, since I would guess sermons are not only where your preach freedom to invite, but freedom to live … freedom to live being why a member may venture into friendships with non-members in the first place. Friendship is its own end, is it not? It is transparent friendship or it isn't friendship, right?
I'm guessing you may even have preached a sermon that validated friendship as more significant than church attendance, let alone membership.
I'm keen to know more … do share …
Bill,
You may find some of this hard to believe, but it works. I am amazed when I look back and see what God has done.
First, we have very little of the traditional formality associated with a church. There are no pews. Just chairs. We meet in a remodeled old farmhouse with a seating capacity of about 80-something in the main room and a second building with a two-way A/V link. No platform. No pulpit. No organ. No stained glass windows. The parking lot is graveled. We're basic and loving it.
Second, when our church was formed we did an intensive study of every aspect of how we "do church" to ask whether it was positive or negative and if we could do better. One result is that we have no offering plates. Instead we have offering boxes at each entrance and giving is an individual, private act. Our budget has never been in the red and we've never had to appeal for giving. Posture in prayer is not an issue. The hymnals a tradition-minded member donated many years ago are gathering dust in a storage room because we put the words to songs on the screen. We enjoy praising to God in song. We have a variety of speakers, many of whom are church members you might never expect to share from God's word, but who have experiences to share that testify to the power of God. There is no sermon plan because God moves on the hearts of speakers to share what is needed at that time.
Third (though this probably should be #1) is our emphasis on discovering and developing spiritual gifts in each member acording to the New Testament model. We don't have a Nominating Committee. Instead, we have a Connections Team. If you feel God moving on your heart to do a particular ministry (regardless of if that ministry currently exists), those are the people you go to for review, counsel and connection. Our view is that it is God who empowers and motivates people to serve, so the role of the church is not to tell you how you can serve or for how long but to embrace what God is doing and support it. You don't serve for one year: you serve for however long God empowers and blesses that ministry. My ministry focuses on helping people with home repair needs. We have a new garden ministry that is being led by a man who isn't yet a member of the church, but who felt God moving on his heart. That gave him a particular purpose for being involved with the church, the fellowship he is experiencing is bonding him into the church family and spiritual growth is following closely behind. We don't have a Church Board. Instead, we have a Spiritual Focus Team that deals with spiritual growth issues and an Administrative Team that deals with business items. We have church business meetings that would absolutely amaze you with their focus, brevity and harmony. I've seen issues dealt with in five minutes of harmony that at other churches would go on for hours in bitter argument. We've had one or two that lasted longer than an hour, though by not much.
Fourth, we are primarily lay-led. We have a part-time pastor who speaks once a month. That basically makes him a regular guest speaker. He doesn't run anything. Actually, our conference president sends us pastors so we can train them and they can gain experience in developing gift-based ministries. So far we've trained two and they are now promoting gift-based ministries in other churches.
Fifth, we have dreams. We're just days away from finished architectural plans for Phase One of an education complex that will be a preschool to grade 12 school with a capacity of 350-400 students. There will never be a formal church building on the campus. Instead, the church will meet in the school.
I've attended a number of churches through my life and Grace Fellowship in Madison, AL is the first where I've seen the members knitted together by God in such bonds of love. If you need something, we're there for you. The tornadoes we went through two years ago were a major bonding event as we pulled-together to help each other, including a family with six children whose home was destroyed. We're putting extra effort into the church garden this year expecting that several families in economic distress will need the produce to survive.
When you have fellowship like that it is hard not to tell your co-workers and neighbors about the blessings God showers on you. The natural result is they want to enjoy those same blessings. By focusing on fellowship first we remove the doctrinal barriers that prevent so many people from ever considering coming. God uses the bonds of love and friendship that form to overcome old objections and open hearts to receive truths that once would have been reflexively rejected. The results are amazing in many ways, including church growth.
Though I must give one caveat on church growth. We're just a few miles from Oakwood University, which is both a blessing and a curse. It can be a curse when we have a popular speaker from there and a crowd comes to hear him, leaving little room for our members. It is a blessing because we have a reputation for fellowship and worship that attracts a continuous stream of visitors from other SDA churches in the area. Some have decided to stay and become members. What excites me is how often I hear these guests describe with great excitement about the blessing they have received and how they want to share the concept of gift-based ministry back at their home church. I've received a number of reports about how God has been working in those churches after their "bees" visited and "pollinated" those churches with what they found.
On a personal note, though I trained to be a pastor, I no longer preach. I've since earned an MBA and am a project manager for the US Army. When given a chance to speak, I testify about what God has done and is doing so people will focus their attention on God so they will be drawn into their own ministries empowered by the Holy Spirit.