Further Study:
"Christ had ascended to heaven in the form of humanity. The disciples had beheld the cloud receive Him. The same Jesus who had walked and talked and prayed with them; who had broken bread with them; who had been with them in their boats on the lake; and who had that very day toiled with them up the ascent of Olivet,—the same Jesus had now gone to share His Father's throne. And the angels had assured them that the very One whom they had seen go up into heaven, would come again even as He had ascended. . . . Well might the disciples rejoice in the hope of their Lord's return"—Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 832.Our concept of time has a lot to do with the level of anxiety we experience in respect to the so-called delay of the Advent. In Western society in particular, our expectation of temporal precision affects our thinking about the event. To be told that an event will happen soon has a certain currency with us, and we expect it to take place shortly, in the Western sense. For the Eastern mind, on the other hand—the context in which the biblical writers operated—the more important aspect of an event was its certainty; time was secondary.
Discussion Questions:
From about the mid-eighteenth century up through World War I, many people in the West thought that through science, reason, and technology, humanity could greatly improve itself, and that evils such as war, disease, and other calamities could be eradicated or at least greatly limited. Contrast that view with the view of the world presented by Jesus more than nineteen hundred years ago, in Matthew 24. Who was right? How should Matthew 24 be a factor in helping us have faith in the promises of Christ's second coming, especially when contrasted with these other views of what the future would be like? 
There is a subtle danger in the fact that the idea of the Second Coming has become part of our regular Adventist vocabulary. This can prevent us from fully appreciating (and thus adequately conveying to others) the extraordinary, mind-boggling nature of this event. How can we protect ourselves from becoming hardened to this extraordinary event, upon which all our hopes rest?
Look at your local church, and then ask this question, Are we helping hasten the Second Coming of Jesus, or are we part of the reason for the delay? Discuss the implications of this question and your answers to it in class.
| Seeking the Lost by FERNANDO CUNHA DIAS I had always wanted to be a missionary, so I studied for the ministry. But God had a mission field far closer than I could have dreamed. I was assigned to work with a pastor in his three churches in a region of Brazil where people are closely bound to their traditional religion. It was difficult to get people to even listen to God's message here. Then someone told me that a woman named Vera lived in a camp of poor people not far from a town in the district. I set out to find this woman. The camp was located in a beautiful valley four miles up a steep mountainside. When I arrived, I found 70 families living in simple dwellings made from bamboo and covered with black plastic tarps. I stopped at several bamboo homes asking for Vera, but no one knew her. Then I met a young man working outside his little hut. I asked the man whether he knew anyone who was a Seventh-day Adventist. "Are you a pastor?" the young man asked. When I told him I was, he responded, "Praise God! I have prayed for a long time for a pastor." Then he introduced me to several people who had been Seventh-day Adventists, but who had not attended church for a long time. I arranged to return and visit each of them to study the Bible and minister to them. The next time I visited the camp, I brought some church members with me. We built a little chapel from bamboo and covered the roof with a tarp. It was not very comfortable, but the people did not mind; they were eager to hear the Word of God. Interest in Bible studies continued to grow, and evangelistic meetings were arranged. The district pastor led out, and several members of nearby Adventist churches lent their support to the meetings. Attendance grew until we had to build more pews to accommodate the people. Eventually some 200 people attended the nightly meetings. Ivanette, a teenage girl who attended the meetings, had a recurring dream in which she returned home after the meetings to discover that she had left her sandals at the church. When she returned to the chapel to get her sandals, she heard a voice saying, "This is the true church, the church you should follow." Following the meetings, 30 new believers were baptized, including Ivanette and her father. The "bamboo church" was organized as a company. Ivanette's father donated land on which to build a permanent church, and the believers are working to build a more permanent church. Our mission offerings make evangelism such as this possible. Thank you for giving faithfully.
FERNANDO CUNHA DIAS is a pastor in the Espirito Santo Conference of Brazil. | ||
| Produced by the General Conference Office of Mission Web site: www.adventistmission.org |
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