I’m very happy that I can be with you this weekend.  Very soon we are not going to be able to have meetings like this.  We are going to be in dungeons or jails or caves or out in the wilderness somewhere for some days until Jesus comes to take us out of this place.  I hope that when you are in a place like that, remembering this weekend will bring great joy to your heart, giving you the memory of a little foretaste of what the Lord is going to do for us in the future.

I invite you to open your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke 12:32.  I believe that, as we draw closer to the end of time, this verse is going to mean more and more to God’s people.  It says, “Do not fear little flock, because it is your Father’s good pleasure to give to you the kingdom.”  “Don’t be afraid,” Jesus said, “because you are little and outnumbered.”

When Jesus spoke these words, the Christian church only numbered around 100 people in the whole world!  On the day of Pentecost there were only 120.

Now I want to ask you a question: Why was the flock so little?  God had called Abraham 1,800 years before and promised him that He would be the God of his children—his descendents.  He also made promises to Jacob, after the night of wrestling near the brook Jabbok.  He said to Jacob, “Your name is not going to be called Jacob; your name is Israel, which means a prince of God.”  And after that, God’s people were called Israelites, which means that they were the princes of God.  Each man was a prince, each woman a princess of God.  That is what it meant to be an Israelite.  And in the time of David, the promises were renewed.  At that time there were over a million numbered among God’s people, and that was a thousand years before this.

Why?  What had happened that the flock was so little?  Well, we are going to find that out right now.  I want to read to you a statement from Selected Messages, vol. 1, 406: “We want to understand the time in which we live.  We do not half understand it.  We do not half take it in.  My heart trembles in me when I think of what a foe we have to meet, and how poorly we are prepared to meet him.  The trials of the children of Israel, and their attitude just before the first coming of Christ, have been presented before me again and again to illustrate the position of the people of God in their experience before the second coming of Christ—how the enemy sought every occasion to take control of the minds of the Jews, and today he is seeking to blind the minds of God’s servants, that they may not be able to discern the precious truth.”

Do you understand what Ellen White is talking about?  Do you understand how successful the devil was before the first advent of Christ?  He was so successful that, she says, in the book The Desire of Ages, 36, “The people whom God had called to be the pillar and ground of the truth had become representatives of Satan.”  Now, that is the way it was before the first coming of Christ.  “The people whom God had called to be the pillar and ground of truth had become representatives of Satan.”  And what did we read in volume one of Selected Messages?  The way it was back then is the way it will be again, just before the second coming.  Well, if it is going to be the same as it was back then, what was it like back then?  Let’s just do a little study as to how it was back then.  You will see the parallel right away.

Back then, there were three main groups among the people of God—the children of Israel.  We will begin by studying the smallest group first, and we will end with the largest group. 

The smallest group is one that some of you may never have heard of, but if you look in a Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary or in any history book discussing the Jews at the time of Christ, this group of people will be discussed.  I want to discuss them briefly, because we have all three groups in Adventism today. 

The first group, the smallest group, was called the Essenes.  The Essenes were a radical, conservative group of the Pharisees.  These people were deadly in earnest for being ready for the coming of Christ.  What I want you to see is that just because you are sincere, just because you are in earnest, just because you are going all the way doesn’t mean you are on the right track.

Have you ever been on a trip, and the person reading the map says, “You are on the wrong road”? 

And you said, “Oh, no!  I was making such good time.”  No matter how good of time you are making, if you are going the wrong direction, it’s not going to help.

The Essenes were very sincere, and they were deadly in earnest.  Let me tell you a little bit about the Essenes.  See if you have heard of any Adventists like this today.  Some of them were so intent that they were going to escape the appetites and the lusts of the world that they rejected marriage.  Some of them practiced celibacy; they withdrew from society; they lived a sort of monastic life.  They were not going to be contaminated with the wickedness around them, so they went off on their own.  Some people believe that the Dead Sea Scrolls that have been recovered from the caves were from an Essene group of people.  They decided to withdraw.  Have you ever heard of people today that decided to withdraw?

I received a telephone call from one man who said, “I’m going to acquire some property that is way off in the hills.”

I asked, “Where are you living right now?”

“Right now I’m living out in the country.  It is about three or four miles to the nearest town, and all they have there are a gas station and a post office.  They don’t even have a grocery store.” 

But he thinks he is not far enough out; he’s going to get way out in the hills in the caves.  There are people like this today.  They are in earnest.  They spend hours studying their Bibles, but they are going to withdraw from society. 

The Essenes avoided trade.  If you knew them, you would consider that they had very high morals.  For instance, they refused to hold slaves.  Slavery was common in the days of Christ.  Approximately two-thirds of the people, it is estimated, in the Roman Empire were slaves.  Only one-third was free.

They refused to take oaths.  They held their goods in common.  They dwelled in houses apart from others that were not Essenes.  These people dressed in white.  They believed in meticulous cleanliness.  They went through much ceremonial washing.  It is believed that baptism by immersion originated with the Essene group.  In fact, every scholar that has studied this group has seen similarities, in what they practiced and taught, in the ministry of John the Baptist.  They looked forward to the coming of Christ.  They were organized in what they called a new covenant community.

Now, so you won’t think that they were just a bunch of ceremonialists, let me point out that the Essenes taught that all of these washings and baptisms would be of completely no value unless the heart was cleansed by the Holy Spirit.  If you met one of the Essenes, you would think that they were the most deeply spiritual people that you have ever met.  Why were they scarcely mentioned in the New Testament?  Well, since they separated themselves so much from the world, they didn’t have much effect on the world.

There are Adventist people today who read that the time is going to come when we will have to flee to the rocks and the mountains, so they say, “Let’s do it now.  Let’s get out there.”  I can tell you many stories of groups of people that have left the United States and returned to there home countries to flee into desolate, mountainous regions to wait for the Lord to come.  Some of these groups, after they have been out there for several years and their children are growing up without medical care or education, return to civilization.  The Lord didn’t come quite as soon as they thought He would, and they discovered that they had to leave those mountain caves.  They used to be called, in one place, mountain Adventists.

We won’t spend a lot of time on the Essenes, because they were a small group.  Don’t think there aren’t any today; there are some.  They are a small group in Adventism, today.  Be careful friends.  Don’t decide that the solution to your problem is to run away.  That is not the solution.  Martin Luther had it right.  They asked him to recant, and he said that he couldn’t fly, much less recant.  Don’t try to run away.  That is not the solution.

There was another group much larger than the Essenes.  You’ve heard of them.  They were completely opposite to the Essenes.  This was the liberal group.  In the New Testament, they were referred to as the Sadducees.  Now the Sadducees didn’t believe in separating from the world.  They believed just the opposite.  They were interested in developing alliances with the Roman government, and they were quite successful in it.  The Sadducees are a prominent group in Adventism today.

Let’s look at a few things about the Sadducees.  First of all, they did not accept all of the inspired writings.  The modern equivalent of that is people who say, “I believe in the Spirit of Prophecy; I just don’t believe it is canonical.  It is just a pastoral authority.  It is not the same as the Bible.”  Let me tell you something, friends.  When God sends you a message through a prophet, He has just as much authority today as He did 3,000 years ago.  God’s authority has not decreased one bit.  But the Sadducees didn’t have that figured out, and so all they accepted was the Torah.  They just accepted the writings of Moses; they didn’t accept the prophets as being inspired—just like people today.

As the result of that, they went off into some tangents on theology.  For instance, they refused the teaching of the future life.  They didn’t believe in angels or spirits.  The New Testament refers to this in the Book of Acts.  These people didn’t think too much about the value of tradition.  You would have liked them on that account; they weren’t rigid like the Pharisees were in regard to tradition. 

They were self-reliant.  They believed in making alliances with the government, and they were very successful in this.  They were so successful in this that they became, politically, the most powerful group in Judaism, because they had the connections with the Roman government.  The Sadducees was the religion of the highly educated and the more well-to-do Jews.  They were the ones that were actually in control of the church organization.

If you don’t see the parallel there, you don’t know what is going on!  The Sadducees were the ones that were actually in charge of the church organization, though there were some Pharisees that were also connected in leadership positions.  These people were highly educated, and they had studied worldly philosophy and tried to join up the Word of God with worldly philosophy.  Politically, they were the most powerful group.  They didn’t believe in going down in the caves like the Essenes; they believed in getting along with and making deals with the Romans.

We have a liberal movement in Adventism today that is an exact counterpart of the Sadducees.  They will take you to court.  They will not hesitate to go to the government.  They will go to the legislature and get laws passed in their favor; they won’t hesitate to do that.  They won’t hesitate to go to the city hall to keep God’s people from doing what they don’t think should be done.  They are powerful, too, friends.

That is really not the group that we need to spend most of our time studying.  Even though they were the most politically powerful, they were not the largest or the most influential group among God’s professed people in the days of Christ.  The largest group, and the most influential with the people, was the Pharisees. 

I have learned the hard way that the people in Adventism that are the most steeped in Pharisaism will vehemently deny that they are Pharisees.  I’ve seen that happen.  But I want to tell you that we have all the elements among us today that they had in the days of Christ.

 The Pharisees clung to the customs and religion of their forefathers.  They were conservative; they were not liberal like the Sadducees.  They would say, “We are the real children of God.”  Today, they would say, “We are the real Adventists.  We are mainstream Adventists.  We believe what James and Ellen White believed and what Joseph Bates believed.”  That is what the Pharisees would say.

The Pharisees were separatists.  They were not like the Sadducees.  The Pharisees believed in separation of church and state, and this was one of the big wedges between the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  The Sadducees were making deals with the state all the time, and the Pharisees kept telling them they were wrong and shouldn’t be doing that.  They were the champions of orthodoxy.  They believed in all the inspired writings.  They didn’t just believe in it, they believed in giving rigid adherence to these inspired writings—as they understood them.  They were critical judges of anybody that didn’t follow their standards.

They claimed to rely on God to lead His people as He had done in the past.  They wanted to rid the high priesthood from political entanglements.  They said the people in the general conference were leading them down the river and they would have to be cleaned out—gotten rid of to purify the church.  They became supporters of any popular or organizational leader who would espouse their views.  They were students of the law of tradition—that is, Jewish tradition.  They were theologians who were highly respected by the common people.  They were the popular, spiritual guides of the people.  Among the Pharisees were good preachers and excellent evangelists.  There were good administrators.  They had some representatives in the Sanhedrin in the highest echelon. 

Many of the common people of Israel believed that Israel was going through.  Have you ever heard about that—that Israel was going through?  The common people had been taught for hundreds of years by the Pharisees that Israel was going to go through.  But even through Israel was going to go through, because it was the true church, in order for Israel to go through, God was going to have to purify it.  In other words, He was going to have to sweep the Sadducees out and bring the Pharisees into power so that the church could go through.  Have you ever heard about that?  I had been taught that for about 50 years.  I’m not speaking unadvisedly.

I remember, when I was studying to be a minister, I was attending a certain college, and I looked around and said, “What is happening to this college is apostasy from the truth.  It is not in harmony with the Spirit of Prophecy.”

The head of the theology department pointed to a statement in the book Fundamentals of Christian Education, about page 290, from which he interpreted that yes, it is terrible what is happening, but God is going to straighten it all out.  If you stay with the church, God is going to purify it eventually.  He’s going to sweep the Sadducees out of power; He’s going to bring the Pharisees into power; He’s going to purify things, and it is going to go through. 

This was a common belief in the majority of the common people in Judaism in the time of Christ.  These people were looking forward to the coming of Christ.  Don’t think that they were insincere.  Ellen White is very clear that these people were sincere.  They were looking forward to the coming of Christ. 

The Pharisees believed in the future life.  They believed that in the future life the righteous would receive the reward of their virtue and the wicked would receive the reward of their sins.  They also had developed a theory that after a person died, in between the time they died and the time they received their reward, that if they were going to receive a reward of virtue, they would go to an intermediate place that they called Abraham’s bosom.  Have you heard of Abraham’s bosom?  They taught that the wicked, in between time, would also go to an intermediate place that was called Hades.  And then, of course, after the judgment, the wicked would go to Tartarus and the saints would go to Heaven.  Jesus made use of this tradition for a story one time.  You can read it in Luke 16.

As we consider these three groups, we see that, today, there have been many home churches started around the world because of the liberal element in the church—because of the Sadducees in the church.  The Sadducees have been pushing a new theology and teaching error.  We have quoted to the people from the Spirit of Prophecy that we are not to go and listen to error.  The liberal movement is so strong that their liberal theology is being taught in a lot of churches, so there have been a number of home churches started.  A lot of lay churches have been started all over the world to try to combat this liberal theology, this Sadduceeism that has come into Adventism.

But let me tell you something.  This is the thing that, the more I’ve studied it, I‘ve thought to myself that God’s people have almost totally overlooked this, and it is very serious.  When you read the New Testament, which group was the most dangerous—the Pharisees or the Sadducees?   The Pharisees were far more dangerous.

In historic Adventism, in the lay church movement, in the home church movement, people have been fighting Sadduceeism, but that really isn’t the enemy.  That really is not the most dangerous enemy at all.  I’m not promoting Sadduceeism, but that is not the most dangerous enemy at all.  Our most dangerous enemy is Pharisaism, and we don’t even recognize it—because it is we!

Why were the Pharisees more dangerous than the Sadducees?  Look in the first verses of Matthew 23.  The Pharisees were far more dangerous than the Sadducees, because most of what the Pharisees taught was true.  Not quite all of it, though, because they were mixed up about Abraham’s bosom and Hades and a few things, but most of what they taught was the truth.  Most of what the Sadducees taught wasn’t even the truth.  That was easy to figure out.  If you studied the Old Testament at all you could figure out that the Sadducees were mixed up with all their worldly philosophy.  But most of what the Pharisees taught was the truth.  In other words, they were much closer to the truth.

If you are looking at counterfeit money and one of them looks just like the real thing and the other one is way off, which one is the hardest one to pick out?  It is the counterfeit that is just about like the real thing.  The Pharisees were so close to the real thing that Jesus told the people, in Matthew 23:3, “Whatever they tell you to do, do.  Just don’t do what they do.”

The Pharisees taught that not only must the people belong to the organization to be saved, but they must strictly follow the rules of the organization.  There were lots of Pharisees that became Christians.  Did you know that?  Did you know that these Pharisees were a thorn to the apostles and the Christian church for the whole First Century? 

By the way, the Pharisees were not trying to take the Christian church back to Judaism under Caiaphas and the Sanhedran.  No, no.  It was a lot trickier than that.  They just wanted them to obey the ceremonial law and the traditions that they had developed for 200 or 300 years.  You didn’t have to be under Caiaphas, you could still be a Christian.

However, they taught that not only must the people belong to the organization to be saved, but also they had to strictly follow the rules of the organization.  It was the Pharisees that got things stirred up so that they had to have that church council told about in Acts 15.  Read the first few verses of Acts 15.  It was the Pharisees that got things stirred up to that point.  They were called Judaizers by the apostle Paul.  Some times the apostle Paul called them worse names than that.  I won’t read some of the names the apostle Paul called them.  Read the epistles for yourself.

Ellen White says that these people went to every single church that the apostle Paul raised up, every one.  And these people claimed that all they were contending for was the glory of God.

We are going to read about the Pharisees, and remember, friends, these things that I am going to read are mostly true.  That is what is so deceptive—they are mostly true.  The Pharisees in the church said, “The door of probation is not closed on the organization, and therefore you need to belong to it.”  The door of probation is not yet closed on the organization.  They said that first of all about the Jewish organization and later on they said that about the headquarters church in Jerusalem.  The headquarters church in Jerusalem was almost taken over by the Pharisaic element in the Christian church.  Read the book Sketches on the Life of Paul.  I was astonished when I first read that to see what was really happening.  The Pharisees said that since the door of probation is not closed on the organization, therefore it is still the true church, and you must not be critical of it.

Whenever God sends a messenger, He will have that messenger rebuke and reprove sin.  Every time that happens, there are Pharisees in the church that will say you are criticizing.  I want to be kind, but isn’t it true, haven’t you noticed, that when you study your Bible, a large share of the Bible is given to reproof and correction?  One of the books I’m reading right now in my private devotions is the Book of Jeremiah.  Almost that whole book is reproof! 

Here is something else the Pharisees said: “You must respect the authority of this organization to be saved.  God is a God of order, and you must respect the authority of this organization to be saved.”  That is what the Pharisees said.  They said that in the time of Christ, and they said that in the time of the apostle Paul.

Read the Book of Galatians, and see what the apostle taught.  The apostle Paul was incensed because the elders in the church at Galatia did not stand up against the apostle Peter when he was making a mistake and leading in the wrong way.  Because they didn’t do it, Paul had to stand up and rebuke him himself.  Peter was from the headquarters church.  Some people think he was the first pope.

I believe in respect, but I think that the first things that we need to respect are the Word of God and the Law of God.  That respect is to be so much higher than any other respect that whatever we do in the church should be subservient to that.

Here is another thing that the Pharisees said in the early Christian church.  They first said this about the Jewish church in the time of Christ, and then, in the time of the apostles, they said it about the apostolic church.  They said that this organization was established by Divine authority, and if you are not under it, you are rebellious, and you are against God’s authority.  Now that is pretty heavy duty.

I’ve had almost those very words spoken to me by an ordained clergyman.  He was vehement when he said it.  He tried to force me to speak, and I really didn’t want to speak, because things were heated.  I just wanted to be quiet.  Almost demanding, he said, “Do you believe that this organization was established by Divine authority?”  You know, I have no argument with that.  I have no argument that the Jewish church was established by Divine authority; I don’t have any argument that the apostolic church was established by Divine authority; I don’t have any regret or any question that the Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church, and the Methodist Church were established by Divine authority.  I don’t have any question that Divine authority established the Anabaptist Church; I don’t have any question that the Seventh-day Adventist Church was established by Divine authority.  I don’t have any question about any of those things, friends.

The question is, Where have we gone since it was established?  That is the question.  When you are going down the road, you only have to make two ninety-degree turns, and you are going the opposite way.  If you make a couple of ninety-degree turns and you are going the opposite way, can you say that Divine authority established this?  Well, let me tell you, we are going directly opposite to the direction we were going when we were established by Divine authority.

Here is something else the Pharisees said.  This is really heavy duty.  This is backed up by Ellen White in The Desire of Ages.  They said that the leadership of the organization was the voice of God to the people.  Have you ever heard about this?  The leadership was the voice of God to the people.  It was part of the gifts of the Spirit.  Therefore, if you were not in harmony with the leadership, you were out of harmony with the Holy Spirit.

They figured that if that didn’t bring a person into line, they couldn’t be brought into line.  This is very similar to what the Roman Catholic Church did during the Dark Ages.  When they wanted to bring a city into line—like if the city was allowing John Huss or somebody to preach there that the Church didn’t approve of—they would place that city under interdict.  When that happened, they couldn’t have any marriages conducted in the church, and according to their theology, if you weren’t married in the Church, you weren’t even married—you were living in sin.  In addition to that, they wouldn’t allow any funerals, so nobody had a hallowed burial.  Besides that, when a baby was born, you couldn’t bring the baby into the Church to be baptized.  People were terrified.  They thought they were all headed to hell.

The Pharisees said, “The temple is God’s house.  Therefore, you must not speak against it.”  You must not be critical of it.  By the way, this is one of the reasons that Jesus was crucified—because of what He said about the temple.

In addition to that, the Pharisees said, “This church organization is still God’s vineyard, so, don’t speak against God’s vineyard.”  It is like I’ve heard people say today, “This is still God’s church.”  Just like an airplane—even if it has been high jacked, it is still God’s airplane.  I don’t want to be on a high jacked airplane.  I don’t care whose it is.  You have seen on the television news what happens to high jacked airplanes, haven’t you?

Do you know that this is exactly what the Catholic Church taught during the time of the Protestant Reformation?  They didn’t have planes in those days that could be high jacked, but they had ships.  And the church was likened over and over again to a ship.  Have you heard people today liken the church to a ship?  They say, “Don’t get off the ship; don’t abandon the ship.  The ship is going in; it is going into port.”  The question is, What is the ship that is going into port?

On my CD-ROM, a few years ago, I found 360 places in the Spirit of Prophecy where the word ship is used, and I looked up every one of them.  I had been told that I was teaching heresy, and if the ship that is going into the heavenly port is the organization, I needed to find out about it real quick.  Since the organization had disfellowshipped me, if it is the ship, I thought I had better figure out a way to get back on the ship.  I looked up every single reference.  There isn’t any reference that says that the organization is the ship.  Do you know what the ship is?  Ellen White calls it the “gospel ship.”  The ship is where the gospel is preached in its purity.  (See Manuscript Releases, vol. 15, 26.)

Here is something else that the Pharisees said: “For God’s plan to be worked out, it is necessary to have a recognized nation or a religious entity in an organized form, that God can point to as His chosen people, His church on earth, and we are that.” 

I want to show the difference between what the apostle Paul preached about who Israel was and what the Pharisees thought Israel was.  We are not going to try to prove it; that would take too long; I’m going to let you study it out for yourselves.

The Pharisees taught that Israel was the descendents of Abraham.  John the Baptist said, “God could raise up descendents to Abraham from the stones.”  The apostle taught that Israel was the children of the promise, not the children of the flesh.  Read about it in your New Testament and study it.  Study the difference in what the Pharisees taught and what Paul taught.  Paul taught what Israel was in Romans 2:28, 29.  The Pharisees said, “Israel are the people that have been circumcised.”  Paul said, “Oh, no.  It is the circumcision of the heart that counts.”  They said that it was the people that were the descendents of Abraham.  Paul said, “No, it’s the children of the promise.”  Romans 9:6–8.

They said that you have to be a member of this organization—the common wealth of Israel—to be saved.  Paul said, “The people that have been baptized are members of that common wealth.”  If you have been baptized, you are a part of it.  Read Ephesians 2:19.  Paul says that point blank.  The gentiles in Ephesus that were baptized, he said, are part of the common wealth of Israel.

Another big problem was that the Pharisees said, “If you are going to be part of Israel, you have to keep all the law.  You have to keep the ceremonial law.”  The apostle Paul said, “If you are going to be a part of Israel today, you must not keep the ceremonial law.”  Study the Book of Galatians.  The apostle Paul said that the people that kept the ceremonial law were to be disfellowshipped.  That is why, when people say to me, “You don’t believe in keeping the feast days?” I reply, “No I would like to be able to go to the same church that the apostle Paul went to without being disfellowshipped.  If I would keep the feast days and the apostle Paul was there, he would make a motion to have me disfellowshipped.  So I’ve decided that I want to be able to fellowship with the apostle.”

By the way, I keep all the ceremonial law.  This is the difference between the Pharisees and the apostolic church and the apostle Paul.  I keep all the ceremonial law in the antitype.  The ceremonial law is typical.  The Pharisees said you have to keep the type.  Paul said, “No, you have to keep the antitype.”  Sure, I believe in keeping the Day of Atonement.  We have been in the Day of Atonement since 1844.  In the Day of Atonement, you do not have a celebration service.  That is the Feast of Tabernacles, which comes after the Day of Atonement is finished.

The Pharisees taught that you had to keep the organization’s rules.  You had to keep the rules of the church.  The apostle Paul said that that is nothing.  He said circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing.  What matters is keeping the Commandments of God.  See I Corinthians 7:19. 

Finally, the Pharisees said, “If you are going to be part of Israel, you have to be registered.  Your name has to be written down at the Synagogue.  You have to be registered with the earthly organization at the Synagogue.”  People were so afraid that they would lose eternal life if their names were not registered at the Synagogue that the parents of the man who was born blind, whom Jesus healed, lied to keep their names registered there.  I hope you are not willing to break the Commandments of God to keep your name written in the Synagogue. 

The apostle Paul taught that the important place to have your name written down is in heaven.  Read Hebrews 12:23.  I’m so glad for that text.  I give God thanks that in my feebleness I understood, so when I was disfellowshipped, I didn’t have to worry and lose sleep and try to figure out what to do.  I’ve known people that said, “If I get disfellowshipped, I think there is a church down in Nicaragua that would make me a member.”  Now wait a minute.  What kind of game are you playing?  Do you know what it means to be a church member?  You can’t be a member of a church in Nicaragua and live in New York City.  Can you participate in a Sabbath School class?  Can you preach to them?  Can you listen to them preach to you?  Can you help them evangelize Nicaragua?  People who talk like that don’t even know what a church is. 

Just so you are clear on this point, let me mention quickly that in the days of the apostle Paul and in the days even of Jesus, when you became a member of the true Israel, usually you were forced out of those who called themselves Israel.  Did you get it?  If you actually became a member of Israel, you were disfellowshipped.  Kind of a switch, isn’t it?

Our text said, “Do not be afraid little flock, because it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  I want to ask you this question in closing: How are you going to stay a member of the little flock?  Let me tell you, the apostolic church lost members.  They lost a lot of members who went back to the structure.  Have you ever read John 6?  They lost almost all their members.  They returned to the structure.  So, when I ask how you are going to remain a member of the little flock, it is a very serious question, for in John 6, multitudes left Jesus.  You are not going to see them in heaven.  They are lost.  They weren’t lost that day, but they started down a road that led to perdition.  A lot of people are doing that today. 

God’s people need to know what to do to remain part of the little flock.  I jotted down 18 things.  If you can think of some more, let me know.  

#1:  If you are going to be part of the little flock, you are going to have to escape the Essenism, the Sadduceeism, and the Pharisaism.  You are going to have to escape all of it.  That’s why it is a little flock.  Most of the people are Pharisees, and what are left are almost all Sadducees, except for the few cave dwellers.  Oh my, you have to go back to the mother body.  That’s what the Pharisees and the Sadducees said.  They said if you are not connected to the organization you won’t be saved.

I love to do this with Roman Catholics.  I like to ask them, Do you think that you are saved by being connected to the church?  Now a lot of Roman Catholics think that being connected to the church saves them.  Did you know that is what the Pharisees thought, too?  They thought that.  Jesus spent three years trying to disabuse his disciples of that idea.  The Pharisees said, “We are the vine,” because they have been spoken of as the vine in the Book of Isaiah.  They said, “We are the vine.  If you are connected to the church, you are going to be saved, because we are the true vine.”                        

The night before the Lord was crucified, He said to His disciples, “Look, I am the true vine.  You are not saved by being connected with Israel; you are saved by being connected with Me.” 

I’m telling you this humbly friends, and I’m not criticizing your church or any other church, but no church can save you.  You can’t be saved by being joined to any church.  You can only be saved if you are connected to Christ.

I like to ask my Roman Catholic friends, “Are you saved by being joined to the church?”  And I say, “Do you know what the first pope said about that? Well, here is what the first pope said.”  Now, I don’t believe Peter was a pope, but they do, so I’m willing to play along with them.  “Do you know that Peter said that you couldn’t be saved by being joined to the church?  Peter speaking, in Acts 4:12, said,  ‘And neither is there salvation in anybody else, for neither is there any other name under heaven given among men, whereby it is necessary for us to be saved.’ ”  There it is.  A Catholic can’t argue with that, because that is Peter speaking. 

Peter says, “You can’t be saved by being joined to a church.”  That is not the question in the Day of Judgment.  God is not going to ask a single person in this world, “What church do you belong to?”  That will not be the question.

#2:  If we are going to stay a member of the little flock, we are going to have to become a humble people.

#3:  If we are going to stay a part of the little flock, we must not be self-confident.  We must keep studying the Word.  That was Peter’s problem—he almost lost his way.  He denied his Lord, because he got too self-confident.

#4:  We must not become disorganized and broken up into little atoms with everybody going their own way.  You can’t do that and stay a member of the little flock. Remember it is a flock.  It is a little flock, but it is a flock.  Paul says, in I Corinthians 14:40, “Let everything be done decently and in order.”  God’s people are a flock, and they are organized.  That was part of the problem with the Essenes.

#5:  If we are going to stay part of the little flock, we must individually experience revival and reformation.  If we do not experience revival and reformation, God is going to separate us from His flock.  Read The Great Controversy, 464.  If we do not experience revival and reformation, God Himself, through the angels, will separate us from His flock.

#6:  We must confess our sins and repent and forsake our sins.  There is a whole section in Testimony to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 506–508, on that.  The New Testament is full of counsel that we must confess our sins; we must repent.  We must forsake; we must make things right between us and our brother.

#7:  This is so important.  We must allow the Holy Spirit the rightful place in the church.  You see, in our church we don’t have a pope; we don’t have a king; we don’t have a dictator.  We don’t need one, because, as James White said it, “The Holy Spirit is to be our king.”  Study the Book of Acts on the early church and find out how the Holy Spirit was involved in everything.  The Holy Spirit must have His rightful place in the church.  He must be the Authority, the King, and the Ruler.  Then we won’t need a pope.

#8:  We must overcome our love of the world.  I John 2:15–17.

#9:  We must not seek our own way.  We have all gone our own way, and the result is, the Bible says, in Isaiah 53, “The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”  That is why Jesus had to go to the cross, because we wanted to go our own way.  We are going to have to get over that problem.

#10:  Read Hebrews 13.  We must listen to counsel from the brethren.  We must not each go our own way.  God has appointed to have elders and deacons and deaconesses in the church.  We are to counsel with one another and listen to counsel.  If we can’t talk things over and if we can’t counsel together and solve our problems, we are never going to go to heaven.  God’s not going to take a church to heaven that has to go down to the civil court to solve its problems.  We have to be willing to listen to counsel from the brethren.

#11:  We must not fly off on a tangent of new doctrines.  Oh, there is so much about that in the New Testament.  Paul gave a lot of counsel to Timothy.  In I Timothy, he talks about it.  We are not to go off and teach some new doctrine.  Someone says, “Oh, I found this new light, and I’m going to copy it off and send it to everybody in the whole church.”  Wait a minute!  That is not gospel order!  If you have new light, Ellen White says, “God won’t show the new light to just one or two people.”  Go and counsel with the brethren about it before you go sending it all over the world.  We must not fly off on some tangent of new doctrine.  

#12:  We must study and practice health reform.  If we don’t, Paul says, we “will be cast away.” I Corinthians 6:24–27.  Health reform has always been important, but it is more important now than it has ever been.  It’s not salvation.  There will be plenty of health reformers in the lake of fire.  You can’t be saved by what you eat, but it is important.

#13:  If you want to stay part of the little flock, you must study the Spirit of Prophecy.  Ellen White wrote to an Adventist evangelist by the name of Elder Simpson.  She told him, “Those that believe that God has sent a message to his church through Ellen White will be saved from the dilutions that are coming upon the world.”  (See Letter 50, 1906.)  Let me tell you, there are delusions all over today.  If you are studying the Spirit of Prophecy, God will protect you from these things.

#14:  If we are going to stay part of the little flock, we must not allow open sin in the church.  In I Corinthians 5, Paul says, “You are not to allow open sin in the church.”  By the way, these people can come to church, but they are not to be members of the church, if they are in open sin.  We are not telling anybody they can or cannot be saved.  That is not the point, but you cannot be part of the body of Christ and be living in open sin at the same time.

#15:  We must not manufacture human tests.  The Bible says, “You are not to add and you are not to take away from the Word of God”

 We must not manufacture human tests for people in our church.  That was one of the problems with Romanism, and that was one of the big problems with Pharisaism.  They manufactured human tests.  They had good motives when they started, because they said, “We are going to protect the law; we are going to build a fence around the law, and if you keep this tradition, nobody will ever transgress the law.”  Don’t build more fences around the law than there are in the Word of God.

#16:  If we are going to stay part of the little flock, we are going to have to learn to love one another—not just when the other guy is doing what is right, but love one another when the other guy is making a mistake.  We all make mistakes.  We want other people to not stop loving us when we make a mistake, and we have to not stop loving them when they make a mistake.

#17:  If we are going to stay part of the little flock, we must learn to keep the commandments from the heart.  Jesus did it from the heart.

#18:  If we are going to stay part of the little flock, our words must build up and not tear down our brethren.  We must cease all evil speaking.  (See Ephesians 4:29–32.)

When Jesus comes, will you be part of the little flock?  You are going to have to avoid Pharisaism; you are going to have to avoid Sadduseeism.  Sadduseeism is easy to avoid; Pharisaism is not so easy to avoid.  Is the home church movement riddled through with Pharisaism?  We must escape it, if we are going to be part of the little flock.  “Don’t be afraid little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”