In my devotions the other day, I read an interesting statement about a prayer that we should pray and I want to pray that prayer with you right now. Have you ever studied in inspired writings the different prayers and how we are instructed to pray? There are many instructions concerning prayer in inspired writings. One of the instructions from the Lord is that we are to ask for the Holy Spirit

We have been promised by the Lord Himself that if we would ask, we would receive the answer to our prayers. Now when the Holy Spirit comes, it does not come the way that many people think. If there is sin in the life, the first thing that happens when the Holy Spirit comes is that you become convicted of the sin in your life. That is the first thing that happens. You can read that in John 16.

But we must have the Holy Spirit or we will not be able to worship the Lord properly; we will not be ready for the kingdom of heaven; and we will not have power to overcome sin according to Romans 8. It is the Holy Spirit that gives us power to overcome sin.

So we have been instructed to pray and say to the Lord, 'Lord, whatever you need to take from me, that is all right, but do not take your Holy Spirit from me.' There is a prayer like that in the Bible. Do you remember that David prayed that prayer? He said, 'Lord, please do not take your Holy Spirit from me.' So let us ask the Holy Spirit to guide us in our worship service as we begin.

Our Father in heaven, we have chosen to follow Jesus. We have chosen to leave this world behind. We know that very soon if we are faithful, we will leave this world behind physically and go up in the clouds and leave everything down here behind. Help us to be ready for that time. Give us a heart that is willing to leave everything else behind, to lose everything in this world as long as we do not lose the Holy Spirit. We pray that your Spirit will work on our hearts and minds today that we may worship you in spirit and truth and that we might be used as humble instruments in Your hand for the saving of those around us who are lost. We thank you in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen.

I would like to read to you an interesting Scripture about something that took place in the life of Jesus the night that He was betrayed. The apostle John has the most complete descriptions of what happened that night. We find those descriptions in John 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17. So it is a large part of the book.

In the middle of these scenes that we see described by the apostle, we have this counsel concerning the worlds hatred and the coming rejection of the Christ by the world. It is found in John 15:18 and on. Jesus is speaking to His disciples. They have already left the upper room. They have eaten the Passover; they have eaten the first Communion Supper. Before that, as you read in John 13, Jesus washed His disciples' feet.

He told them that He was leaving. In both the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of John Jesus told His disciples that He was leaving. So they were very sorrowful and very troubled. He is trying to comfort them but He has to mingle the bright with the dark because Jesus never tells a lie. There are some things that are going to happen that are not very nice. So He has to mingle the bright with the dark.

In John 14, 15 and 16 He paints a very bright picture about the future, how they are going to receive the Holy Spirit. And He said, 'Let not your heart be troubled because you believe in God, believe also in Me.' He said, 'I am going to My Father's house…in My Father's house I am going to make a place for you. I am going to prepare a place for you and then after I prepare the place for you, I am going to come and I am going to receive you to Myself so that where I am you might be.'

He promised them he was coming back. He told them that He was leaving, but He said, 'I am going to come back.' And I want to tell you, friend; Jesus does not ever break a promise that He has made. He said He is going to come back. That is a promise and He is coming back. That is the Christian's hope. The keynote of the New Testament message is that this same Jesus, who was crucified, who slept in Joseph's tomb, who was raised from the dead, this very same Jesus is coming back.

When He comes back, He is going to take all of His believers, and His followers, and He is going to take them back with Him to heaven. That is the hope of the church. So He painted a very bright picture for them. He was coming back, and in between the time that He left and would come back, they were going to receive the Holy Spirit. He told them, "The Holy Spirit has been with you, but it is now going to be in you." That was fulfilled starting on the day of Pentecost.

By the way, do you like serving a God, obeying a God, following a God that always tells you the truth? Do you not really want to know the truth? Would you not feel absolutely overwhelmed with terror if you thought that God would not tell you the truth?

So, mingled with these wonderful bright descriptions, He has to tell them the truth about some things that are going to happen so they will not be overwhelmed with discouragement when it happens.

When it does happen, they will be able to say, 'Jesus told us this was going to happen.' So He starts telling them about this. In John 15:18-27, He says, "If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, 'a servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates Me hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin; but now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father. But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law. They hated Me without a cause. But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me. And you also will bear witness because you have been with Me from the beginning."

He intermingles the dark with the bright future of receiving the Holy Spirit. But He continues in Chapter 16:1-4, "These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble (that is, to be offended). They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me. But these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them. And these things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you."

So, Jesus says, the time is coming when you are going to be cast out of the synagogue. That is step one. He mentions the first thing, but after that He mentions the last thing and whenever there is a casting out of the synagogue, like Jesus is talking about, it will always end with something else. What will it end with? "The time will come that…" The Greek says it in a very interesting way, "that everyone who kills you will glory that he is offering service to God."

Now what does it mean for somebody to be cast out of the synagogue? Well, we have modern words for that. That means that you have been excommunicated, or even a more modern word than that, it means that you have been disfellowshipped. A church is a place where people gather together to worship and they have fellowship with each other. But a church can decide and they can say to somebody, 'We do not want to fellowship with you.' A church can decide that and they can have a majority vote and say, 'We are going to disfellowship this person.' In other words, they are cast out of the church. Incidentally, a person in Protestant churches, who is disfellowshipped, can still come and worship in the church. But when there is a church business meeting, they cannot vote and they cannot have an office in the church.

However, have you ever noticed that when people are disfellowshipped, they usually do not come back and worship at that church? Why not? They do not feel comfortable. Just put yourself in that situation. Suppose that you belonged to a church and the majority of the church says, 'We are going to disfellowship you. You cannot be a member of our church.'

Would you say, 'Well, fine; I will just come worship here anyway'? Would you say that? Most people would not. They would say, 'I just do not feel comfortable worshipping with that group of people. They do not want me around, so I will not go.'

Now, is there ever a time when it is lawful for a church to disfellowship someone? Some people say, 'Well a church should never do anything like that.' Be careful! The Bible is quite plain about this. There is a time when the church is commanded to disfellowship someone.

Let us look at that. We could read several texts in the New Testament, but we will just read one. "It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles--that a man has his father's wife! And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away." 1 Corinthians 5:1, 2.

What does it mean to be taken away? It means that he is disfellowshipped, and Paul goes on to say "I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit." In other words, even though I am not there at the church, my spirit is present with you when you are in the church business meeting. I "have already judged (as though I were present) him who has so done this deed. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan." (See verse 3.)

In other words, disfellowship him from the church so that he can be saved. You see, when the church disfellowships this person, as we study the book of 2 Corinthians, we believe that this man actually was saved. Because, it appears, that not only did they disfellowship him, but he realized that he was going to go to hell if he did not repent and change his life.

He did repent and change his life and it appears, in 2 Corinthians, that this man was later taken back into fellowship because he forsook his sins. But we see here in 1 Corinthians 5 that if a person is living in open sin--now you know what open sin is. A secret sin, any sin, is breaking one of God's commandments. But we, or any other church, do not have authority or permission to judge secret sins because we cannot read somebody's heart. We cannot read their mind. We would make a mistake every time we turned around, would we not? But if somebody is living in open sin, like this man was, the apostle Paul said, 'You are to disfellowship that person.'

If they repent and they forsake their sins, then they can be accepted back into fellowship again. Even in between time, if they desire to, they can still attend worship service, although most people do not because they do not feel comfortable. But is that what Jesus was talking about to His followers, His disciples, in John 16 when He said, 'The time is going to come that you are going to be cast out of the synagogue?'

Were they cast out of the synagogue because they were living in sin? No, not at all. Well then, why were they disfellowshipped? Why were they cast out? You read the book of Acts and you can see very clearly why they were cast out. It is all through the book of Acts. The reason that the disciples of Jesus were cast out of the synagogue was not because they were living in sin. That would be the only just cause that the church would have had to cast them out of the synagogue. The reason that they were cast out of the synagogue was because they had accepted and believed the testimony of Jesus even more than they believed the authority of the church. What do you think about that? Did you get it? The disciples of Jesus accepted the testimony of Jesus. By the way, Revelation 19:10 says the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of Prophecy. They accepted the testimony of Jesus above the authority of the church.

The church did not like that. I want to tell you, churches down through the ages have not liked that. That was the major issue of the reformers in the sixteenth century. They said to the predominant church in Europe, 'The Bible is the top authority.' The church leaders said, 'Oh, no, we are the top authority! We are above the Bible.' That controversy has existed between the Roman Catholic Church and Protestants right down to the present day.

Who is on top? The Protestants say the Bible, the Word of God, is the ultimate authority. The church has authority, but its authority is underneath the Bible. Roman Catholic theology says, 'No, we believe in the Biblical authority, but we believe that the authority of the church is above that.'

By the way, at the Council of Trent they were arguing this very point. The Council of Trent was called by the Roman Catholic Church in an effort to destroy Protestantism. It went from 1545 to 1563, eighteen years! A fairly long Council, right? They were debating and arguing this point, 'Is the authority of the church above the Bible or is the authority of the Bible above the church?'

The Protestant Reformers all said that the Bible is the ultimate authority. The preacher is not the ultimate authority. The church leader is not the ultimate authority. The Bible is the ultimate authority. That is what all the Protestant Reformers said. So, in this Council of Trent, they were arguing this point, which is the top authority? Is it the Bible, the Word of God, or is it the church?

They finally decided that the church was the top, the ultimate authority and do you know what was the deciding argument that proved that point in the Council? We have a little booklet called, Rome's Challenge that reviews all of this. This was about 1561, and the deciding point was the argument that we go to church on Sunday, the day of the resurrection, and that is not commanded in the Bible anywhere. We do that on the basis of the authority of the church and that proves that the church is the top authority!!! That was the argument that proved it!

Well, the disciples of Jesus were cast out of the synagogue. They were disfellowshipped because they accepted the testimony of Jesus above the testimony of the Jewish church. Now, should you accept the testimony of Jesus, the Spirit of Prophecy, above the church? If you do that, should you be disfellowshipped for it?

That is a question that has been burning in the hearts of men ever since these words were spoken by Jesus. It was a burning issue at the time of the Protestant Reformation and it will be a burning issue right to the end of time. Every human being has to make a decision on this point. What is going to be the ultimate authority in my life?

There are three positions that you can take. We have already reviewed two. One is the position that the Protestant Reformers took, that the Bible, the Word of God, is the ultimate authority. As Protestants, that is the position that Adventists take.

But there is a second position, which was taken by the Roman Catholic Church back in the sixteenth century, and that position is that the church is the ultimate authority. If there is a conflict, you take the word of the church.

There is a third position, and this position has become very popular in the last two hundred years. It has infiltrated the Protestant world. This third position is very attractive, also, to human nature, and it is this; my mind, my reason will be the ultimate authority and I will decide what is truth and what is error. We have scientists and highly educated people, and many people in the New Age movement all over the world, who have taken this position today.

They say, 'Oh, no, I am not going to worry about what the Roman Catholic Church says and I am not going to worry about what the Bible says. I will decide myself what is true, what is right and what is wrong.' That is one of the big reasons that our world is in such a mess today, because we are proving that we are not very capable of deciding what is right and wrong, and God has never given us permission to do that.

Did you know that? Did you know that God has never given any creature, any created being permission to decide what is right and wrong? God said, 'That is something that I Myself am going to decide. It is so important to know what right and wrong is that I am not even going to tell it to a prophet in a dream. I will come down and I will write it out Myself.'

And He did. He came down, and it says in the Bible (in Deuteronomy and also in Exodus), He wrote it out with His own finger on tables of stone. He did not write it on parchment. He did not write it in clay. He wrote it in stone! Do you think there might be some significance in that?

That law, which He wrote in stone, we call the Ten Commandments. And the Ten Commandments define what righteousness is. The Bible says that they are all righteous, (See Psalm 119.) And it defines what evil is, what wickedness is. Evil or wickedness is breaking that law, and righteousness is keeping that law. That is what the Bible says.

But in this generation, we think that we are smarter than God is and that we can decide what right and wrong is. That is why this generation is in so much trouble, and that is what was predicted to happen in the Bible. (See 2 Peter 3 or 2 Timothy 3.) The apostles predicted this very condition in the last days in which we are living.

Jesus told the disciples this would happen. He told them they were going to be disfellowshipped and they were going to be cast out of the synagogue. Now let us just think this through. This happened. Do you know how far you can go? What is the ultimate in disfellowshipping somebody? Well, the ultimate in the Jewish church for disfellowshipping somebody was to stone them. That is as far as you can go, and they went that far with Stephen. They not only cast him out of the synagogue; they took him up and stoned him. You can read the story of Stephen in Acts 7, a very interesting chapter.

Let us ask this question about Stephen. When he was cast out of the synagogue, did Jesus forsake him? Did He? No! He did not forsake him because it says in Acts 7 that he looked up into the heavens and he saw Christ leaning over and looking at him and watching him.

He said, 'I see Christ standing at the right hand of God.' That is when they got so mad that they stoned him. So Christ did not forsake him. We want that clear. When you are cast out of the synagogue, if you are cast out for righteousness sake, you are not living a life of sin; Jesus will not forsake you. That is good news, is it not?

But there is another point we need to think through, too. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 1. He says, "Christ is not divided." Now if Christ is not divided, then Christ cannot be on both sides of a war or conflict. Does that make sense? In other words, Christ does not fight Christ. Let us make it real simple. If Jesus is living in your heart and Jesus is living in my heart, will you and I get into a fight? No, we will not! There may be many things that we do not understand the same way, but if Jesus is in your heart and Jesus is in my heart, we will not get into a fight, because Christ is not divided.

That leads us to some other points. If Christ is not divided, if He remains faithful to the one who fears Him and accepts His testimony and keeps His commandments, if He stays with the one who is disfellowshipped, then Christ Himself has been disfellowshipped in the person of His disciple. Notice what Jesus says about this very point in Matthew 12:30, a very interesting text in regard to this subject. It says, "He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad."

Now in World War II there were some nations that said, 'We are not on this side or that side. We are neutral.' Switzerland said that. Very interesting what has come out in the news recently about that, is it not? They were not really as neutral as everybody thought.

Let us look at Matthew 12:30 in your Bible. There is a controversy going on in the world today between Christ and Satan. Is it possible for you or for me to be neutral in this controversy? What does Jesus say? No! Do not ever forget that, friend.

You cannot be neutral. There is a supernatural fight, a controversy going on, and Jesus said, 'If you are not with Me, you are against Me. You cannot be neutral. You are on one side or the other.' So if a person is following righteousness and living according to God's law, Jesus is not going to forsake him, even if he is disfellowshipped. Even if the whole church votes unanimously to kick him out, Jesus will not forsake him.

But here is a group of people who said to Stephen, 'You are getting out!' They were against him. So what does it mean if Jesus stays with him? There are only two sides. Jesus now is with the person who has been disfellowshipped. What does that mean for the rest of the people in the church? They disfellowshipped this person who was living a righteous life and following the Lord. The Lord will not forsake him. What does that say about the rest of the people?

That means, friends, that they are on the opposite side of the great controversy. Remember, there are only two sides and there is no such thing as neutrality. You are on one side or the other. There are really only two churches in the world. There are really only two sides to the great controversy and so those who disfellowship a person because he believes and follows the testimony of Jesus, those people declare to the whole universe that they are on the opposite side of the great controversy than that person is on.

When you start thinking that through, this disfellowshipping business becomes very, very serious. If there is somebody in our group who is living according to the commandments of Jesus; they might be making some mistakes in their life, but they are not living in open sin, and we decide we do not like them because of this or that, and we disfellowship them from the church, do you know what we have done? We have declared to the whole universe that we are on the opposite side of the great controversy than they are on, and the Lord is not going to forsake them.

That is the way a church becomes a church of the devil. The Bible calls it the synagogue of Satan. Jesus said, 'You are going to be cast out of the synagogue.' When they cast His disciples out of the synagogue, who took over? Satan took over. When you cast out the people that are filled with the Holy Spirit, the devil takes over.

So those who disfellowship these people from the synagogues, demonstrated to the whole universe that they were on the opposite side of the great controversy, and they were not God's true church anymore. Think this through carefully. Disfellowshipping is taking place today. People are being disfellowshipped today who are not living in open sin. When that happens, any church that does that declares to the whole universe that they are on the devil's side of the great controversy and they become part of the Synagogue of Satan.

What we are talking about is very serious. The Jews in these synagogues can talk all they want to about the truth that they have, about the Scriptures that they have, and about receiving the Holy Spirit, or anything else they want to talk about; but they are actually part of the Synagogue of Satan. The first step will always be followed by the second and clear to the end.

The first step is to disfellowship. The second step is to take legal action against them, and the third step is to eventually kill them. That happened in Christ's day; it happened in the sixteenth century; and it is going to happen again at the end of the world. Revelation 13 says that there is coming a time when, if you are faithful to God, there is going to be a death decree against you. Have you read that in Revelation 13:15? It is going to happen again! That is the last step, but it is preceded by a first step.

I want to focus your attention, not on the people who are doing the disfellowshipping, but let us focus our attention on the people who are being disfellowshipped. That is, the disciples of the Lord.

The people who are following the Spirit of Prophecy, the people who are accepting the testimony of Jesus, are getting thrown out of church for it. Of course, it does not happen overnight. It does not happen in one day. The first thing you get is a cold shoulder. Have you ever been in a place where you get a cold shoulder? Eventually it gets so cold and there are so many people, you say, "I cannot stand it any more." Eventually they say, "Well, we cannot stand you either." So now you are out. Maybe there is a whole family. In Ellen White's day her whole family was disfellowshipped, all at one time, from the Methodist Church. They were disfellowshipped, not because they were living in sin, but because they were talking to people about the Day of Judgment coming soon and the church members said, "No, we are not going to stand for this. You are going to get out." And they disfellowshipped them.

Now, what do you do? Here is a whole church of people against you, and you are maybe a family, or just a few people, and you are forced out. What do you do then? It is very interesting to study what people do then. We are going to look at two things that are very common to do when a person is disfellowshipped or forced out.

The first thing (and this happened in the New Testament and there are lots of testimonies about it) a person says, "I am going to do whatever I need to do to get back in there. I am going to prove to them that I am all right and I am going to get back in the synagogue." Were there Christians that tried to do that? You can read it in Galatians and Philippians. These people said, "They have disfellowshipped us, but we are going to figure out a way to get back in there."

Do you know what they were called by the apostle Paul? They were called the Judaizers. Ellen White has a lot to say about these people. She says in the book Sketches from the Life of Paul, that these Judaizers followed the apostle Paul to every single church that he raised up. Then they went into these churches and taught the people that they needed to get circumcised so they could get back into the Jewish church. You could not get back into the Jewish church unless you were circumcised.

They said, 'You need to follow all this protocol so that you can get back into the Jewish church.' They were going to get back in. Have you ever met anyone like that? They had been disfellowshipped but they wanted back in. They determined to join a church down in Guatemala, or out in California, or over in Africa, whatever, but they will get back in there.

The problem with that was, could the Christians take the gospel to all the world while they were spending the bulk of their energies trying to get back into the Jewish church like these Judaizers were trying to do? Could they do it? Some of the strongest rebukes in the whole New Testament are given to these Judaizers.

The apostle Paul had no use for them and he said, "They ought to be cut off. They ought to be disfellowshipped. These people trying to get back in there ought to be disfellowshipped." That is what the apostle Paul told the Galatians.

It was so bad that the majority of the Christian Church in Jerusalem consisted of this kind of people. It was because of this, that the ministry of the apostle Paul was cut short. You can read about that, also, in the book Sketches from the Life of Paul. Or you can read it in the book of Acts. The ministry of the apostle Paul was cut short and the God of heaven allowed it to be cut short.

Do you know why? It was because of all the Judaizers in the Christian Church. They were not only intent on getting back into the synagogue themselves, but they regarded as heretics anyone who did not try to get back into the synagogue.

There are many people like that in Adventism today. When they are disfellowshipped, they try to figure out how to get a membership in some other church, in some other state or country. They consider that anybody else that does not do the same thing they are doing, is a heretic. They are doing something that is not kosher. When the apostle Peter was put in prison what did the church do? They prayed all night.

I have often thought that if there were somebody in our church, if anybody in our church got put in prison for his or her religious faith, would our church pray all night? Or would we say, "Well, they have made enough mistakes. It serves them right." The church prayed all night for the apostle Peter; and he was in solitary confinement with two soldiers at each side and there was no way that he could get loose.

But did God answer their prayers? There is nothing too hard for the Lord, folks, if the church will pray. So the Lord sent an angel down there and he went through all those locked doors and he said to Peter, "You get up, put your sandals on, put your outer coat on and follow me." The chains fell from him and Peter looked around and he starts following this angel. Pretty soon he goes through this set of doors, he goes through another set of doors; and all the guards are asleep.

The angel leads him outside and he takes him to a place where he knows where he is and the angel says, "There you are, you are free." Peter looks around. He cannot believe it. Why did that happen? It happened because the church was praying for him. A praying church is a powerful church. But I want to tell you something sad. A few years later, when the apostle Paul was placed in prison in that very same town, the church did not get together and pray all night for him.

And the Lord did not answer a prayer that was never offered. The ministry of the apostle Paul was cut short. Ellen White makes it very clear in the book Sketches from the Life of Paul. The Lord would have answered the prayers of the church when Paul was in prison just as much as He answered the prayers of the church when Peter was in prison.

Why did they not pray? Because of the Judaizers trying to get back into the synagogue. Paul was not trying to do anything like that at all. They said, "This apostle Paul is a teacher of dangerous doctrines." So they did not pray for him to get out of prison. The Lord did not take him out of prison, either.

There is a second group that we need to look at. As I have studied it, sometimes I think that this group may be even more dangerous than the Judaizers were, because it is more subtle. These people are not Judaizers. These people are not saying, "Let us get everybody back into the synagogue from where they have been disfellowshipped. Let us figure out a way to get them back in, get them circumcised, have them keep all the feast days, and have them keep the entire ceremonial law so they will be accepted."

(By the way, Ellen White says that the reason they were doing this was because they were cowards and they were afraid of persecution from the Jews. It was the fear of the Jews all over again.) But this second group of people are not Judaizers. In fact, a lot of them had never been cast out of the synagogue because they had never been in the synagogue. They were Gentile Christians, so they had never been in the synagogue.

But they had a problem just as serious, and maybe more serious than the Judaizers. You will have to decide that. Let us read about them in the Bible. Jesus talked about this principle. The head of this paragraph in my Bible says, "Jesus Forbids Sectarianism."

"Now John answered Him, saying, 'Teacher, we saw some one who does not follow us casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us.' But Jesus said, 'Do not forbid him, for no one who works a miracle in My name can soon afterwards speak evil of Me. For he who is not against us is on our side.'" Mark 9:38-40.

These were the twelve apostles. The twelve apostles at this time were organized. They had a treasurer, named Judas. They had a spokesman. He was always sticking his foot in his mouth, but they had a spokesman, and his name was Peter. They had a couple of other real aggressive men in their group. Jesus called them the sons of thunder; that was James and John. They had organization in their group.

They were organized, by the way, in three groups of four each. If you look at the different lists of the twelve apostles in the New Testament, you will see very clearly that they are organized in three groups of four each. Every time they are listed, they are listed by group. They were organized.

The disciples had been given authority by Jesus to work miracles and that was wonderful, was it not? One day, they saw somebody that was working a miracle in Christ's name and he was not part of their "church organization." John said, "We told him, You do not have any right to do that. You are not part of our group. You are not part of our church organization."

Now that is sectarianism. Sectarianism is when you say, "Our church, our church organization, we have the truth, if you want to be saved, you have to be part of us." The biggest sectarian group in the world that I know of is the Roman Catholic Church. They have taken the position, hundreds of years ago, that you must be a Roman Catholic to be saved. That is sectarianism.

So maybe you did not know this before, but according to Roman Catholic theology, if you are not part of their group, you are going to hell. That is part of their theology. You had better find out what you believe about what the Bible says or you are going to get sucked into that.

This is what the apostles said. They said, "You are not part of our group and you must not work miracles." This is sectarianism. Did Jesus approve of what they were doing or not? Remember, these were the twelve apostles. If anybody had a right to say, "We are the true Christian Church," it would have been them.

By the way, who ordained the twelve apostles? The Lord Himself ordained them. There is no minister around today that can say that. They could say, "The Lord Jesus, the Messiah, He ordained us and told us to do this. He organized us. So you must belong to our organization or you cannot be saved. You must not work miracles unless you belong to us, unless you are part of our church organization."

What did Jesus say? Did He say, "Yes, that is right. Everybody has to belong to the same church organization or they are just going to be lost." Is that what Jesus said? Jesus forbade them to do that. It is a hard lesson for human beings to learn. The apostle Paul had the very same problem.

People had not gotten over this yet, and the Gentiles had to learn the very same lesson. They got into an argument on sectarianism as to who you belonged to and what you believed in. "Now I say this, that each of you says, 'I am of Paul,' or 'I am of Apollos,' or 'I am of Cephas, (Peter)' or 'I am of Christ.' Is Christ divided?" 1 Corinthians 1:12, 13.

Some of them are saying, "I am following this leader." Some are saying, "I am going to follow this leader." Have you ever heard that? Look what he says about it in Chapter 3. He says, "And I, brethren, could not speak to you as spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food, for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal (Not converted.) For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? For when one says, 'I am of Paul,' and another, 'I am of Apollos,' are you not carnal?" You are practicing sectarianism again all over again. Paul says, "That is carnality. You are not converted when you do that."

I found an interesting testimony just recently. This is a letter that Ellen White wrote on the subject of sectarianism. She shows here in this article how sectarianism gets started.

She quotes from these Scriptures that we just read in John 15 and 16 about getting cast out of the synagogue. How does a person get cast out of the synagogue? They get cast out of the synagogue because whatever they believe, or practice, or teach, they are not in the majority. The majority vote always wins, right? And they are not in the majority.

Have you ever been in a situation where the majority of people, even in the church, did not think the way you thought about something? Have you ever been in that kind of a situation? That is how sectarianism gets started and the majority can say, Well, we are the majority. You know, in spiritual things it is uncanny when you study religious history. The majority in religious things has almost always been wrong.

Was the majority right in Noah's day? Was the majority right in Jeremiah's day or Isaiah's day? Was the majority right in the days of John the Baptist? Was the majority right in the days of Jesus? Was the majority right in the days of the apostle Paul? It was so bad, Ellen White said, that the apostle Paul had to stand alone against the twelve disciples of Jesus.

They did not understand this issue that we are studying about nearly as clearly as he did. They did not understand how dangerous this Judaizing was like he did. So he had to stand alone. What is the effect? What does sectarianism lead to? Well, if you disfellowship them, that is just the first step. What does it lead to? It leads eventually to hatred against a person that you do not agree with.

Jesus said, the people that cast you out of the synagogue later what are they going to do? They are going to glory that they are doing service to God when they kill you. Sectarianism makes a person a religious zealot. The priests, Scribes and rulers were so exact in regard to their own maxims and traditions. Sectarianism leads to maxims, traditions to large church manuals, oracles of church tradition.

Will it happen again? This is what she says is going to happen again, "As Christ is hated without cause, so will His people be hated without cause because they are obedient to the commandments of God and do His works in the place of working contrary to them.…What can His disciples expect but similar treatment, however faultless may be their life and blameless their character? Human enactments, laws manufactured by satanic agencies under a plea of goodness and restriction of evil, will be exalted, while God's holy enactments are despised and trampled underfoot. And all who prove their loyalty by obedience to the law of Jehovah must be prepared to be arrested, and to be brought before councils that have not for their standard the high and holy law of God, but have made stringent laws inspired by him whose attributes were manifested at the trial of Christ. 'We have a law,' these men said, 'and by our law He ought to die.'" [John 19:7] Manuscript Release, vol. 19, 163.

Do you realize, friends, that the scenario that Revelation 13 depicts is not going to be brought about in this world by atheists? It is going to be brought about by the most religious people in the world. And sectarianism, if you look in Mark 9, or if you look in 1 Corinthians 3, results in strife and war, and if I am engaging in it, that is a sign that I am not converted.

Are you converted? If you are a sectarian you are not. Sectarianism leads to war and to strife. We just read it in 1 Corinthians 3. And where will it lead. Here is where it will lead. "The world is represented in the apostate churches who are trampling upon the word of God, transgressing His holy law. They know not what spirit they are of, nor the end of the dark tunnel through which they are passing. They are hastening forward, deceived, deluded, blind, to the first and second death. The vast tide of human will and human passion is leading to things they did not dream of when they discarded the law of Jehovah for the inventions of man to cause oppression and suffering to human beings. They have exalted phantoms, and internal realities are naught to them." The Upward Look, 285. Where will it end up?

Well, where did it end up in Jesus' day? It ended up at the cross. Is it going to do that again? Yes it is! Read Revelation 13. It is going to end with a death decree. Now we know, according to the Bible prophecy, that when the death decree comes the Lord is going to intervene.

But if the Lord did not intervene, when Jesus returns back to the earth again, there would not be one Bible believing Christian left, not one! However, the whole lost world, which will be doomed when Jesus comes, will think they are saved, because they will have the greatest revival there has ever been. But it will be a false revival. You can read about it in 2 Corinthians 11. You can read about the consequences in Matthew 7:21-23, or in Revelation 16 where it talks about the false religious revival.

"They will be suddenly destroyed at the end and that without remedy." So where does sectarianism end up? It started when Lucifer started pulling away a group out of God's government. It resulted, as you see in the lives of Cain and Abel, in a war that is going on clear to the present day. And it will be an unceasing conflict until the end.

When they cast you out of the synagogues, Jesus said, remember that I told you before it happened. I told you before it happened. The time is coming when they are not just going to cast you out and say they are going to disfellowship you, the time is coming when the very same people are going to say, If you do not do what we tell you to do, we are going to kill you. That is what it says is going to happen in Revelation 13.

So, as we have studied before, as you go toward the end of time--and we are going toward the end of time--there is going to be only two groups of people left in the world. There will be the people who are practicing sectarianism and who are persecuting those that do not go along with them.

They are going to unite. The devil is going to unite the whole world in a three-fold union as described in Revelation 16, 17. There are going to be those people that will be persecuting and then the people that are being persecuted. That does not sound very good, does it? But that is the way it is going to be. We might as well face reality.

As we approach the end of the world, every single person in the world is going to be in one of two groups. And I want to tell you that there are going to be a lot of Seventh-day Adventists in the group that are persecuting. You do not start persecuting your fellow believers like Jesus talks about in Matthew 24 and do it year, after year, after year and then right at the end of time flip around and do something completely different. No, that does not happen.

We are creatures of habit and what you train yourself to do over and over again; you will do right to the end. There will be a few people that are honest in heart in their persecution, like the apostle Paul, and get turned around. There will be a few people like that, but it will not be the majority. The apostle Paul was one out of thousands of Jewish leaders.

Where are you going to be? As we approach the end of the world, every one of us will be in one of those two camps. We will be among those who are persecuting or we will be among those who are being persecuted for obeying the teachings of the Bible. The good news, of course, is that if you follow God's Word and obey His Word, it may look like from now on that you are lost, it may look like everything is going wrong. The devil makes it look that way.

But the Bible says, The one that keeps this Word is going to endure forever. Do you want to be part of that group? It is not my purpose when I preach to scare people. I hope you have become scared of sectarianism today. I hope you have become scared of it because I hope you understand where it goes, where it will take you.

It will take you to the devil's side of the great controversy. That is the way it starts and that is the way it ends. But if you want to be among that group that the Bible calls, in Revelation 12, the remnant, there is going to be a group of people that will not go along with that and they are going to be snatched out of this world.

They are not going to be snatched secretly as some people think. They are going to be snatched out of the world publicly. The reason that the devil is not going to be able to kill all of God's saints at the end of the world is because the Lord is going to put a wall of angels around them and preserve them until Jesus comes to take them out of this world.

Do you want to be in that group of people? It is coming soon, friend. There are going to be some people that are going to lift right off this world. They are going to go up and nobody is going to fake that. You cannot fake that---unless the Lord takes you, you will just stay right here. I want to be recognized by Him as one of His own that is going to be taken with Him on that day. Do you?

If you do, if you want to be part of that group, before we sing our closing song, let us pray together because what we have been studying is very, very serious and it affects our eternal destiny.