Welcome to the God Wants to Use You Message. This post contains sermon notes from Pastor John Wesslen’ s sermon given at Orchards Seventh-day Adventist church in Vancouver, Washington on Sabbath, 15 October 2016.
Turn In Your Bible to Jeremiah 29:11.
Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Verse 14
I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.
William Miller married Lucy Smith in 1803. The couple had five children and were farmers. God blessed the Millers and they became wealthy. William read all the books he could in the local library in New England.
Miller had doubts about everything he learned in church as a child. His family were Baptists. Miller lived from 1782 until 1849 so he grew up when the United States was a new nation. Many of the Founding Fathers of the USA were Deists. A Deist is a person that has belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe.
William believed in being a trustworthy citizen in his local area, in the State of New York and for the Federal Government. He served as a Constable. William also signed up for the War of 1812 and he became a Captain in the Army. During the Battle of Plattsburg, a rocket came down 2 feet from William. William was injured and the two men next to him were killed.
Miller began thinking about his Deist beliefs. One weekend he was invited to his Baptist church to read a sermon when the Pastor was unavailable. Miller became curious and started studying the Bible. Miller discovered Jesus Christ as his personal Savior.
God Wants to Use You Message
Soon the Deist friends of William Miller thought Miller had lost his mind. Miller studied the Bible for 2 years. Miller used a Concordance and studied all the Bible Prophecies about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Going out into the churches of New England to teach Bible Prophecy was not what the reserved conservative war veteran William Miller wanted to do. Miller said a prayer to God: “If someone comes and asks me to preach, I will go”.
Just 30 minutes later, Miller’s nephew comes over and tells Miller the Baptist Church in Northampton asked him to preach on Sunday. Then another village asked Miller to come and preach the following Sunday. Then Miller was invited to Boston to preach. As a result of William Miller answering God’s Call, everyone in New England learned about Bible Prophecy.
Miller led the Millerite movement. Many of his discoveries from studying the Bible form some of the Doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventist Christian church today.
On 22 October 1844, Miller and hundreds of thousands of people were expecting the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Miller had studied the Prophecies in the book of Daniel and calculated that Jesus was coming back. The day is now known as the Great Disappointment.
Miller and the people that kept studying with him soon discovered that the date was correct, but they misinterpreted what the year 1844 was about. Jesus Christ entered the Most Holy Place in the Heavenly Sanctuary and ministers to us now. Jesus is answering our prayers and we are going through the Investigative Judgment right now.
Here are the Takeaways for us today.
- Deism Does Not Work For Anyone
- Merely Being a Good Patriot Does Not Either
- Citizenship Here Is Not Important
- Citizenship In Heaven Is important
- Bible Study Brings Great Rewards
- God Reveals Prophecy In the Written Word, the Bible
- God Can and Will Use Us Even If We Make Mistakes
- God Calls Men and Women to Teach Others About Jesus
- You Will Seek Me and Find Me If You Search With All of Your Heart
- Miller Served God the Rest of His Life
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