Devotional Message at the 62nd General Conference Session, July 4, 2025
It takes little in the way of genius or insight to recognize the Bible as inspired by God. And I would say it takes some determination to declare it is not. Consider this evidence: Daniel 2, with Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and the return of Jesus. Daniel 7, with the rise and fall of the same kingdoms, and then Rome dividing and the little horn appearing. Daniel 9 and the remarkable 70 weeks prophecy, accurately pinpointing the baptism of Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus, and the gospel going to the world. Isaiah 7, the Messiah would be born of a virgin. Isaiah 53, He would be despised and rejected of men; He opened not His mouth; He would die with the wicked and be buried the rich. Zechariah foretells Jesus being sold for 30 pieces of silver, and the money spent on a potter’s field. Jesus would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. The Bible says Jesus would be born in Bethlehem; He would be the son of David; a forerunner would go before Him. He would work miracles and teach in parables. He would be beaten and spat upon; He would cry out to His Father, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). We have the 1260-day prophecy. Fulfilled. The 2300 days. Fulfilled. They were to be 70 years in
Babylonian captivity, and there was. Cyrus and Josiah were
called by name before they
were conceived!
We know all this. The Bible is verifiable, anchored in history and geography, interconnected with kingdoms great and small. We’re convinced the Bible is the Word of God.
He was a Baptist, a Bible student, and his Bible study led him to believe Jesus would return in 1843. When Jesus did not, it was suggested faulty mathematics caused an obvious error—Jesus would return not in 1843, but in 1844! Again, when He did not, others searched their Bibles and found the error not in the Bible but in the reckoning of the Bible. Instead of returning, Jesus had entered the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary. Then truth after truth was added, until a systematic, life-changing collection of Bible teachings coalesced to become the central tenets of the remnant church.
What We Believe
So here we are—the people of the Book. We believe the first verse of the Bible. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). We don’t believe in evolutionary theory. We have respect for those who do, but we don’t join them in their fantasy. Think with me. There was nothing. Then, for no explicable reason, the nothing exploded, and everything came out of the nothing. The Gobi Desert, the Nullarbor Plain, the Caspian Sea, the Himalayas, the Andes Mountains, the Amazon, Orinoco, Nile, Yangtze, and Waikato rivers, the Florida Everglades, the Iguazu Falls, Victoria Falls, the Steppes, and Lake Baikal. All out of nothing. It’s easier to believe Genesis 1:1! We believe because we are Seventh-day Adventists, and creation is central to who we are.
We need to believe the truth, even if it isn’t popular.
We believe the seventh day is the Sabbath and should be kept holy out of love and respect for the God who made us, in the beginning. We believe the dead sleep. Because it’s in the Bible. We believe hell reduces the lost to ashes for the same reason. We’re not trying to win a popularity contest. We’re endeavoring, by the grace of God, to exist with integrity, to honor God, and to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
We believe Jesus is in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary. We believe He entered it in 1844 because the Bible teaches it. We believe in the investigative judgment because it’s biblical, and because it works. We live, we die, we rest until the return of Jesus. There has to be an investigative judgment, which, and apologies to those who were traumatized by harsh or unbalanced teachers, is nothing to fear and everything to celebrate. The Bible says Jesus is in heaven “for us.” The investigative judgment is not God looking through the minutiae of our lives, desperately seeking something we haven’t acknowledged, ready to pounce on a sin that was somehow unconfessed. The investigative judgment is simply an audit, the God of heaven reviewing the choices we have made and honoring them.
We believe the plan of salvation as expressed in God’s Word. After sin and death were invited into our world, there was a way of escape. Jesus would die for the sins of all. In doing so, His heel would be bruised, but the head of the serpent would be crushed. Christ would die, while Satan and sin would be destroyed. And we, through simple faith in what Jesus has done, may pass from death to life. “Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation; even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life” (Rom. 5:18). This is the most important message we have—the most important arrow in our quiver. Jesus died that we might live.
Why We’re Here
So our mission is threefold. First, believe the Bible. Trust the Bible. Yield to the Word of God.
Second, live the message of the Bible. We have enough people already who are so right they’re wrong. People who are theologically orthodox, but meaner than sin. “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). None of it means anything if we’re unkind and disagreeable. Some this week will be tempted to campaign and politic and maybe
“go to war” to promote their allegiances and affiliations, forgetting this is God’s business. Our
profession ought to lead people to say, “Those Adventists.
Nicest people.”
I was on a flight between Lusaka and Johannesburg years ago. The man sitting beside me was a coffee farmer. He told me he employed only Jehovah’s Witnesses, although he admitted he was not a Jehovah’s Witness himself. He said he employed them exclusively because, in his experience, they were honest; they didn’t drink, steal, or cheat on their spouses; and they worked hard. Let someone say that about you.“She’s an Adventist. I might not believe the same as she does, but she’s a saint if ever there was one.” Do you think we’ll get anywhere convincing people of our truth if it hasn’t transformed us? “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32).
We need to believe the truth, even if it isn’t popular. There’s a temptation to water down our beliefs because of the surrounding culture. May I appeal to you? Don’t give in to that pressure. Simply believe the Bible. You don’t want to be obnoxious, but you don’t want to compromise. There are times we can bend almost to the breaking point to satisfy the people around us. We don’t want to do that. We don’t need to do that.
We need not backpedal. We go forward with the Word of God. Forward with the light of the gospel. Forward with the cross. Forward with the truth. Forward with the three angels’ messages. Forward!
Which leads me to my third point. We have to share the Bible. At an It Is Written evangelistic series in the Philippines a Sunday pastor attended a series held by Miguel Crespo, president of the Greater New York Conference. After the pastor was baptized, his denomination fired him. But he shared what he had learned with several dozen pastors in his former denomination, and several followed his example and were baptized also. A Sunday church pastor with a double Ph.D. attended an It Is Written series in Puerto Rico, along with his Ph.D. wife, his Ph.D. daughter, and their medical student daughter. Impressed by God’s Word, the entire family was baptized, along with his in-laws. The Holy Spirit drew them, and the power of God’s Word brought them into the remnant church.
We don’t need to go backwards. Asked to shepherd a Sunday congregation in need of a pastor, an Adventist pastor told them he conducted Bible prophecy seminars. They invited him to present a series to them and their community. He said, “I’ll have to share my entire series.” They said, “We’d like that.” He said, “You know I’ll preach about the Sabbath.” They said, “Oh, we want you to preach about the Sabbath.” He said,
“I’ll need volunteers.” They said, “We’ll do it.” He said, “It’ll take some money.” They said,
“We’ll cover the expenses.” I texted him shortly after the series ended, and he texted me a photo of a brand-new Sabbath-
keeping congregation!
Friends, this Book has changed the world, and God is wanting His people to go forward, Bible in hand, and change the world again. We can believe what it says and take this message to the uttermost parts of the world. We stand on the brink of a great ingathering of souls. The final moments of earth’s history are surely not far away. Let the Bible be our guide. Let the Bible be our strength. And let the Bible be the message we proclaim to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.
