I would like to finish studying with you now the subject about the salvage business. We studied about the salvage business as it applied to the spiritual world. However, we studied about it on a personal level. But individual souls are not the only thing that Jesus Christ has in mind to salvage out of this world.

If you have your Bible, I would like to invite you to open it to Matthew 16 and we will read about that which is the dearest thing on earth to the heart of God. The only object on earth on which He bestows His supreme regard. It is written about here in Matthew 16:18, 19. It says, "And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this Rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

That is a very interesting text. This is a text that the Popes down through the ages have quoted, and they have said, God has given us the power to bind and loose. Now that is not our subject, we are not going to investigate that. It is a very interesting subject. God has given to His ministers, to His church, divine authority, but that is not our subject.

What we want to see is that Jesus says, "I am going to build My church on this Rock and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. They will not. I am going to save it." Now there have been times when the church has been in so much difficulty and trouble that it looked like it was just junk and it was going to get destroyed.

Ellen White says that as the result of the Papal persecutions that the church of Christ on earth was almost destroyed. She says that. It was almost destroyed. Jesus gave this promise for a reason. He knew that the time was going to come when it would seem to His followers that they were all going to be blotted out and that there would not be any church left.

Ellen White writes about this in the book Early Writings. She says the persecutors were killing the martyrs and, of course, there were angels all about, and the evil angels were saying to God's angels (who were watching over these martyrs who were being killed), "We are going to kill them all." And Ellen White said that if the hand of God had not been outstretched, they would have killed them all. There would not have been a single one left.

But God's hand was outstretched so that did not happen. They killed most of them, but because God's hand was outstretched His church was not going to be destroyed. How long is the church going to last. Well, it is going to last until the Second Advent of Jesus. Look what it says here in Matthew 24:32-35. "Now learn this parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near--at the doors. Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will be no means pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away."

Now, it is not our purpose even to explain this text. I did not try to explain the other text and I am not going to try to explain this one. I just want to point out that Jesus made a promise to His church that there was going to be a generation where it would look like the church would pass away, and let me tell you, it is looking more and more again like the Dark Ages. In some way the devil is just going to destroy God's people. That is what it is looking like.

But Jesus said it would not happen. It will not pass away. It may look like it is going to pass away, but it will not. Why not? Because God is going to salvage the Second Advent movement. And let me tell you, to many of the leaders of the Second Advent movement, it sometimes looked like the movement was going to be smashed to pieces.

It has looked that way many times. All during Ellen White's lifetime there was one group after another, division, separation. We went through the crisis with D. M. Canright and we are still facing that today all over the world when we meet opposition to Ellen White as a prophet. The arguments that are used against us are the arguments that were developed and printed and distributed by D. M. Canright who was one of our foremost ministers.

There was the pantheism crisis with John Harvey Kellogg. D. M. Canright was one of the most outstanding ministers that we had. I remember when I was in the Seminary and I had a class assignment to do some reading in some old Adventist periodicals. I was reading the old Adventist Review and Herald, and I was amazed to find out that the person that seemed to be foremost in promoting the Adventist views of prophecy and doctrine was D. M. Canright. He was one of the best writers that we had and one of the best speakers that we had.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was the best known Seventh-day Adventist physician that we have ever had. It was a terrible, terrible blow to the Second Advent movement when both D. M. Canright and John Harvey Kellogg left and began to oppose that which they had built up. Then about the same time as all this was going on, we had a young minister by the name of Ballanger who began to preach new ideas about the Sanctuary and that Jesus had gone into the Most Holy Place in 31 AD.

Now the teachings of Ballanger might have really caught hold in the Adventist Church except for one thing. Ellen White was still alive, and Ellen White came and opposed Ballanger's teaching and said it would destroy everything that we have taught for the last fifty years. And because of the powerful protest that Ellen White registered against Ballenger's teaching, the church was not derailed at that point.

However, if you are up on your reading, you are all aware of the fact that the very same teachings of Ballanger re-entered the Seventh-day Adventist Second Advent movement in the 1970s and Ellen White was not alive any more to protest against it. We have large numbers of Seventh-day Adventists who have essentially accepted the Ballanger teachings today.

And then Ellen White wrote in Testimonies, vol.5, 77 "They [tears] are falling upon my paper as I write. It may be that ere-long all prophesyings among us will be at an end, and the voice which has stirred the people may no longer disturb their carnal slumbers." That time came. Prophesying among us ceased. If we had always followed what the Lord had told us through the prophet, we never would have been in a situation like that. From 1844 until the Second Coming of Christ we would always have had a prophet, a living prophet.

You know, the devil always works against God's people with multiple attacks, never single attacks. It is always like machine gun fire and usually from different directions. And the church, God's people, was facing these problems from D. M. Canright and the problems with Ballanger were developing and the problems with Kellogg were developing and the church leaders said, "We have to do something to combat this."

And so to combat the evil we created something else that has turned out to be one of the greatest evils of all. We developed a highly centralized church organization to fight these awful things that were happening to us, that were threatening to destroy us. It is because we have this highly centralized church organization, which by the way is directly contrary to Spirit of Prophecy. Hundreds of pages of the Spirit of Prophecy counsels us against doing the very thing that we set up.

I am not trying to criticize people, by the way. They were human beings like you and me trying to deal with all kinds of crises and emergencies day after day after day. They were just like you and me. I am not trying to criticize anybody or any group of people for making a mistake, that is not the point. But it was still a mistake.

It is because of that mistake that we are in a position today where we have a small group of people who say, We are the church and we have the authority to tell you whether you can even call yourself a Seventh-day Adventist or not. Now those people, of course, are not the church. But that idea was fostered through the concept of a centralized church organization so that the people of the central church organization believe that they are the church.

That did not just happen in the 1990s, or even the 1980s. It happened officially on court record in the 1970s that the General Conference Officers claimed in court, in the Merikay Silver case, that they were the church. Now if we had not been Laodicea, we would have stood up as one man and said, "Get those people out of there!" But we were in Laodicea.

I was very concerned when I read about the Merikay Silver case. I do not know what happened to your mind when you read it, but what went through my mind was, "Where do you go? How can you get out?" Everybody said, "Just stay with the church, it is going to go through."

Friend, what people think is the church and what is going to go through, it is not going to go through. God is not going to take sin in through the gates into the City. Does that make sense? Now I am not judging who can go in and who cannot. That is not my business. That is God's business. But I know from His Word that God is not going to take anybody with sin or any group with sin in through the gates. God is going to have a church that is purified. He is going to salvage it.

I want to study with you for a few minutes this morning about this salvaging process. How does it happen? Not just how does God salvage a person, but how does God salvage a movement? How does God salvage a movement, a group of people, a church? Well, if we want to understand how God works, Ellen White tells us that we are not traveling over untried ground. We need to look back into history to find out how God tried to salvage His people at other times when they were in crisis and were about to go into ruin, destruction and oblivion? How did He do it?

There are a number of examples that we have studied. One of the best known and one that we should all study because Ellen White told us that it is a type of our time, a type of what is going to happen to our people, is the experience of the Jewish Church in the time of Christ. Now just for a few minutes, let us look at how God attempted to salvage the Jewish Church, and He did salvage the Jewish Church. It is just that He did not get very many in proportion to the total number. But we have been told very clearly in the Spirit of Prophecy that it is going to happen that way again.

Ellen White wrote; clear back in Testimonies, vol. 1, that few Seventh-day Adventists would be saved. Not because they could not be saved but because they would not be saved in God's appointed way. God works in certain ways of His choosing. The Jewish Church had been in one apostasy after the other. There had been revival and reformation, and then Ellen White said that after every revival and reformation they had gone back down into a deeper apostasy.

At the time when Jesus was born, it had been many, many years since they had had a revival and reformation in their church, many years. But here is what happened. First of all, God sent a special messenger to the Jewish Church. Who was that? That was John the Baptist. A revival and reformation started and, of course, the church organization started to fight that.

But there were some people who accepted what John the Baptist said. Now notice, the people who accepted what John the Baptist said were the ones that became Jesus' disciples. It was very, very important whether or not you listened to the special messenger. Your whole eternal salvation ended up depending upon that one point.

Even the disciples were confused about all sorts of things but they listened to the special messenger and as a result of that they got in contact with Jesus and became His disciples. Then during the ministry of Jesus, Jesus did something that was unforgivable to them. He told them that He Himself was to be the center of their religion, not the temple and not the church organization.

You see they had made an idol out of their temple. They had made an idol out of their church organization and Jesus said, "I am the center, I am the light of the world, I am the One you need to look to." They could not stand that. So most of the people followed leaders like Caiaphas and here is what Caiaphas said.

They got together in council after the resurrection of Lazarus and they said, "What shall we do? For this Man works many signs. If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation." John 11:47.

That is exactly what Seventh-day Adventists are scared of today. They are scared of the Roman power just like they were scared of the Roman power and they say, "If we let this Man go on like this, the Romans will come and destroy us."

That is what people think today. They do not want the newspaper ads to go out and they do not want all these things to go out because they are afraid of the Roman power. That is exactly what they are afraid of. The name really is peripheral. That just gives you a legal handle to get a hold of something. That is what they are afraid of. And they said, "If we let this Man go on like this, the Romans will come and destroy us. The Roman power will come and destroy us."

"And one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that yea, said to them, You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish." John 11:49. It is better for this little group of people to be destroyed than for the whole world and all nations to be thrown into confusion. That will be the argument that will bring in the death decree during the time of trouble. Ellen White says so in The Great Controversy. She says it will be the same argument that Caiaphas used. We do not really want to hurt these people, but it would be better for them to be destroyed than for the whole world to be thrown out of joint and in confusion. And they thought that if they destroyed Jesus, that would stop it.

So Jesus was crucified and about six weeks after that, instead of having one preacher, they had a dozen preachers who were talking in all the known languages of the world and talking to all the people that came from all the world to Pentecost, Feast of Weeks. The message went all over the world just like an explosion. It went all over the world.

When we get to heaven it is going to be very interesting to study what happened during the next few years. Something happened in the next few years that had never, ever happened before. We do not know for sure, but within the next few years it is estimated somewhere between five and ten percent of the Roman Empire became Christians. That is a very, very interesting phenomena to study in history.

So did Jesus salvage the church? Sure, He not only salvaged it; He expanded its size, bigger than it had ever been before. I love to study about this and I love to pray about it. "Lord, is something like this going to happen again?" And that is not the biggest question. The biggest question is, are you and I going to be ready for what God wants us to do?

You see, when we salvage something, when you go to the body shop and you watch somebody working on a wrecked car, they can fix it up so that it looks just like new. But I will tell you something; a wrecked car that has been salvaged by us actually is not quite the same as it was when it was new. It is not quite as good and it is not worth as much money in the marketplace.

But when God salvages something, He not only recreates it, He also expands it and makes it bigger and better. And we know from prophecy that God is going to salvage the Second Advent movement.

I want to study this process with you briefly. We studied about getting it yesterday and how God took Gideon through a winnowing process. So it seemed like it was getting weaker and weaker and worse and worse. As we study sacred history, we find that this is something that God does often. He did it during Jesus' time. Ellen White said that Jesus winnowed His followers over and over again until, at one point, there were only eleven men and a few faithful women to start the Christian Church.

Sometimes it is a little bit discouraging, from a human point of view, when you are going through that winnowing process, and that is the process that we are going through right now. That is why some people have trouble keeping their courage up. You need to realize, friends, what is around the corner, what is going to happen, what the winnowing process is, how it is done. And once God has a battle-hardened army that is ready to cooperate with Him, once He has a purified church something is going to happen, friends, that we cannot even imagine.

I tell you, I just want to be ready for it. I know it is going to happen. But I know that when it happens, if I am not ready for it, I could just be forced out of the church. Not by human beings necessarily. You see, in the salvage business the individuals have to be salvaged from their sins first. They have to be saved from these addictive sinful behaviors. That has to happen first.

But if that does not happen in my life on an individual basis, then when God salvages the whole church, if I have not been salvaged first, then I will have to be separated from it. Does that make sense? So we are going through a winnowing process right now and Bible prophecy predicted that this would happen in the last days.

Maybe you would like to turn to a few texts in your Bible. Look for instance at Isaiah 17:4, "In that day it shall come to pass that the glory of Jacob will wane, and the fatness of his flesh grow lean. It shall be as when the harvester gathers the grain, and reaps the heads with his arm. It shall be as he who gathers heads of grain in the Valley of Rephaim. Yet gleaning of green grapes will be left in it, like the shaking of an olive tree. Two or three olives at the top of the uppermost bow, four or five in its most fruitful branches, says the Lord God of Israel."

Do you understand that? It is talking about gleaning. Now gleaning is what you do when the harvest is about all done but there is still a little bit of fruit left. What all is left? You see the tree has been shaken and most of the fruit has been shaken off. It looks like there is not going to be anybody left. That is the way it looked to Gideon. You see the experience of Gideon is an experience like a pastor who has a church of three hundred twenty and after the shaking is over, only three are left.

I want to tell you friend, that is not an exaggeration that is not over drawn. Those types of figures exist around the world today in various places. In fact, my brother, Marshall, used to say, "Where we are going to actually lose the biggest percentage is in our biggest churches," and there are reasons why that will be the case.

The prophet said it is like the shaking of an olive tree. Two or three olives at the top in the uppermost bough, four or five in its most fruitful branches. There are two or three at the top and four or five in the most fruitful branches, and that is all there is. People say, "What are we going to do?" We are in a winnowing process. You see, God is getting ready. He is getting a battle-hardened army ready. That is why you and I are having trials and troubles.

Are you having any troubles? Are you having any trials that you just cannot understand? Why are we going through this? It is because we are in the shaking time and we are all going through a winnowing process; and the whole universe is watching to see who can hang on. The tree is being shaken and when it is done being shaken, there will only be two or three at the top and four or five in the outermost fruitful bough. It is a winnowing process and there will be just a little bit left.

You see, God does not think like we do. I think we human beings are all the same on this. We are all impressed with numbers. Now maybe you are the exception to all the rest of us. I am not arguing with you if you tell me you do not fit that. That is fine. But whoever you are, the rest of us, we are all impressed with numbers. That is the way human beings are.

We are impressed with the size of churches and the extent and the number of people. This is the way the world thinks, too. When you are in a winnowing process, the world looks at this and they say, "That little motley group of people, they will never amount to anything, nothing." They are not worried. It is starting to change, but right now the bulk of the people of the world are not the least bit concerned about the historic Adventist people. They are not the least bit concerned. They think we are nothing

And it looks as though we are because we are in this winnowing process when the tree is being shaken. Let me tell you, God is going to shake everything loose that can be shaken loose. That is what it says in Hebrews 12. Friend, you had better hang on, because when the shaking is over, some wonderful things are going to happen. When the church is purified, some wonderful things are going to happen.

I should maybe spend just a minute or two explaining that, because many people do not understand what the shaking is. Many people, of course, believe that I was shaken out of the church. The reason they believe that is because in 1993 I was disfellowshipped. So they believe that I am not part of the church any more, that I am some heretic, some voice crying in the wilderness, a crazy fanatic.

I was disfellowshipped at that time for doing things like organizing churches. That was true, I confess to that. Baptizing people, and that was true, I confess to that. Ordaining people, that was true, I confess to that. I was, and still am, saying that the church is in apostasy. I confess to that, and it is! At that time they had already put John Marik in prison for calling himself a Seventh-day Adventist. I protested that and I still believe in protesting it.

So people say, You have been shaken off, you are shaken out, you are not part of the church any more. Well, the Lord prepared me for that. Before that had ever happened, the Lord had arranged it so that I would develop an interest, because of what was going on, in studying this subject of who and what is the church. So I was ready for that accusation when it came and I said, "You know, you folks do not really understand who and what the church is. I am still part of it."

They have not figured that out yet. The Conference President in the mid-west said, "Well, that Grosboll guy, he has got some new teaching on ecclesiology." Ecclesiology is a big theological term for the doctrine of the church.

Well, without going into a lot of history and a lot of theology, let us just try to answer the question, When and how is a person shaken out? Am I shaken out? Well, it depends on whom and what you believe the church is whether I am shaken out or not. Are you shaken out? There are probably other people here that have been disfellowshipped. I was talking about this to Pastor Rafael Perez. He has already gone home but I was talking to him about this yesterday afternoon. He was telling me that right now thousands of people in South America are being disfellowshipped from the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He said to me, "When I went to Peru, they disfellowshipped five hundred in one day just for coming to hear me preach." And he says, right now a whole container load of "The Earth's Final Warning" went down to Brazil and some of the clergy in the Seventh-day Adventist Organization said to the people, "If you pass those out, we will disfellowship you."

They just said, "Well, go ahead. We have to pass them out." Let us think this through. According to what is commonly taught, are all these people now out of the church? Are they lost? By the way, friends, this is something that you do need to understand because if you are really out of the church when Jesus comes, you are lost if you are alive. Do you know that?

The only people that will be translated when Jesus comes are the people who are in the church. There will not be anybody else. Read it in Revelation 19. He is coming to get His bride and His bride is the church. That is whom He is coming to get. So you had better know what the Bible teaches about this subject.

When are you shaken out? Are these brethren who are passing out "The Earth's Final Warning" and have been disfellowshipped, have they been shaken out? Shaken in! Turn in your Bible to 1 Timothy 3:15. It says, "But if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."

The church is the pillar and ground of the truth. Here is the way you get shaken out. If you reject truth--it does not really matter what truth you reject--now the Sabbath is the testing truth for the last days, but you do not even have to reject the Sabbath to be shaken out of the church. You can get shaken out of the church by rejecting the Spirit of Prophecy. People who do not believe in the authenticity and inspiration of the Spirit of Prophecy are not part of the church. They are not part of the remnant church described in Revelation 12:17. They are not, because that is part of the two identifying marks.

You cannot be part of the remnant church and not believe in the inspiration of the Spirit of Prophecy. You cannot be. That is one of the two identifying marks. So if you reject the Spirit of Prophecy, or if you reject any part of the Three Angels' Messages, if you reject any part of the law of God, if you reject truth, you have been shaken out! And we need to pray for each other that we will not be shaken out.

Do not think that just because you are in a home church somewhere that you cannot be shaken out. Do not think that. That happens all the time. People get shaken out and they keep going to church and so they think they are in the church when they are out of the church. It is like what happened in the times of the early Christian Church. You can read about it here in Revelation 12:6. It says, "Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed here there one thousand two hundred sixty days."

I want to ask you this question. How did the woman get into a situation where she had to flee into the wilderness? Do you know who chased the woman into the wilderness? It was the people who said, "We are the Christian Church and you are non-Christians and you cannot even call yourselves Christians because you are heretics and we are going to turn you over to the government as a criminal."

It was the people who called themselves "the church" who chased the church into the wilderness. Let me illustrate it on a personal level. The center of all this goings on was in two places: Alexandria and Rome. The time came, in the Roman Church, when the majority of the church decided, with their bishop, that they would keep Sunday in celebration of the resurrection every week instead of just once a year as they had been doing. They would keep it every week and they would not keep the Sabbath any more.

When that developed, now the Eastern churches, they kept both Sabbath and Sunday for several hundred years. But in the Western Church they not only started keeping Sunday, but they also said, "We are going to keep Sunday instead of the Sabbath. We are not going to keep the Sabbath because that is a Jewish day" and, of course, the Jews were in trouble with the Roman government.

When that happened, there was a small group (we know there was a small group because of what their enemies said about them,) there was a small group who said, "We cannot begin to break the commandments of God. We cannot do that." And the Sabbath in particular has been a sign that you were God's people ever since the days of Moses. It was given clear back in creation, but in the days of Moses, God said, "This is a special sign that you are My people." You can read it in Exodus 31.

So there was a small group of people who said, "We cannot go along with that, and they were forced out of the church because the rest of the church decided that they were going to keep Sunday and not keep Sabbath." Now suppose you had been one of those individuals who, because you were keeping the commandments of God, were disfellowshipped, forced out of the church. And now, with a little, tiny group you are meeting in a kitchen or an apartment or a little hall, somewhere, in some other part of the city of Rome.

Now you are down in the city of Rome, doing business one day, and you run into one of your former friends who is part of the big church that keeps Sunday. He says to you, "Why did you leave the church?" What should you say? If you understand who and what the church is, you should say, "Why did YOU leave the church?"

You see, even if ninety-eight percent changed, that ninety-eight percent left the church and the two-percent that kept keeping the commandments, they were the church. That is the same way it is today.

You can have ninety-nine or more percentage of the church--and that is about what it was in Gideon's time, about one percent or a little less--You could have ninety-nine percent or more who leave the truth, but the church is the people that stay with the truth. You have to understand. To understand the winnowing process that is being talked about in Isaiah 17, where it says that there are only two or three left in the topmost branch and only four or five on the outermost boughs, the most fruitful branches, you have to know who makes up the true church.

Look at verses 9-11: "In that day his strong cities will be as a forsaken bough, and an uppermost branch, which they left because of the Children of Israel; and there will be desolation. Because you have forgotten the God of your salvation, and have not been mindful of the Rock of your stronghold, therefore you will plant pleasant plants and set out foreign seedlings; in the day you will make your plant to grow, and in the morning you will make your seed to flourish; but the harvest will be a heap of ruins in the day of grief and desperate sorrow.

And that is where Seventh-day Adventism, as a movement, is headed, because we have not followed the counsel of the Lord. Ellen White wrote, "Dark hours of trouble, dark days of trouble are before the church of God because we have not followed divine counsel. There is going to be a winnowing process that separates the people, who are willing to follow all the way with the truth, from all the rest."

That is the first part of the process in salvaging the Second Advent movement. We are going through that right now. Do not get discouraged, because something wonderful is coming just around the corner. And I would not want to study with you the winnowing process without studying with you what is going to happen right after it is over. You see, Jesus winnowed His followers over and over and over and over, until it got down to where there were eleven men and just a few faithful women and that was all that was left. And the world looked at them and they said, "We do not have anything to worry about that little group of people."

Just like the world is saying right now. We do not have anything to worry about the historic Adventists. But once the winnowing process was over, I will tell you that if you had been in some of the churches I have been in, you would hope and pray that the winnowing process is just about over, because in some of these churches there are not very many left.

I talked to one gentleman not too long ago who was going to an historic Adventist Church--not a Conference Church--and they had around sixty or seventy people going to that church. They went through a shaking and he told me there are only four left. They thought that they had already been winnowed because they came out of the Conference Church and were an independent home church. So they thought that, "We are an historic Adventist group." And they got shaken until there were only four left. I would not want to talk to you about that and leave you discouraged unless you see the vision of what is going to happen when the winnowing process is over. Oh, friend, if you can hang on to the truth, something wonderful is about to happen to the Second Advent movement that is beyond anything that we have ever dreamed.

God has something in mind for us that is bigger than anything we have dreamed of. The Bible talks about it and Ellen White talks about it. I want to read first a statement from Ellen White and then look at several Bible texts. She says, "The accessions to the truth will be of a rapidity which will surprise the church." 1888 Materials, 755.

After the winnowing process was over in Jesus' day, what happened? Pentecost happened. And when Pentecost happened, let me tell you, the church exploded all over the world. You see, at Pentecost there were Jews there from all over the world and just like that, it went all over the world. Within a matter of months, after Jesus was crucified, the message of His crucifixion was going all over the world.

Twenty years later, Paul says that it had already been preached to every creature under heaven. That is such a stupendous statement that a lot of theologians do not even believe that today, but that is still what the Bible says. Something wonderful is going to happen, if you can just hang on. Look at what the Bible describes. The Bible describes it as happening in our time, and it has not happened yet because we are still in the winnowing process. But it is going to happen. Friends, I believe we are very close to this event happening.

Let us look at some texts. First of all look at Amos 9:13. "'Behold the days are coming says the Lord, 'when the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; the mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.'" What is this talking about?

Normally when you are a farmer, you have to plant. You have to cultivate and water and then after a time you will reap. But the time is coming when in the process of planting; the reaper will overtake the one planting. How is that going to happen? Turn over to Zechariah. This is one of the most exciting texts in the book of Zechariah. It says, "Thus says the Lord of Hosts: in those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, 'Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'" Zechariah 8:23.

You see, when the Loud Cry really gets under way, all of a sudden, this little group of people, who people thought were nobody, all of a sudden they are going to explode all over the world. People are going to look at this and they are going to make a choice. They are going to see the ecumenical movement and they are going to see a choice. They can go with the ecumenical movement or they can go with the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

People are going to look at that. And people who have been studying their Bibles and praying are going to say; "This is where the Lord's people are. They are keeping the commandments. They are following the religion of Jesus. They are following the Bible." And it says that ten men from all languages of the nations are going to grab hold of every one who is a Jew--who is that? We are spiritual Israel--They are going to grab hold of every one who is a Jew and they are going to say, "We are going with you because we have heard that God is with you."

How big is that going to be? We have no idea, only God knows how this is going to be fulfilled. This has not been fulfilled yet, but it is going to be. It is in the Bible. Turn to Isaiah. Isaiah has some of the most striking things to say about this development. You see, when God salvages something, He does not just fix up the broken pieces. He makes it better than it was at the first.

Ellen White says that the plan of salvation will resolve in bringing us into closer fellowship with God than if we had never fallen. I cannot explain those kinds of things. But when God salvages something, He makes it better that it was the first time. Look what it says here in Isaiah--we are not going to read all the Bible texts--Joel has a lot to say about this, too, but we are not going to look in the book of Joel.

But let us look in Isaiah 66. This is a stupendous Bible promise. This is about Zion, about God's people in the last days. We will start reading in verse 5. "Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at His word: your brethren who hated you, who cast you out for My name's sake, said, 'Let the Lord be glorified, that we may see your joy,' but they shall be ashamed."

Has that happened? That is happening right now. Your brethren, who hated you, they have cast you out. They said, "You are not part of the church any more." Then they said, "Let the Lord be glorified, that we may see your joy, but they shall be ashamed. The sound of noise from the city! A voice from the temple! The voice of the Lord, Who fully repays His enemies! Before she was in labor, she gave birth; before her pain came, she delivered a male child. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her children. Shall I bring to the time of birth, and not cause delivery?' says the Lord. 'Shall I who cause delivery shut up the womb?' says your God. Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all you who love her; Rejoice for joy with her, all you who mourn for her; that you may feed and be satisfied with the consolation of her bosom, that you may drink deeply and be delighted with the abundance of her glory."

Oh, friends, something is going to happen that people will not be able to believe. They are going to say, "What is this? Before she travailed, she had a child. Before she went into labor she already had the child." Can you have a nation be born in one day? But it is going to happen. Something is going to happen that people cannot believe. They are going to say, "This cannot happen. You cannot have a baby without even going into labor; just boom and you have already had it. You cannot do that. That has never been heard of. Who has ever heard of such a thing?"

And who has ever heard of a nation being born in one day? Who has ever heard of that? It takes hundreds of years for a nation to develop into a power. Oh, no. Something is around the corner, friend, that is going to be absolutely unbelievable and mind-boggling. This text is going to be fulfilled.

"Before she was in pain?" Yes. "Shall a nation be born in one day?" Yes. Oh, friend, do not be discouraged. Do not be discouraged because we are in the winnowing process. When the winnowing process is over, around the corner, something wonderful is going to happen. I just want to have a little part in it.

I have to go today, but I hope that you will have wonderful meetings as you meet together to discuss and pray about church organization. By the way, when the work is finished, God's people are going to be organized. God is not going to take a bunch of independent atoms to heaven or even independent churches. That is not going to happen.

When the winnowing process is over, there is going to be an explosion, a spiritual explosion. Ellen White says the nations will be shaken to their center. Every single person, between six and seven billion people, in the world is going to hear the Three Angels' Messages. They are all going to hear it, not over a fifty-year-period, oh, no, it is going to happen fast.

You and I must be prepared to be surprised and to hang on. Do you want to be part of what God is about to do? You see, back in the disciples' day, if you did not hang on during the winnowing process, you did not get to be part of what happened later. You did not get to be part of Pentecost. And, friends, the Latter Rain is coming. When the Latter Rain comes it is going to be greater than Pentecost. You have been promised that.

The Bible says it will be more abundant. Do you want to be ready? Do you want to be part of it? I am willing to be the doorkeeper or any humble position that the Lord gives me, but friends; I do not want to be passed by. I want to be part of this. Do you want to be part of it, too?

Remember, if you are shaken from the truth, you will not be part of it. I am not saying you will lose your soul. The Lord might figure out some way to save you yet, even if you have been misled, just like there were a multitude of priests who came in; but that multitude of priests were not there and did not get to partake of Pentecost. That was later. Would you like to be where the action is? Would you like to be where the Latter Rain falls and where the Loud Cry is given?

If you want this, you are going to have to hang on during this time of winnowing that we are going through. Let us kneel down and pray together before we go and ask the Lord to help us.

The only people that will be translated when Jesus comes are the people that are in the church. There will not be anybody else. Read it in Revelation 19. He is coming to get His bride and His bride is the church. That is who He is coming to get. So you had better know what the Bible teaches about this subject.

When are you shaken out? Are these brethren that are passing out "The Earth's Final Warning" and have been disfellowshipped, have they been shaken out? Shaken in. Turn in your Bible to 1 Timothy 3:15. It says, "But if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."

The church is the pillar and ground of the truth. Here is the way you get shaken out. If you reject truth--it does not really matter what truth you reject--now the Sabbath is the testing truth for the last days, but you do not even have to reject the Sabbath to be shaken out of the church. You can get shaken out of the church by rejecting the Spirit of Prophecy. People that do not believe in the authenticity and inspiration of the Spirit of Prophecy are not part of the church. They are not part of the remnant church described in Revelation 12:17. They are not. Because that is part of the two identifying marks.

You cannot be part of the remnant church and not believe in the inspiration of the Spirit of Prophecy. You cannot be. That is one of the two identifying marks. So if you reject the Spirit of Prophecy or if you reject any part of the three angels' messages, if you reject any part of the law of God, if you reject truth, you have been shaken out! And we need to pray for each other that we will not be shaken out.

Do not think that just because you are in a home church somewhere that you cannot be shaken out. Do not think that. That happens all the time. People get shaken out and they keep going to church and so they think they are in the church when they are out of the church. It is like what happened in the times of the early Christian Church. You can read about it here in Revelation 12. It says in verse 6: "Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed here there one thousand two hundred sixty days."

I want to ask you this question. How did the woman get into a situation where she had to flee into the wilderness? Do you know who chased the woman into the wilderness? It was the people that said, We are the Christian Church and you are non-Christians and you cannot even call yourselves Christians because you are heretics and we are going to turn you over to the government as a criminal.

It was the people that called themselves the church that chased the church into the wilderness. Let me illustrate it on a personal level. The center of all these goings on was in two places: Alexandria and Rome. The time came in the Roman Church when the majority of the church decided with their bishop that they would keep Sunday in celebration of the resurrection every week instead of just once a year as they had been doing. They would keep it every week and they would not keep the Sabbath any more.

When that developed, now the Eastern churches, they kept both Sabbath and Sunday for several hundred years. But in the Western Church they not only started keeping Sunday but they also said, We are going to keep Sunday instead of the Sabbath. We are not going to keep the Sabbath because that is a Jewish day and, of course, the Jews were in trouble with the Roman government.

When that happened, there was a small group. We know there was a small group because of what their enemies said about them. There was a small group that said, We cannot begin to break the commandments of God. We cannot do that. And the Sabbath in particular has been a sign that you were God's people every since the days of Moses. It was given clear back in creation, but in the days of Moses, God said, This is a special sign that you are My people. You can read it in Exodus 31.

So there was a small group of people who said, We cannot go along with that and they were forced out of the church because the rest of the church decided that they were going to keep Sunday and not keep Sabbath. Now suppose you had been one of those individuals because you were keeping the commandments of God you were disfellowshipped, you were forced out of the church and now with a little tiny group you are meeting in a kitchen or an apartment or a little hall, somewhere, some other part of the city of Rome.

Now you are down in the city of Rome doing business one day and you run into one of your former friends who is part of the big church that keeps Sunday. He says to you, Why did you leave the church? What should you say? If you understand who and what the church is, you should say, Why did YOU leave the church? You see, even if ninety-eight percent changed, that ninety-eight percent left the church and the two-percent that kept keeping the commandments, they were the church. That is the same way it is today.

You can have ninety-nine or more percentage of the church--and that is about what it was in Gideon's time, about one percent or a little less. You could have ninety-nine percent or more that leave the truth but the church are the people that stay with the truth. You have to understand that to understand this winnowing process that it is talking about in Isaiah 17 where it says that there are only two or three left in the topmost branch and only four or five on the outermost boughs, the most fruitful branches.

Look at verses 9-11: "In that day his strong cities will be as a forsaken bough, and an uppermost branch, which they left because of the Children of Israel; and there will be desolation. Because you have forgotten the God of your salvation, and have not been mindful of the Rock of your stronghold, therefore you will plant pleasant plants and set out foreign seedlings; in the day you will make your plant to grow, and in the morning you will make your seed to flourish; but the harvest will be a heap of ruins in the day of grief and desperate sorrow.

And that is where Seventh-day Adventism as a movement is headed because we have not followed the counsel of the Lord. Ellen White wrote, Dark hours of trouble, dark days of trouble before the church of God because we have not followed divine counsel. There is going to be a winnowing process that separates the people that are willing to follow all the way with the truth from all the rest.

That is the first part of the process in salvaging the Second Advent movement. We are going through that right now. Do not get discouraged because something wonderful is coming just around the corner. And I would not want to study with you the winnowing process without studying with you what is going to happen right after it is over. You see, Jesus winnowed His followers over and over and over and over until it got down to where there were eleven men and just a few faithful women and that is all that was left and the world looked at that and they said, We do not have anything to worry about that little group of people.

Just like the world is saying right now. We do not have anything to worry about the historic Adventists. But once the winnowing process was over, I will tell you that if you had been in some of the churches I have been in, you would pray and hope that the winnowing process is just about over in some of these churches because there are not very many left.

I talked to one gentleman not too long ago who was going to a historic Adventist Church--not a Conference Church--and they had around sixty or seventy people going to that church. They went through a shaking and he told me there are only four left. They thought that they had already been winnowed because they came out from the Conference Church and they were an independent home church.

So they thought that, We are a historic Adventist group. And they got shaken until there were only four left. I would not want to talk to you about that and leave you discouraged unless you see the vision of what is going to happen when the winnowing process is over. Oh, friend, if you can hang on to the truth, something wonderful is about to happen to the second advent movement that is beyond anything that we have ever dreamed.

God has something in mind for us that is bigger than anything we have dreamed of. The Bible talks about it and Ellen White talks about it. I want to read first a statement from Ellen White and then look at several Bible texts. She says in 1888 Materials, 755. She says, "The accessions to the truth will be of a rapidity which will surprise the church."

After the winnowing process was over in Jesus day, what happened? Pentecost happened. And when Pentecost happened, let me tell you the church exploded, all over the world. You see, at Pentecost there were Jews there from all over the world and just like that, it went all over the world. Within a matter of months after Jesus was crucified, the message of His crucifixion was going all over the world.

Paul says twenty years later that it had already been preached to every creature under heaven. That is such a stupendous statement that a lot of theologians do not even believe that today, but that is still what the Bible says. Something wonderful is going to happen, if you can just hang on. Look at what the Bible describes. The Bible describes it as happening in our time and it has not happened yet because we are still in the winnowing process. But it is going to happen. Friends, I believe we are very close to this event happening.

Let us look at some texts. First of all look at Amos 9:13. "'Behold the days are coming says the Lord, 'when the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; the mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.'" What is this talking about?

Normally when you are a farmer, you have to plant. You have to cultivate and water and then after a time you will reap. But the time is coming when in the process of planting; the reaper will overtake the one planting. How is that going to happen? Turn over to Zechariah. Zechariah has something to say about this. This is one of the most exciting texts in the book of Zechariah. Zechariah 8:23. It says, "Thus says the Lord of Hosts: in those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, 'Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'"

You see, when the Loud Cry really gets under way, all of a sudden, this little group of people that people thought were nobody, all of a sudden it is going to explode all over the world. People are going to look at this and they are going to make a choice. They are going to see the ecumenical movement and they are going to see a choice. They can go with the ecumenical movement or they can go with the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

People are going to look at that. And people that have been studying their Bibles and praying are going to say; "This is where the Lord's people are. They are keeping the commandments. They are following the religion of Jesus. They are following the Bible." And it says that ten men from all languages of the nations are going to grab hold of every one who is a Jew--who is that? We are spiritual Israel. They are going to grab hold of every one who is a Jew and they are going to say, "We are going with you because we have heard that God is with you."

How big is that going to be? We have no idea, only God knows how this is going to be fulfilled. This has not been fulfilled yet, but it is going to be. It is in the Bible. Turn to Isaiah. Isaiah has some of the most striking things to say about this development. You see, when God salvages something, He does not just fix up the broken pieces. He makes it better than it was at the first.

Ellen White says that the plan of salvation will resolve in bringing us into closer fellowship with God than if we had never fallen. I cannot explain those kinds of things. But when God salvages something, He makes it better that it was the first time. Look what it says here in Isaiah--we are not going to read all the Bible texts--Joel has a lot to say about this, too. We are not going to look in the book of Joel.

But let us look in Isaiah 66. This is a stupendous Bible promise. This is about Zion, about God's people in the last days. We will start reading in verse 5. "Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at His word: your brethren who hated you, who cast you out for My name's sake, said, 'Let the Lord be glorified, that we may see your joy,' but they shall be ashamed."

Has that happened? That is happening right now. Your brethren who hated you, they have cast you out. They said, You are not part of the church any more. Then they said, "Let the Lord be glorified, that we may see your joy, but they shall be ashamed. The sound of noise from the city! A voice from the temple! The voice of the Lord, Who fully repays His enemies! Before she was in labor, she gave birth; before her pain came, she delivered a male child. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her children. Shall I bring to the time of birth, and not cause delivery?' says the Lord. 'Shall I who cause delivery shut up the womb?' says your God. Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all you who love her; Rejoice for joy with her, all you who mourn for her; that you may feed and be satisfied with the consolation of her bosom, that you may drink deeply and be delighted with the abundance of her glory."

Oh, friends, something is going to happen that people will not be able to believe. They are going to say, What is this? Before she travailed, she had a child. Before she went into labor she already had the child. Can you have a nation be born in one day? But it is going to happen. Something is going to happen that people cannot believe. They are going to say, This cannot happen. You cannot have a baby without even going into labor; just boom and you have already had it. You cannot do that. That has never been heard of. Who has ever heard of such a thing?

And who has ever heard of a nation being born in one day? Who has ever heard of that? It takes hundreds of years for a nation to develop into a power. Oh, no. Something is around the corner, friend, that is going to be absolutely unbelievable and mind-boggling. This text is going to be fulfilled.

"Before she was in pain? Yes. Shall a nation be born in one day? Yes. Oh, friend, do not be discouraged. Do not be discouraged because we are in the winnowing process. When the winnowing process is over, around the corner, something wonderful is going to happen. I just want to have a little part in it.

I have to go today, but I hope that you will have wonderful meetings as you meet together to discuss and pray about church organization. By the way, when the work is finished, God's people are going to be organized. God is not going to take a bunch of independent atoms to heaven or even independent churches. That is not going to happen.

When the winnowing process is over, there is going to be an explosion, a spiritual explosion. Ellen White says the nations will be shaken to their center. Every single person between six and seven billion people in the world is going to hear the three angels' messages. They are all going to hear it. Not over a fifty-year-period. Oh, no. It is going to happen fast.

You and I must be prepared to be surprised and to hang on. Do you want to be part of what God is about to do? You see, back in the disciples' day, if you did not hang on during the winnowing process, you did not get to be part of what happened later. You did not get to be part of Pentecost. And, friends, the Latter Rain is coming. When the Latter Rain is coming, it is going to be greater than Pentecost. You have been promised that.

The Bible says it will be more abundant. Do you want to be ready? Do you want to be part of it? I am willing to be the doorkeeper or any humble position that the Lord gives me, but friends; I do not want to be passed by. I want to be part of this. Do you want to be part of it, too?

Remember, if you are shaken from the truth, you will not be part of it. I am not saying you will lose your soul. The Lord might figure out some way to save you yet, even if you have been misled, just like there were a multitude of priests that came in, but that multitude of priests were not there and did not get to partake of Pentecost. That was later. Would you like to be where the action is? Would you like to be where the Latter Rain falls and where the Loud Cry is given?

If you want this, you are going to have to hang on during this time of winnowing that we are going through. Let us kneel down and pray together before we go and ask the Lord to help us.