Inside Story for Friday 27th of September 2024

By Andrew McChesney

Purna faced a seemingly impossible task. He had volunteered to plant a church in an unentered district of a major South Asian city, and he didn’t know where to start. He had moved to the district after volunteering to serve as a Global Mission pioneer. But how could he share his love for Christ with his non-Christian neighbors?

“God, please help,” he prayed.

Purna prayed for a week, but he still didn’t know where to start. But he did know one thing. He couldn’t stand the stench on the road outside his house. Piles of garbage and puddles of dirty rainwater mingled on the road. One morning, he saw that the garbage had blocked the gutters, and filthy water was overflowing onto the road. He decided to do something. Taking a long bamboo pole, he began picking away the trash from the gutters.

As he worked, the neighbors noticed.

“Did the city government send you to clean the road?” someone asked.

Purna replied that he had not been hired to clean the road and that he simply lived on it. The neighbors were impressed. Nobody had ever cleaned the road before.

“You’re a good man,” a neighbor said. “We need you here.”

“Don’t ever leave here,” another said.

As he cleaned the road, Purna became a local celebrity. Everyone knew him and was talking about him. People invited him into their homes.

As he met the neighbors, he learned that one man was paralyzed on his left side. Purna, who had been trained in massage, offered to help. The man agreed, and Purna began to give massages. Every time they met, Purna prayed and then gave a massage. The man recovered fully.

Neighbors were amazed to see the man in such good health.

“Who healed you?” they asked.

“Oh, it was the good man who cleans our road!” the man replied.

Then the neighbors really wanted to get to know Purna. They began to ask for prayers and massages.

Today, Purna has accomplished the seemingly impossible and planted a church. Eleven people have been baptized, and 20 others are studying the Bible. “Please pray for God to help us serve Him more and more,” Purna said. “Even today, I am cleaning the road. If I see garbage stuck in the drains, I clean it up.”

Purna lives in a veiled country that Adventist Mission is not identifying so as to protect his work among a population often hostile to Christianity. Learn more about Global Mission pioneers on the Adventist Mission website: bit.ly/GMPioneers.

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/24c-13-inside-story-a-church-built-on-garbage/

Daily Lesson for Friday 27th of September 2024

Read Ellen G. White, “ ‘The Lord Is Risen,’ ” Pages 779–787; “Go Teach All Nations,” Pages 818–828, in The Desire of Ages.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

“To the believer, Christ is the resurrection and the life. In our Saviour the life that was lost through sin is restored; for He has life in Himself to quicken whom He will. He is invested with the right to give immortality. The life that He laid down in humanity, He takes up again, and gives to humanity. ‘I am come,’ He said, ‘that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.’ ‘Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.’ ‘Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.’ John 10:10; John 4:14; John 6:54.

“To the believer, death is but a small matter. Christ speaks of it as if it were of little moment. ‘If a man keep My saying, he shall never see death,’ ‘he shall never taste of death.’ To the Christian, death is but a sleep, a moment of silence and darkness. The life is hid with Christ in God, and ‘when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.’ John 8:51-52; Colossians 3:4.”—Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, Pages 786, 787.

Even atheist historians, those who cannot accept the reality of the Resurrection, admit not only that Jesus had been killed but that after His death many people claimed to have seen the resurrected Christ, and as a result they began the nucleus of what became the Christian church. Some, in an attempt to explain why they claimed this, said that Jesus had a twin brother or that the early disciples hallucinated, thinking that they saw Jesus. Others said that Jesus never really died but only swooned and then, later, revived. Another person claimed that aliens came down and took the body. For a look at all these arguments and how they don’t work, see Clifford Goldstein, Risen: Finding Hope in the Empty Tomb (Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press, 2021).

Discussion Questions

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/24c-13-further-thought-the-risen-lord/

Join the Hit the Mark panel as they discuss Sabbath School Lesson 13 – The Risen Lord. It’s the fastest hour of the week!

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/the-risen-lord-hit-the-mark-sabbath-school/

Daily Lesson for Thursday 26th of September 2024

The first words of Jesus to His disciples are recorded only in indirect discourse in Mark 16:14. He rebukes them for their unbelief and hardheartedness. This question of unbelief is not simply a modern problem. As we already have seen, the original disciples of Jesus struggled with belief (Matthew 28:17, John 20:24-29), and they were with Jesus in the flesh and saw, again and again, the miracles.

Image © Lifeway Collection at Goodsalt.com

But by various proofs, He demonstrated to them the reality of His resurrection. Then their testimony, combined with the evidence summarized in Monday’s study, forms a firm foundation for faith.

Jesus then commissions His disciples to take the gospel to the world. His command is expansive. They are to go to the entire world and proclaim the gospel to all creation. Jesus then explains the outcome of their work for weal and for woe—believers will be saved, unbelievers condemned.

Jesus also describes signs that will accompany the disciples’ work—casting out demons, speaking new languages, protection from harm, and healing the sick. Some people have mistakenly interpreted Mark 16:18 as an affirmation for Christians to show their faith by picking up venomous snakes. No such presumptuous action is authorized here. What Jesus is describing is protection when one is involved in mission, such as Paul’s service for others, as in Acts 28:3-6.

Of course, the Bible does not teach that Christians will always be protected from harm. At times God sees fit to work a miracle to further the gospel cause. But sometimes Christians suffer because of their witness. In that circumstance their patient endurance is another sign to unbelievers of the power of faith.

And then, after doing all He did here, “He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19, NKJV). Jesus ascended to sit at the right hand of God, the place of supreme power, for Jesus had defeated all the forces of evil.

Notice the last verse. Though they went “everywhere,” preaching the gospel, they did not go alone. “The Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen” (Mark 16:20, NKJV). He was with them then and promises to be with us now as we continue the work they started.

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/24c-13-go-into-all-the-world/

Daily Lesson for Wednesday 25th of September 2024

Almost all of Mark 16:9-20 has parallels to other passages in the New Testament—Mary Magdalene at the tomb seeing Jesus (Matthew 28:1,9-10; John 20:11-18; compare with Luke 8:2); two disciples see Him in the countryside (Luke 24:13-35); the 11 disciples are commissioned (Matthew 28:16-20, Luke 24:36-49, John 20:19-23).

Image © Review & Herald Publishing at Goodsalt.com

The first person to see Jesus alive was Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-18). Other women saw Him, as well (Matthew 28:8-10). It is significant that the first people to see the risen Lord were women. Because women in the ancient world did not have high status as witnesses, if the story were fabricated, it would have been much more likely to name men as the first witnesses. But it is not men, not the 11, but a woman. She goes to tell the good news to the disciples, but, not surprisingly, they do not believe her testimony, most likely because it seemed fantastic and also, unfortunately, because Mary was a woman.

Apologists for the resurrection story of Jesus have used this fact, that of women being the first ones to have seen Jesus, as powerful evidence for the veracity of the story.

Of course, if they were making the story up, why would they have made themselves look so bad? Jesus had to rebuke them for their “hardness of heart.” The Gospel accounts, from the time of His arrest to His appearances after the Resurrection, depict the followers of Jesus in a very negative light—fleeing, denying, disbelieving, and so forth. This would make no sense if the story were made up.

In contrast, their later bold and unwavering proclamation of the risen Christ, and the hope it offers everyone, presents powerful evidence for the veracity of their claims.

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/24c-13-appearing-to-mary-and-others/