Message from SDARM-WUSU President for this coming Sabbath
Dear Brethren, Sisters, Young People and Friends,
What an amazing God we serve. Day by day we are seeing the fulfillment of the promises He has given us in the sure word of prophecy. As an Advent people we can rejoice even in the midst of crisis. “And it shall be said in that day,
Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation” (Isaiah 25:9). For 176 we have been preaching this message. And how rapidly are events fulfilling around us. Exactly as it was prophesied: “Great changes are soon to take place in our world, and the final movements will be rapid ones.”—Testimonies, vol. 9, p. 11.
But even though we have an assurance of salvation through the righteousness of Christ, we see challenges for the proclamation of the gospel. Does this deter us from the commission given to us? NO! We know our mission. We know our commission. We know who is trying to stop the proclamation of the gospel. But we know who will be victorious! God has blessed us with tools, so that even in a time such as this we do not need to stop sharing the message.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to communicate with the gospel workers throughout the Union, and we want to assure you that from all six units of the Union we are absolutely committed to continuing our work of proclaiming the gospel. We may alter our methods, but we have no intention of stopping our work. In fact, we are sure that the simple technologies available to us in this time should be utilized to the fullest to continue our work even if we cannot meet in person. “God will use ways and means by which it will be seen that He is taking the reins in His own hands. The workers will be surprised by the simple means that He will use to bring about and perfect His work of righteousness.”—Testimonies to Ministers, p. 300.
Now as never before we need God’s leading in helping us continue to proclaim the gospel message. For this reason we are announcing for March 21 a SPECIAL SABBATH OF PRAYER AND FASTING FOR THE PROCLAMATION OF THE PRESENT TRUTH IN OUR TIME throughout the SDARM Western US Union. We are joining with the Mexican Union in this appeal, and we invite other units in North America and around the world to do the same.
At the same time we want to encourage you to know that we are preparing sharing tools for you to use in your personal mission work. We have released one sharing video already on the current crisis and this Sabbath we will be launching morning and afternoon messages from the media ministry, 21st Missionary (21M), in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian to assist you in your home meeting and family worships. The Union Secretary will be sending you more details on how to access this by Friday. And to give you even more food, churches around the world are banding together to stream messages from their local media departments including a message Pr. Peter Lausevic, Regional Secretary for North America, will be sharing from Roanoke on Sabbath at 11:00am EST (8:00am PST).
As you can imagine we will be heavily relying on media in the coming weeks both to continue our work of sharing the gospel and maintaining our church fellowship. We hope that those of you have seen it are already sharing the first sharing video that was posted on THE MESSAGE, one of the special channels hosted by 21st Missionary. We are so thankful to the Lord that He opened the way for us to already have a media ministry in place before this crisis time began.
At the same time, we need you to understand that we will continue to need your help. Our media ministry has been supported primarily through the church budget, and this comes from offerings collected. With churches shuttered for the time being we are asking for your help to directly help fund the media ministry. In fact, we can see at this time that we need to hire at least one more person to deal with the volume of materials we need to provide so that we can keep sharing the gospel at this time. This includes all different forms of media as well as setting up systems so that Bible workers continue to give their Bible studies (by virtual means), etc. We also need to fund and support transitional educational platforms for the elementary school at Whispering Pines and the missionary school at Plymouth Leadership College. We are thankful that we already have a head start on these, but we need your support to ramp up to meet our current media needs.
Please, do not forget the media when you make your contributions. Many churches and units have implemented online methods for giving, and when you utilize these please designate a portion of your offering for “21st Missionary” or “media ministry.” You can also contribute directly through the 21M app.
Thank you in advance. We may need to alter techniques, but we will not stop sharing the present truth, so long as the door of mercy is opened.
David Zic, President
SDARM-WUSU