Break Every Yoke

by Elder David Bauer

*From Silver Lake, CA Camp Meeting, September 11, 1981

I would like to have you turn to a text that talks about the question of the Book of Life, although this first text in Exodus the thirty-second chapter and the thirty-second verse does not mention it. Do you remember the experience of Moses where the children of Israel had sinned? And God said, Look, let me destroy them. Let them go and I will make of you a new beginning and a new nation and you will be the promised people.

And here is what Moses said, "And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin. . . ; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou has written." Exodus 32:31, 32. There is a book, friends, that has the names of God's people. And Moses was willing if God would not forgive the children of Israel for the golden calf, gods of gold, friends.

He said, Look, I do not want to be a big leader. I do not want my descendants to be the promised people and the great nation that is going to receive the covenant. If you cannot forgive the sin of the children of Israel, he said, You blot me out of the Book of Life. Do you know what that means? That means that he gives up his right to heaven.

And God then said what His policy is. "And the Lord said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book." Now how many of you have not sinned against God? That is the way to get your name out of the Lamb's Book of Life, right? We are all sinners. So your name goes into the Book of Life, friends. Your name can go out of the Book of Life if you are a sinner and what hope is there for us? If we have sinned against God, our name goes out.

Well, let us take a look at the other end of the Bible. Revelation the third chapter, verse five. Here we find how to keep your name in the Lamb's Book of Life. "He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels."

Now this is in brief in two texts the doctrine of the Investigative Judgment. You get your name in the Lamb's Book of Life. If you continue in sin, your name will be taken out of the Lamb's Book of Life. But if you overcome, it will be left in the Lamb's Book of Life. Very simple. Now there has to be then an investigation of the names in the Lamb's Book of Life, right?

And it makes a difference, friends, whether you are continuing in sin or whether you overcome. Now if I took the position that evangelical Adventists take that you cannot stop sinning, then, of course, I do not want an Investigative Judgment because my name will be blotted out if I cannot stop sinning. So, along with their idea that you cannot stop sinning, they have to do away with the idea of an Investigative Judgment because if they do not, friends, the people are all doomed to be lost who accept the idea that they cannot stop sinning.

But if you believe that you can overcome, then your name will be left in the Lamb's Book of Life. If it is left in the Lamb's Book of Life, you are going to be in a select group of people in the end. Would you like to read about them? So turn to Revelation 13:8. "All that dwell on the earth shall worship him." Whom? Well, the first beast of Revelation 13. Who is that? Well it is the Papacy and indirectly it is the devil.

". . . shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Now, friends, the select group of people and only those who overcome and whose names are left in the Lamb's Book of Life, they are the only ones that will not worship the devil. It is important that your name remain in the Lamb's Book of Life.

Then we come to the fourth text. How do you get your name in the Lamb's Book of Life? How do you know that it is there? I tell you, friends, I have actually cringed and felt like standing up and saying, No, it is not so, when I have been in Adventist meetings and especially when it comes to a baptism or the appeal in evangelistic meetings. And I have heard the minister say, As soon as you are baptized and voted into the Seventh-day Adventist Church, your name is inscribed in letters of gold in the Lamb's Book of Life.

No, friends, that is not how you get your name in the Lamb's Book of Life. I dare say that the majority of people who are members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church never have their names put in the Lamb's Book of Life. I would like to have you turn to Philippians the fourth chapter and the third verse. "And I entreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are [Where?] in the book of life."

Now, friends, you have to be a fellow-labourer, a true yokefellow and then you may be assured that your name is in the Lamb's Book of Life. In other words, if you want to have your name in the Lamb's Book of Life, it is not a matter of baptism and being voted into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It is a matter of accepting the invitation of Christ found in the eleventh chapter of the gospel of Matthew and the last three verses where He says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you."

You must, friends, take the yoke of Christ if you hope to have your names inscribed in the Lamb's Book of Life. You must be a true yokefellow, wearing the yoke of Jesus and no other yoke. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Now there are many other yokes in the Bible and in the world today. Back in the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, and incidentally in Series B, 24 the same chapter that I preached from yesterday, The Great Controversy, it says the entire fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah is the message for this time. It is on page 1. "The whole of the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah is to be regarded as a message for this time, to be given over and over again." Not just once.

The part of the fifty-eighth chapter that I want to talk to you about is the question of yokes because we get down to the sixth verse. And after saying what the children of Israel were doing was not what God wanted, he says, This is what I want. "Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?" Isaiah 58:6, because you cannot wear two yokes at a time.

Now, friends, the yokes that Isaiah calls to be broken are the thing and the things that for many, many years I did not understand and I do not believe that most people sitting here tonight understand them. I do not believe that the people of the denomination or the leadership in particular understand what they are talking about and what this appeal means.

Now there is more than one yoke. There is the yoke of Christ. If you are wearing that yoke, then you may be positive and certain that your name is in the Lamb's Book of Life. If you are wearing any other yoke, you have no assurance at all that your name is in the Lamb's Book of Life. You may say, I am wearing the yoke of Christ. For years, friends, I thought that I was wearing the yoke of Christ, and I was not.

You know, Christ says His burden is light. There is one big difference between the yoke of Christ and the burden of Christ and that of any other yoke that you can find. Here, I will read it again. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is [What?] easy, and my burden is [What?] light." Matthew 11:29, 30.

Would you like to hear what Christ had to say about another yoke in His time? Well, if we go a little further forward in the book of Matthew we find that Christ gives a little sermon on the church of His day. The twenty-third chapter beginning with the first verse. "Then spake Jesus unto the multitude, and his disciples, Saying, The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. For they bind [What?] heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers." Matthew 23:1-4.

But what was the purpose of their life? "But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the uppermost seats or rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, And greetings in the markets, and to be called of man, Rabbi, Rabbi." Verses 5-7

Now, friends, this is a description of another yoke and it is what kind of a yoke? It is a yoke of bondage of heavy burdens. All other yokes, friends, except the yoke of Christ is a yoke of bondage of heavy burdens and these are the yokes that we are called to break in the book of Isaiah the fifty-eighth chapter. Now this was a political yoke that they had foisted on the people, or was it a church yoke?

They were sitting where? Not on the throne of King David but in Moses' seat. Now, friends, this is something that I puzzled and puzzled and puzzled over because in my reading I came to an interesting page. I ought to give you a lot of background on this, but we do not have the time. On page 480 and top of 481 of Testimonies to Ministers we have an address by Ellen G. White.

You know, friends, sometimes I think we should not use her name. I think we ought to say we have an address from the Holy Spirit to the Adventist Church, because that is what she says we do in volume five. She says that if you slight the testimonies and belittle them you have thereby insulted the Holy Spirit. I take this as a message from God.

"I write thus fully, because I have been shown. Testimonies to Ministers, 480. By Whom? Well, Who did she say has shown her these things? The Holy Spirit I would say this now. In my studies of the early pioneers and the history of the Adventist Church and Ellen G. White, I find that Ellen G. White did not have, as you all know, a formal education. I find that Ellen G. White did not go around looking for problems in the church to write testimonies to people about.

It was her nature to always look on the good side and always give people the benefit of the doubt and always be on the positive side and she had difficulty writing these kinds of testimonies. So much so that she had to be warned once that if she did not write them just as they were given and she lessened the effect or watered them down from their severity, that the blood of souls would be on her garments and she would not be in heaven.

When Sister White writes these things, friends, it is the Holy Spirit, not Sister White. She was not a genius that knew all the things that the brethren were doing and all that was going on in the church. They had to be revealed to her by God. So she says, "I write thus fully, because I was shown that ministers and people are tempted more and more to trust in finite man for wisdom, and to make flesh their arm. To Conferences and Presidents, and men in responsible places." Ibid., 480.

Now, whom is she talking to? To the world? She is talking to the leaders in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. "I bear this message: Break the bands and fetters that have been placed upon God's people." Ibid., 480, 481. I am afraid, friends, that most Seventh-day Adventists have been baptized and taken a church yoke on their necks instead of the yoke of Jesus. I did. And I fully believed, friends, that for most of my life that the yoke of the church and the yoke of Jesus were one and the same.

I believe that most Seventh-day Adventists and most church members, Reformed Adventists, whatever group you belong to, if you belong to any group, believe that the yoke that they have taken in joining that particular group is the yoke of Jesus. And when I first read this, it did not fit my thinking. It did not fit what I wanted to believe. In fact, the first time I read Testimonies to Ministers it was one of the old professors that had worked with Ellen G. White, Doctor Wolfkill.

He said, You are not going to get a grade. He did not discuss the book. He just said it is required outside reading. I read it through when I was about eighteen or nineteen, I forget which now, and it was so foreign to anything that I had heard or anything that fitted into my frame of thinking that it did not register. This is the book I had in college. I do not think I put the date in here, but this was bought about forty years ago.

It is in better condition than the other books that I have because Testimonies to Ministers and what it said just did not fit into my thinking. So I left it on the shelf. There was a lot in the Spirit of Prophecy when I first read them through that I read and forgot. I did not know what to do with it. It did not suit my thinking, my beliefs or anything else. What I am going to say this evening, friends, will probably not suit your thinking or your beliefs.

So, she says, "I bear this message: Break the bands and fetters that have been placed upon God's people." Ibid., Every Seventh-day Adventist according to this testimony is wearing bands and fetters put on them by Conference Presidents and men in responsible positions. "To you the word is spoken, [She quotes Isaiah 58] 'Break every yoke,'" How many? Every one except Christ's.

Because you cannot wear the yoke of Christ, friends, until you have broken from off your neck every other yoke. Whether it be the yoke of the church, or the yoke of the American Medical Association, or Labor Unions, or Fraternal organizations, or the Rotary Club, or the Kiwanis Club or you name it. All of these organizations put a yoke upon your neck. Yet we do not perceive this because our thinking is not tuned to it.

Like I say, I worked for the Church for twenty-seven years as a minister. I grew up in the Church. Before I went into the ministry, I worked at the Glendale Sanitarium. I never worked at the Glendale Adventist Hospital, friends. That came after I quite working there. When I worked there, it was a sanitarium doing sanitarium work. The last summer I worked there, they started converting it into a hospital. Before that, it was not a hospital.

And I worked in the academy and I went through our schools, friends, and I did not know that I was wearing a yoke. I thought I was wearing the yoke of Jesus. I had my doubts at times because the yoke of Jesus was always described as [What?] light, easy. So to you is spoken the word, break every yoke. Now what yoke is she talking about? Well, she goes into it rather lightly here. "Unless you cease the work of making man amenable to man." Ibid.

Have you ever been called to account to the Church for what you did? Have they ever come to you and said, You cannot do this? Or You do that? "Unless you cease the working of making man amenable to man, unless you become humble in heart, and yourselves learn the way of the Lord as little children, the Lord will divorce you from His work." Ibid.

We are to treat one another as brethren, as fellow laborers. In other words fellow yokefellows, as Paul calls it, wearing the yoke of Christ, not any other yoke. "As men and women who are, with us seeking for light and understanding of the way of the Lord, and who are jealous for His glory. God declares, 'I will be glorified in My people.'" Ibid. Friends, there is going to be a group of people in this world who are going to throw off every other yoke and wear only the yoke of Christ and glorify God, and the world is going to be lightened with the message they bring. Is that not what it says?

So "God declares, 'I will be glorified in my people;' but the self-confident management of men has resulted in putting God aside, and accepting the devisings of man" Ibid. That is exactly what the Pharisees got bawled out for all the time while Jesus was here, friends. Ye teach for doctrines [What?] the traditions or commandments of men. When I was born, friends, there was no General Conference working policy. There was no General Conference educational policy. There was no church manual.

When people wanted to know what to do, they only had two places to go: the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy. When I was three years old, the brethren put together the first General Conference Constitution and By-laws and Working Policy. It consisted of eighty-three pages. I bought one the last summer when I was -no, I ordered it. I am sorry. I ordered one. I did not get it, but at Pacific Union College I bought one this summer.

One of the professors had ordered them. You can order one if you want it, the General Conference Constitution and By-laws. I do not remember the exact number of pages but now it is over five hundred pages of rules and regulations laid down to be followed by you and the leaders of this church, because bureaucracy always multiplies itself. If time goes on, it will probably expand to a thousand and the next thing we will have to do is train scribes to interpret it!

We need them right now, friends, because I used to have quite a bit of fun in committee meetings when the brethren would be laying some plans, I would say, Do you not know that in the Working Policy it says this. And they would say, No, we do not, because nobody, friends, can remember five hundred pages of rules and regulations--not even the leaders.

I checked a few years back on the educational policies. So I went over to the church school and I pulled open the teachers' file and I pulled out the Pacific Union Conference Educational Code, as they call it. Then I pulled out the supplement because, friends, the rules of men are never adequate and consequently they are always adding to them. I counted one thousand pages, friends. Now this was not fine print like the General Conference Working Policy, this was mimeographed pages. One thousand pages of rules to govern our colleges and church schools in this denomination

When I was nine years old, they issued the first Church Manual. The statement as to the reason for voting to issue a church manual was, We hope this will stop the headlong plunge of the church into apostasy. Has it? Elder McElhaney had a burden. He was not the first one. J. N. Andrews was one of the first men who had a burden to stop apostasy by issuing a man made code of rules to govern the church.

The first Church Manual was advisory. It had no authority, no binding, nobody had to follow it or pay any attention to it. But in 1946, and I had been in the ministry one year, they gave the full authority of the highest authority in the Church, the General Conference in session, to the Church Manual. This is a yoke, friends, made by men and put on your neck and on their own necks.

Would you like to know what the apostle Peter and the brethren in Jerusalem had to say about the yoke of the Jewish Church? Turn to the book of Acts. I was not going to use this text. It might possibly take me a minute to find it here. The tenth verse of the fifteenth chapter of Acts. The people in Jerusalem were starting down the same headlong rush to put a yoke besides the yoke of Christ upon the church.

The tenth verse says, "Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples?" How long did it take the early Christian Church to start putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples? Why, they had just barely gotten started. A yoke "which [What?] neither our fathers nor we were able to bear." Acts 15:10. Oh, friends, all human yokes are heavy, difficult. The yoke of Jesus and His burden is light.

You may say, Well, I do not know, Elder Bauer, I do not think I have a yoke on my neck. Maybe you feel quite comfortable with it, you have gotten so used to it. Or maybe like I did for many years, I believed that the yoke of the Church was the yoke of Jesus. Sometimes I wondered how He ever thought to say that His yoke was easy and light, though. I used to really puzzle over those two words describing the yoke of Jesus when I had the two confused.

Last January I was down in Jamaica and it was a rather interesting experience. The man who asked me to come down there, I do not know, the Lord intervened and anyway, we did not make connections and I ended up with another Adventist family, purely by accident. They had asked me to take the books, old Spirit of Prophecy books, whatever I could get together down there. And somebody had just passed away and the children had sent me a box of their Spirit of Prophecy books. So I bound them up and I was carrying this carton all over the airports and around.

I had taken my few books to give some studies and I never contacted that man. But I did talk to this other Adventist family. They had never seen this little book here, Series B, Nos. 2 and 7. I prized mine very highly. I had had it for twenty-five years and it was all cross-referenced and underlined. I could find anything I wanted to in it, right like that. Something told me, Give that book to these poor Jamaicans down here who do not have it or know anything about it.

So I gave them my marked copy. When I got home, I went to Sister Patterson and got a new one. Then I had to read it again. That was the best thing that ever happened to me. Sometimes I have been tempted to throw all my notes away so I would have to study everything over again.

So I find here in Series B, No. 2, something that shocked me when I read it. It has been there the whole time. I had read it when I went through and marked it the first time. Then I went by my markings and missed it for fifteen years. So do not, I am not saying do not mark your books, but do not just read what you marked, like I did. I have been puzzling over this question of yokes for years and years. What was Sister White talking about?

Well, at least I know that we cannot be amenable to mankind. I know that making men responsible to man puts God aside and that was at least part of the yoke. How many of you have seen the book, Omega? How many of you have read it? Well, it is about the Alpha and the Omega. Now this is written, friends, to the people under the Alpha and it gives you an idea that you will not find in the book, Omega.

It tells you what was wrong with the church at that time. It says here, "For years" and since the Alpha had to do with our positions primarily and page 14, Series B, No. 2, "For years our physicians have been trained to think that they must not give expression to sentiments that differ from those of their chief. Oh, that they had broken this yoke." Series B, 28.

The idea that you cannot express an idea that differs with the pastor or the church is a yoke that you have to break. I cannot break the yoke from off your neck unless I put it there. And even then, you may not let me remove it. Only you, friends, can break a yoke off your neck. These physicians, friends, had accepted a yoke which required them to agree with the boss, the head of the Battle Creek Sanitarium and Hospital, which required them even though they differed with him to keep their mouths shut.

Sister White says, "Oh that they had broken the yoke." Ibid. Have you worn that yoke and kept your mouth shut? Have you accepted that yoke? You had better break it. Because they did not break it off, here is what she says. "Oh, that they had called sin by its right name!" Ibid. Have you ever been quiet when you should have spoken out and called sin by its right name? A yoke you have to break, friends. A yoke the church puts on your neck because I know they put it on my neck and when I threw it off, they immediately rushed in to put it back on.

It used to make me sick in the stomach, friends, the fact that the leadership would urge the preachers to reprove and rebuke the laity but if we spoke one thing in reproof or rebuke to them, we were of the devil, faultfinders, criticizers and condemners. It made me sick. You people, I could bawl you out, tell you how bad you were, tell you that you had to dig deeper in your pockets and everything and the brethren would sit and say, Amen.

But if I turned to them and said the same things, then I was a faultfinder and condemner and a criticizer. It made me sick because they are human beings just like you. The first workers' meeting I went to they discussed a lot of Conference policy. To close the meeting the Conference President said, Do not tell the laity. Six weeks before I was one of those laymen who could not be told. What made the difference that I could not be told? I was getting a paycheck, friends.

Do not tell the laity the policies of the Conference. That irked me, so I said, Why? Why not? They said, Because they would not understand and they would get wrong impressions. I do not believe that, friends. I do not believe it. Oh, friends, the yoke to keep quiet and not disagree with your boss, your leader, so that you do not call sin by its right name is a yoke you have to break before you can wear the yoke of Christ.

Then she continues there. "They would not be regarded in the heavenly courts as men who, though bearing weighty responsibilities, have failed of speaking the truth in reproof of that which has been in disobedience to God's Word." Ibid. This yoke that the brethren impose upon the necks of the ministry, and upon the necks of the laity, and anybody else, is a yoke of silence when it comes to denominational policy and procedure.

If you dared to open your mouth, you were a faultfinder, condemner and criticizer. They worked on me for years to silence me. When they did not succeed, finally their last attempt to silence me was, Brother Bauer, you will never again speak in the Seventh-day Adventist Church to teach them the things you know. I said, What is wrong with what I know? We are not arguing with you that it is wrong, you know too much and you will never again preach in an Adventist church.

But they were willing to keep me on the payroll, full minister's salary and I said, Doing what? They said, We are going to send you out to the middle of Nevada. That is just about as far as you can get from where there are very many people. And you are going to go to Austin. Have you ever driven through Austin? Oh, I will get some Bible studies; I will get some meetings started. And they said, No, you will not! You are not to give a Bible study or hold a meeting because we do not want you teaching anyone what you know.

Who said that to me? The Conference Committee. Well, I decided I would try it and I protested and we finally worked out a compromise and I went to Saint George, Utah, where the Mormons had killed the previous Adventist pastor that was down there. The brethren were glad to send me. I was warned by a Mormon lady who was then attending the Tahoe Church, when she found out that I was going to Saint George.

She said, I do not want you to go down there. I said, Why not? and she said, Well, Saint George is the second temple of the Mormon Church and the Mormons down there are old fashioned and they believe in persecution. This was a Mormon lady telling me this. When I got to Saint George, I started ringing doorbells. The first people I called on were the people who were not Mormons. They were Baptists, Methodists, and Pentecostals.

I would ring the doorbell. They would come to the door and you could tell they were tense and on edge. I would say, I am not a Mormon and they would relax, Oh, Brother, come in. It did not matter whether I was an Adventist or not, friends. I would come in and sit down and they would say, What church are you with. And I would say I was a Seventh-day Adventist and about the first words they would say were, You know they killed the last Adventist minister that was down here, so be careful.

Well, I went to Saint George and we had some Adventist girls who had married Mormon young men because the Mormons have told their young men to marry non-Mormon girls, especially Adventist girls because they already do not drink and they do not smoke and they believe in health reform and they make good wives. Incidentally, I found in Saint George that they hold Ellen G. White in high esteem.

But they stop with her books on health. They have her books on health, friends. One of the branches of the Mormon Church even sells her books on health to their members. Now when I say branches, in Saint George I found out that there are eighty-six different branches, groups of Mormons. The only thing that holds them together is the genealogy record in Salt Lake City.

Outside of that, they call each other apostates. Some of these groups actually use Ellen G. White's health reform books because they say they are the best. Consequently, I had no problem giving these people other books by Ellen G. White, like The Great Controversy, Steps to Christ. So I found these Adventists and I rented the Southern Baptist Church and the first Sabbath it came out in the newspaper that we were holding services.

I got a phone call from the Mormon lady who taught me a great deal about Mormonism and the symbols that Elder Santee had up here on the origin of the Mormon religion. She is still a Mormon. She mastered all the ancient languages in order to find out where Mormonism came from and where the symbols they use came from, friends. She learned Sanskrit and Hebrew and Aramaic and cuneiform and hieroglyphics and Greek.

There is a satanic hold through the genealogy part that holds these people together. As I said, all eighty-six are held together by that one thing. That is the binding thing in Mormonism, friends. It is posterity and ancestor worship, friends. I will not go into what she told me, but, friends, I got a group of nineteen people there coming to Sabbath School and Church.

I thought, Well, this is really good. So I went over to visit my children who were attending Loma Linda University at the time one weekend and swung by on the way back to go by the Union Conference Office. I went in to see the President of the Union. I had known him for years. I went in and sat down. He said, Well, how are things going? And all this.

He was the man that had gotten me in and he said, You work for the Union, do you not? And I said, Everything is going fine. He says, Well, good, what are you doing? I said, Well, I rented the Southern Baptist Church [I was paying for it out of my pocket and the people there. The Conference was not helping.] I said, I have got nineteen people coming. He got a funny look on his face. He said, We do not want you to do that. We do not want you to do that.

I got to thinking about that. About two months later I went to the brethren and I said, Look, I am not going to work for you and take your paycheck and do nothing, if that is what you want me to do. I asked for a Leave of Absence. But it was not, friends, until the brethren disfellowshipped me that the yoke of the Church was actually fully removed.

I am not saying you have to be disfellowshipped. But I would like to see the Adventists fully remove the yoke of the church from off his neck and not be disfellowshipped. Because all you have to do is to throw the yoke that I read to you about here, friends. The one that you do not disagree with the leadership, you do not disagree with the Conference President or the Pastor or the Church Board. You do not call sin by its right name; you do not reprove things that are contrary to God's Word.

Some of my friends from the General Conference came to me and they said, We want you to go back to work for us. They are my friends. I went to school with them, academy, and college, worked with them in the ministry. They said, We want you to come and help us straighten things out. I thought, Well, maybe because things did change at the last General Conference in a lot of ways for good and bad.

I went home that night and I dreamed. In that dream all of the reasons why I cannot go back to denominational work were presented to me. I can sum it up in just a few words. I cannot again put that yoke upon my neck. I cannot promote unscriptural things. I cannot see unscriptural practices carried out without speaking out in protest against them. For example, friends, I have known about the Davenport scandal for fifteen years.

If I protest against such things, like I said, the brethren say that I know too much. I cannot require that every student that attends a church school where I am pastor takes out a General Conference Accident Insurance Policy, which requires and includes a fifteen hundred dollar life insurance clause, which is forbidden in the Spirit of Prophecy. When you send your young people to Academy, they do not even ask you whether you want to purchase it. It is included in the fee. Or college. Or Andrews University.

I cannot support things contrary to the Spirit of Prophecy without speaking out. If I speak out, I am not welcome. The reason the Union Conference President gave when I confronted him one time that they could not give me another church to teach these things was, he said, We cannot trust you to support the Conference program, and I had to heartily agree with him. The only program that I hope that anybody can trust me to support is the one found in the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy. That which is found in the Church Manual and Working Policy, friends, I cannot support if it is contrary to the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy.

So continuing in this chapter that I had to read over again, I go across the page to page 15 and again addressing the people under the Alpha of apostasy, here is what was wrong that caused the church to go into the Alpha of apostasy and it says. "Our physicians have lost a great deal out of their lives because they have [1] seen wrong transactions and [2] heard wrong words spoken, [3] and seen wrong principles followed, and have not spoken in reproof, for fear that they would be repulsed." Ibid. 29.

Now the yoke of man, friends, silences you so that you will not object to a policy of the church that is contrary to the Spirit of Prophecy. Like the football games that are carried on at all of our campuses of all of our colleges and they are playing other schools, friends. Go back in our history and you will find that at the time that Sister White said, Do not send your children to Battle Creek, that is what was going on at Battle Creek College.

Any anything else, friends, that is contrary to the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy is a yoke of man that says, do not speak out, be a loyal Seventh-day Adventist. Are you wearing that yoke? Have you refrained from speaking out about something? Well, as it says here, you "have seen wrong transactions." Maybe you have sat like the monkeys that the Japanese think are so great. You know, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. That is a pagan doctrine, friends, that is in all of the Buddhists and Shinto temples over in Japan. That is where it came from. It is not scriptural.

Sister White says, Have you seen? Not, have you put your hands over your eyes so you will not see. She says, Have you heard? Not put your hands over your ears so you will not hear. And have you seen wrong principles followed? And have not spoken in reproof, because of what? Because you thought you might be repulsed, called a condemner, criticizer, and faultfinder?

It worked, friends, for years. It worked on me. I wore a yoke of silence when I should have spoken out and yet the brethren always did think I was speaking out too much. But I kept quiet too often, friends. The last, I suppose, ten years of my ministry I spoke out against life insurance and churches that I pastored voted not to buy General Conference life insurance and accident insurance plans.

The brethren threatened to close the school. They said that I would threaten the whole Conference insurance program. They called me disloyal. They called me everything in the book they used to call names by. I could not go along. But I had to be quiet enough to keep getting that paycheck coming in, friends. The yoke of silence, do not speak in reproof. The term they loved to use is, leave the brethren in God's hands.

If things need adjusting at the heart of the work, what? O. K., friends, because you folks did not speak out, because you have worn this yoke of silence, God is taking care of it in the newspapers of today for the whole world to read about the corruption among the leadership of the Seventh-day Adventists in their investments. That is not anywhere near the whole story. I have not seen an article yet that mentioned the kickbacks and the favors that Davenport did for them, if they would invest church funds with him.

Yes, God will take care of it, friends, but how much better it would have been if we had taken care of it inside instead of waiting to let God splash it across the newspaper headlines and in the courts. And everything wrong with the Seventh-day Adventist Church that for years we have worn the yoke of silence and the brethren have eased us by saying, God will take care of it. Everything wrong with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, friends, is going to be taken care of, either by God as He has taken care of this Davenport deal or you folks are going to speak up and take care of it before God goes that far.

It is all prophesied, friends, in the books. I think this is the one I want. Volume 5. In here, Sister White in the chapter on the sealing makes an interesting statement. "The abominations for which the faithful ones…" Now these are the ones, friends, that did not wear the yoke of silence. Page 211, the bottom paragraph. "The abominations for which the faithful ones were sighing and crying were all that could be discerned by finite eyes, but by far the worst sins, those which provoked the jealousy of the pure and holy God, were unrevealed. The great searcher of hearts knoweth every sin committed in secret by the workers of iniquity. These persons come to feel secure in their deceptions and, because of His long suffering, say that the Lord seeth not, and then act as though He had forsaken the earth. But He will detect their hypocrisy and will open before others those sins which they were so careful to hide." Testimonies, vol. 5, 212.

We have done it, friends, we have done it. I used to read that and say, Why do you not do it, Lord? Why did the church get into the mess that it is in? Because we have worn the yoke of silence for fear of being repulsed. We have been taught to accept and not speak out. We have been like those monkeys of the Japanese. We have put out hands over our eyes and stuck our fingers in our ears, literally, friends.

A few years back at Lake Tahoe after church one day, the deacon and the elder came to me, they were new. They had not been there and they did not know what had gone on. And they said, We want to know what went on. And I started to tell them and they said, We do not believe it. I said, All right, fine, you can come over to the house and I will show you the documentation I have. That scared them. They said, We do not want to see it. Keep it! Covering their eyes.

Friends, there is no virtue in ignorance. There is no merit in silence. In fact, friends, if you do not wear the yoke of Christ and you insist on wearing this yoke imposed upon you by the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, which Sister White says, Break it. She called upon the leadership to take it off your necks. They have put it on your necks. The leadership has never taken it off your necks, even though she appealed almost a hundred years ago for them to put it off the necks of the people. You have got to take it off.

They will not take it off. Now God will remove that yoke from off the necks of the people if He has to, friends, the whole thing is going down the drain. The sad part is that it will frighten many people because they will feel so uncomfortable without a yoke. And without the yoke of Jesus, friends, they are lost. So they desperately cling to the idea that it is going through! It is going to get straightened out, when the prophet does not say any such thing.

On the contrary, friends, this is really another study. After describing the Omega of apostasy in here and this is one of the sad things about the book on Omega, published by the denomination, friends. They cannot say they did not know about it because Elder Pierson published this very paragraph in the Ministry Magazine and called it the Omega while he was General Conference President. And in his farewell address, which was published in the Review and Herald, he quoted the identical paragraph and called it the Omega.

Then somebody writes a book and I am not saying the writer did it or the editors. I do not know which and they did not include this paragraph, a description of the Omega in the book on the Omega. Can you imagine that? She says that they will put their dependence in human power, which without God is worthless. Elder Pierson omitted this statement when he had it published in the Ministry Magazine or the editors did. And he omitted this last statement in his farewell address to the General Conference because the brethren cannot accept this idea.

"Their foundation will be built on the sand, and storm and tempest will sweep away the structure." Because you have silently worn the yoke, friends, imposed upon you by the leadership of the Adventist Church, they have refused to take it off your neck and you have refused to take it off your neck. God is going to sweep the whole thing away. And you have no yoke from the Adventist Church.

The sad thing that I have observed is that people take the yoke off from their necks that is imposed by the Adventist Church and run right over to the Reformed Adventists and take their yoke and put it on their necks. And it is no better, not one whit. Or they run over to some other group and take and put that yoke on their necks. And, friends, nobody can put a yoke on your neck if you do not accept it. And put that yoke on their necks.

Back when I was a child, it was Houteff and the people put his yoke on their necks and it was a galling yoke, friends. Then Brinsmead came along and before long he had a yoke for them to wear and they wore that. Any yoke but Christ's, friends. Why are we that way. And you come to these meetings and people ask me, Where do we join?

And then they come to me and they want me to put a yoke on their necks by being their boss and telling them what to do and what to believe and making the decisions for them. As far as I know, you cannot get a yoke in these meetings. We do not have one. The only yoke we are interested in, friends, is that you put the yoke of Jesus on your neck. So that your name will be in the Lamb's Book of Life, because unless you are a true fellow yokefellow, you are not in the group whose names are in the Lamb's Book of Life.

They may be on the church records of some group or denomination because they wear that yoke. But they are not in the Lamb's Book of Life because they are not wearing the yoke of Christ. No man can serve two masters, right? For either he will, what? Hate the one and love the other or he will, what? Hold to the one and despise the other. Did you know that is exactly what Ellen G. White says will happen?

In Testimonies to Ministers, 363, a very important page and chapter on "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me." I wrote a letter in 1970, which I sent to Pierson, and the Union Conference and the Local Conference Committee in which I said, Brethren you have placed me in the position described in this paragraph. Then I quoted this paragraph. "When one who professes to be a representative of Christ engages in sharp dealing, in pressing men into hard places, those who are thus oppressed will either break every fetter of restraint, [and take the yoke off] or they will be led to regard God as a hard taskmaster."

This is the worst part. "They cherish hard feelings against God," because they think this hard yoke imposed by the church is God's yoke. "And the soul is alienated from Him, just as Satan planned." Ibid. It is important, friends, that you break every yoke. That is why it is in Isaiah 58. That is why Sister White says that the whole chapter is a message that should be repeated over and over again.

I wrote to the brethren and I said, Look, I have to make this choice. Either break every fetter or regard God as a hard taskmaster. Which do you expect that I am going to do? Now a lot of people do not know that this is in Testimonies to Ministers. They have not read it. But I knew it, friends, so I could intelligently make the decision. If I had not read this, I probably could not have made an intelligent decision.

That is why I had to ask the brethren to give me a leave of absence to get that yoke off my neck. Because I had to either regard God as a hard taskmaster and have my soul alienated from Him or take those fetters and restrictions that they had placed upon me off my neck. They could not or would not do it. So I had to do it. To this day, friends, they will not remove these yokes. It is up to you to make the decision.

Are you going to wear a yoke of human origin? The apostle said that the one that the Jews had was one that neither their fathers nor they could bear. It is so heavy, friends. And the yoke of Jesus is easy and light. You may say, But Brother Bauer, the church, the true church…. I think maybe I will bring in a little bit…No, I will not. I did not bring it.

This yoke was put on the necks of Adventists, friends, Brother Nicolici put up the date 1852, when the church became Laodicean and was very comfortable and lukewarm, and the devil came in and imposed the yoke upon the Adventist Church. Why? In order to get Laodiceans to do anything, you gotta crack the whip. And James White wrote objecting to the change that took place in the organization in 1873 and he said, The minister submits to be directed and sent out by a Conference President or Committee takes himself out of the hands of Christ.

The minister who submits to be directed or sent out by President or Conference Committee takes himself out of the hands of Christ. That is strong language, friends, but that is published in The Review and Herald, 1881, the year that James White died. James White died partly of a broken heart because the organization of which he was the architect in 1863 was completely reversed and changed in 1873 at the General Conference.

From that time on they imposed a yoke of human origin on the necks of God's people. That is why Sister White made the plea to the Conference Presidents and those in positions of authority to break the yoke off the necks of the people. The yoke, friends, was one of going along and keeping silent; one of authority and you taking orders and James White, the year he died, said, The minister that submits to that takes himself out of the hand of Christ.

Nobody else can take you out of the hands of Jesus. What does Paul say? For I am persuaded that [What can separate me from Christ?] nothing! If you are separated from Jesus, it is an act of your own. If you wear any yokes but Christ's yoke, it is because you took it. Maybe ignorantly, not knowing and maybe I have not convinced you tonight. That is not my job, friends, to convince you or convict you of anything, just present what is written and then you take the action.

We are living way down in this earth's history, friends. I used to hear and I have heard all my life, you know, ten minutes to midnight, minutes to midnight, it is just about here. Well, friends, if we were minutes to midnight back then, we are probably tenths of seconds now. It is late. There is an Investigative Judgment regardless of what these scholars with their Ph.D.'s are proclaiming in their false research.

Your name is going to be checked on. If you are continuing to wear the yoke of man, you are a sinner for you have broken the first commandment; Thou shalt have no other Gods before me. And your name will be removed from the Lamb's Book of Life. If you are wearing the yoke of Christ, you will be in the group of overcomers and your name will be left in the Lamb's Book of Life.

Sad to say, friends, we are so far down in the history of this earth that the Adventist Church is fulfilling that text in Revelation that says, They wondered after the beast. We have given the Pope a gold medal. We have employed graduates from Jesuit Colleges in our schools to teach our young people.

We are accepting Catholic concepts, terminology and I will tell you, when I read that statement of fundamental beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists as published in February Review and Herald last year, I could not believe the terminology that said that the Lord's Supper was a sacrament. That Baptism was a sacrament. That said that the foot washing was a means of grace. Terminology taken straight out of the Roman Catholic Catechism.

We did not even get those words, friends, from apostate Protestantism. Who wrote that? If it was not a Catholic, where were the watchmen in the Autumn Council in 1979 that O.K.'d it? The Conference Presidents, friends, make the majority in every Autumn or Annual Council. They O.K.'d that terminology. Where was their thinking? I will tell you where it was, friends. They were wearing the yoke of the Seventh-day Adventist Church that says you cannot differ with your leaders.

Consequently, they voted for sacraments in the Adventist Church that were means of grace! When I first spoke out against Questions on Doctrines back in 1957 and 1958, the Conference President called me in. I had merely stated that either the original statement of beliefs by Seventh-day Adventists, which Sister White O.K.'s was heresy or Questions on Doctrines because they contradict each other.

He called me in and he said, You called me a heretic! And I said, I did? I did not know that. How did I call you a heretic? He said, You said that either that or the book Questions on Doctrines was heresy and you said you chose to believe that the original statement was truth and Questions on Doctrines was heresy. And I said, How does that concern you? He said, I am one of the two hundred fifty men who received a mimeographed copy of Questions on Doctrines and O.K.'d it.

Now the man was an intelligent man and a Spirit of Prophecy man. I said, How did you O. K. that? Did you read it? And he said, No, I have confidence in the brethren. He was wearing the yoke that the Adventist Church wants everybody to wear and that is that you do not disagree with the leadership. In doing that, friends, he did not even both to check on it. He just plain O.K.'d it and he O.K.'d heresy.

And for years, friends, to speak against that book was to be either fired or disfellowshipped. But we kept right in there and it got so warm because some people broke the yoke and spoke against it and now it is not being printed any more. They quietly discontinued and disavowed. But they have not told you that in the Review and Herald. But that is what they tell me.

They have promised us that Movement of Destiny will meet the same fate because it is a far worse book with far more distortion of the truth. But how many preachers are wearing the yoke of silence, friends? Have you heard them speak out against these things? God pity the Adventist Church, friends. They are not wearing the yoke of Jesus. They are wearing a yoke of man's origin, the kind the Pharisees used, the kind the disciples said a yoke which neither we nor our fathers could bear.

Friends, the yoke of human origin is a galling yoke. It is why ministers have nervous breakdowns. And incidentally, the last statistic I checked, undertaking all of the denominations into consideration, the ministry is next to the medical profession in the number of nervous breakdowns, and then comes teachers. It is why ministers get ulcers. It is why ministers get all of the diseases that we call degenerative diseases, which are not caused by infection or germs but by malfunctions of the body.

And ministers, friends, get them. While I was pastoring the Tahoe Church, three ministers quit the Reno Church pastorate with nervous breakdowns. The yokes of men, friends, are not easy and their burdens are not light. The yoke of the Adventist Church is not an easy yoke and the burden is not light.

I have had ministers come to me and say, We wish we could do what you are doing. And I say, Well, why not? They cannot seem to get the courage to take the yoke off their necks, usually because it means giving up their paychecks. Friends, pray for these people. They are lost until they take the yoke of Jesus and His yoke alone. And they do not know it. They are as ignorant of the fact as the Catholics are that they are wearing the yoke of the Pope.

I really, after going to Japan, friends, I can understand why our young people are attracted to Buddhism and Zenbuddhism in particular. I was curious. So I investigated while I was over there. The Japanese look at us. We are a Christian nation and they say, In Japan the psychiatrist and the psychologist cannot make a living. We do not need them. That is what their religion does for them.

Do you know how? It removes guilt from things that we feel guilty about and it O.K.'s things that we would not, well, I should not say, we would not think of doing. But that if we do them, they begin to eat inside. But in the Buddhist religion, there is no such thing, friends.

Another reason I decided I could not longer work for the Conference was that it was beginning to eat away inside of me. I know a minister who has had this eat away on him and he is all crippled up with arthritis. That is a degenerative disease, friends, caused by the effect of the mind upon the body, usually. Now there is inflammatory arthritis. I went to a lecture by Doctor Hans Selye in Reno on these degenerative diseases, friends, and they are caused, he is the world authority, by stress and frustration and tension. These are the things that bring them on.

The yoke of Jesus, friends, has no stress. No tension. No frustration. It is a yoke of victory. It is a yoke of being an overcomer. It is a yoke that is easy and the burden is light. It brings none of these degenerative diseases upon the people that practice it. You may say, But wait a minute! Oh, yes, it promises you persecution, but it says you will be able to rejoice and be exceeding glad when man shall persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely.

I once went to the Conference brethren and I said, You made me a very happy man. And they said, How? They thought they were making me unhappy. And I said, All the things that you have said against me are false. So much so that if you found out something very bad about me that was true and told it, people would not believe you anyway. That is the truth, friends. They were telling so many wild things about me. Anybody that knew me knew that they were not telling the truth. And it did not eat away inside of me, friends. It does not bother me.

If you are going to serve the Lord, Sister White says the first thing you are going to sacrifice is your reputation. If you are wearing the yoke of the church, you are going to worry about your reputation in the church, because if you do not have a good reputation, you are not going to be a Sabbath School teacher. You are not going to have any part in it. They might even put you under censure.

But if you are wearing the yoke of Jesus, friends, then you worry about your reputation in heaven and not on earth. And Christ does not change. Down here it is change, change, change. All you have to do is to wait a little while and things change. I used to be the number one bad guy and then I was sadly replaced at General Conference last year by Desmond Ford. I did not know how to act down there! People came to me and they said, Bauer, you have been right all along.

Why did not they tell me that before? They were wearing the yoke of silence. My nephew is a minister. At that time, I guess, he was a Conference man. He came to me after Bradford's speech the first Sabbath down there. He said, Hey, Uncle they are in your corner now. I did not know how to act, friends. It does not really make any difference. They change; they are all around, up and down, friends. There was a long time when if you mentioned the Davenport situation, you were threatened.

I found out about it because it came out in the Tahoe newspaper. And then, just about the same time a young man came and told me that he worked for Davenport and what a crook he was. He said, I have got to talk to somebody. He did not tell me about that. Finally, I asked him, I said, I do not know you, I have never seen you before. Why did you come and talk to me? He said, Because I have to talk to somebody. The Conference men tell me that I am psychotic and they are going to put me under the care of a psychiatrist or psychologist and put me in an institution if I do not shut up.

I can give you the names of Adventist ministers who have tried to put the yoke off and spoken out. And they have gone to these people's family and relatives and had them sign them into the insane asylum and before they got out they took shock treatments. Shock treatments. No, friends, the apostle Paul knew all about this and he went out preaching just about what I am preaching now.

And Paul fought with the church in Jerusalem his entire lifetime because they were constantly trying to reinstate the yoke of the Pharisees on the Christians' necks. And that last trip to Jerusalem, Paul gave in and what did he do? He went to the temple, he shaved his head, he offered a sacrifice in that temple that he had preached for years was forsaken. And he took these vows. He had the holy water with the ashes of a red heifer sprinkled on him. That is the yoke that the people in Jerusalem forced on the apostle Paul's neck, friends.

A yoke that he says in Galatians the fifth chapter that if the Galatians who were being tempted to turn back to it, he says, If you go back to that, you are not Christ's. Even Paul, friends, could not bear up under the pressure. He gave in. He was human like you and me. Human like Elijah who broke under Jezebel's threats. Human like Moses who under the provocation of the children of Israel struck the rock twice. Human like Abraham who gave into his wife's suggestion instead of trusting in God. Human like everybody else, God knows what we are, friends, and He looks down and He says, Look, you need the yoke of Jesus.

Paul went around preaching this and they accused him of turning the world upside down. I like an expression I heard back in Arkansas this time. What he was really doing was turning the world right side up. It is upside down now.

Let us go now to Paul's writings and see how he puts it. In 1 Corinthians the seventh chapter when we get down to verse 20-22. "Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he is called. Art thou called being a servant? Care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord being a servant, is the Lord's free man."

When you wear the yoke of Christ, friends, then and then alone you are God's free man. If you are not wearing the yoke of Christ, then you are in bondage. I could not understand Galatians until I realized this. I could not understand Paul's theology until I realized what he was talking about when he says, You are in bondage. Why, friends, people are so used to yokes that if they do not have one to put on, they will sit around and manufacture one to put on.

One of the things that I have had to fight the most in these meetings is that we always have some people who want to set up a committee and manufacture a yoke to put on the necks of the people. Now, I will have no part of it. Then continuing, "For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's free man: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant." Verse 22.

Now, friends, you cannot be God's free man until you become Christ's servant. You must. God will not place the yoke upon your neck. You must willfully choose to take the yoke of Christ. He says, Take My yoke. He does not say, Accept it and I will put it on your neck. He says, Take up the cross. He does not say, Lean over and I will put it on your back.

No yokes can be forced on your neck. You may die resisting it, but you do not have to accept any yoke. Then he concludes his line of thinking and he says, "Ye are bought [How?] with a price." Verse 23. What were you bought with, friends? The blood of Jesus, the life of the Son of God. Whether you like it or not, whether Kruschev liked it or whether Stalin liked it or Hitler or anybody that has ever lived on this earth, they were all bought. Are they not? With a price.

What is the next statement? "Be not ye the servants of men." Verse 23. Do you recognize that you are the purchase of Christ? We have a lot of thinking to do. We have a lot of re-thinking to do, friends. And your eternal life involves on how you relate to these yokes that can or cannot be on your neck. You have to make a choice. It is pretty hard sometimes. When you wear the yoke of Jesus, one thing you probably will not do is ask my opinion.

"The Final Warning", The Great Controversy, a chapter that you need to study and restudy and study over again. The first thing is, friends, if you take the yoke of Christ, no man can serve God without enlisting against himself the opposition of the hosts of darkness. Your life will become very interesting. You will probably not have another boring day. Page 610. "Evil angels will assail him, alarmed that his influence is taking the prey from their hands."

And I am going to tell you something right here. The most authority that you have and the most pressure that you are legally allowed to exert if you wear the yoke of Christ over any other human being is influence. That is as far as you can go. You can go no further. You cannot stoop to the tactics of the devil and start using group pressure, self-criticism sessions, authoritarian pressure, financial pressure or anything else. The farthest you can go with the yoke of Christ is influence.

Sister White wrote a letter to the Conference President and she said-he had a problem in his conference and he had been reneged. She writes and says, You should have exercised you authority as Conference President. You should have counseled and tried to influence. That is as far as the Conference President's authority goes according tot he Spirit of Prophecy and the Bible.

Their influence was taken away, friends, that is all you have to do is try and influence people. And probably the harder you try, the less your influence and the less conscious of it, the more your influence is. And God, she says, will give you as much influence, as He can safely trust you with.

I have had Conference men sit and tell me the influence comes with the job. I said, No, it does not. And then I have had them later come and complain that they had found out that it did not. It does not come with the job, friends. "Evil men, rebuked by His example, will unite with them in seeking to separate him from God by alluring temptations." Ibid.

You want a lot of the luring of temptations? You just put the yoke of Christ on. "When these do not succeed, then a compelling power is employed to force the conscience." Ibid. You have an interesting life ahead of you, friends, never a dull moment. This chapter you need to study. There is one statement that I wanted to share with you here and I guess I am not supposed to.

Yes, I am, I just found it. This is the chapter, "The Scriptures Our Safeguard," friends, and I have to urge you one thing. The yoke of Christ requires only one thing of you and that is that you know your Bibles and your Spirit of Prophecy. That is all the knowledge you need. You do not need to go to the university and learn a lot of gobbledygook. You do not have to become acquainted with all the theologians that Desmond Ford is quoting or Luther's theology or Augustine's.

In the paragraph at the bottom of page 598. "It is the first and highest duty of every rational being to learn from the Scriptures what is truth." Where? From Elder Bauer's preaching? You lean on me, friends, and you have taken yourselves out of the hand of Christ. People come to me and say, Brother Bauer, we are back of you one hundred percent. I say, I do not want anybody back of me. I want everybody standing beside me.

So "The first and highest duty of every rational being [is] to learn from the Scriptures what is truth, and then to walk in the light and encourage others to follow his example." Ibid. We had better get busy on the first and highest duty of every rational being. First you learn what it is, then you practice it and then you encourage. You do not threaten. You do not demand. You do not drive. You do not pressure. Those discourage, friends. You encourage.

Years ago when I first read the Spirit of Prophecy through as a minister, I told the Lord, I said, If there is anybody trying to do anything, I will help them, whether I see any light in it or not if they are at least in motion. And sometimes I have supported programs that I thought were a waste of time because I am to encourage people to do something, to walk in the light.

And I really do not have all the wisdom to know exactly what you or anybody else should do, let alone even myself. Then continuing. "We should day by day study the Bible diligently, weighing every thought." Ibid. Not rushing through to read it through in a year, friends, but studying it how? Weighing every thought. You know there are big sections of the Bible that I have never done that.

It is hard work, but thank God for Doctor Desmond Ford! He is making a lot of Adventists do just that! My son-in-law who is a dentist has bought Greek books and Hebrew books now. And he is going through and he is studying the book of Daniel and he is studying Hebrews and he is weighing every thought and he is learning things that I never knew were in there.

Do you know why? Because a few years back he took a partner into his dental office who is a rabid, and I will say rabid supporter of Desmond Ford and in self-defense, he had to study. As soon as he began to learn the answers, this fellow moved out. But my son-in-law is enthused. You cannot stop him from studying.

He did not study Hebrew in college, friends. You do not have to study Hebrew in college to be able to buy a good lexicon and find out what it says. You do not have to be a Ph.D. to know what is going on in this world. And continuing, "We should day by day study the Bible diligently, weighing every thought and comparing Scripture with Scripture." Ibid.

Is that what you are doing? And now comes the part that I cannot stress too much. "With divine help [do not do it on your own. But it does not stop there.] we are to form our opinions for ourselves." Ibid. That is hard work. I do not expect anybody to form an opinion because of what I have said tonight, because if you do, when the time of trouble comes, you are on shifting sand and you are not going to stand.

The only foundation that is going to see you through the time of trouble, friends, is right here, when you wear the yoke of Christ, friends, then you will not be leaning on me. You will not be leaning on anybody else. But with divine assistance, and divine help, we are to form our opinions for ourselves.

Then it continues. "As we are to answer for ourselves before God." Ibid. God is never going to come to you and say, Now what did Brother Bauer think? Or what did he say on September 11, 1981? What He is going to come to you and ask is, What did you believe? What were your ideas? What yoke were you wearing? Do you know, sometimes we mind everybody else's business but our own.

A lot of times we want to shirk the responsibility that God has given to us and we want to advocate the dignity of humanity that is given to us, friends, that we personally can have divine guidance as we study the Scriptures, to form our opinions for ourselves. I am never to form an opinion for anybody. I can share mine and try to encourage you and I can try to influence you in the right direction and that is as far as I can go. I cannot put the yoke of Christ upon your neck. You must put that there yourselves.

Now, friends, I do not know what you can do, excepting to go to God. To do anything else in these times, friends, is practically saying, Lord, I do not want to go to heaven. And if you will not even put it that way, it is putting yourself in a position where you cannot go to heaven. I beg of you, sometime soon, very soon, if not tonight, throw off every yoke and get down on your knees and say, Christ, I take Your yoke, and put your dependence upon God.

It is imperative that you do this! It is like Sister White says, study as though your life depended upon it, because it does and it is not this life here, it is eternal life, friends. And I say, get down on your knees until you know you wear the yoke of Christ because your life depends on it. Your eternal life depends upon it. Because soon, very soon, what we have called the Investigative Judgment is going to go through the church and your name is coming up and it is going to be either blotted out of the Lamb's Book of Life, if it is there. Or it is going to stay.

I can talk a lot because all of God's truths, friends, fit together like this: The Sabbath, the law, the sanctuary, the atonement. It all fits together. You cannot separate it. You cannot tamper with it. To do so is to destroy it and lose out on eternal life. We have all heard our whole lives that the Sabbath is the seal of God. I am telling you something, friends, new Evangelical Adventism, those who are accepting it are placing themselves where soon, they can no longer believe the Sabbath.

One of their leaders, Brinsmead, has already come out publicly saying that the Sabbath has no importance. Because in Early Writings, Sister White says the Sabbath test could not come until Christ had finished His ministry in the heavenly sanctuary's first apartment and shut that door which cannot be opened and opened the door to the second apartment where the commandments of God are.

These men are denying the sanctuary doctrine and in doing so, they are destroying the Sabbath. And Sister White says that when the Sunday law is passed, they will find it an easy matter to go from us. Who is going to tell them? Are you? I am doing what I can. Maybe not all that I could. Are you keeping silent because of your fear of being rebuffed? That is a yoke, friends.

You can even put your own yoke, you do not have to wear a church's yoke or some group's yoke. You can put a yoke on your own necks. Take them off. I was going to make a call tonight, but I am not going to. I think you need to settle this between you and God on your knees alone without any group pressure, nobody watching to see who stands or does not stand--on your knees alone.

It has to be your decision, alone with God. Shall we kneel in prayer?

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