Members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in East Jamaica Conference received well needed information about their religious rights and freedoms as citizens of the country at a Religious Liberty Convention held at the Hagley Park SDA Church on January 20, 2018. The Convention was held under the theme “Liberty of Conscience Threatened” and saw religious liberty leaders from over forty churches across the Conference gather to explore some of the religious liberty issues facing the church.
The main messages for the day were conveyed through drama presentations, music, PowerPoint presentations, a panel discussion and the spoken word.
Guest speaker for the divine service and Director of the PARL Department in Inter-America Division, Pastor James Daniel, captioned his sermon “A Storm is Gathering – Prepare your Minds “ and gave a solemn warning to the church about future events which are about to take place upon the earth.
His message was on point and covered the important Biblical, historical and prophetic issues outlined in chapter 35 of the book “The Great Controversy” with theme “Liberty of Conscience Threated” which was the inspiration for the theme for the day.
From his opening sentence, Pastor Daniel engaged the attention of the congregation by using the familiar imagery of an impending storm soon to engulf the whole world.
“Anyone who is paying attention to what is happening in the political and religious world would know that a storm is gathering,” said Daniel, “and when it brakes, it will sweep across the globe, forcing upon people what they should believe and attempting to dictate how they should think.”
“It’s a storm of religious political persecution that will threaten even our freedom of conscience,” Daniel warned. “It will be more intense than it
was five hundred years ago,” he added.
