Counting the Cost

Luke 14:26-33  If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.  And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.  For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?  Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him,  Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.  Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?  Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace.  So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

Mission Statement of the Seventh Day Adventist Church

The mission of the Seventh Day Adventist Church is to make disciples of all people, communicating the everlasting gospel in the context of the three angels messages of  Revelation 14:6-12, leading them to accept Jesus as personal Saviour and unite with His remnant church, discipling them to serve Him as Lord and preparing them for His soon return.

The Beasts of Daniel…an overview.

The chapter in which these creatures appear is Daniel 7. But to understand the context, one must go back to Daniel 2 where a vision is given and an explanation of the meaning of a statue. It had a head of gold, chest of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron and feet of iron and clay. Then a rock from heaven comes down and destroys the whole thing.
This statue represented 4 empires to come, beginning from Daniels time, each one superceding the one before, and the final to continue right down to the second coming of Christ, which the rock represents.
The first kingdom was Babylon. The second, Media – persia, the third Greece, and the fourth, Rome. Rome would continue till our day except in a different form. The iron on it’s own was pagan Rome, the mixture of iron and clay is papal Rome. So Rome continues to exist, but as a church/state union.

What happens in chapter 7 is the same pattern of empires but with much greater detail. A lion representing Babylon, a bear representing Media-Persia, a Leaopard representing Greece, and a horrible indescribable beast representing Rome. Out of this last beast grows 10 horns, plus another which grew up among them, and displaces 3 of them.

Characteristic seven, part B

But we must now turn to the other Jesuit scholar: Francisco Ribera (1537-1591), from Salamanca, Spain. Ribera was a brilliant student who specialized in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He received a doctorate in theology from the University of Salamanca and joined the Jesuit Order in 1570 when he was just 33 years old.
Before we analyze Ribera’s methods of prophetic interpretation we must underline that the Early Church fathers (not the New Testament writers!!) had certain futuristic elements in their eschatology. They almost unanimously believed that the “restrainer” of II Thessalonians 2 was the Roman Empire. They also believed that as soon as the Empire fell apart, a literal evil individual would arise to rule the world for three and a half literal years. (See, George Eldon Ladd, The Blessed Hope, pp. 28-31 where he presents, for example, the views of Lactantius and Hippolytus).
In all fairness to these Church Fathers, we must remember two things:

1) They did not expect the history of the world to last another 2000 years. They believed that the coming of Christ was in the foreseeable future.

2) Prophecy is usually not understood in its fulness until the times of fulfillment.
Jesus Himself explained to the disciples: “And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.” (John 14:29).
The Gospels reveal that the disciples of Jesus totally misunderstood and misapplied Bible prophecy before the resurrection. It was not until after the fulfillment of these prophecies that their hearts burned within them as Jesus opened unto them the Scriptures (Luke 24:32). History proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the meaning of the prophecies becomes clearer and clearer as the time of fulfillment draws near (see, II Peter 1:19).
The Early Church Fathers lived in the time of the fourth beast (Rome). The Empire had not yet crumbled into ten kingdoms. The little horn had not yet risen. The best they could do was guess about the identity of the Antichrist.
But the Protestant Reformers did not need to guess. They had the benefit of looking back at over one thousand years of church history and saw, with their own eyes, what the Early Church fathers could not have foreseen.

Close, very, very close.

Matthew 24:6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled:for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:
There is a great escalation in verse 7 from the previous verse where war was simply rumour and hearsay. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the world was full of confidence and great expectation of a coming millennium of peace and safety brought about by very recent remarkable advances in scientific knowledge in industry and medicine. Christianity was held dear by the vast majority of those living in the world, before communism took over in Russia, before the Chinese shut out the missionaries from the west, before Japan turned away the church from their doors.

Antichrist Revealed

A Study on Antichrist

Before we look at the antichrist, I want to look at the real Christ. Who is He? Let us go to the scriptures to find out what and Who He claimed to be.

Mathew 12:6 But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple...

The temple, the priesthood, and the religious system including all the ceremonies, the sacrifices, and the law of the Jewish nation go hand in hand. It was the mainstay and focal point of the life of Israel. Yet Jesus claimed to be greater. Greater even than the very High priest who no doubt would take great interest in hearing a report of these words. Greater even than the law itself, because He was the lawgiver.

….38 ¶ Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.
39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:
40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
41 The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here…

Jonah was the most powerful and successful of all OT prophets. In all 40 odd chapters of Jeremiah, there is no record of anyone at anytime taking the slightest bit of notice of anything Jeremiah said. Yet Jonah, on the strength of just one or two sermons, converted the entire city of Nineveh of the children of Ishmael totaling maybe 60,000 people.  By any standards, that has got to be recorded as a very successful evangelistic campaign. Yet Jesus claimed to be greater than Jonah.

Balaam

I did a study recently on Balaam, taken from Numbers chapters 22-24.

1 Corinthians 10:11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.

There are 4 major players in this drama.
God
Israel
Balak, king of Moab,
Balaam.
……….with supporting roles from an angel, several sundry politicians and noblemen, and one talking donkey named Shoeshine.

God.…Sovereign. His purposes regarding Israel would be accomplished: no outside interference would be tolerated, interestingly though,as we read through toward the end of the drama, we see that it is….

Israel …..herself that interferes with the purposes of God, yet in the beginning, she is not even aware of the drama that is taking place in the hills around her. (Is this not so much like us? There is a warfare going on about us all the time, yet unseen. Evil angels and true faithful angels to God are constantly at work in our lives for good or evil. Unseen for the most part, yet their influence in our lives is ever present. And while we are faithful ourselves to God’s commandments and our wills are surrendered to His will, nothing can stand in our way. But the moment we turn away from the truth, and the path that God would have us to go. He leaves us to our own choices and only then does Satan find advantage over us.)

Balak….Understandably nervous. And so would you be if 3 million people set up camp in your neighborhood and used your letterbox as a boundary marker.