Edwin de Kock

Forward to Zion: Ohio Camp Meeting 2015: For Such a Time as This

Plenary

Forward to Zion

The Latter Rain to Ripen the Harvest

The Lord impressed me to speak about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the second great outpouring described as the latter rain, the main purpose of which is to ripen the grain for the harvest before Jesus comes.

We must first look at the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost in the time of the apostles to understand more about the Holy Spirit and the concept of rain.

The Lord Jesus spoke of water as symbol of the Holy Spirit.

Now falling water or rain represents the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

At Pentecost, there were gifts given to people, gifts of tongues, gifts of prophecy, gifts of healing and many other things.

But the main purpose was to preach the gospel for which the individuals had to be prepared.

And there's very much to learn from looking at what happened there at Pentecost, because it will help us to understand the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as the latter rain.

There was to be, as prophesied even in the Old Testament, both an early and a latter reign.

Now when Peter stood up, he actually quoted from the Old Testament.

We read of the latter reign in the prophet Zechariah, that is the second last book in the Old Testament, where he said, ask the Lord for rain in the time of the latter rain, Zechariah 10 verse 1.

Before him the prophet Joel had rejoiced And that was in Joel 2 verses 23 and 24.

Be glad then you children of Zion and rejoice in the Lord your God for he has given you the former rain faithfully, and he will cause the rain to come down for you, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month.

The threshing floor shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil." You see, ripening it for the harvest.

Let us now consider the main events on the day of Pentecost as recorded in Acts, the second chapter.

The disciples had waited for the Holy Spirit because Jesus had told them to do so.

They searched their own souls and consciences.

There were things to put right between themselves and their brothers and sisters, and they did so.

And so, when the outpouring came, they were of 1 accord.

Now in that second chapter of Acts, we read how they were all together.

Then there was a sound from heaven, like a thunder clap, I imagine, because it caused people round about to run and see what was happening.

And then it was like a mighty rushing wind.

Before rain falls you sometimes have great wind.

Suddenly they heard this rushing sound and they saw tongues of fire descend upon each of them and they spoke in foreign languages.

They spoke in languages that they had never learned.

The language spoken in Palestine, in Jerusalem, and in that small country of Palestine, now known as Israel also, I was there.

That was the language of Jesus and the apostles.

The home language of Jesus was not Hebrew.

The Jews had given up their language while they were back in the Babylonian captivity.

So when they came back, They brought with them the Aramaic language which they spoke.

They brought back the Aramaic script and even wrote the Hebrew scriptures.

So when you see written Hebrew, it is Hebrew but written in an Aramaic script.

So those who lived in that area spoke Aramaic.

But there were also other people in Jerusalem.

Jews who did not speak Aramaic, some of them might have understood it, but These were sort of either visiting Jews coming for the festivals or let's call them immigrant Jews from the Diaspora.

And there they were and They spoke a lot of other languages.

They were from Egypt, Libya, Mesopotamia, Persia, Crete.

Arabia, and even Rome, which was a long distance away.

And to their amazement, they heard these Galileans speaking their language.

The Galileans also spoke their version of Aramaic, but here they were speaking these other languages.

Those Jews who lived over there in Rome, well, their language, their own language was perhaps Latin.

Many of them would have spoken Koine Greek, Koine meaning the common Greek.

It had been spread after the conquests of Alexander the Great and the various kingdoms that had been built up by the generals of Alexander and so on, Koine Greek, it was like the English of the ancient world.

Does everybody in the world know English?

How many people do you think in the world do not know English?

What percentage of the world's population does not understand or really understand any English?

How many languages are there in the world?

About 6, 000 and the Seventh-day Adventist Church has worked in more than a thousand.

Now some of them are spoken by small groups of people, admittedly, and sometimes if they spoke some language, they could understand 1 of the neighboring more widely known languages like Hindi, the official language of India, which is supposedly understood by more than a billion people, far more than the native speakers of English.

Written Mandarin written by all the dialect speakers of Chinese.

Oh, a billion 0.3 hundred, you know, 1300000000 people and we are to reach them all in their own languages to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.

They did not speak koine Greek, but the languages of those people for the purpose of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now we must be aware of the fact that we are not going to evangelize the work of the Lord and finish it with English language television.

Literature is perhaps in the long run a better thing, but we cannot print in so many languages because if you have small groups of people, it costs a lot of money to print books.

That is why the Lord enabled people to invent the Kindle, the Nook, and other little reading machines so that if text is produced, it can be read that way.

Now Peter had to explain what this was all about.

Some of the more ignorant people said, oh, they're drunk.

He said, well, it's only very early in the morning, 9 o'clock.

They would not have had the chance to become intoxicated.

And so he quoted from Joel, and what we read in the New Testament is translated from the Greek of the New Testament, and the Greek of the New Testament often quoted from the Septuagint, a translation from Hebrew into Greek made about 200 years or so before Christ.

Now I'm going to read some of this from Joel, but I'm going straight to the Old Testament, which may read a little differently from what Peter said.

And we have this in Joel 2, verse 28 to 32.

Joel 2 verse 28 to 32, and it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.

And also on my servants and on my maidservants I will pour out my spirit in those days.

And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke.

The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Your Bible may have a little different wording.

I have been quoting from the New King James Version.

Not all these prophecies were fulfilled at Pentecost.

Before Jesus ascended, the apostles had asked him, Lord, when will you be setting up your kingdom?

And he told them, it is not for you to know.

The day or the hour, not for you to know.

Morning Devotional

The Lord is Coming. Are You Ready?

It is a great pleasure to be with you here.

HMS Richards had a theme song, lift up the trumpet and loud let it ring.

They also had another song they liked singing, The Lord is coming, are you ready?

That second song, I heard it sung, oh, probably there in the middle of the 60s, 1960s, back in South Africa, when a physician, Dr.

Leroy Latterhan, with 1 of the most glorious bass voices that I've ever heard sang it.

And all these beautiful songs about the second coming, They are wonderful.

But lift up the trumpet and loudly let it ring.

Well, somebody says, no brother, Don't lift it up.

Put a potato into it to muffle the sound.

I hope as we as Seventh-day Administers will not put a potato in.

No, lift up the trumpet and loud let it ring.

Jesus is coming again, coming again, coming again.

But it is a bit of a shame that it is necessary for us as Seventh-day Adventists to rehearse this theme again, as though we were not always sure what we believed about it.

Well, the Bible tells us there in Acts 1, verse 11, when Jesus had ascended and the disciples were gazing up after him, suddenly there were 2 men, angels in bright garments saying, you men of Galilee, Why are you looking up like that?

This same Jesus whom you have seen taken up into heaven, into the cloud, will likewise come back.

He is in a cloud, a mysterious cloud which really is a host of angels.

And in the Apocalypse, Revelation 1 verse 7, We read, every eye will see him, including those who will have pierced him.

He comes with clouds and every eye will see him.

Oh no, the Jehovah's Witnesses say, that's not really an eye, that's an inward eye of understanding.

Now, they were not the first to say funny things like that, there was a Jesuit by the name of Luis del Alcazar in the 16th century in the time of the counter-reformation.

He said, well, yes, he'll be coming back, but it's really also the clouds of preaching of the gospel.

And Jesus told us about his second coming, sitting on the Mount of Olives, looking down through the centuries.

He saw and told his disciples everything that would happen.

How Jerusalem would be destroyed, how there would be persecution, A great tribulation such as the world has never seen and never will see again.

And if the days would not be shortened, nobody would be saved, but the days would be shortened.

But he said beyond that, how the Lord would come.

It would be like the lightning striking, lighting up the sky from the east to the west.

And there will be this great trumpet sound, and his angels would gather his elect.

And he said, careful, There will be many false Christs and false prophets.

When they say, go out into the desert, Go out to Mormon, Utah.

Or if they say, well, he's in the secret rooms, don't go to a spiritualistic seance.

Also, Jesus does not come to you when you die and you go to heaven, Something that will not happen, for the dead know not anything.

But the Lord also said there would be certain signs, great earthquake, the sun darkening, Great earthquake, the sun darkening, the stars falling, and that is said even more clearly in the book of Revelation under the sixth seal.

And there was the greatest in recorded history up to that time.

In 1755, the great Lisbon earthquake, which also caused a tsunami, a great wall of water, which destroyed most of Lisbon in Portugal, cities in Morocco and North Africa, killing 40 to 50, 000 people.

The effects of it being noted as far north as Finland and as far west as the Caribbean.

Now you have heard of tsunamis in the year 2004.

On December the 26th, There was this great tsunami in the far east.

Well, it was our 50th wedding anniversary, the great earthquake.

Not long after it, there was the great dark day seen in New England and as far as Canada.

It started between 10 and 11 o'clock in the morning and it went on until past midnight of the next night.

They confused fowls to roost because this was a sign of nightfall to them.

Now, nobody knows exactly what caused it.

But whatever the cause, it happened, the Lord had predicted it.

And then when the moon became visible, It was as red as blood.

After 1798, which marked the beginning of the time at the end, it was the last of the 3 signs because they were in a specific sequence.

The great earthquake, the darkening of the sun called the great dark day, and the falling of the stars in 1833, the Leonid meteorites.

Somebody actually ran out and read from the Bible by the light of those stars about the falling of the stars in the book of Revelation.

And some of those meteors were huge, some of them visually were bigger than the moon, exploding like fireballs, like nothing that you or I have seen.

Now Jesus had said that there would be a great tribulation such as the world has not seen and never will see again.

And in Reformation lands, the time was shortened about 200 years.

Now, near the end of this were these 3 signs, and eventually beyond that will be the sign of the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, the clouds again.

Now notice that we're also told by the Apostle Paul that the Lord will come, it will be very visible, it will be loud with the sound of a trumpet, not some inconspicuous thing, and it will not be a secret rapture either.

But you see, the devil doesn't like these prophecies, so he set about subverting the interpretation.

This brings us to this further point that the great tribulation that Jesus spoke about there in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21, as is parallel in the book of Daniel, Daniel 12 verse 1, it speaks about this great, great tribulation, using similar language, but linked to a time, times, and a dividing of times, when the holy people, the children of God, would be dealt with terribly.

And also in Daniel 7, 25, where it speaks of the little horn, and the little horn would continue for, again, that period of time.

But In the New Testament, the same period of time is mentioned 5 times in 1 shape or form or the other.

I think it is in Revelation 13 where it speaks of the seven-headed, ten-horned beast, the seven-headed, ten-horned beast, the sea beast, the papal beast, will continue for 42 months, oppressing of course again the people, the saints of the Most High.

And it is mentioned elsewhere there in Revelation.

What is interesting about this time prophecy, Which is important for the second coming because the second coming must take place after the 1260 days.

That it is given in days, 1260 days, in months, 42 months, in years, 3 and a half years.

We say that these are year days where every day stands for a year.

There was a libera, Francisco Libera, a Jesuit priest there in about 1590.

And he said, well, the Antichrist is still coming in the future.

Now the Protestants were saying up to that time, oh the papacy is the Antichrist.

Three Angels Flying in the Midst of Heaven

I'm very happy to be here again and I want to tell you about a peculiar thing that Gus said to me.

I should not speak for such a short period of time again as I did last time.

You know, yesterday I boiled it down to half an hour and he says, no, I've got to keep on for longer.

Usually the complaint is whoever is the minister is talking way too long.

It is not really a sermon, whatever you want to call it.

But Stephen Boe last night sort of preempted a little of what I was going to say, and yet he and I prepared separately from each other, not knowing what the other person would speak about.

There's something peculiar happening in some places.

There are misguided people, even misguided pastors and professors who say, don't preach about the 3 angels' messages.

There are so-called progressive Seventh-day Adventists, liberals, who don't believe all this stuff anymore.

This morning I spoke to Stephen Emcee, who unfortunately can't come.

He helped to research the material that went into my book, The Truth about 666 and the Story of the Great Apostasy.

When he heard that, he said, remember the word progressive is a favorite word of the spiritualists.

Those so-called progressive Adventists who don't want to accept that we are the remnant church or that the 3 angels' messages are what we think they are, who reject the idea of the mark of the beast being Sunday keepers.

You know, progressive Adventists, regressive Adventists, I would say, a danger.

3 angels flying in the midst of heaven, Let's see about them.

Seventh-day Adventists have a four-fold relationship to the 3 angels' messages.

Second, we came into existence as a result of the prophecy of the 3 angels.

To begin with, there were the Millerites before us, and they preached, fear God and give glory to him for the hour of his judgment has come.

But Miller was right about the 2, 300 days representing years.

He was, however, wrong about the nature of the event, about the judgment.

You know, those people thought that this world was the sanctuary of God and that this world would be cleansed.

Well, it so happens There is a sanctuary and there is a judgment, but it's not on this earth.

The Millerites were absolutely crushed when Jesus didn't come on October 22nd, 1844.

So most of them gave up in 1 way or the other, but a small group, a remnant, a remainder, persevered.

And they found out, but yes, the judgment was real.

And then they also discovered the Sabbath, but the judgment, the investigative judgment would take place before the Lord's return.

And so we can say that the Seventh-day Administered Church is a result of this message, specifically of the sanctuary message, including the discovery of the Sabbath.

Third, the Good Book specifically identifies us by saying, Here are those who keep the commandments of God in the faith of Jesus.

And in a parallel passage back at the end of Revelation 12, it says that the dragon was enraged with a woman and he went to make war with a remnant of her seed, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus.

And another scripture says the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

So this would be a group of people who have the gift of prophecy, but they would be keeping the commandments of God, all the commandments of God, including the Sabbath commandment, and have the faith of Jesus.

There is no other church in the world that can claim all of that.

So there are 3 links that we have for this message.

But fourthly, the passage that comes at the end of Revelation 12, which speaks of the woman fleeing from Satan, the great dragon, would be nourished for 1260 day years.

And so this would be there at the end of the 1260 years, stretching from 538 to 1798, and this ties it up with historicism.

So we are tied in many ways, and I've mentioned 4.

Perhaps some clever person will discover some other links.

But in 4 ways, we are linked to the 3 angels' messages.

The first angel's message, as we observe it, says, then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation, tribe, tongue and people, saying with a great voice, Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.

And you find all of this, of course, there in Revelation 14.

But now, first, what is the everlasting gospel?

It's the good news of Jesus Christ who died for us, was resurrected for us, who intercedes for us so that we will be saved.

The good news of John 3.16, you know, whosoever believes on him will have eternal life.

Now the Millerites to some extent proclaim that.

Did you know that these presentations by William Miller and others were great occasions of revival?

To prepare for the coming of Christ, they had to get ready.

And this ties up with the Great Commission.

You remember what Jesus said just before he went up to heaven?

That the disciples had to preach the gospel throughout the whole world.

But he also said, baptize them and teach them Everything that I have commanded you, everything.

Jesus was a Sabbath keeper, so were the apostles.

So although they proclaimed the everlasting gospel, it was an incomplete version of it.

Therefore preaching the first angel's message for seventh-day Adventists means something more complete than what the Millerites were saying.

We must look at these messages not only from the point of view of what was going on then in the 19th century, but what is going on now in the 21st century.

So this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations and the end will come, the end will come, the Lord said.

Now, so all things have to be observed, but that would also be keeping of the commandments of God, all the commandments of God.

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Presenter

Edwin de Kock

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