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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Stephen Bohr

Global Events in the End-Times

I preached Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings.

And then yesterday morning early I traveled to Oklahoma City where we celebrated my dad's 93rd birthday.

This morning I got up real early, flew into LAX, and rented a car and drove here.

And then tomorrow afternoon I'm going to be driving home, Lord willing.

I believe that this is the Pacific time zone, if I'm not mistaken.

I'm going to shuffle the title just a little bit, because tomorrow I'm going to present a two-part series.

The first is titled, Michael Shall Stand Up, what was really scheduled for tonight.

And then the second presentation, I think it's 4 in the afternoon, will be the second part of that, and the title is Fire, Lions, and Deliverance.

And this evening, we're gonna talk a little bit about the global events that are taking place and what we can expect in the future.

Before we do begin though, I would like to have a word of prayer.

And so I invite you to bow your heads as we ask for the Lord's blessing.

Father in Heaven, we thank you for the wonderful hours of the Sabbath that are just beginning.

We thank you that we can just take a 24-hour break from all of our own endeavors, our work, and our secular activities, and just dedicate 24 whole hours to our fellowship with you.

We ask that as we open your word this evening that your Holy Spirit will be with us to guide our minds and open our hearts.

We realize that we are living in trying times.

The final movements are certainly rapid ones.

We want to be ready for the close of probation and the coming of Jesus.

So we ask Lord that you will be with us in our study and we thank you for hearing our prayer for we ask it in Jesus name.

I must say that some of the things that I'm going to say tonight will not be new.

They will be review of things that you've heard before.

But I've put everything together in what I consider to be perhaps a unique way, even though much of the information you've heard, the way that it's organized, is perhaps a little different than what you've heard before.

I'd like to begin by mentioning that the end time crisis is going to involve 2 objects of worship and their respective signs.

So basically the end time crisis has to do with 2 objects of worship and their respective signs.

And I'd like to begin, I hope you brought your Bibles because we're going to use the Bible profusely this evening.

We're going to begin by reading Psalm 95 and verses 1 through 6.

And there are 2 points that I want to emphasize in this passage.

It's beautiful to hear the pages of the Bible turning.

I know that some of you don't have pages.

It says there in verse 1, Oh come let us sing to the Lord, let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation, let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, Let us shout joyfully to him with psalms.

And then we have the reason why we're supposed to praise the Lord in this manner.

It says in verse 3, for, that means because, for the Lord is the great God, and the great King above all gods.

So we are supposed to praise the Lord and give him thanksgiving because he is the great God above all gods.

Now the question is what makes him the great God above all gods?

Well we have to continue reading at verse 4.

He continues saying, in his hand are the deep places of the earth.

The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land.

O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our maker.

What makes God the great God above all gods?

And you notice here that because he is the creator, we must worship, bow down, and kneel before the Lord our maker.

In other words, those are 3 synonymous expressions.

Worship, bow down, and kneel to the Lord our maker.

So the 2 points that I want us to notice as we begin our study is that we worship God, we bow down to Him, we kneel before Him because He is the Creator.

God as the Creator is the reason for our worship.

Now let's notice another verse in the Old Testament that expresses the same thought, only in this verse we're going to find that heaven also worships for the same reason because heaven is filled with creatures as well.

Nehemiah chapter 9 and verse 6, Nehemiah chapter 9 and verse 6.

Here God is being extolled once again because he is the creator and that's not an easy book to find Nehemiah, that's 1 of those difficult books to find but if you found it this is how it reads you alone are the Lord now comes the reason You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their host, the earth and everything in it, the seas and all that is in them, you preserve them all.

And then notice the last part of the verse says, the host of heaven, what?

Once again it speaks here about God being the creator, He made heaven, the heaven of the heavens, He made the earth, everything in the earth, and then it says that the host of heaven worships you.

Once again, the emphasis is that we worship God because God is the creator.

Now the next point that I want us to notice is that God established at the very beginning a reminder that he is the creator and we all know what it is.

Let's go to Genesis chapter 1 verses 31 through chapter 2 and verse 1.

Chapter 2 and verse 1 actually belongs to chapter 1 even though in our Bibles it's in chapter 2, it's really the conclusion to the creation story.

It says there in Genesis 1 verse 31, Then God saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good.

So the evening and the morning were the sixth day, thus the heavens and the earth and all the host of them were finished.

So God finished his work of creation in 6 days according to this.

And then I want you to notice, and we already know this, that the week was not complete because something still needed to be established during creation week and that's where we read Genesis chapter 2 and verses 2 and 3 this is the climax of creation week it says and I'm going to emphasize certain expressions and on the seventh day God ended his work which he had done and he number 1 rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.

Then God blessed the seventh day, I believe that God wants us to know it's the seventh day, right?

It says he rested on the seventh day, he blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.

And now notice why God blessed and sanctified the seventh day, because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made.

So what this is telling us is that God blessed the seventh day, God sanctified the seventh day, or made it holy and rested on the seventh day because it was a memorial of his work of creation, it was his signature on the work of creation.

It's like an artist who paints a work of art, they finish the picture but What is lacking is the signature of the artist, identified who made the picture.

And so the Sabbath is God's signature on the work of creation.

And the Bible tells us 3 things, remember these 3 things, we're going to come back to them in a few moments.

He rested, he sanctified or made holy, and he blessed the seventh day Sabbath and 3 times we are told that the Sabbath is the seventh day.

Now as Adventists we believe that the days were literal 24-hour days, just like the days that we know today.

And there are clear evidences in the creation story that this is the case, and in other parts of scripture.

First of all, each day had an evening and morning.

Would be kind of ridiculous to say it was the evening and the morning of 100 million years.

You know, evening and morning indicates that it's a literal day.

In scripture, when that expression is used, it means a literal 24-hour day.

We're also told in the Psalms that God spoke and it was done.

And in the creation story we find the expression and it was so which indicates that God spoke and it happened.

It didn't take millions of years to happen.

Another important detail, and you know we've studied these things before, is that there was no Jew at creation.

So the Sabbath was made for humanity because all humanity comes from Adam and Eve.

Furthermore in its original function the Sabbath has nothing to do with being a shadow of the rest that Christ would give us in redemption.

Because when the Sabbath was created, there was no need for redemption.

In other words, the Sabbath after sin takes on a secondary meaning, which is that Jesus is gonna come to give us his rest.

But in its primary function, the Sabbath is a sign of creation and if sin had not come in, the Sabbath would have been simply a sign that God is a creator, the remembrance that God is the creator.

Now some people ask, they say, well how do you know that the Sabbath today is the same Sabbath that existed at creation?

In fact, 1 individual once said to me, you know, how do you know that the Sabbath today, the seventh day today, is the same seventh day that existed in the days of Christ.

So I looked at him and I said, he was not an Adventist, I said, what day do you go to church?

He said, well because that's the day that Jesus resurrected.

Global Events in the End-Times

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