Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Christ in Daniel

Jerry Finneman

Christ in Daniel- Part 1

Gracious Father, you have said that if we have a grasp of the principles of the book of Revelation and Daniel, that we'll have a deeper and a richer experience.

So we ask that your Holy Spirit might teach us as a group, as we study, as we discuss.

And I believe that you will, you're more willing to teach us than even we are to learn.

You've promised that if we being evil know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.

And so we ask, and I know that you will not give sticks and stones, But you'll give us the very gift that you promised and we thank you for it.

Alrighty in John chapter 5 We have We have the comment by Christ in verse 39.

He says, you search the scriptures, for In them you think you have eternal life.

And I believe every book of the Old Testament, the central figure in all of them, either history or prophecy, whatever it might be, or even your basic laws of existence, the central figure is Jesus Christ.

If this thing, I'm hoping it will come here.

Well, what's interesting there is, we use this phrase, search the scriptures a lot, but he was using it in a negative context where they were searching the scriptures and thinking that they had eternal life because they were doing that.

Yes, yeah, yes Yeah, your your conservatives even today do the same but Your liberals it doesn't matter to them, but your conservatives are very cautious in the book of Daniel.

But if you're not going to get what you need out of scriptures, you're going to miss Christ.

Because we need to die to self in order for Christ to live in us.

But scriptures tell us that we could do the same thing.

We could search these scriptures to try to find life.

But the life is in the life change that Christ made in our hearts.

Is there a danger for us as Seventh-day Adventists to miss Christ?

Doctrine is being put down today, but some of it is for a good reason, in that people have zeroed in on doctrine as an argumentation and to actually to miss an experience with Christ.

Okay, yes, either lead us to Yeah, either lead us to Christ or to to come from him outward.

Yeah, there should be both, but he should be the center of it.

And the second problem had to be not the marriage.

You could break that down with inspiration.

I think that's, you know, what they were kind of doing, the tradition of the fathers.

The tradition of the fathers was more important than the homosexuality.

I'll tell you, during the, say from the 1860s to about 1880, somewhere in that range, Ellen White spoke about the preaching of that time was drier than the hills of Gilboa without dune or rain.

But they were winning almost every debate.

If you use logic, premise, premise, and conclusion, and They won almost every debate.

He was probably the best debater that we've ever had.

He won, I think, nearly every argument, including spiritualists.

He would hunt up spiritualists to debate them and defeat them.

She says, you're on dangerous ground because you're dealing with the mind of the devil.

He continued to win debates with spiritualists, but the devil finally got him.

He went so far as to say that Christ was wrong and the devil was right.

But he had an argumentative mind and he knew how to debate, but it destroyed him.

I was going to say, in my own personal experience when it came to doctrine, I wasn't raised Adventist, and so when we started learning a lot of the distinctive doctrines that the Adventists teach, it gave us a different view of who God actually is and who Jesus actually is.

It gave us the right picture of the character of God and of Jesus, and that was what won us over.

For example, like the state of the dead in hell and understanding that God isn't the kind of God that's going to take someone from their family prematurely because he wants them in heaven or he's not going to burn them with you for eternity.

So really a lot of ways, doctrine is such a key part of understanding who God is.

I remember when I was in college, 1 year I stayed with a man, his name was Charlie Brown.

And his wife had passed away, and he wanted a Seventh-day Adventist to stay with him.

He was lonely, you know, and he just wanted some fellowship and that type of thing.

He said, I want an Adventist who doesn't drink or smoke.

And so they asked me if I would go and stay with them.

And we used to have tremendous visits together every evening after supper.

And he, this 1 evening he said, Jerry, I need to back up a little bit.

He said, my wife and I were deeply in love.

He was in his 80s, still working, but he said we'd prayed that she would go before I, because he says we knew that she couldn't take care of me, but I could take care of her until she died.

And then he says, but she's in heaven now, looking over at me and things like this.

And he said, you told me that, didn't you?

I said, Charlie, I couldn't have told you that.

Christ in Daniel- Part 2

We want to thank you for the book of Daniel, and we want to thank you especially for Jesus, who was the author of Daniel.

He gave Daniel the information through his spirit, and Daniel revealed him in such a way that it should uplift our spirits, not only uplift us, but convert us.

We ask for your Holy Spirit now to guide and direct our thoughts and our words during this time in Jesus' name, Amen, amen.

All righty, last we started with Christ and Daniel, continuing and just a little bit of review.

We considered that every chapter in the book of Daniel somehow Christ is represented.

And we went through this, we will not go through it in detail today, but this is a summary and an overview of the entire book.

And we talked about Jesus testifying of Daniel, and we looked at Mark 1, 1.14-15, the beginning of his public ministry, where he said, the time is fulfilled, repent and believe the gospel.

And then we have, we looked at Matthew 24, that's this 1 here that just Before he was crucified, he gave an outline of prophecy to his disciples, as recorded there in Matthew 24.

And he said, when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place, Whoever reads, let him understand.

Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

This was an understanding that the Jewish Christians, the believers had at the time of Christ.

And they say there was not a single Jewish believer in Christianity in Christ who lost.

But this is repeated then in the Middle Ages and it's going to be repeated again.

And he's quoting from, there are 3 places in Daniel that deals with the abomination of desolation.

This 1 in Daniel 12.1, the time that the daily is taken away and the abomination of desolation is set up, there should be a thousand 290 days and That's 12 I'm not going to get into it There's there's 2 2 positions on the daily 1 is that that is the gospel that was taken away.

Miller said it was paganism, and that the daily was taken away so that the papacy could be set up.

That's when the daily was taken away, according to Miller, and then in 538 the papacy was set up.

Now, there are some strong arguments about the gospel too, that the gospel was taken away And then the papacy was set up.

But I would say it applies, both of them apply to the papacy as being the abomination of desolation.

Down here you can, let me show you again.

So, this, the little horn, this is the abomination of desolation, the papacy that Daniel speaks about, Revelation talks about, Jesus talks about, Paul talks about.

I didn't have this yesterday, but I'm going to bring it in here.

This is the old Rothhaus or the City Hall in Nuremberg, Germany.

Now some of you may remember that Nuremberg was when they had the trials after World War II.

Many of the Nazi leaders that were actually sentenced to death because of that, because of their activities.

But Nuremberg goes back to the Middle Ages and it goes back especially as far as Protestants are concerned, it was what they called a free city and they became Protestant or Lutheran.

And let me look at it, we'll look a little closer here at this.

The building has very interesting animals on the doorways.

The animals are the prophetic beasts of Daniel 7, even featuring the little horn and 1 of the beasts' heads.

And we'll see it here in a little bit, when it comes up.

Here is Alexander, and you have the 4 heads of Daniel 7.

And then you have here on the other side you got Caesar and the little horn.

Caesar, of course, representing Rome, pagan Rome.

And then you have the little horn up here.

You have the little horn, 1 of those horns coming out of this.

I saw a film or a video of some American students, young people, and some Germans.

And they were asking people that were standing around, they'd point, they said, what does all this mean up here?

No 1, even college professors, university professors, oh, we don't know what that is.

They had 1 of the guides that was guiding people through this old townhouse, he didn't know what it was.

They thought, oh, it's some mythological creature, you know.

As a free city, as a Lutheran city, they were advertising the fact that the Protestants believed that the Little Horn, or I mean not just the Little Horn, but Babylon, Medo-Persian, Greece were a part of the national belief system at that time.

And the only ones who carried on with that are Seventh-day Adventists.

Now there are some who may believe part of it, but for the most part, we're the ones that have that.

But I thought this would be interesting to you folks.

There are 2 things that the Reformation taught that nearly brought the papacy to its knees, almost destroyed it.

1 was justification by faith in Christ alone, and The other is that the Little Horn power and both Daniel and Revelation represented the abomination or the papacy.

And it was so powerful that that's 1 of the reasons for the Catholic Reformation that was to attack 2 points, who the Antichrist is and justification by faith.

2 tremendously intelligent Jesuit scholars were the ones who gave the teachings of justification by faith that are recorded in the Council of Trent.

And then out of that came 2 other scholars, Spanish scholars, who said the antichrist, 1 said the antichrist is sometime in the past and the other 1 said no, the antichrist is sometime in the future.

So you have both Daniel revelation prophetically was destroyed in the minds of Catholics and also the message of justification by faith.

God has called you and me back to those principles of of the true Antichrist.

It's not some future man, king that comes along or a dictator.

And it will eventually pull the entire anti-Christian system down before Christ comes.

In Daniel 7, 2 Thessalonians 4, and Revelation 13 and 17, the reformers were all united on these same principles.

They had differences of opinion on some of the other things, but they were solid on who the Antichrist is and justification by faith.

But here, you know, this 1, I'm really fascinated with this 1.

Here, what do these things look like here?

Christ in Daniel- Part 3

Father, we thank you again for the day you've given to us, and we, you've promised that if we ask for your Holy Spirit that he will be given to us.

And you said if we lack wisdom, we may ask of you, and you give to all people.

And we thank you for that, in Jesus' name, amen.

Alrighty, we're going to be looking at chapter 4 of Daniel.

We're going to go through the conversion experience of Nebuchadnezzar.

As you're well aware that he built Babylon.

It was 1 of the greatest cities in the ancient world.

It had 2 walls surrounding it, and they had a moat also.

They had enough food in that in the city itself to last for about 20 years and had it not been for God and that 70 years later after this had it not been for God it would not have it would not have fallen But God prophesied 150 years before that, that Cyrus by name would be the 1 who would conquer it.

And we may look at that next time, tomorrow.

But this was Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar's credited with building it.

It had been built before, but he was the 1 that made it extremely popular in the world in his day, and even to this day when people talk about Babylon, they think of him.

This is on 1 of the bricks, and I think I have it later on.

He says, this is the great city which is the light of my eyes, which I have glorified, may it last forever.

It used to be there was no record in secular history of Nebuchadnezzar nor his grandson Belshazzar.

And I had no use for archaeology whatsoever.

I thought they just went over with a toothpick and a toothbrush and get the sand away and pick up some of these artifacts.

Horn, who was a prominent he was a Seventh-day Adventist, 1 of the leading biblical archaeologists in the world.

And when I listened to him, he was telling us about the Book of Daniel.

And he said in the 1800s and even into the 1900s, the Book of Daniel was considered not a prophecy because there was no evidence, no secular history for these 2 men.

And then in chapter 3, there are musical instruments that are listed and they are in Greek.

And they said at this time, in the time of Nebuchadnezzar and these, there were no Greeks over there, because Greek really didn't exist.

But the archaeologists were digging around in the palace in the kitchen of all places and they found clay tablets with grocery lists on it written in Greek.

And so that gave evidence that there were Greeks there at that time.

And I went on an archeological dig after that.

And we were invited by the king to a party.

And they had a feed and a dance and drinking and that sort of thing.

And there were non-admins as well as admins in the group.

And I think 1 couple got up and danced, and the rest of us, we were dead in our seats.

And these guys were really wise, because as soon as they had the 1 song, they stopped for intermission.

And that was for us to get out of there, which we did.

These men, it was a band of Greeks, a roving group of Greeks who went through the countryside of the Middle East playing for dances and concerts and things like this.

And I think it was much like it was in the days of the Babylonians.

So it gave evidence that they, I mean, not necessarily these musical people, but the handwriting in the kitchen was evidence that there.

And another 1 was Nebuchadnezzar's name was never in secular history until the archaeologists started turning over bricks and on the backside of every brick his name was stamped.

And so that gave secular information that there was a man by this name.

Questioner 2 That's why he said, I delight in my eyes, which I have glorified.

But he was converted, and that's the good news.

And we'll be looking at that as we get into this more You're probably familiar with this man Who used to exist?

You know, we modeled himself after Nebuchadnezzar, yes, He had in fact, here's 1 of the pictures that he had painted and He's facing Nebuchadnezzar and it's interesting.

He's got the tree and I was the same kind of tree or not But that was there was a tree in chapter 4 showing the downfall of Nebuchadnezzar and his conversion then later on.

This is a very interesting 1, especially this 1 over here.

You've got him, this is Hussein in a chariot from the era of Babylon, and showing an arrow, but he's got his other modern-day armament, but this is this is he he modeled him so he thought he was the new Nebuchadnezzar and his idea was the same to rule the world And he was did he get it built Why not yeah, I mean he he had all the resources yet, huh Prophecy Okay, God said it will not be rebuilt.

And so he was actually going against the word of God.

And of course he, this is another picture of a little larger 1 of that same 1.

Here we see people digging and they did build a wall and then I think the next 1 shows, yeah, it came to naught.

Let's see, there's 1 there and 1 there's 1 way in the back, to a chair back there, and then there's 1 over there.

So This is the ruins of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar.

It has never been rebuilt, never will be.

Now men may start, but it will not be finished.

Yeah, this is, now this 1 is, yeah, this is part of the old, this is part of the old, both sides, yeah.

I think the military came in, they had a lot of their military in this, I believe it was this area.

American soldiers were there for quite some time and there was a palace that was built outside the boundary of old Babylon.

But I don't think that 1 was destroyed, but everything else Completely fell away.

Nope wrong wrong 1 here What I do with my button here it is You know the runes of the palace and time magazine we mentioned Iraq was on the march and then here was a, he was, he wanted to become a master of the universe and he was a dictator like Nebuchadnezzar and it says Saddam himself had photographed not long ago in a replica of the war chariot of Nebuchadnezzar.

That's what we saw a little bit ago and Saddam apparently reveres Nebuchadnezzar as his hero.

Despite a bout of insanity, which is recounted in the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar made his name in history by destroying Jerusalem in 587 BC and driving its inhabitants into 70 years of captivity.

It is a fair warning, because this is what they thought maybe Hussein was going to do.

The backyard of a hole that some of his Subjects had covered it up so that they couldn't find him, but they finally finally found him and then later on he was executed For the crimes that he had done against his own people Alright coming back to Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon This is a picture of 1 of the gates going, this is the main gate going into the city itself.

Here is, this is 1 of the stones or bricks that they found, is this not great Babylon that I have built?

And there's several stones, bricks like that.

Clay tablet in which an inscription by Nebuchadnezzar says, the excellency of the kingdom may it last forever.

This is only half the height as it usually was.

It was so high it would have gone off the picture itself.

And this is where all the processions went in and out at that time.

Oh, you've probably seen the pictures of the bulls and the different nondescript beasts.

That's why he used some of these animals in chapter 7 that people would have been familiar with.

But this is, the wall is really beautiful, the blue brick.

Christ in Daniel- Part 4

Heavenly Father, we gather here today at camp meeting to study your Word.

We pray for the Holy Spirit to be in our meeting today.

We pray that you'll put your hand upon Elder Finneman.

We pray that you'll put your hand upon us, that we will be receptive, that we will learn to see our Lord more and more in the scriptures as we study him, and especially in these prophetic books.

Father, we pray that you'll give us the experience that's been promised from the study of these books, that we might proclaim your message in these last days, and be ready very soon to go home with you.

Alrighty, we're moving now into, more directly into chapter 5, and we're going to talk about what Belshazzar knew, and we're going to see glimpses of Christ also in this chapter.

That's 1 of the aspects, but before we get into that, I want to do a little bit of review and I'm going to talk here about the conversion of Nebuchadnezzar that we didn't have this on the, oh I had it yesterday but we ran out of time.

And there was a process of Nebuchadnezzar was impressed, chapter 1, with the dietary habits of these 4 young people, their health, the principles of diet, and education.

This made a tremendous impression on him.

Then in chapter 2 he was convinced of the superior principles by which they operated and they had insights, especially Daniel and also the character.

This was all part of the process of conversion.

And then in chapter 3, he was convicted by God's power to deliver his own people, which were the Jewish people, thrown into the fiery furnace and that type of thing.

And then in chapter 4, he was finally converted, and it was the same power that protected the Jewish people in chapter 3 that converted him from the inside out and made him a converted man.

And it appears that the rest of his life, which was not very long, he, I believe he'll be in heaven.

And then this is a testimony that all of us can relate to.

How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders, his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, his dominion endures from generation to generation.

This is 1 of the main things that Nebuchadnezzar had to learn.

Series

Christ in Daniel

Christ in Daniel- Part 3

Transcript

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