ASI Scandinavia Convention 2021: Overdue

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ASI Scandinavia

Daniel Pel

A Window of Opportunity

The title for my message this afternoon is A Window of Opportunity.

And wherever you're viewing this from, you can just say it.

Even if you're all by yourself in your room, just say a window of opportunity.

I believe that God is going to give us a window of opportunity in order to finish the work, in order to proclaim the gospel.

Now a lot has happened in the year 2020, and It's been a rough year, it's been a turbulent year, an unprecedented year, and I believe that the Bible can speak into some of the challenges that our world has been facing.

I believe that the Bible is not silent when it comes to current events.

And even though this book has been written for many, many years ago, it has the ability because it's inspired by God to speak directly to particular circumstances that we face, also in 2020 and 2021.

And so we're going to go on a little journey in the Bible.

But before we do that, let me share a little experience that I had some years ago.

It was February 2011, and I had been invited to conduct an evangelistic meeting, a prophecy seminar in the country of my birth, which is New Zealand.

That's about as far as you can get from Norway.

And for anyone that has visited New Zealand, you've been close to heaven.

And so I'm on my way to New Zealand And we are going to preach there to a crowd in the city of Christchurch in the South Island.

And there was another evangelist by the name of David Asher that already started the meetings and then he had to leave earlier and so I was going to come and continue those meetings.

Now as I was on my way in 2011 in February I didn't make it to New Zealand right away because when I landed in Sydney Australia I heard that there were no flights going to Christchurch And the reason why there were no flights going to Christ Church was because an earthquake had just happened.

An earthquake had struck the city of Christ Church.

200 people had lost their lives, thousands of people were now being evacuated.

The city, major parts of the city and especially the center of the city had been demolished.

Now, that night I had to stay in a hotel close by the airport And you can just imagine all things that are racing through my mind and are we going to be able to have these meetings at all?

And how is this going to go and what's going to happen next?

Well the next day I was able to get the flight a flight to Christchurch and as I arrived in Christchurch, we were able to meet together with some of the leading people that were organizing this event.

And I remember very well as we were praying and discussing together how we were going to do and how we were going to continue the work, the very auditorium that had been used was now no longer available because the civil defense was using this as a launching point of helping people in the city.

And so I remember very well that I got a stack of cards in my hand and they told me that these were the decision cards that people had filled out the last night and the day before the earthquake.

And so here I am holding these cards of decisions that people have made.

The last subject that David Ashok had preached on was the Sabbath subject and it also being connected with a decision card to give your life to Jesus for the first time, to decide to follow His commandments including the Sabbath.

And so I'm perusing through these cards and I'm reading these cards and my heart is just, I don't know what to think because here are people that have made decisions for Christ but are they still in the city?

Well, after some days we were able to start some of the visitation work and so we were driving to these addresses.

It was very hard to get around the city because a lot of the parts of the city were now no longer accessible because of the earthquake.

But I remember very well coming to homes where we thought we would meet someone that had written on the decision card that they wanted to follow Christ and they weren't there.

They had left the city, they had maybe gone to some, you know, family members in another part of the country or perhaps for some other reason they had left.

Many of the people that had been writing down on those cards that they wanted to follow Jesus we no longer could contact.

And it made me think that perhaps the last window of opportunity has now been given to these people.

Perhaps we are now in a circumstance and situation that we won't have another opportunity to reach out to them.

Well, hopefully and by God's grace, of course, God can use all kinds of means to reach people in various circumstances, but it made me think how fast a situation can change.

And that's not just the case for 2011, an earthquake in New Zealand.

And I must add to that story that God worked a miracle because we were able to continue the meetings and many of the people that had come did come back and some new people that hadn't come prior to the earthquake started to come and, you know, they just realized, like, the last thing that you expect to shake is the earth beneath your feet.

And when that starts shaking, yeah, you really search for a foundation in life.

And some of the people that came after the earthquake, they said, we just need to find something firm in life, something that we can rely on, and that became the Word of God.

And so we praise God how God can work through difficult circumstances, but it made me think that we have this window of opportunity, and if we don't use it, we don't know what tomorrow is going to bring.

And I believe that the year 2020 has also taught us this, how fast things can change.

Literally overnight countries went into shutdown.

Bible studies could no longer take place in the same way in the homes.

Gatherings have taken other forms through the internet and we praise God for that.

But we can't deny that we had a window of opportunity in 2019 that we no longer had in 2020.

And though God can work in many different ways, we see how that window of opportunity can suddenly disappear.

And the question is, now that we've moved through 2020, now that we've come through 2020, will we have another window of opportunity to spread the gospel into all the world?

No 1 can really answer that question, I believe, but time will show.

But I want you to take you to some passages in the Bible that I believe are fulfilling before our very eyes.

I wanna take you to a passage in scripture that I believe speaks into the very situation The world has gone through and is going through right now.

And again, the title of this presentation is A Window of Opportunity.

So take your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Matthew.

Matthew's in the New Testament, the first book in the New Testament.

Matthew is built up in a very beautiful way, a very structured way.

There are basically 5 large teaching blocks in the book of Matthew.

We have the well-known Sermon on the Mount, which is Matthew 5 to 7.

Then we have the Sermon of Jesus when He sent out His disciples, the Sermon on Mission, which you find in Matthew chapter 10.

Then you have of course the well-known chapter 13, which is the teaching on parables.

Then we have Matthew 18, which is the teaching on the church.

And then the final teaching block in the book of Matthew is chapter 23 to 25, and it's really a teaching on the end times or a little fancy language we call it eschatology.

It means the teaching of the end times and Jesus is teaching the people what's going to happen as we get closer and closer to the end.

And in this message this afternoon, I want us to focus on that fifth and last teaching portion in the book of Matthew.

Let's look at what Jesus has to say about the end times.

So Matthew chapter 23, and we're going to pick it up in verse 37.

And I would just hear that amen through the camera, even though I can't hear it audibly, but we have a few people here that are participating, so please lean into this Bible study, follow along closely.

Matthew chapter 23, beginning in verse 37.

In Matthew chapter 23, Jesus is speaking to the religious leaders, and it's really the last time he is addressing them publicly.

They have rejected his ministry and Jesus is revealing to them the consequences of the rejection of him as a Messiah.

And he's in the temple and He says the following words from verse 37, he says, Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the 1 who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." And isn't that just a beautiful picture?

Jesus says, it's like, I wanted to protect you, I wanted to care for you, I wanted you to abide under the shadow of the Almighty, And yet they were not willing.

Verse 38, the consequence of the rejection of the Messiah, Jesus reveals very clearly in verse 38.

He says, see, your house is left to you desolate.

And when Jesus says, your house is left to you desolate." He's talking about the temple.

He is standing in the temple as He speaks these words.

Verse 39, "'For I say to you, you shall see Me here no more, till you say, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.'" And Then we just need to continue to read because many times what we do when we study the Bible is we forget that when it was written there were no chapter divisions.

And sometimes we read and then we come to the end of the chapter and we think in our mind that a new chapter must mean a new subject, but that's not always the case.

And here, this is just a continual unfolding of the events that are taking place.

He's told them that their house, their temple is going to be left desolate.

And the very next thing that happens in the beginning of chapter 24 is the disciples are amazed by the words that they have just heard Jesus speak to the religious leaders.

It says, then Jesus went out and departed from the temple and His disciples came to Him to show Him the buildings of the temple.

It's almost like they're saying, Jesus, I think you must have got something wrong here.

When you said that this house will be left desolate, come on, come on, let me give you a little tour here.

Look at this magnificent temple and by the way it was absolutely stunning.

A Window of Opportunity

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