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Strong Tower Radio

Garhett Morgan

Probation and the Second Coming

Fresh manna fell to the ground as a gift from God while the Israelites were in the wilderness.

It was fresh from the ovens of heaven, baked by the master baker himself.

How the Israelites must have anticipated the taste and the smell of each morning's delivery.

Just like the Israelites, you too can now experience the taste and the smell of fresh manna.

Today you will be listening to Garrett Morgan, pastor of Big Rapids, Bristol and Reed City Seventh-day Adventist churches.

Before we get started today, we're going to be talking about the second coming and how that falls into the close of probation and the timeline and all of those things.

But before we get to that, let's go ahead and have a word of prayer, shall we?

Father, Lord, we thank you for your Sabbath.

We Thank you for just the wonderful blessing that it is to be among like-minded believers.

Father, we know that we all are different in our personalities, but Lord, your truth draws us together and draws us to you, and we thank you for that.

Lord, we ask that as we study today that we would not only be encouraged and convicted, but Father, that we would be drawn closer to you.

So my wife and I currently are reading through the book Desire of Ages together, And I've read through the Desire of Ages before on my own, but you know, just like the Word of God, when you read the book, the Desire of Ages, or like the Great Controversy, books like that, there's things that you missed or maybe you just don't remember, right?

And so we read through the first few chapters this past week, and there was a lot in there that reminded me of a few things, and we'll get to that as we're looking at this topic today.

But if you would, turn with me to Matthew 24.

Matthew 24 opens up, and it's quite interesting here, Matthew chapter 24, how this starts out.

Now in the timeline of the life of Christ, Matthew chapter 24 is taking place after Jesus has ridden into Jerusalem on a colt full of a donkey.

The townspeople have already crowded out Hosanna.

He went to the temple and he cleanses the temple yet again.

And you'll remember that the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the religious leaders, They moved up their want to kill Jesus into a full-blown plot to kill Jesus.

Christ doesn't have many days left on earth in his earthly ministry to be with his people.

So after he finishes there at the temple, he takes his disciples and they leave Jerusalem and they go up and we find this here in Matthew 24, starting here in verse 1.

And it says this, notice, and Jesus went out and departed from the temple and his disciples came to him to show him the buildings of the temple.

And Jesus said to him, See not all these things.

Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here 1 stone upon another that shall not be thrown down." I want to pause there for just a moment.

When I was reading the Desire of Ages this past week, there was a sentence that stuck out to me that really blew my mind.

It was simply this, the Jewish nation, when they saw Jerusalem, Jerusalem was their heaven.

Jerusalem was the Jewish people's heaven.

Not only is that semi-blasphemous in my opinion, but it's a gross misunderstanding of what heaven truly is.

And Jesus takes the disciples up, and you can see they're looking over Jerusalem there on the mountain, especially the temple, and the pride of maybe this nationalism, I don't know what it is, but they just have such pride about the heaven that was there.

And Jesus looks at them, but he says, you see this?

And in the egocentric minds of the disciples, notice how they respond to this shocking claim in verse 3.

And as he sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of your coming, and the end of the world?

The disciples thought so much that the world and in fact the universe revolved around Jerusalem, that the destruction of Jerusalem must mean, but of course, the end of the world, right?

And that reminded me of something that I've been seeing lately and something that I've experienced as well.

We know that persecution of God's people has always existed, amen?

But in the modern era, many of us have been tempted to think that persecution doesn't exist like it did maybe in the Dark Ages and maybe on that level that's true.

But as we know in the past few decades more and more that Christianity has actually been in the world stage under quite heavy persecution.

We don't necessarily see that in our country today but we certainly see it in other countries, don't we?

We see people being persecuted for believing in Jesus.

We see people being persecuted for owning a Bible.

And we look at those things and say, wow, that's really sad.

When something begins to come closer to home for us as Americans, when things began to get harder, when we see some of our freedoms, maybe we see them slipping away, maybe we see them challenged, maybe we see some things that's starting to hit us on our doorstep.

As soon as uncomfortableness hits our doorstep, we throw up our hands in a panic and we say the world is ending.

And I'm not trying to minimize the times that we're living in.

I truly believe the signs of the times are happening more rapidly now than ever before.

But let us not forget that this persecution has been happening for a long time.

And the signs of the times have been happening for a long time.

We're just starting to see them on our door, right?

And so I find it interesting because I think we as American Christians, and to put it plainly, have grown rather soft and spoiled when it comes to living and preaching and living our Christian life as we do.

And we see that just beginning to be threatened.

We panic and we say, oh, it's the signs of the times.

But in reality, people have been dealing with this for a long time.

And so we really truly need to be careful that we like the disciples here don't make earth our home, amen.

That this is not our heaven, but that we're just simply passing through.

And in that, as we're looking forward to the second coming of Jesus, I'm sure that we have the same questions as the disciples did here in verse 3.

What are the sign of your coming and the end of the world?

Now of course we can go through all these signs of the times here today, but I'm sure you can tell by my picture we're going to focus on 1 part of this.

Matthew chapter 24 and verse 37, Jesus mentions something interesting and he brings them back to a story when the world was judged and cleansed a time before.

It says, Matthew 24, 37, But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.

For as the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

So Jesus here, when talking about the end of the world, when he's talking about the close of probation, he points us back to the days of Noah.

And interestingly enough, when you are in the spirit of prophecy and you're trying to understand the timeline, when you're trying to understand how the close of probation works, she often goes back exactly to the story of Noah.

She talks about many things that we're gonna be taking a look at today.

But I'd like to start this straight from the beginning.

Many Christians today, and maybe even some Adventist Christians, but many Christians today believe that probation closes at the second coming of Jesus.

When Jesus comes in the clouds and we see his face, that's when probation closes.

Probation closes before the second coming of Jesus.

And we'll see that from scripture and spirit of prophecy here today.

But let's go ahead and take a look at this quotation here before we get started because I think it's important.

It's in first selected messages, and we actually have quite a bit of spirit prophecy today.

God has not revealed to us the time when this message will close or when probation will have an end.

Those things that are revealed we shall accept for ourselves and for our children, but let us not seek to know that which has been kept secret in the counsels of the Almighty." So I see this very similarly when it comes to setting a time for the second coming of Jesus.

The second coming of Jesus, Christ tells us to look for the signs.

Christ tells us to look for that time when it is fast approaching, but it doesn't give us the exact date and time.

And I believe the same thing is with probation.

I believe that we are supposed to be educated, and I think we are supposed to understand the time frame of when the close of probation will happen, but not the exact same date or time, right?

And the danger of that would be the same if we knew the date of the second coming of Jesus, what would we as procrastinating human beings do?

We would put it off till the last day before probation ended, and then we would have a, probably in the most part, fake conversion, right?

So today we're not gonna be setting a date per se for the close of probation, but we're going to see through scripture and the spirit of prophecy, what is so important about this time and also around what will be happening when the close of probation takes place.

Probation and the Second Coming

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