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Living Hope SDA Church

Chris Holland

Not on the Bones of a Dead Man

And I want to thank Seth and Raquel for singing this morning, Give Me Jesus.

Because it lays the framework for what we're going to study today.

The first evidence of that song was in a songbook in the 1840's.

Negro spirituals were special songs because they affirmed the reality that they must have a complete and total trust in God, believing that he would make right in the next world all the things done wrong in this world.

And the song Give Me Jesus has been recently popularized by Jeremy Camp, who sang that song in the aftermath of his first wife dying from cancer.

And if we make it about anything else, we are in very serious trouble.

Heavenly Father, we have gathered to study Your Word, and now as we open Your Word, I pray that You would enlighten our minds that the Holy Spirit would be here amongst us and help us to discern truth from error.

And Lord, I pray that You do what You need to do today.

If it's hope that we need, I pray that You would give us hope.

If it's encouragement that we need, then I pray that you would encourage us.

But if it's a rebuke that we need, then I pray that it would happen.

And if it's conviction that we need, I pray that that would happen.

I pray, Lord, that your word would be operative, living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.

And I pray, dear Lord, that while I have prepared words to say, if there are things I should not say, You would not let me say them.

And if there are things I should say that are not in my notes, that You would bring them to my mind.

Help us, Lord, I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

The Waldensys were a people, also called the Vaudoy, that are believed to be a people who practiced primitive Christianity in the Alps of Italy and France and Switzerland.

There are many who believe that they are the church that maintained the pure faith in light of a great deal of apostasy.

There is evidence for their existence much earlier than is popularized by many historical records.

In fact, the leader of the churches in Milan and Turin, as early as the fourth century, began to protest the encroaching error of the church in Rome.

In the ninth century, San Ambrogia, who was the first bishop of Milan and died in 397, was styled and called the rock of the church.

And it was a well-deserved title because he wrote extensively on the opposition to idols.

Some of his manuscripts still exist where he wrote about the errors of the church and the protest that was needed to be faithful to the Word of God and the Word of God alone.

There were others, unknown to many, philastreous, guadensious, all protested.

In the 800's A.D., the Archbishop of Turin writing what many believe was an outline as he led people, and some believe led the Waldensian people, wrote against images.

He wrote against pilgrimages that brought about absolution.

He maintained that faith is the only requirement of salvation.

He held that the church was in fact fallible.

He opposed the veneration of images and saints and even the cross as heretical, and believe that 1 must worship the Creator alone." 1 historian writing about the Waldensies said this, they are the primitive Christians and heirs of the primitive church preserved in these valleys, secure from the alterations introduced successfully by the Roman Catholics into the evangelical faith.

Another historian wrote, the seed of the pure Christian church has been appointed by wonderful providence of God, and none of the storms by which the world has been shaken nor persecution has been able to prevail against the Waldensians." And Another historian wrote, with the dawn of history, we discover some simple Christians in the valley of the Alps where they still exist under the ancient name of the Voidoi, who by the light of the New Testament saw the extraordinary contrast between the purity of primitive times and the vices of the gorgeous hierarchy which surrounded them.

The faith and the discipline of the Waldensian Christians was considered to be the true Gospel.

The Waldensians held a Bible and reproduced a Bible through hand copies.

There are many who believe that it was possibly the earliest New Testament in the vernacular of the Roman Empire.

It is difficult to know all the history of the Waldensians, Because virtually all the writings that existed from that time were destroyed.

Because while these people desired to live in the country, live simple lives, and practice pure Christianity, while they desired to get the Bible in the language of the people, in the hands of the people, while they desired to train their youth in missionary service, while many of their youth went to universities to share the Gospel message.

And while it is believed that there was no kingdom in southern or central Europe to which the missionaries of the Waldenses did not go.

They were a thorn in the side to the church.

And so the church at that time, persecuted these people.

I want you to listen to a description of the Piedmont Valley where the Waldensians lived as a historian tried to describe it.

As 1 comes from the south across the level plain of Piedmont, while yet nearly a hundred miles off, 1 sees the Alps rise before 1, stretching like a great wall along the horizon.

From the gates of the morning to those of the setting sun, the Mountains run on a line of towering magnificence.

Pastures and chestnut forests clothe their base.

Some rise like castles of stupendous strength.

Others shoot up tall and tapering like needles, while others run along the serrated lines, their summits torn and cleft by the storms of many thousand winters.

At the hour of sunrise, what a glory kindles along the crest of that snowy rampart.

At sunset, the spectacle is again renewed.

The valleys are lovely and fertile as well as strong.

They are watered by the numerous torrents which descend from the snows of the summits.

The grassy carpet of their bottom, the mantling vine and the golden grain of their lower slopes, the chalets that dot their sides, sweetly empowered among fruit trees.

And higher up, the great chestnut forests and pasture lands where the herdsmen keep watch over the flocks all through summer days and the starlit nights.

This picture is a picture of blended beauty and grandeur not equaled perhaps, and certainly not surpassed in any other region of the earth.

Why read these things and talk about the Waldensys?

Because my dear friends, the Piedmont Valley, there in the foothills of the Alps, is a literal fulfillment of the passage just read by Alex in Revelation 12.

I'd invite you to open your Bibles to Revelation 12.

There, beginning in verse 13, we see predicted in the first century what would take place so many centuries later.

Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child.

Earlier in Revelation chapter 12, the dragon is identified as the serpent of old.

This great dragon had 1 thing on his mind, and has always had 1 thing on his mind, and that is the usurpation of Jesus Christ.

He desired His throne to be above the Almighty.

He desired to take place, take the place of the Creator.

Which means, literally in the Greek, He zealously pursued and pressed toward the woman.

Now we don't have time to go into great detail, but the woman throughout history and in the Bible is a representation of God's pure church.

Micah 4, Isaiah 7, Isaiah 9, Isaiah 26, Isaiah 62, Isaiah 66.

Here in Revelation 12, the pure woman represents the true church.

The pure and faithful throughout time, both in the Old Testament and then into the New Testament, those that were faithful.

And the dragon being enraged with the church, pursued the church, and Verse 14 says, but the woman was given 2 wings of a great eagle that she might fly into the wilderness to her place where she is nourished for a time, times, and a half a time from the presence of the serpent.

The dragon worked through first pagan Rome and then worked through papal Rome to pursue those faithful and they fled into the wilderness.

Undoubtedly this is referencing back to the wilderness being a place that both has positive and negative associations, but in its positive association, in Exodus 19, it describes Israel being bore on eagles' wings.

Once again in Deuteronomy 32 and Isaiah 40, the wilderness provided a refuge to God's people in the past, and John was predicting a time where it would provide refuge for the future.

In fact, the wilderness provides refuge even for individuals.

Elijah fled into the wilderness not once, but twice.

And in that latter fleeing, was actually miraculously fed.

But here John predicts that the church would flee into the wilderness for a time, times, and a half a time." If you go back just a few verses into verse 6, it tells us exactly what this time, times, and a half a time is.

Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God that they should feed her there 1, 260 days." And once again, time does not allow for me to go into details on this prophecy, but this 1260 days or time, times, and a half a time are the identical time period.

The phrase time, times, and a half a time appears in Daniel 7.25, Daniel 12.7, and here in Revelation 12.

1260 days appears in Revelation 12.6, as I just read.

And then there is 1 other reference, the reference to 42 months, which appears in Revelation 13 and verse 5.

Throughout history, the historicist's interpretation of this prophecy is that a day equals 1 literal year.

1260 years where the church would be placed or would be pursued into the wilderness.

How fitting a symbol that the Waldenses are this primitive people that were driven into the wilderness of the Piedmont Valley.

The 1260 day prophecy is fulfilled from 538 AD to 1798 AD.

And again, time does not allow for me to get into the details.

If you'd like to study this further, please talk to me and I will make sure that you get literature or studies on understanding this prophecy.

But it is during that time that papal supremacy reigned and God's people had fled into the wilderness.

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Not on the Bones of a Dead Man

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