ASI Scandinavia 2023: Look UP

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ASI Scandinavia

Seminars

Kenneth Jørgensen

Israel in the Time of the End Part 1

Time is there, so I think we should start with a prayer.

Dear Father in heaven, We come before you in the name of Jesus Christ to ask you for a blessing this hour and the next hour, not only for those who are gathered in this room, but for everything that happens here at Vailefjord this day.

I pray you, Father, to be among us with your Holy Spirit, with the presence of the angels, and with the Spirit inside our lives.

So help and guide us and let us see that Jesus Christ is really in the center of that big question concerning Israel.

So help us to understand these things and guide us because we pray in the name of Jesus Christ.

And in a few hours, we can say Happy New Year to each of you.

Some of you I haven't seen for some time, especially very nice and former students from the Madison School.

And I hope we will have a good time here.

You see, I have a question to begin with, and I'm not going to ask you to raise your arm because your arm may be a little tired now after these days.

It has gone up and down in many meetings.

But I have a question to begin with and that is, do you know who was the first woman on the moon?

There is a woman that has been a woman that has been on the moon and when when did she land there?

When did she touch the ground there and who is this lady?

She is, we can read about her in Revelation chapter 12.

And she's, at least it says that she's standing on the moon, so she was the first a long time ago, 1900 years ago, or 2000 years ago actually.

2000 years ago we had this first woman on the moon.

It tells us about church history from the beginning of church history until the last hours of church history as we know it in this world.

Chapter 12 verse 1, no a great sign appeared in heaven a woman clothed with the Sun with the moon under her feet with the moon under her feet and on her head a garland of 12 stars.

We believe that that is God's people, the people of God, Israel, 2, 000 years ago, expecting this Messiah to arrive, and according to Galatians 4, verse 4, he came at the right time.

And when Jesus came to this world, church history began.

Technically, it began there on the day of Pentecost.

But Jesus signalized that something new is coming to this world.

And this chapter is telling us about the great controversy between good and evil.

And we can actually get an insight into how Satan is working because he is there described as a dragon, a red fearful dragon, fierce dragon.

And at the very end of that chapter, it speaks about Satan's war against his God's church.

Because he says, and the dragon was enraged with the woman and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

The big question is who are these people?

Are these people the ethnic Jews or the Jewish nation, the nation of Israel?

Or are these people the spiritual Israel who are living in the last days, just before Jesus comes back the second time?

This is a very big question, Because it is describing the last war in this world.

See, the dragon was enraged with the woman.

And he went to make war with the rest of her offspring.

Those last generations of Christians in this world, I believe.

Some believe the Jews, and they are characterized as keeping the commandments of God and having the testimony of Jesus Christ.

You see, the last conflict will be very, very intense.

And many people, many Christians in this world, they believe that the true Christians, they will be raptured before the time of crisis, before the time of persecution.

The true Christians in this world, they will be raptured, they will be taken up to heaven.

We will not see him or hear him, but they will be sucked out of the earth and those who are living among the true Christians, they will be taken up to heaven.

So all the ungodly and unconverted and half-converted and the Jews and everyone in this world will be left behind, alone, without the true Christians.

And Then a last period of 7 years will begin.

And these 7 years, many Christians believe, is the last week of the 70 weeks in Daniel chapter 9.

And the last week there of the 70 weeks, they detach from these 70 weeks, and they move it.

They move it until the very end of history.

So before Jesus comes second time visibly with all his angels and with his church with him, then a period of 7 years has taken, it has lasted 7 years since he came invisibly until he comes visibly.

So these 7 years, These people, these Christians, very good Christians, and they are, we call them fundamentalist Christians.

Many of them, they believe in verbal inspiration.

But these people are very dedicated to the Bible.

They truly believe that all of Revelation, or at least from chapter 5 until chapter 19, all that you can read there, they place inside these last 7 years of world history.

Everything here, inside these 7 years before Jesus comes back a second time, visibly.

So Of course, these 7 years, they have not started yet.

But all these fundamentalist Christians, these good Christians, they are expecting to see that these 7 years very soon will start.

But when we read Revelation chapter 12 and we see that Satan is attacking God's people, those who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus, it's obviously the last conflict.

When we go on to Revelation chapter 13, there is an entirely different scenario than we are presented with by these good Christians.

We call them actually dispensationalists.

We could easily, not to ridicule, but we could easily call them dispensationalists because it's a great sensationalist thing they are into.

But in chapter 13 of the book of Revelation, we have the war more between good and evil in church history more clearly described.

Because when you read the book of Revelation, you must remember that it is a presentation of the whole scope of church history.

There are 5 visions in the first part of the Book of Revelation that takes us from the beginning of church history until the end.

And this I'm eager to teach the students I'm teaching to understand because it's so important to understand.

This is 1 of the major points in understanding the book of Revelation, that we begin at the time of the prophet, and then the vision ends at the time of Jesus' second coming.

5 times we have these visions in the book of Revelation in the first part between chapter 2 and chapter 13, including chapter 13.

The 7 churches, you remember the 7 churches, they begin there at the time of Ephesus in the early church, first century, and then we are taken on a tour de force through history.

We start with the first seal, and then we go through history.

Kind of, it's called periodization of history.

And then we end up with the seventh seal, just at the time of Jesus' second coming.

The same with the 7 trumpets, Revelation chapter 8 and 9, 10 and 11.

The 7 trumpets, the first trumpet in the beginning, and then we end up with the seventh trumpet just before Jesus comes back.

And the same is the case with chapter 12 of Revelation.

Because there we have in the first verse the lady on the moon, which is the Israel of God in the first century when Jesus was born, or around that time.

And we begin there, and Revelation 12 takes us on this tour through history, and it ends up there in verse 17.

So that is the fourth time we go through history, from the beginning, through church history, from the beginning to the end.

And the fifth time is in Revelation chapter 13.

The dragon, the beast from the sea, and the beast from the land, also called the false prophet.

So the beast from the sea is coming up from the sea in the beginning of church history.

You know, we believe as Seventh-day Adventists, we believe that this is the papal system.

And if you ask Catholics, when was your first bishop instituted?

Israel in the Time of the End Part 2

Dear Father in Heaven, we pray you to continue to be with us, fill us with your Holy Spirit, guide us and help us, and give us some good Bible texts that we can meditate over and use in our arsenal when we meet people of another opinion who will not accept the Protestant hermeneutic of interpretation.

Bless us for we pray in the name of Jesus.

Yeah, the remnant is a very important topic.

God, after sin entered this world, God had to make selections in the future of who shall he put his trust in, Who shall be his people that he can show to the world as a demonstration of his character?

They were thinking evil thoughts from the morning to the evening, and God decided I can't handle this.

And he condemned the old world, and 1 family was rescued, Noah and his family.

He was a character that God could show to the environment and tell, he is representing my character and he is exposing the character of Satan.

So Satan, he hates those people who presents the character of Jesus Christ.

So God made a remnant, and the remnant was Noah.

Later on, God took out Abraham from Ur in Chaldea, And he started anew with Abraham.

And you know the Bible text speaking about Abraham that all the nations of the world will be blessed through his seed.

So Abraham was the beginning of something new.

The world was into idolism and paganism and ungodly behavior.

And from that person, from Abraham, many kids came out.

And most of the families of the Middle East today are actually descendants from Abraham.

And we know that God again made a selection of Isaac, so he continued the family line through Isaac.

So God chose Jacob as his selected 1, and Jacob, he had 12 sons.

And you know all these, the 12 tribes of Israel.

So God decided that is the people I will count on for the future.

I'll bless them immensely, I'll show them my commandments, and they will be a proper demonstration to the world.

And this demonstration to the world, you can actually read about it there in Deuteronomy chapter 6, or chapter 4 actually.

In Deuteronomy chapter 4, and I think this is 1 of the most important texts in the Bible actually, because here we can see the purpose of Israel.

Why did God raise up a people called Israel.

It says here in chapter 4 of Deuteronomy, it says, no, O Israel, that's verse 1, verse 5, surely I have thought you statues and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess.

Therefore, be careful to observe them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us?

For whatever reason we may call upon him.

And what great nation is there that has such status and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?

Here we see 1 of the deep purposes of God of selecting the people of Israel, later called the Jews.

At this stage they are called the people of Israel.

So he wanted to use them to show his character to the world.

It's not a coincidence that the land area where Israel is placed, you know, it is between 3 large continents.

And even today, when you see a satellite picture of the world, you can see that the most strategic point, geographic point in this world, must be Israel, the Middle East.

And in the old days, particularly very strategic, because their ideal borders should really go to the Euphrates River and the River of Egypt.

So God planned to give the Israelites a big, big geographic territory.

And they would, through this territory, influence the rest of the world.

They would be like perfume to the rest of the world.

So God had a showcase here for the rest of the world.

And when it didn't work as he wanted, then, of course, God had to shatter his people to different parts.

Because when you have too much salt on 1 potato, If you eat a dinner and you put all the salts on 1 potato, then it is very sour and not so pleasant to eat.

And this was actually the case with Israel.

It became, for God, very unpleasant to have them there.

You know, all peoples of the world were crossing by this place all the time, and they saw these lukewarm people, and some of them really dedicated to idols and pagans in their religious exercises.

No, God couldn't handle it, so he sent them out.

He sent them to Babylon and he sent them to the Assyrians and so forth.

And then after these people had been in exile, God found a little remnant, always a little remnant.

Through the prophets, God clearly stated, I will preserve a little remnant, a little remnant, all the time a little remnant.

So God has been very dependent on his little remnant because when Satan is using his people, abusing his people, and introducing ungodly theologies and theories for them, then it needs to be destroyed and restored.

And in order to restore it, he needs a remnant, a true people of God.

And then we come to the time of Jesus Christ, because the people had apostatized, the Jewish people had apostatized in the time of Jesus Christ.

They were supposed to receive Jesus as their Savior and treat him with the greatest respect.

God had to restore the truth through a new remnant.

The true remnant now are really the 12 disciples.

So the New Testament church was a Christian church, but it was built on a Jewish foundation, on Jewish roots.

So therefore, it is not entirely correct to say, as some Adventists say, that we believe in a replacement theology.

That is that the Jews are now rejected and now we have the Christians.

It was a very soft transition from the Jewish true church to the Christian true church.

And this transition is very delicate because all the first Christians were Jewish.

When the church was established on the day of Pentecost, there were basically Jewish believers there.

There might have been 1 convert from some other sector of the religious world, but basically there were Jews.

And then after some time, a few years, then the Gentiles starting to pull in to the fold.

And When we go a hundred years ahead in history, the Gentiles are probably the most numerous in the Christian church.

But nevertheless, it started on a Jewish ground, with Jewish people, with Jewish traditions, and all Jewish things.

So it is remarkable to see how church history developed because there was an anti-Judaistic tendency in Christianity for a long time, especially after 135, after Christ, when they had their second rebellion against the Roman superpower.

The first was 1 in year 70, when Jerusalem was fallen.

And the second 1 is called the Bar Kokhba rebellion, taking place from 133 to 135 during the time when Hadrian was the emperor of the Roman Empire.

So the Jews, they hadn't learned the lesson from when Jerusalem fell.

So they went into a new rebellion against the Romans.

So from that time, the Jewish people became very unpopular in the Roman Empire, and also later in church history.

No people in the world, I think, has been persecuted as much as the Jewish people.

So that is something to consider for us when we express our, some express their hatred for the Jewish nation.

We should consider these things from another angle, I believe, but this I will talk about a little later.

So, the last foundational issue we have to consider is this Daniel, chapter 9.

This last week of the 70 weeks, What does it really mean, this prophecy?

You remember Peter came to Jesus 1 time and asked Jesus, how many times shall I forgive my brother?

Fredrik Kosma

Revelation Revealed

I'm not sure there are so many more people coming and I thought like we'll just get into it because I don't even, I won't even make an introduction, you don't need to know who I am, maybe you read it in the pamphlet, but the point for today is actually to help you get a, what do you call it, better understanding of the last portion of the Book of Revelation, which can be all confusing.

We can be a little bit confusing because the Book of Revelation is a very tricky book, especially if you try to read it chronologically, because there are a lot of timelines that suddenly go backwards, there are some breaks, there are some parenthesis.

What I want to show you today is to see the structure of the book of Revelation, because you know when you give a story to a friend, you usually try to start explaining something, then you realize that, oh, I just need to give a little bit of background of this.

It's very seldom that when you try to explain something to a friend, a story or something that happened, that you do it from point A to B.

And sometimes this is intentional so that you can follow the flow.

And I really believe that the book of Revelation is inspired in a way that the chapters are written in the order it's supposed to be.

And I will also show you some points how we can know that, oh, now it's a new topic.

Now this is trying to emphasize something that was mentioned before.

And then we have a word of prayer and then we start.

Some questions so far, a little bit about what you hope to know, what you...

Did anybody read Revelation chapter 12 to 22 yesterday?

Somebody ever read Revelation chapter 12 to 22?

So I will also try to keep it also on a low level, in the sense that sometimes people don't remember like, oh, this chapter is about this, so I will be a little bit repetitive, but I hope this can be a blessing for you because the thing that helped me the most to understand the book of Revelation is first to understand the big picture and the structure of it.

The symbols, they are not that difficult to find out.

There are always cross-references that can help you to know what a lion could represent or what crowns or heads or mountains.

I think the difficult part in the book of Revelation is actually to understand the timeline.

So let us have a word of prayer and then we start.

So Father in Heaven, We just want to thank you so much that we have the opportunity to study your word.

1 of the most awesome books in the Bible.

And I just pray that it might be clear to us, that we might be excited to know that you're coming soon.

And that this is really a book that you have given a blessing upon the reader and the hearer and the doer of the person who reads this book and do the things that are written therein.

So thank you for the opportunity, We pray for your spirit and your guidance and we pray this in Jesus name.

Amen and I just want to give a little little What they call Small introduction to the book of Revelation.

We will focus on chapter 12 to 22, but first of all I just want to read verse 1, where we get the very main idea of who the book of Revelation is about and to whom it was written.

So if somebody could read Revelation chapter 1 and verse 1.

There are some key elements I want to focus on here.

First of all in verse 1 we know it's a revelation about whom?

And like I said yesterday, for those who heard, do you think that the book of Revelation is a salvational issue to understand or know?

What is salvation according to John 17, verse 3, if somebody knows that verse?

And what better book than the book of Revelation to know Jesus Christ?

And the other point I want to make there, it is that it was given by the Father to Jesus, right?

And that's also a key word, the servants.

What's interesting, you can see there in verse 1, that before the angel gives it to the servant John, what does he do with the book?

It was signified, which means that the book was put into signs.

The same word signify, you can find it in John chapter 12, when Jesus talks about his death, when I am lifted up, I will draw all men to me.

And it says that this is signified by which death he would die.

The same with Peter, when he talks about Peter in John chapter 21, how Peter would die.

He also said that he said it's to signify, he put it into signs, he didn't put it straightly.

So already in verse 1 we can understand that the book of Revelation is a book of symbols.

The other point I want to make is, like you said Alexander, whom was it written to?

So I would just want to challenge you a little bit to understand that it is important for you to be a servant before you can receive the message of Revelation.

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