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Sabbath School 2nd Quarter 2025: Allusions, Images, Symbols: How to Study Bible Prophecy?

Mark Finley

Is Ellen White a Prophet or Plagiarist?

01 Some Principles of Prophecy

02 The Genesis Foundation

03 Images from Marriage

04 The Nations Part 1

05 The Nations: Part 2

06 Understanding Sacrifice

07 Foundations of Prophecy

08 In the Psalms, Part 1

09 In the Psalms Part 2


I hope that you've been enjoying these Sabbath School lessons. And my intent in each lesson is not simply to share the information in the lesson, but to share the spiritual principles in the lesson that will make a life-changing difference in every single 1 of our lives. So as you study the lesson with me, pray that God will give you open eyes and an open heart to receive something new, something fresh in the lesson that will be life transformational for you. If you're enjoying the lessons, please invite your friends to tune in too. We have more than 80, 000 people that are studying the Sabbath school lesson with us each week on some weeks.

And God is moving as I travel through the United States. More and more people in local churches are saying, pastor, thank you so much for doing the Sabbath school lessons. They are making a difference in my life. So let's pray and then we'll enter into our lesson today. This is lesson number 7 called foundations of Bible prophecy.

So let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you for the opportunity of studying your Word today. Thank you for the privilege of opening the Bible and letting God speak to us by his Holy Spirit through his Word. As we study this lesson, May it be more than simply a lesson study. May it be a dynamic experience with the living Christ, I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. If I had to summarize this lesson, I'd summarize with the 5 C's. You say 5 C's. Now that's not oceans, that's 5 C's, like letter C. The Creator, Confession, Commitment, Cleansing, and Contentment.

We look at some of these 5 C's, how God leads us to understand the Creator, how God then leads us in the light of the cross to confession, how God leads us to commitment and mission for Him, and how God leads us to cleansing of our sin, and how God leads us to contentment. When you live for Christ and serve Christ, there is contentment. We begin our lesson with the first paragraph there in Sabbath Afternoon's lesson, God's right to rule the universe is founded upon his position as creator of all things and upon his character. It is discovering God's righteous character that we begin to understand how and why sinful human beings fall short of the glory of God. So if we simply evolved, if we have no more purpose than simply an advanced animal creation, if that's all of our purpose is, then the basis for worship, there is really no basis for worship, but if God created us, which he did, if God fashioned us and shaped us and brought us into existence, then there's a purpose for living and there's a reason for worship.

In the light of our Creator, in the light of his holiness, in the light of his righteousness, in the light of his pure, perfect character, we see ourselves in the mirror of that as a very, very imperfect reflection. We see ourselves in the light of Christ's love, grace, and character as faulty, as weak, and as sinful. Now that's hard for 21st century men and women to recognize, to admit. There are many that say, just develop the God within you. There's no God within us.

The God is outside of us. And if we're going to get adequate help for the trials and difficulties and temptations and sins of life, Jeremiah says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it? Jeremiah 17, verse 9, Isaiah 54 says, My righteousness is as filthy rags. And so how do we how do we leave, get out of the bondage that we're in? First, we must have to recognize it.

And that's what happened to Isaiah. This is Sunday's lesson, Isaiah 6, Isaiah chapter 6. We'll go to Sunday's lesson. We're going to look at Sunday, Isaiah's declaration. Isaiah 6, I'm going to start with verse 1.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above it stood Seraphim, each 1 had 6 wings, with 2 he covered his face, and 2 he covered his feet, and with 2 he flew. 1 cried, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts, the earth is filled with his glory." So why wings cover the face of this being called the Seraphim? Because he's in the presence of the holiness of God. And when you see God's holiness and righteousness, You recognize your weakness.

That's what happened to Isaiah. Look, I said, verse 5, Isaiah 6, verse 5, then I said, woe is me, I'm undone because I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. And 1 of the seraphims flew to me, having in his hand a live cold, which he had taken with the thongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips. Your iniquity is taken away and your sin is purged.

I also heard a voice saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I said, here am I, send me. He said, go and tell this people. Look, did you notice the sequence there? First you have the holiness of God and Isaiah sees God's holiness.

He sees God's righteousness and then Isaiah sees his deformity, his sinfulness. Then Isaiah says, God cleanse me And the cleansing comes from heaven, not within himself. And then Isaiah says, send me. So you have those elements there. You have God as the creator of the universe of holiness.

You have Isaiah coming to confession and commitment and cleansing. You have Isaiah being commissioned to go out and eventually this Isaiah, forgiven of his sins, cleansed of unrighteousness, standing before God as righteous in Christ. Isaiah goes out now to witness for Christ. All through the Bible, you see this idea of cherubim, this idea of angels, this idea of the holiness of God. You remember when Adam and Eve had sinned and they had to leave the Garden of Eden?

And What took place? First mention actually of fire in the Bible is there because you'll read about it, Genesis chapter 3, verse 21 to 24. You have the first mention of fire in the Bible because 2 cherubim, you remember there were cherubim in the days of Isaiah, but the first mention of these flaming beings in cherubim comes back here in the book of Genesis chapter 3. They stand at the gates of the garden and you're going to look there at Genesis chapter 3 and we're going to take a look at verse 21 to 24. Then the Lord God said, "'Behold, the man has become like 1 of us, "'to know good and evil.

"'And now lest he put out his hand "'and take also of the tree of life and live forever." If Adam and Eve would have come into that garden and they would have eaten of that tree of life again, again in an act of disobedience, an act of rebellion against God because he had told them not to eat of it, but if other humans would have come into that garden and ate of that tree, they would have been perpetual sinners and therefore would have lived forever in perpetual sin, in everlasting sin. And so the Bible says, verse 23, therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So he drove, this verse 24 of Genesis 3, out the man and he placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the Tree of Life." So you have these cherubim again. Why are the cherubim there? I think the cherubim are there for a couple reasons.

First, as humanity might come to the gate of the garden, to the entrance of the garden, they of course guarded it so they wouldn't come to the tree of life. That's 1 reason. But I wonder in my own imagination, whether these angels were there to reveal the glory of God. I wonder if beings coming to the garden could see them, and they could, if the human beings could see them, and they could reveal God's glory and majesty. And as human beings could look into the garden, they could see the promise of God of what the earth would be like after sin was demolished.

Because you remember when Adam and Eve sinned, the earth experienced that sin. There were thorns and thistles, and there was devastation on the earth, and earth beings eventually could see all around them in the decaying leaves and the rotting fruit, the result of sin. I wonder if they could look over into that garden and see the beauty that would be restored. I'm interested in a statement that Ellen White makes in Patriarchs and Prophets in page 62. The Garden of Eden remained upon the earth long after man had become an outcast from its pleasant paths." Isn't that interesting, that the Lord of the Garden of Eden remained there?

The fallen race was long permitted to gaze upon the home of innocence. So they could, couldn't they? We don't have to imagine it, they could gaze in there, couldn't they? Their entrance barred only by the watching angels. At the cherubim-guarded gate of paradise, the divine glory was revealed.

Hither came Adam and his sons to worship God. Here they renewed their vows of obedience to that law, the transgression of which had banished them from Eden. But in the final restitution, when there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, it is to be restored more gloriously adorned than at the beginning." So Why did God allow them to come to the garden, to the gates of the garden even after they fall, and why did he allow it to remain there until eventually he took it up to heaven so they could see its glory and be reminded of the glory of the heavens and the earth. So they could come right there to where those cherubims were. Throughout the Bible, we see a correlation between what's happening in the Old Testament and the book of Revelation.

Do you know there are 404 verses, at least, in the book of Revelation that have allusions to the Old Testament? We find, and we're studying today, the theme of the glory of God. We're studying about the cherubims and the angels all through the Old Testament, all through the book of Revelation. And in a book of Ezekiel, I want you to see the similarity between Ezekiel chapter 1 and Revelation chapter 4. So Ezekiel chapter 1, and we're looking there at Ezekiel chapter 1.

And you remember, this is that great chapter about the wheel within the wheel. Isaiah, Jeremiah, on to Ezekiel, right before the book of Daniel. Ezekiel chapter 1, Jeremiah, Lamentations, on to Ezekiel. I'll get it here. Ezekiel 1.

And chapter 1, verse 4 to 14. And I'm going to pick up right from verse 5. Well, let's get verse 4. Ezekiel 1, verse 4. Then I looked, and behold, a whirlwind was coming out of the north, a great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself, and brightness was all around and radiating out of its midst like the color of amber out of the midst of fire.

Also from within it came the likeness of 4 living creatures. Remember, in Revelation 4, we read about 4 living creatures? Now look, 4 living creatures. This was their appearance. They had the likeness of a man, 1 had 4 faces, each 1 had 4 wings.

It Talks about their legs were straight, soles of their feet were like the soles of calves, sparkled like the color of burnished bronze. But I'll let your eyes drop down to verse 10. This is Ezekiel 1, verse 10. As for the likeness of their faces, each had the face of a man, each of the 4 had the face of a lion on the right side, each of the 4 had the face of an ox on the left side, and each of the 4 had the face of an eagle. Interesting isn't it?

There are some scholars believe that when Israel's 4 tribes marched, they had these standards. We'll look at that a little later. They had these standards, face of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle. When I thought about that, Could this be an allusion to Jesus? Because in heaven, in Revelation chapter 4, what do we find in Revelation chapter 4?

We find in Revelation chapter 4 a very similar theme of worship. And these beings are worshipping Jesus around the throne of God. Here, John takes the theme of Ezekiel. In Revelation 4, verse 6, it says, before the throne there was a sea of glass, a glass-like crystal, the throne, there are 4 living creatures, full of eyes in the front and back, eyes are a symbol of wisdom. And it says, the first living creature, like a lion, and the second living creature like an ox or like a calf, a sacrifice, third living creature like a man, and the fourth like a flying eagle.

Where are they? They're around the throne of God worshipping. Who are they worshipping? Jesus, the Creator, Jesus, the Redeemer. I want you to think about this.

Could it be that this is a symbol of the incarnation? Jesus becomes a man. He leaves the glory of heaven and he becomes a man, dwells in tabernacles in human flesh, gives up the glory and the worship in heaven. Then he becomes like the… Well, first he's the Lion of the tribe of Judah. See that's these first, he's the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

Then he becomes a sacrificial service, like a calf. He comes to sacrifice as a man, but 1 day he will die and he will be resurrected like an eagle. See, could it be that the lion represents Jesus, the lion of the tribe of Judah? That the calf represents Christ's sacrifice for us? That becoming a man indicates his humanity, and that he would go into the tomb and die on our behalf, but 1 day he would be resurrected and wing his ways like an eagle?

Could that represent that? And could the 4 standards that were all of the big tribes of Israel? Could they represent Christ himself? And could they represent the fact that all in Israel, that all humanity would have the privilege of knowing this Christ that once was the Lion of the tribe of Judah, that once became a sacrifice, that once lived and dwelt in human flesh, that is now resurrected for us. These symbols in the Old Testament become rich.

We mentioned about, And this would be Wednesday's lesson, God Among His People. I read the first paragraph, following the leading of God's presence in the cloud. The Israelites would stop in their journey to the promised land, set up the tabernacle, and then the tribes would pitch their camps around it, 3 tribes on each side. The presence of God would descend into the most holy place and take up residence in the midst of his people. Now there's 1 dominant side on each of the 4 sides.

So there are 3 sides to the 3 tribes on each of the 4 sides around the tabernacle. Now keep that in mind because remember in the New Jerusalem, what are there? There are 4 sides, 3 gates on each side. So here you have 4 sides around the earthly tabernacle, 3 gates or 3 tribes in each side. So what do you have?

I wanna go back to Numbers chapter 2, because this becomes really fascinating to me when we study Numbers chapter 2, because here is an allusion in the book of Revelation back to the book of Numbers. And there are some rich spiritual lessons that speak out to us. Numbers chapter 2, verse 3. Numbers 2, verse 3. On the east side toward the rising of the sun, those of the standard of the forces of Judah shall camp.

So Judah camps there. And Judah, often scholars tell us that he had the symbol of the lion. Remember, Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah. Verse 10, on the south side shall be the standard, the forces of Reuben. And Reuben often was equated with the symbol of a man in the standard.

Yet the standard had the flag like on it. It was not a flag, but more of a tapestry. And then verse 18, you have the West, you have Ephraim on the west side, the standard or the tapestry of the forces of, with Ephraim according to their armies. And Ephraim is assembled as an ox, most scholars say, on that standard. And Then, verse 25, you have the standard or the tapestry of Dan, an eagle.

Wait a minute, you have those 4 tribes, Judah, Reuben, Ephraim, Dan, the lion, the man, the ox, the eagle, Jesus, the divine son of God, leaves his kingly robes off as the lion of the tribe of Judah, worshipped by all the angels and cherubim, the seraphim, comes to earth as a man, dies for us as a sacrifice, the ox, and is resurrected. The book of Revelation, 4 sides, 3 gates on each side. Names above the gates, names of the children of Israel, rascals, scoundrels at times. They were tried in a court of law, they could be tried for murder and adultery and thievery, etc. Names on the foundations of the 12 apostles.

Peter who denied him. There, Thomas who doubted him. James and John, the sons of thunder, Matthew, the conniving 1, tax collector. What do the names above the gates tell us? What do the names in the foundations tell us?

These names tell us that Christ wants us to enter in. 12 patriarchs, 12 disciples, 12 gates. Gates on the north, south, east, and west, and Jesus says you can come in. These are men redeemed by God's grace. These are men changed by God's love.

These are men who, like you and me, walk the dusty, dirty sod of this earth, born genetically weak and frail, but these are men who are redeemed by the grace of Christ. And what is Jesus saying here among the tribes? What is he saying to you and me? He's saying we can enter in through those gates into the city. The last lesson is the fall of Lucifer.

I wondered why put the fall of Lucifer last here. But there is a reason for that. It's contrasted with Jesus Christ. So we're going to Look at Isaiah chapter 14, verse 12 to 14. Isaiah 14, verse 12 to 14.

And we're gonna contrast Lucifer with Jesus and see the powerful contrast here. Isaiah 14, verse 12 to verse 14. How are you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? How you cut down to the nations, you who weakened the nations? Jesus voluntarily left his throne of glory and came to earth.

The line of the tribe of Judah became the man who became the ox to die for us. Jesus came from the glories of heaven to this sin-polluted earth. Lucifer was in heaven, but he wanted to usurp the place of Christ. Lucifer wanted a higher place, Jesus took the lower place. Lucifer says, verse 13, "'For you have said in your heart, "'I will ascend into heaven.

"'I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. A battle between good and evil, between Christ and Satan, the exaltation of the throne. A throne implies rulership, leadership. I'll sit on the mount of the congregation on the sides of the north. The Mount of Congregation, sides of the north, Mount Sinai, north of the camp of Israel.

Lucifer wants to give the law, not to obey the law. He says, I'll ascend above the heights of the clouds, I'll be like the Most High, but you'll be brought down to a pit Lucifer who was in heaven wanted a higher position wanted to rule on the throne wanted to dominate and He'll be brought down to the pit and destroyed Jesus who was in heaven came to the snake pit of this world, this sin-polluted planet and rebellion for you and for me. The book of Revelation reveals Jesus Christ as the 1 worshipped by the angels, as the 1 worshipped by cherubim and seraphim, coming into this world to take your place and mine, to die the death that we should have died so we can live the life that he should have lived. He took upon himself our sinfulness so we could take upon ourselves his righteousness. Would you like to open your heart and thank Jesus for his sacrifice and his goodness.

Dear Lord, thank you for your sacrifice. Thank you for your goodness. Thank you that 1 day we can live with you forever and ever and ever among all the angels of heaven. And rejoice with you around that throne and sing worthy, worthy, worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive glory and honor and power forever and ever. In Jesus' name, Amen.

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Series

Sabbath School 2nd Quarter 2025: Allusions, Images, Symbols: How to Study Bible Prophecy?

07 Foundations of Prophecy

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

Is Ellen White a Prophet or Plagiarist?

28m

01 Some Principles of Prophecy

25m

02 The Genesis Foundation

22m

03 Images from Marriage

20m

04 The Nations Part 1

24m

05 The Nations: Part 2

29m

06 Understanding Sacrifice

22m

07 Foundations of Prophecy

24m

08 In the Psalms, Part 1

22m

09 In the Psalms Part 2

23m

Sound Doctrine