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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

George Guthrie

Wait, Watchers’ Anonymous

It's a pleasure to see the group here this morning.

Now turn with me, if you would, in your Bible to Hebrews, the sixth chapter.

And I'd like to read a little bit from well the first 3 verses I really appreciate my Seventh-day Adventist Church you know when I was young I went to church just because my parents went there.

And then I suppose when I was in my junior age, God touched my heart and I said, I want to be baptized.

And I went through the baptismal class and I was baptized.

When the teen years came, it's often that questions arise.

I watched my fellow students around me wrestling.

And when all was said and done, and I think I'm grown up now, I know that the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the theology of the Seventh-day Adventist Church answers questions for me better than anything else that I have ever heard.

It is a system that explains, gives hope and perspective.

I'd like to wrestle with some of the questions that maybe you've thought about, maybe you haven't, today.

Hebrews chapter 6 verse 1, therefore let us leave the elementary teaching about Christ and go on to maturity.

Now what follows is a rather interesting list.

If I listen to TV evangelists, I find that what they are often speaking of is elementary things, yet Paul in the book of Hebrews is calling on to maturity asking hard questions.

Notice with me, will you, the list of basics, okay?

Repentance from acts that lead to death, faith in God, instruction about baptism, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.

Those are the basics, and I think most of Christianity does a fairly good job in wrestling with these.

But Paul is calling us to move further and in verse 3 he says, and God permitting, we will do so, that is, leave the elementary and move on to something a little more A little more depth, a little more meaning.

1 of the questions that rolls around in my mind is, why has it been 7, 000 years of sin?

Have you ever wrestled with that question?

My simple mind says if God is really a God of love and He allows sin to go on 1 second longer than absolutely necessary, then he's really not as loving as he says he is, right?

I suppose 1 of my favorite questions, and maybe this 1 is for this afternoon, because that's divided up, you see, into a couple.

Number 1 is, Why has it been 2, 000 years since Jesus died and he hasn't come back?

In the book of Hebrews Let me see if I can if I can identify it.

Yes Hebrews chapter 10 we find the writer saying verse 37 Hebrews 10 37 for just a little while and he who is coming will come and will not delay it was the expectation of the disciples that Jesus was begun going to be coming right away Why did it take 2, 000 years before, well Jesus hasn't come back yet, we say his coming is soon and I do believe it is.

I would challenge you to try to answer that question.

The answer that I have arrived at, I think defines the very presence of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The 1 I would like to wrestle with this morning has been a harder 1 for me, but I think I'm beginning to understand it.

And I come to you as a searcher, not someone who has it all nailed down, but why was it 4, 000 years after the creation of the earth and the fall and sin came in until Jesus finally came?

Why you know Cain was expected, I mean we understand by his name, his mother thought he was the promised 1.

And it just, each Jewish mother down through time expected that maybe their son would be the 1.

Yet, 4000 years passed before Jesus finally came.

Have you ever wrestled with the question?

Anybody ever ask themselves the question?

And this is where, in my mind, Seventh-day Adventism and our understanding of the great controversy begins to answer questions in a wonderful way.

I'm a health educator, so I thought that would be appropriate.

But it seems like there's been a lot of waiting.

4000 years of waiting, had that till Jesus came, and then 2000 till now.

But then 2000 until now and maybe it has something to do with anonymous watchers.

Hebrews chapter 9 verse 26 gives us I think a bit of a clue.

Hebrews 9, verse 26, For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world, but now in the end of the world hath he appeared to take away sin by the sacrifice of himself." God was waiting for something to happen.

You may remember that back in the very beginning when God created the earth, it must have been a magnificent time with God saying, let there be light.

God saying, let the dry land appear and the plants.

And then kneeling over Adam, breathing into his mouth the breath of life.

I would have enjoyed being there to see God bringing the animals to Adam.

Have you ever noticed in the scripture it says, God said to see what he would name them?

I would have, if I had been God, I would have said this is a giraffe, Notice how I put the long neck on there.

Look at the long nose God had put into Adam this whole sense of creativity and so Adam Created names for these animals He discovered himself to be alone and God made him a partner.

There were angels watching and I think that's where the watchers, anonymous, come from.

For God has a universe of beings that love him and have served him.

Angels were watching when God created the earth and they thought it was wonderful.

Do you know we have an idea from scripture what they said and what they did in creation.

It's found in the book of Job, chapter 38.

God is actually speaking to Job after kind of a long dialogue with his 3 friends and he is seeking where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth that's verse 4 and then down to verse 7 while the morning stars sang together and the angels shouted for joy.

What would have been like to have been an angel?

Were these angels joyous over this new experience?

Remember from Revelation chapter 12, there had been a perfect angel who had become rebellious and had actually taken a third of the angels with it.

So angels were watching to see what was happening.

They were sensing the joy of the creation process.

Angels, once Adam and Eve fell, were given the job of guarding the opening to the gardener.

Remember they stood there with the sword and did not allow Adam and Eve back in for fear God says that they would eat from the tree of life and live forever.

What follows was about 2000 years, a little shy of 2000 years, of continual worsening.

As human beings began to experiment, They were created as glorious and strong beings they could go and be and do.

At the end of about 2000 years, the message that the Bible gives us in Genesis chapter 6 is that the thoughts of men's minds were evil continually.

What do you think the angels thought as they saw all the evil going on?

Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord, you may remember.

So the angels observed and they watched this destructive process as the flood came.

Can you imagine being an angel herding animals into the ark by twos and by sevens.

Having chosen to follow God, recognizing that there's a devil and his angels who are trying to make things wicked, they seem to be winning, and God destroys and starts over.

We get another little picture into what happens in the heavenly courts, into what's happening in the angels' minds in the book of Job.

And you remember the story, how God had made a meeting of the sons of God.

I think that's what the King James Version says, right?

There was a meeting of the sons of God, and as I thought about this I wondered who these sons of God were.

I remember from the, what is it, the begat in Matthew, it goes back until Adam was a son of God.

In my own simple mind I see the first begat of each creation gathered together, God running his universe in a way that involved his creatures, the ones that he had made.

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Wait, Watchers’ Anonymous

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