Repeatedly in Adventist history, there has been a fascinating parallel between world events and moments of unique opportunity for the church. At times when providence opened the door for quick advances by the Advent message, secular world events followed a repeated pattern, recognizable in the world today, that blocked those opportunities unless God’s people moved very quickly. With that historical pattern, and with the advice given by the Spirit of Prophecy, what should our priorities be?

ASI 2013: It's Time... To Be About Our Father's Business

<p>Repeatedly in Adventist history, there has been a fascinating parallel between world events and moments of unique opportunity for the church. At times when providence opened the door for quick advances by the Advent message, secular world events followed a repeated pattern, recognizable in the world today, that blocked those opportunities unless God’s people moved very quickly. With that historical pattern, and with the advice given by the Spirit of Prophecy, what should our priorities be?</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

ASI 2013 Seminar: Prophecy

Norman McNulty

Adventism’s Prophetic Role in the Great Controversy

Our Father in Heaven, we thank you so much this morning for bringing us here to ASI.

We thank you for the privilege of being at meetings like this where we can come and fellowship and learn more truths and interact, and I just pray that you would be with me in a special way over the next hour or so as we go through this message.

May the message be clear, may you give me just the words to speak, And may it help us to be more prepared for the soon coming of Jesus.

Well again I want to welcome you here to our seminar this morning.

This is the first in a series of 4 presentations on prophecy.

Later today Michael Haase will be doing a seminar, and then tomorrow morning, Lewis Walton, and then tomorrow afternoon, Greg Hamilton.

So that's the 4 presentations on prophecy.

And the first presentation this morning is entitled, Adventism's prophetic role in the great controversy.

Now you realize that we as Seventh-day Adventists have a very unique and special role to fulfill in the great controversy between Christ and Satan, right?

We are not just any other group of people, amen?

We have a special message and a special mission to take to the world, but in order for us to accomplish that mission, we need to allow God to do a special work in our lives.

So we are going to be looking at our prophetic role in the great controversy, and I hope this will give you some fresh ideas, perhaps looking at things in a way that, it's familiar concepts, but presented in a way that you haven't thought of exactly in the same way before.

Now I'm just going to give you a couple of quotes to start off.

Why is prophecy such a big deal to us as Seventh-day Adventists.

Well here's a statement from Testimonies to Ministers, page 113.

And this statement says, the book of Revelation opens with an injunction to us to understand the instruction that it contains.

When we as a people understand what this book means to us, there will be seen among us a great revival.

And you know, sometimes you hear people say, oh I'm tired of studying beasts and horns and that kind of thing.

Well, if people are tired of studying beasts and horns, it could be that they haven't studied the book of Revelation and Daniel correctly.

Because when you study the book of Daniel and Revelation correctly, you will see that there's a lot more than beasts and horns.

"'Those who eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of God will bring from the books of Daniel and Revelation truth that is inspired by the Holy Spirit.

They will start into action forces that cannot be repressed.

The lips of children will be open to proclaim the mysteries that have been hidden from the minds of men." Listen, if you want to be partaking of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, you're going to be studying the books of Daniel and Revelation, and you're going to bring truths from those books that are inspired by the Holy Spirit, and this will start into action forces that cannot be repressed, and my friends, that's talking about the loud cry of the louder rain that will bring this work to a close.

So we find in these books the message that will start into action forces that cannot be repressed under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Now what we're going to be looking at today especially, we're going to be looking at the 2300 year prophecy, 2300 day prophecy in connection with the 70 weeks.

And we're going to see hopefully some things that we don't think about so much.

But what is our identity as Seventh-day Adventists?

Well, of course we see the 2300 day prophecy, We see that that prophecy takes us down to 1844.

We see that that prophecy tells us the time of the investigative judgment being inaugurated.

We see that we are the judgment hour people identified in Revelation chapter 14.

And sometimes when I look around our church today, I wonder, have we forgotten our identity?

Why are we trying to be like Willow Creek?

Why are we trying to be like the churches, let's just put it frankly here, the churches of Babylon.

Now God has his people in the churches of Babylon, don't get me wrong.

God says, come out of her my people, but that does not mean that we go to Babylon to say, let's see how we can be like you.

No, we're supposed to be the head and not the tail.

We are supposed to be calling people out and showing them from scripture what the truth is for our time.

We need to get over this identity crisis that we're having as a people.

We need to get back to our true identity and I'm hoping that as you see this presentation this morning you will gain a clearer picture of just exactly what our identity is.

And what role does the 2300 day prophecy have?

We're going to look in greater detail at this prophecy.

You know, I hear some people say, oh I'm so tired of talking about the 2300 days, let's just talk about Jesus.

Have any of you ever heard anybody say that?

Okay, well, if someone says that, it's because they don't really understand the 2300 day prophecy.

Because the 2300 day prophecy is identifying what Jesus is doing right now in heaven.

So if we want to talk about Jesus, let's talk about what he is doing now for us as identified by prophecy.

So the importance of the 2300 days, this is Great Controversy page 409 paragraph 1.

The scripture which above all others had been both the foundation and the central pillar of the Advent faith was the declaration, unto 2, 300 days then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.

Notice Ellen White says this is the scripture above all others.

This is the foundation and the central pillar of the Advent faith.

On the 2, 300 days, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed, found in Daniel 8 14.

And I think you're going to see why this scripture is the foundation and the central pillar of the Advent faith.

Listen, this foundational scripture, this central pillar of Scripture to our faith is more than just a time prophecy.

This prophecy takes us to an understanding of the sanctuary message and of what Jesus is doing in heaven, and it's designed to place our focus on what Jesus is doing right now.

And in line with that thought, let's go to our next statement, Great Controversy, page 423.

The subject of the sanctuary was the key which unlocked the mystery of the disappointment of 1844." Now notice this carefully, it opened to view a complete system of truth, connected and harmonious showing that God's hand had directed the great Advent movement in revealing present duty as it brought to light the position and work of His people." Listen, the sanctuary message which is identified through the 2300 day prophecy unlocks a complete system of truth that is connected and harmonious.

Listen, as Seventh-day Adventists, we need to understand more than ever before at this time of earth's history that God has given to us a complete system of truth.

It's time to stop being ashamed of the complete system of truth that God has given to us.

It's like, oh, I don't really want to talk about the sanctuary and boy, don't talk about the spirit of prophecy, that's going to offend people.

We get all defensive about our message when if we were being led by the Spirit, we would be excited to show people the complete system of truth that God has given to us.

We don't need to be ashamed of our doctrines.

Now is not the time to start removing pillars of truth from our faith.

We have a complete system of truth that is connected and harmonious, and notice it reveals present duty as it brought to light the position and work of his people.

Now it's 1 other statement, and I love this statement.

The great plan of redemption as revealed in the closing work of these last days should receive close examination.

The scenes connected with the sanctuary above should make such an impression upon the minds and hearts of all that they may be able to impress others.

All need to become more intelligent in regard to the work of the atonement which is going on in the sanctuary above." Now notice this, when this grand truth is seen and understood, Those who hold it will work in harmony with Christ to prepare a people to stand in the great day of God and their efforts will be successful.

By steady contemplation and prayer God's people will be elevated above common earthly thoughts and feelings and will be brought into harmony with Christ and His great work of cleansing the sanctuary above from the sins of the people." Listen, Ellen White makes it very clear, we need to give the great plan of redemption a close examination.

And when we do, the scenes connected in the sanctuary above will make such an impression upon our mind and heart that we're going to go out and share it with others so that they will be impressed.

We need to have that level of an experience with God, not only just having a relationship with Jesus, but a relationship that is connected to what He is doing in heaven so that we will impress others with what He is doing in heaven on our behalf.

And when we do this, we will work in harmony with Christ to prepare a people to stand in the great day of God.

We are to be working to prepare a people to stand in the day of God, the great day of God.

And when we do so, it says our efforts will be successful.

You know, we come up with all sorts of schemes to reach people and it's good to understand where people are coming from, their cultural backgrounds and things of that nature.

I lived in Trinidad for 2 years and so yes you want to understand where people are coming from.

But at the end of the day, truth is truth.

And you can come up with all sorts of interesting plans but at the end of the day, truth is truth.

And you can come up with all sorts of interesting plans, but at the end of the day, we need to learn how to present this truth in a way that it will impress their hearts and minds, so that they will get excited about this message.

Now having said that, this is what I've come to the conclusion to.

The prophecy of the 2300 days is the engine in the vehicle that drives Adventism.

Now you may be saying, come on Norman, the 2300 day prophecy, what about Jesus?

Well my point is this, the 2300 days takes us to what Jesus is doing right now.

It is Christ centered, it is Christ focused, It is present truth that is showing us what Jesus is doing in heaven right now.

This prophecy connects the life, work, and death of Jesus on earth with his work and ministry in heaven today.

We don't just talk about Jesus on the cross, we talk about Him in the sanctuary in heaven.

We don't just talk about Jesus in the sanctuary in heaven, we talk about His ministry here on earth and His death on the cross.

Michael Hasel

Archaeology, History, and Prophecy: Signs of Time

I wish it was something glorious relating to archaeology that caused this, or you know, defending my family's honor or something of that nature, but the reality is I was cleaning my daughter's fish tank, which was for a little betta fish, and it was in my hands in the bathtub.

It slipped out of my hands and hit the wall of the bathtub and broke while it was still in my hands.

So I cut the flexor tendon and a nerve in my ring finger on my left hand.

So I called a very close friend of mine who's a physician and he told me how to put a tourniquet on my hand, raced over to my house to take me to the emergency, and well I won't go into all the details, but had a very good surgeon do a reconstructive surgery the next day, which allowed me a postponed trip to Israel.

I was supposed to leave on Sunday for Israel.

You'll hear a little bit about that today, but at least I got over there anyway.

So anyway, I was directing which was what I was supposed to do.

God is good and I'm happy to be here with you today.

Let's bow our heads for prayer as we begin.

Heavenly Father, we're thankful for your watch care over us.

We're reminded with just this little incident of what a minor slip can cause in our lives, and we need you every step of the way to keep us focused, keep us focused on your mission, focused on your purpose for our lives, focused on those things which are most important.

We pray that you would be with us today as we discuss prophecy, archaeology, and history.

Oh, by the way, I should say that the $3 betta fish survived.

He's worth a little more than that now, I think, after the surgery.

But anyway, We are going to delve into an issue that some of you may wonder what the connection is between archaeology, history, and prophecy, But as we unfold this, I think that we will see that connection very, very clearly.

It is interesting to think that the 3 Angels' messages have been broadcast by our church now, this year, officially.

This is not working, ah, because it's not plugged in.

The 3 angels Messages have been broadcast by this church and proclaimed by this church now for 150 years.

You realize that this summer was the 150-year anniversary from 1863 when our church formally organized as the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And since that time we have been faithfully proclaiming the 3 Angels messages, these precious messages that have been sent as a warning to the world at this very crucial time in which we live.

And I know that that message is very dear to us here, but it is very important as well.

It is a message that we have been proclaiming now for that period of time and as time has gone on I think that there is sometimes a temptation or even a thinking among some of us that the message is getting a little old.

I don't believe that for a moment, but there are some that believe that perhaps it is.

That we need to focus on something different.

That somehow we need to adjust ourselves to the 21st century.

After all, this message came out of the, what, 15th to 19th centuries of the Protestant Reformation.

The prophetic time chart that I have up here is, it has a few little issues with it here and there, but it basically is the prophetic message that was hammered out by William Miller and Josiah Litch and others earlier on, and it is still the message that many of us see today as we have put together the prophecies of Daniel, the 2300 days and years that you see up there, along with the prophecies of the book of Revelation, the trumpets and the 7 churches that unfold themselves in historical time over the course of history.

We are inheritors of a prophetic movement and interpretation of prophecy called historicism that sees the fulfillment of prophecy over the course of history.

And I'm speaking here at ASI, so I know that this is nothing new to any of you.

But I think it's a very important concept, 1 that we didn't invent, but that is inherent in the Bible itself.

As Daniel explained, the great vision that Nebuchadnezzar had, of that image of the head of gold, Babylon, and Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, and as prophecy has unfolded in the course of time as well.

But in the church today, as well as in, when I say the church, I'm talking about the wider church of Christianity, in the wider Christian movement, Historicism is not really something that is in vogue any longer.

In fact, we as Seventh-day Adventists are 1 of the only groups that are still strongly historicist in our interpretation.

Most evangelical groups today are into futurism and into a branch of that, dispensationalism.

They see Israel's existence today as a direct fulfillment of prophecy.

They see the possibility of a temple being built in the future.

And all of these things are very, very important in their view of history.

Boy, now I'm getting a lot of reverberation there.

And so we have futurism, we have dispensationalism, we have preterism.

I work in the scholarly world and there is no predictive prophecy.

Everything was something that happened in the past.

There's no foretelling, there's only forth telling of events that have already taken place.

Because after all, God does not intervene in human history and secular scholarship, and so we have this issue, and preterism of course is another view that these events all were fulfilled in the past.

And of course, then we have idealism and the spiritualization of some of these things in the future.

In the Advent movement, these things have had an impact as well.

These ideas have had an impact as well, and today even among Adventists, there are scholars as well as evangelists who are becoming eclectic in their view and in their interpretation of prophecy.

Some feel that the 19th century interpretations are a bit antiquated and we need to update ourselves a bit with some of these things.

So today, by eclecticism we mean it's not only historicism, but you can also have parts of prophecy being interpreted as preterist, some of it as futurist, and 1 example, of course, is the Ford crisis that occurred in this church in the late 70s and early 80s when 1 of our scholars decided to reinterpret the 2300 days not as years.

He did away with the year-day principle and basically saw that these 2300 days were literal days that were fulfilled at the time of Attiagus Epiphanes IV, a king who was reigning in the Greek Hellenistic period, that Daniel was in fact not foretelling a future event, but as a second century prophet was simply describing what had already occurred prior to his time.

This is a preterist interpretation, and of course our church had to deal in a very clear way with this at that time.

We lost a number of our pastors, not only in Australia, but around the world, and the effects of that has, to some degree, remained with us.

The church engaged in a brand new study of this issue through the Biblical Research Institute, the Daniel and Revelation Committee, was produced a series of books called the Darkon Series, and really in-depth studies were done at that time, which really brought us even more closely to our roots as historicist interpreters of prophecy.

Today, I'm not going to mention names, this is just as a segue to get into our topic for today, but today we find that there are those who are using this eclectic approach to minimize some of the time prophecies that we find in the Book of Revelation.

There are 5 time prophecies in Revelation that historicists and Adventists have traditionally seen as specific applications of time.

And many of these, 4 of the 5, today by many scholars, or some scholars I should say, that have had a major influence on the church, 4 of those are no longer seen as direct fulfillments of an event in history.

For instance, the Smyrna Church's 10 days or 10 years of persecution, which many expositors throughout Protestantism, historicist expositors, saw as the 10-year persecution by the Roman Emperor Diocletian, that particular prophecy is now interpreted as simply a short period of time without any specific application.

Another example, the 3 and a half days or years of the 2 witnesses, which are often applied to the French Revolution, that period of time is now an indefinite short period of time.

And the Preterists have gone, of course, the Preterist interpretation is to say this represents Christ's 3 days in the tomb after his death at that time.

The 150 years of the fifth trumpet, which is coupled together with the 391 years and 15 Days of the Sixth Trumpet, which gave us the date of August 11, 1840.

This was a huge breakthrough at that time because it was predicted by some of our pioneers just at the right time in history, and Ellen White says in The Great Controversy that this prediction of the fall of the Ottoman Empire on August 11, 1840, she writes on Great Controversy, actually was a great boon to the belief in the historicist interpretation of scripture.

I'm paraphrasing her a little bit, but to the Millerite understanding of Scripture at that particular point in time.

So all of these 4, with the exception of the 1260 days or years, that's the only time prophecies retained, is being minimized, I would say, by a number of individuals today.

There's another trend where literal applications are spiritualized or become figurative.

We have for many years taken the number 666, that's the Greek translation by the way, it's not simply 666 in Revelation, it's 666.

We have taken this along with other Protestant interpreters to refer to the name of a man.

Particularly, we've applied it very specifically to the papacy and to the Pope.

We've looked at a number of different examples of this in history.

Well, today you find even in Adventist literature that this simply is a symbol for imperfection and rebellion against God.

It should not be applied literally any longer.

I had a church history professor at Andrews University for many years, a very well-known church history professor who after his retirement began to teach that 666 really meant something or 666 meant something very, very differently than we have traditionally interpreted.

The new book that was just published a year ago by Edwin de Kock, 835 page volume, I don't know whether you're gonna have the time or the energy to wade through it all, has now definitively answered that question.

And if you're interested in that issue, it's available and can be ordered, and it's a fantastic historical study that confirms the traditional interpretation of this particular issue.

But we're just going through these briefly.

The Lake of Fire, 1 writer says, is a metaphor for complete annihilation.

It's no longer a literal event, but simply a metaphor.

What does it mean, a metaphor for complete annihilation?

The 2 witnesses are not the old and the New Testaments as described in Ellen White and other expositors, but simply refer to the people of God.

And the 7 last plagues are not literal plagues, but describe spiritual realities.

Maybe some of you have heard or read some of these things before.

It's interesting that even eclectic non-Adventist scholars have to admit that there is a connection between the 7 last plagues and the 10 plagues that Israel and especially the Egyptians experienced in the Old Testament in the book of Exodus.

So my question I guess would be, were those spiritual events or were those literal events in the Old Testament?

And I think that that can be answered very clearly from the Bible that these were literal plagues in the Old Testament.

But again, these are seen as simple spiritual realities today.

Lewis Walton

End-Time Events: What Do We Know and When Did We Know It?

It's time to begin, but oh, there's the camera person.

I was a newscaster before I became a lawyer and I'm always looking for the light on the camera.

Our topic this morning is end-time events and prophecy.

We're going to be talking about 3 major developments in world events, but we are going to discover this morning that you can't go very far in equating world events to prophecy without finding that you're drawn into events within the church.

The 2 almost seem to come together like railroad tracks in the distance.

The further you go the closer they get together.

So we're going to start with world events.

We will end up with events within the Church.

And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn, for no 1 buys their merchandise any more.

Gold and silver, precious stones, every kind of object, all the things which are rich and splendid have gone.

And the merchants stand at a distance saying, Alas, for in 1 hour so great riches came to nothing.

Revelation 18's prediction of an end-time economic meltdown obviously involves world trade because it goes right on to say every shipmaster and as many as trade by sea stood at a distance wailing, alas, in 1 hour she is made desolate.

The Bible doesn't paint a pretty economic picture at the end of time, nor as a matter of fact does another prophetic source that I still happen to consider reliable, and that's an old-fashioned source called the spirit of prophecy.

Ellen White put it this way, Money will soon depreciate in value very suddenly when the reality of eternal scenes opens to the senses of man.

Obviously a prediction made when the world is on the brink of eternity, human beings can begin to see through the fog of the future.

They can see something out there that's endless and money depreciates very suddenly in value.

The Laffer curve changes, it goes vertical, it goes exponential, the economic and monetary system collapses and money depreciates in value very suddenly.

There's another broad hint of hyperinflation echoed in Maranatha.

You ought to get it and read it till you wear it out and then buy a new 1.

Maranatha chapter 173, the Lord has shown me that some of his children would fear when they see the price of food rising, and they would buy food and lay it by for the time of trouble.

Now let's get a real clear focus on the word picture Ellen White is painting here.

Series

ASI 2013 Seminar: Prophecy

End-Time Events: What Do We Know and When Did We Know It?

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

ASI 2014 Plenary Sessions

Living and Sharing the Three Angels’ Message

1h 58m

Religious Liberty

Adventists, Politics and the Final Crisis

56m

Seminar: Lift Him Up

Lift Him Up: Evangelism’s Last and Only Hope

1h 20m

Plenary

Unfinished Business: A Conversation with Our World Church Leaders

1h 52m

Plenary

Our Greatest Need

1h 30m

The Three Angel's Messages

08 The Spirit of Babylon Part 1

1h 6m

Breakouts

Why I Don’t get the Gospel

1h 2m

Norman McNulty Weekend

01 Prophetic Peril in America

48m

Righteousness by Faith

Return of the Latter Rain

1h 6m

Clifford Goldstein: Unashamed to be an Adventist

The Resurrection of Jesus

59m

ASI 2013 Seminar: Prophecy

Archaeology, History, and Prophecy: Signs of Time

1h 11m

ASI 2012 Seminar: Business / Nonprofit

Growing a Sustainable Ministry

1h 14m

Sound Doctrine