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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Lewis Walton

The Jordan Syndrome

And a special welcome to my much valued and esteemed Romanian friends, some of whom are here today.

I always appreciate visiting the Romanian church.

Dear Lord, we pray You'll be with us this morning.

May I disappear and whatever truth you have to express to all of us be the only thing that we notice this morning we pray in Jesus' name.

On a summer day in 2005, An obviously irritated resident of Phoenix wrote a letter to the editor of the Arizona Republic.

Whom do we thank for the morning air show?

Last Wednesday at precisely 9, 11 AM, a tight formation of 4 F-16 jets made a low pass over Arrowhead Mall.

Do the Tom Cruise wannabes feel we need this wake-up call?

Or were they trying to impress the cashiers at Mervyn's early bird special?

A few days later, a responsive letter to the editor appeared, signed by Lieutenant Colonel Scott Plius, commanding officer 63rd Fighter Squadron.

On June 15, at precisely 9.12 AM, a perfectly timed 4 ship of F-16s from the 63rd fighter squadron flew over the grave of Captain Jeremy Fresk.

He was an Air Force officer killed in Iraq on Memorial Day.

On June 15, his family and friends gathered at Sunland Memorial Park to mourn the loss of a husband, son, and friend.

The letter writer asked, whom do we thank for the morning air show?

The 56th Fighter Wing will call for you and forward your thanks To the widow and parents of Captain Fresk.

The world we live in is the most dangerous world I've seen in my lifetime.

I've lived through just about all of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, where I was deployed and fought in combat, the Cold War, which I reported as a young broadcast newscaster when I covered the Cuban missile crisis.

And our adversaries in that particular conflict were at least rational because they were atheists and they feared death.

This world is moving in a slow motion and seemingly unstoppable crawl toward a level of anarchy so profound that even prophets struggled to describe it in words.

We were there some this morning in our Sabbath school class.

And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people, and there shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation." Daniel reaches 25, 26 centuries into the future and sees something and struggles to come to bear with it.

And all he can really say is, whatever precedent you're looking for in human history, there's nothing to compare with it.

This is trouble on a scale beyond description.

Well 5, 6 centuries go by and the Lord deals with the same thing on the Mount of Olives as young disciples come to Him, obviously aware there will be an end to this war.

What will it look like when your coming is near?

Just a brief excerpt out of that laundry list of things the Lord has given us to look for in order to be able to recognize the onset of His coming.

And in Luke 21 verse 25 and 26, He said, there shall be signs in the sun, moon, and stars.

And on the earth distress of nations with perplexity, men's hearts failing them for fear.

And more recent translations put it a bit more graphically, men will faint with terror at the thought of what is coming on the world.

And I call it, and our topic this morning, is the Jordan Syndrome.

And every time God's people reach a point of unique opportunity, there seems to be an associated event in world affairs, out in the secular world, that parallels what's happening among God's people.

They're ready to cross the Jordan, which is made of water, which represents what in biblical symbolism?

People, which is exactly what God's people will have to do at the end of time.

They're waiting there And as they approach the Jordan, they encounter 1 of the most ferocious threats they've ever seen, a consortium of nations who live just to the north of their route of march.

They're made of defensive parapets of walls made out of volcanic rock.

And the king who leads this consortium is an individual whose bedstead is made of iron and it's 9 feet long.

So you get an idea of the problems God's people face.

On The other side of the Jordan is this fortress city Jericho with satellite fortresses around it, AI being 1, but by no means all of the satellite fortresses for that warlike people.

Without the help of the Lord, there is no physical way God's people can face the kind of armed threat and potential battlefield anarchy that they're gonna stir up when they try to go home.

There's an interesting parallel in Adventism.

And I wanna move to the whiteboard here and kind of illustrate it because I think an illustration makes it clearer.

In Adventism, it seems as you go back and look at the history of our movement that there is an interesting associational relationship almost like the parallel rails of a railroad train so that whenever God's people reach a moment of unique opportunity on a parallel and not very distant track, world events form up a recognizable and repeated pattern.

On 1 of those rails is the Advent message proclaiming hope in the coming of Jesus.

On the other 1, following it, paralleling it very closely, always seems to be world strife that is trying to reach the level we would typically call anarchy.

A strange associational relationship between the 2.

Now for a room full of presumably biblically literate and motivated Bible students, 1798 means what to you?

In 598 BC, the last of the 3 powerful competitors for authority within the Christian church is defeated.

And we have a predicted period of time which appears not only in Daniel but also in Revelation 13 and 14.

In 13 and 14 you're going to see this thing repeated 3 times.

1260 days, times, times and half a time and in Revelation 14, 42 months.

Evidently it's important enough, the Bible says it 3 times, so we ought to get the point, we ought to recognize this thing.

And the Lord says there will be a period of time in which truth will fight for its life but at the time of the end, this ends and something changes in world history.

This curly-headed French general by the name of Louis Berthier moves his forces into Rome.

She always said Bonaparte never, never touched the Holy Father.

But Louis Berthier had no such inhibitions.

Berthier moves him to Rome, takes Pius VI captive.

Time for God's people to move forward to a climactic series of events, right?

If I'm wrong, let me know because I'm not, you know, infallible.

You know, as 1 of the presidential candidates said in a debate 1 time, I had understood there would be no math.

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The Jordan Syndrome

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