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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Dennis Priebe Weekend 2007

Dennis Priebe

Overcoming Fantasy or Reality?

And we, this is the close of a month of meetings around the Loma Linda area, and I can't think of a better place to close our time in this area before we go on.

You do know I brag on you around the country.

People seriously wonder what is happening to the generation that's growing up and I tell them there's Advent Hope.

So you'll be, you might hear somebody mention what I have said.

The United States standard railroad gauge, that's the distance between the rails, is 4 feet, 8 and a half inches.

Why did they come up with that distance as a gauge for the railroad?

Well, that's the way they built them in England.

Railroads were built by English expatriates.

Or, now, why did the English people build the rails exactly at that strange distance.

Because the first rail lines in England were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways.

Because the people who designed and built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing.

Well, why did the wagons come to use that very odd wheel spacing?

When they tried to use any other spacing, the wagons were prone to breaking down on some of the old long-distance roads because of the spacing of the old wheel ruts in those roads.

So now you want to know the rest of it, don't you?

Who built those old rutted roads that they had to adapt all of their tools to?

Those long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions and those roads have been used for centuries.

And those initial ruts, which everyone had to match for fear of destroying their wagons were first made by Roman war chariots as they traveled to make sure that the Roman Empire held together in 1 piece.

Since the chariots were all made to certain specifications by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

And so we have the answer to our question.

But there's still another 1, isn't there?

Why did the Romans choose that wheel spacing?

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet 8 and a half inches derives now from the military specification for an Imperial Roman Army war chariot.

The reason they designed their war chariots at that exact spacing was it was just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of 2 war horses.

So the next time you take a nice little trip on the train, looking down those rails, you can thank the rear end of war horses for your journey.

Past experience has a tremendous effect on present behavior and present attitudes.

Without a doubt now, the most pervasive and universal experience of every 1 of us has been that of sinning.

From our first memory, We can remember things we did wrong when we took something we shouldn't, when we said something we shouldn't, and that memory is deep within us.

And so from our first memory, we have sinned sometimes constantly, sometimes intermittently.

And even after being born again, we have continued to sin and we need to confess and repent over and over again.

So the question is, how could there be any other reality than that?

Just like those old wheel ruts that we had to adapt everything to, do we not have to adapt our present thinking, our theology, and our hopes to the reality that sin is just about as present with us as eating or breathing or sleeping.

It's a reality we cannot escape from, it seems.

And could this be why any talk of living without sinning seems to be the ultimate fantasy, the ultimate impossibility.

You ask your neighbor, you ask your friend, you ask yourself, and every 1 of us is in the pattern and has have been all of our lives of sinning and repenting.

Now we do read that our Savior was tempted in all points like as we are, and we even read that the Son of God become Son of Man was without sin.

And we believe it, but then we ask, how can that connect with us?

And so we have a terrible time trying to understand how Jesus could and we can't.

And so we assign to Jesus different reasons.

Or he had a better nature than we do, better equipment.

And so we come up with reasons that Jesus could and we can't.

Now, before we go any farther, we need to identify precisely what this thing called sin is.

In response to the age-old question, what is sin?

A good Adventist will reply, sin is the transgression of the law.

And certainly when we break God's 10 Commandment law we sin.

But you know there are other nuances to sin as well that you find in the Bible.

There's 1 in Proverbs chapter 10 verse 19 that says, where words abound sin will not be wanting.

While you're in the book of Proverbs, look at chapter 14.

Proverbs tells us a lot about improper behavior.

Proverbs chapter 24 verse 9, the thought of foolishness is sin.

Have we done some foolish thinking now and then?

Just plain old foolish thinking about stuff.

I'm not important, but just verbal sneezing Go to the New Testament with me.

If you do it for any other reason than believing that Jesus Christ is the Lord and Master of your life, you do it for selfish reasons even if it's a good thing.

Whatsoever is not of faith is sin, if it's self-produced for selfish motives.

Therefore, to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

Do we know a lot of things that we should do and we just don't do because we're either too lazy or too ashamed or don't have enough time or whatever the reason might be?

We know we should help that person that is in need and we know their need but we ignore it.

Therefore to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

These vistas of sin open up a whole new morass, don't they?

More than just breaking 1 of the 10 Commandments in their superficial way.

When we speak of sin we are in mortal combat with the most deadly foe in the universe with all kinds of ways to move us into his plan.

God's standard for his people is high And if indeed there are differences between big and little sins, and I doubt there are, God's plan seems impossible because of all of these things.

God On Trial

The greatest trial in history was brewing.

The most majestic being that God had ever created was filing suit against his Creator God.

Lucifer, son of the morning, was becoming filled with pride because of the beauty, the intelligence, and the power that he had been given by the Creator.

Lucifer, remember, was the five-star general of the heavenly universe.

This morning, we're going to let inspiration pull back the curtains for just a few moments as to events that happened long before we came on the scene, even before this earth was created.

We're going to start with early writings, page 145.

When God said to his son, let us make man in our image, Satan was jealous of Christ.

He wished to be consulted regarding the formation of man, and because he was not, he was filled with envy, jealousy, and hatred." Do you know that you and I are the cause of the whole problem?

God decided to create us in his own image, apparently a special, unique race.

And Satan said, I want to be in on the planning session.

This statement is from Review and Herald September 7, 1897.

He complained of the supposed defects in the management of heavenly things and sought to fill the minds of the angels with his disaffection.

Thus, the seeds of alienation were planted afterward to be drawn out and presented before the heavenly courts as originating not with Satan, but with the angels.

Couldn't have God have done it better that way?

And then he came back and said, well, I'm just saying what the angels are saying.

In secret, He whispered his disaffection to the angels.

A word here and a word there opened the way for a long list of suppositions.

Sometimes today we have many questions, don't we?

About the way this universe is run, how God is handling things, what will happen at the end of time, and all the mysteries.

Some of them in his artful way he drew expressions of doubt from them.

Then when he was interviewed, he accused those whom he had educated.

He laid all the disaffection on the ones he had led.

Well, they're the ones that are doubting.

Look at this angel over here and that 1 over there and that 1.

The Lord saw the use Satan was making of his powers, and he set before him truth in contrast with falsehood.

Time and time again during the controversy, Satan was ready to be convinced, ready to admit that he was wrong.

Almost time after time, Satan was ready to say, yes, I made a mistake.

Remembering at this point, it is not rebellion yet.

And God honors questions if they're honest questions.

It is not rebellion to ask a question that you don't have a good answer for.

And God was willing to let Satan say, I misjudged, I'll rethink my position.

Time and time again, Satan was ready to say, I made a mistake, But those who he had deceived were also ready to accuse him of leaving them.

You brought us all this way, and now you'll walk away and leave us hanging?

Submit to God or continue in a course of deception.

Satan, Lucifer then, had a major problem on his hands.

Now a substantial number of them were depending on Him.

And He was ready to say, hey, I made a mistake, maybe I can go back.

And all of a sudden the ones that He was leading were saying, but you got us this far, now what?

This shows that this whole thing took a fair amount of time.

You know, from the Bible record, Very brief, it seems like it all just happened like that.

But this was a fair amount of time to go through all of this process of evaluation and answering questions.

God does not do things hastily, either then or now.

Well, to curb this brewing palace coup, the father called an assembly of all the heavenly hosts.

And he explained that the son had from all eternity been 1 with him, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.

Even that was a question with the angels.

And the father had to settle that question.

At this great assembly again, Lucifer was almost convinced and almost surrendered to Christ.

How close it could have been for no earth like this to have existed like you and I know.

A earth of sin controlled by plague and anger and murder and war.

How close it came that this earth never would have come to this if he would have just got on his knees at that time.

And so then he assembled his own meeting after the father's meeting.

He assembled his own meeting and he described how unjust it was for God to bar him from this special council of 3 that he wanted to be part of.

And now we're looking at story of redemption.

As 1 aggrieved, he related the preference God had given Jesus to the neglect of himself.

Jesus gets to sit in the council and he does the same work I do and they exclude me from their council.

Lucifer declared that he would take the throne of God by force.

Now that's where the rebellion began at that point.

And with this threatening news, the angels rushed to the father to tell him of what was happening, as if the father, of course, didn't know.

They found the father in conference with his beloved son to determine the means by which for the best good of the loyal angels, the assumed authority of Satan could be forever put down.

The great God could at once have hurled the arch deceiver from heaven, but this was not his purpose.

He would give the rebellious an equal chance to measure strength and might with his own son and his loyal angels.

In this battle, every angel would choose his own side and be made manifest to all.

All the heavenly hosts were summoned to appear before the father to have each case determined.

Each angel would have to make a decision 1 by 1 not by general vote, but 1 by 1 Satan unblushingly made known his dissatisfaction That Christ should be preferred before him he stood up proudly and urged that he should be equal with God and should be taken into conference with the Father and understand his purposes.

Then Satan exultingly pointed to his sympathizers, comprising nearly 1 half of all the angels, and exclaimed, These are with me.

Will you expel these also and make such a void in heaven?

He then declared that he was prepared to resist the authority of Christ and to defend his place in heaven by force of might.

And again notice, if it was almost a half and a third were cast out, some angels changed their minds.

Christian or Adventist?

Before we start this afternoon, I've gotten into the habit in recent years of sharing a few news notes that come across my view about where we are in the scope of time, history, and closing events.

As you know, the pope recently got himself into some difficulty with the Muslim world by some comments that he made.

And it was very interesting when he said Islam is a violent religion.

And it's very interesting that in their protest against what the Pope was saying, they rioted, they attacked Christians, and they killed.

That's a very interesting response to his claim.

They even issued a fatwa to kill Pope Benedict for his blasphemous statements about Muhammad.

And so he thought he needed to mend some fences.

And believe it or not, he did a Muslim type of penance.

He went to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul and he prayed toward Mecca to show that he would be in harmony with their interests.

And the cameras focused on Pope Benedict as he bowed his head and began to move his lips in silent prayer.

The only sound you could hear in the stillness of the Grand Mosque was the snapping of cameras as news networks instantaneously beamed this startling message image to televisions around the world.

And it's very interesting, I thought, that you have to go back to the year 1077 to find something similar to that.

King Henry IV, the king of Germany, crossed the Alps in the dead of winter to do penance for offending the pope.

And once at the castle where Pope Gregory was a guest, the king stood for 3 days barefoot in the snow before the king would give him an audience." So there you have a king doing penance for the pope, and now you have a pope doing penance for the Muslim world.

Very interesting times in which we live, aren't they?

Another interesting news note, an official state media website in Iran has posted a message heralding the coming of the Shiite messianic figure Imam Mahdi, noting he would arrive with Jesus by the spring equinox.

So the Imam messianic Mahdi will come with Jesus.

Mahdi will be the leader, while Jesus will be his lieutenant in the struggle against oppression and establishment of justice in the world.

So that is the latest in their predictions from their perspective as to what's going to happen.

And again, interesting things, but now more close to home.

The folks that are wanting to promote morality, justice, honor, and faith in the United States.

Here's an interesting perspective from the book, The Changing of the Guard, Biblical Principles for Political Action.

Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ, to have dominion in civil structures just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.

But it is dominion we are after, not just a voice.

It is dominion we are after, not just influence.

It is dominion we are after, not just equal time.

World conquest, That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish, and we must never settle for anything less.

Keep in mind, folks, that in all the rhetoric, all the things that we can agree with as to the concerns of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, It is more than just the voice of persuasion that they are seeking.

And if that isn't the image to the beast, I don't know what is.

We are seeing it formed in front of our eyes.

Another interesting thing, a church in suburban St.

Paul, a congregation of 5, 000 members, the pastor, Boyd is his name.

How do you lose 1, 000 of 5, 000 members?

America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies.

Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn't bloody and barbaric.

That's why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.

I am sorry to tell you that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world.

The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.

And he lost 20% of his church for that kind of rhetoric.

And that's how you lose membership if you're pastoring 1 of the large mega-churches today.

If we aren't getting serious about the times in which we live, I don't know when we will ever get serious.

This is the time above all that we are seeing Revelation 13 fulfilled in front of our eyes.

Now a couple of announcements so we know where we're headed together.

Number 1, we have 2 meetings scheduled for this afternoon.

The first meeting will be more of a sermon presentation.

The second meeting will be more of a classroom presentation.

Is there 1 or 2 of you that know what that's like around here?

And so we will have a little break in between the 2 meetings, and then after the second meeting we will do the time-honored question and answer.

So you'll get a chance to ask me questions that I can't answer.

So we'll do that after the second meeting.

Also, again, we always bring with us our tapes, CDs, DVDs.

We have advanced into the category of CD and DVD almost exclusively now, so we have all of that material.

And in addition to that, the reason my son wasn't with me this morning was he was over 2 buildings removed in Dr.

Roth's Sabbath school class, sort of a scientific approach to Sabbath school.

And he presented his newest presentation called Could the Blind Watchmaker Account for This?

Very famous book came out a while back about the blind watchmaker and how it can solve the problems of life.

Blind watchmaker really can produce all the things we see around us, is the theme of the book.

And so his presentation was on diversity and design in the animal world, showing how the evolutionary method really doesn't have good answers for that diversity in design.

So that was what he was doing over there.

And when I got done here, I said, where, where is the rest of them?

And we went over there and they were going until 1215 over there with questions and all kinds of things.

Well, He's got that on DVD as well, Just Put It Together.

So we have some new productions in that area.

In addition to that, I always bring with me some extra study materials, little booklets and pamphlets on various subjects pertaining to the things I talk about.

Series

Dennis Priebe Weekend 2007

God On Trial

Transcript

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