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Montgomery First SDA Church

Certainty in Uncertain Times

Daniel Pel

1. A Chaotic World? – Where is God?

2. Is the Bible Trustworthy?

A Transforming Touch

3. Has Religion Failed?

4. What is Your Picture of God?

5. How Can We Find Inner Peace?

6. Who is the Next Superpower?

7. What Happens When a Person Dies?

8. Heaven and Hell – Fact or Fiction?

9. Who Will Make it Right?

10. Where Do I Find Power to Overcome?

11. What Does the Future Hold?

12. How Can We Recognize Christ’s Followers in the End of Time?

Alright, thank you John, thank you Samuel.

We'll get right into our presentation this evening because we do have some good material to cover here, but we'll try to get you out on time, probably about half past 8.

So we're going to build in this second presentation on our first presentation.

We dealt with the fourth commandment, the Sabbath truth.

Maybe this is like a bomb in your experience, like a dynamite, maybe a lot of new thoughts.

And I hope that this second presentation will also further help you to understand the connection of the Sabbath in end-time prophecy.

I mentioned in my first presentation that, you know, some people will say, well, aren't the commandments nailed to the cross?

And there's actually even an expression that Paul uses nailed to the cross in Colossians chapter 2, but you've got to read that text very carefully because he's not talking about the commandments as the moral 10 commandments, he's talking about the commandments of Moses, the ceremonial commandments that… and surely those were nailed to the cross.

We don't have circumcision as a sign between us and God, and all these ritual, traditional Jewish things that pointed forward to the coming Messiah, they were fulfilled in the Messiah, and so they were nailed on the cross.

But, oftentimes, there's a lot of confusion in Christianity today between the laws of Moses and the 10 Commandment laws.

And sometimes they're mixed up and so they say, oh, all the laws were nailed to the cross, but that wouldn't make any sense because we wouldn't even know what sin was if we didn't have the 10 Commandments today, right?

And if you have more questions, please come to me after these presentations and make sure you get the handouts where we are also going a little bit more into some of these things.

All right, well, in our second presentation, we're going to go back to a prophecy found in the book of Revelation, chapter 13.

And in our presentation yesterday, we talked about Revelation 13, this beast that comes up out of the sea.

And what does a beast represent, everyone?

And John on the Isle of Patmos sees this beast coming up out of the sea in Revelation 13, and we looked at the identification marks yesterday evening, and if you weren't here yesterday, you want to go back and, You know, you want to listen to these presentations, we'll make them available on the website, and also you want to get the handouts.

But we looked at all those identification marks of Revelation chapter 13, the first beast, and no doubt this was pointing to none other system than the Roman Catholic system.

Here we have a religious system that is seeking to really receive the worship of man and is putting itself in the very place of Christ Himself.

Remember that this beast in Revelation 13 is described as, you know, a leopard, a bear, a dragon, a lion, really like this amalgamation of the different beasts that we read about in the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, chapter 7, where we looked at these beasts, these kingdoms coming and falling, leading us to the arrival of the Antichrist, the arrival of this Roman church power that basically said, okay, now we're going to unite the state with the church, and they reigned for this long period of time, even a period of 1260 years.

We verified that in history, and also prophecy confirms this.

From the year 538 all the way to the year 1798, this church reigned and the state was there to back up and to enforce everything that this church taught, its doctrines and its traditions.

And millions of people lost their lives during this period merely for believing in the Bible and actually wanting to possess the Bible themselves and teach it.

It was only there, it was only to be taught by the clergy and it was only available in the Latin language.

And when the reformers came on the scene like John Wycliffe, the morning star of the Reformation, he actually translated the Bible into the English language.

And he really got in trouble for doing that and the Roman Catholic Church sought to take his life.

Even many years after his death, they actually, you know, they took up his bones and they burned them and just made sure that everyone would know that he was denounced a heretic because of that act of translating the Bible.

Now that may sound absolutely strange for us today, but those were the circumstances during what we call the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages in the continent of Europe.

And prophecy really shows us the events around these times.

Now Revelation 13 portrays then this first beast or this power that ruled for this period of 1260 years, and then it describes that this power would receive what the Bible calls a deadly wound, or it is also described here in verse 10 the following way, Revelation 13 verse 10, he who leads into captivity shall go into captivity.

He who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword.

Here is the patience and the faith of the saints." So Revelation 13, verse 1, the beast comes up out of the sea and He does all these different things, all these different things that are described in these verses and then you come to verse 10 and then the Bible says that this power will go into captivity.

And this is exactly what happened in the year 1798 when again Napoleon sent his commander Brichet into the city of Rome.

He took the Pope captive and basically he abolished the unity between church and state.

And So this happened in 1798 and the prophecy predicted that this church would reign and rule for 42 prophetic months or 1260 years, and this is exactly what we see took place.

Now the event that happens next or the description that comes right after this verse is quite fascinating.

Revelation chapter 13 and verse 11, because I titled this message this evening, the second presentation, Who is the Next Superpower?

And as we look at Revelation chapter 13, in Revelation chapter 13 there are 2 beasts.

And so there are 2 nations or 2 powers that are on display here.

The first 1, the Roman Catholic Church there in the first verses of Revelation 13, but then when you come to verse 11, it talks about another beast coming up.

And let's read together the description here, Revelation 13, verse 11, listen to what it says.

Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had 2 horns like a lamb, and spoke like a dragon." So the first beast, remember we identified that 1, Roman Catholic Church, ruled for 1260 years, goes into captivity, and right after that, in Revelation 13, in verse 11, John the Revelator on the island of Patmos, he sees a second beast, another beast, but this beast does not come up out of the sea as the first beast, but it comes up out of the what?

And then it gives a little description of this beast.

Can you just get a mental picture of that?

Little lamb, and You're going to go over, you're going to pet the lamb.

So he sees this lamb-like beast, but this lamb-like beast speaks like a dragon.

Now, what does a beast represent, people?

So we got to look at what power does this represent?

What power does this lamb-like beast represent?

Well, we got to look at the characteristics of this beast.

Here are a little animation of what it could look like.

I don't know exactly what it looked like.

These are just animations, but what power are we looking at here?

What are the characteristics that we have?

The second beast comes up out of the earth.

Now the Bible tells us that the sea represents multitudes of peoples and nations.

In Revelation chapter 17 and verse 15, It talks about water being a representation of multitudes of people and nations and kindreds and tongues.

So, if the first beast comes up out of the sea, it came up in a populated area.

The earth is the opposite of the sea, and so this nation is coming up in a scarcely populated area.

Okay, that's the first identification mark.

Now, the first beast had 10 horns on its head, and the Bible tells us in Revelation 13 in the first verses there, that upon the horns there were crowns.

And that's interesting because the Church of Rome ruled over the kings of Europe.

That's why the papacy had so much power during the Dark Ages because all the kings said, we give you our authority, our armies are your armies.

Now this second beast has 2 horns, but there are no crowns on his head.

Now let's look at some more characteristics.

Now the word lamb appears a number of times in the book of Revelation.

It appears 27 times in the book of Revelation.

Now listen to this, 26 of those 27 times the word lamb is pointing to no other person than Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.

But in 1 instance, this 1, it does not point to Jesus Christ, but it points to a nation.

So a nation that has Christ-like principles, a lamb-like nation coming up in a scarcely populated area, no king, and listen, this is also interesting, it comes up at a time that the first beast goes into captivity.

Now the first beast ruled for how long, do you remember?

Series

Certainty in Uncertain Times

6. Who is the Next Superpower?

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

War of Thrones

Finding Rest in Today’s Society

1h

Revelation Today Crusade

12. Antichrist’s Greatest Deception

53m

A God Worth Knowing

07 The Reminder of Your Value

1h 2m

There is Hope

A Second Look at the First Day

52m

Restoration 2024: The Message of Healing

Healing Rest

1h 1m

The Big Questions (Evening Meetings)

7. How to Ace Your Exams and Still Be Normal

1h 13m

The Seventh Day

The Seventh Day- Part 2

38m

Religion, Power, and the Future of America

Pastors are Lying to You

45m

Babylon, America, and Bible Prophecy

11 Antichrist’s Counterfeit Worship

1h 18m

Jesus On Prophecy

Babylon the Fall and the Call

1h 7m

Unlock Revelation

7. History’s Greatest Religious Cover-up

56m

The Beast and the Little Horn

1h 7m

Sound Doctrine