Prophecy
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The Memorial
Protected by Law
Jesus
protected the sanctity of His Sabbath
memorial with the force of law.
He did this so that His memorial to
creation would not be
forgotten. Adam and Eve knew
and observed the holiness of the
Sabbath in the Garden of Eden before
sin began. This statement is
valid because Adam and Eve’s
first sin was not that of violating
the holiness of God’s
Sabbath. After Adam and Eve
were cast out of the garden, the
importance of observing God’s
Sabbath was passed down through the
patriarchs. Adam, the first
patriarch, lived for approximately
250 years after Methuselah was born
and Methuselah died the year of the
flood. Therefore, two men, who
knew each other well, spanned the
time between Creation Week and
Noah’s flood! The
knowledge of God’s holy Sabbath
was not lost before the flood.
Even though
the Garden of Eden remained on Earth
until the flood, it would be fair to
say that very few people observed
God’s seventh day Sabbath at the
time of the flood.[83] Even
though the Bible does not explicitly
say so, I assume that Noah observed
God’s holy Sabbath because Noah
was a righteous man (a law abiding
man) and He walked with God![84] If
Noah did not know about the holiness
surrounding God’s seventh day,
Jesus would have told him. I am
confident that Noah and his employees
did not work on the ark on God’s
Sabbath. The Bible declares
that God sent the flood in
Noah’s day because the world was
full of gross degeneracy and endless
wickedness.[85]
Wickedness is unrighteous and
unlawful behavior[86] and the
salvation of eight people at the time
of the flood indicates that very few
people worshiped the Creator by
resting from their labors on His holy
day.
Prior to the
Exodus (and the giving of the law at
Mt. Sinai), the Lord tested
Israel’s faith by imposing His
Sabbath rest upon them. (Exodus 5)
This made Pharaoh furious! Then
again, shortly after the Exodus (but
prior to the giving of the law at Mt.
Sinai), the Lord tested Israel with
His Sabbath rest. (Exodus 16) A
few weeks after the Exodus, the Lord
Himself descended to Mt. Sinai to
pronounce the Ten Commandments
because Israel had been chosen to be
the light of the world.[87] The
holiness of God’s seventh day
Sabbath did not begin at Mt.
Sinai. It began at Creation.[88]
The two laws
of love underlying the Ten
Commandments are eternal. All
created beings are required to love
God supremely and their neighbors as
themselves.[89] These
two laws of love are amplified in the
Ten Commandments. The first
four commandments define love for God
and the last six commandments define
love for man. Mankind does not
have the privilege of defining what
love is and is not. God is
love, He defines love. The Ten
Commandments are called “a
covenant”[90] because
they contain a promise. The
Lord has promised that the Ten
Commandments are a reflection of what
a born again person will naturally
want to do when there is no
rebellion in his heart.[91]
We know that
the Ark of the Covenant will be
presented to the world at the end of
salvation’s offer at the seventh
trumpet.[92] We
know that Jesus wrote the Ten
Commandments with His own finger on
two tablets of enduring stone.[93] We
know that at the end of the Great
Tribulation, there will be two groups
of people. One group will worship the
Creator on His holy Sabbath, the
other group will worship Lucifer on a
false sabbath.[94] The Ark
of the Covenant will be visibly
presented to the people of Earth as
physical evidence confirming the
Father’s will. The test of
worship will then be over. The
saints are rewarded for their faith
and the wicked are destroyed because
of defiance.
God’s
Sabbath is far more than a holy
day. When the Sabbath is
ignored, the Creator is ignored. The
devil knows that when a man or woman
loses sight of his accountability
before God, the result will be
horrible. Sinners will lie,
cheat, steal, kill, and commit
adultery if they think they can get
away with it. When people
forget God, they behave in the most
disgusting and despicable ways.
Predators prey on the innocent and
the weak. Children are abused
and the elderly robbed or
abandoned. Spiritual people can
see the problem, but fools have no
understanding. They say,
“There is no God,”[95] but
wise men know better. Many
years ago the Russian philosopher
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote,
“If I were called upon to
identify the principal trait of the
entire 20th century, I would be
unable to find anything more precise
than to reflect once again on how we
have lost touch with our Creator. . .
. Men have forgotten God.”[96]
Persecution
and the Sabbath Rest Test
Earlier, it
was said that Jesus tested the faith
of the Israelites before the
Exodus. He required His
trustees to rest from
their labors on His Sabbath[97] as a
precondition to deliverance from
Egypt. He did this to test
their faith in Him. When
worship requires a price, faith is
revealed! The Israelites showed
their regard for God’s higher
authority by resting on His holy day
and their cessation from work was
considered an act of defiance.
Pharaoh severely persecuted his
slaves.[98]
This Exodus
story has an end time parallel.
Before Jesus delivers the saints from
the bondage of sin (removes the
carnal nature), He will test our
faith by requiring us to rest from
our labors on His seventh day
Sabbath! Resting on God’s
Sabbath according to His commandment
is an act of worship. In an
effort to appease God’s wrath,
Babylon will make laws demanding that
God be worshiped, but on days other
than the Creator’s
Sabbath. The leaders of Babylon
will become furious with God’s
saints because they will interpret
worshiping the Creator on His holy
day as an act of defiance.[99] It is
interesting to anticipate how the
seventh day Sabbath, an institution
as old as Creation week and the
divinity of Jesus, as Creator of
Heaven and Earth, will become
inflammatory topics during the Great
Tribulation.
When the
eternal gospel is set before mankind
as a demand from God, a great
controversy will arise and there will
be a surprising outcome. The
honest in heart will hear the
144,000. They will learn of
Christ and His salvation and millions
will embrace the eternal gospel and
keep God’s Sabbath holy even
though they will be severely punished
for it. A time is coming when
the world will see devout Moslems,
Jews, Hindus, Atheists, Baptists,
Catholics, pagans, and others worshiping
Jesus by resting on His
Sabbath day! This amazing
phenomenon will prove to the universe
that the honest in heart are worthy
of salvation because they are willing
to do whatever God asks (once they
know His will), regardless of the
price or lifelong heritage.
Give Him
Glory
The eternal
gospel includes this phrase, ‘and
give Him glory.’
People give glory and praise to those
they admire. Giving glory to
Jesus is a righteous demand because
He is our Creator, Redeemer, and
Almighty God. He has done many
things for mankind which no one else
in the universe can do. He gave
us life, but He was willing to cease
to exist so that we might have His
eternal life. Jesus has
promised that sinners can overcome
temptation if we will abide in Him
and receive His strength. Jesus
was tempted in every way as we are
and He did not sin.[100] Jesus
was tempted in ways that go beyond
the human experience (such as turning
stones into bread) and He did not
fail. On the basis of
Christ’s perfect life and death,
the Father reconciled the world unto
Himself.[101] Jesus
overcame the world,[102] and His
victory assures us that we can have
victory through His power.
Therefore, “give Him glory”
is a righteous demand. When the
honest in heart hear and understand
who Jesus really is, once they
understand the love that He has
bestowed on sinners and the victory
that He has achieved for sinners,
they will joyfully embrace Him and
give Him glory! People like
Pharaoh will stubbornly refuse.
The wicked will submit to the laws of
Babylon to avoid punishment.
They justify their defiance for fear
of punishment or suffering. The
delivery of the eternal gospel by the
144,000 will produce many surprises
and one of the biggest will be the
response of family members and
friends!
Babylon
Suddenly Forms
Consider
Earth’s situation after the
destruction caused by the first four
trumpets. The whole world will
look something like a giant ant hill
that has been scalped by a
lawnmower. People will be
rushing around, confused and
bewildered. They will be filled
with anxiety, desperately looking for
ways to survive. Some will be
cursing God and others will be
questioning God, trying to make sense
of what happened. The leaders
of the world will be feverishly
working on a global plan to appease
God’s wrath. Religious
diversity will cause great confusion
at first, but eventually the leaders
of the world will unite, naively
creating a beast that will soon
become a monster. The leaders
of the world will create a one world
crisis government.
Babylon’s stated purpose will be
simple and singular: We must quickly
appease God’s wrath or we will
all be destroyed.
During the
first four trumpets, God’s wrath
will burn up (like Sodom and
Gomorrah) a third of the Earth and
then will destroy thousands of
coastal cities. God’s
wrath will wipe out a continent and
the heavens will turn so dark that
crops cannot grow. The carnage
will be indescribable. When
1.75 billion people die from these
judgments and the survival of mankind
looms large, the political and
religious leaders of the world will
get the picture. They will
rightly conclude that man’s
sinful behavior has made Almighty God
very angry, but they will wrongfully
reason that if mankind’s
offensive behaviors are eliminated,
God will be pleased and His judgments
will cease. The political
leaders of the world will agree to
enforce whatever laws religious
leaders might think appropriate and
almost everyone will go along with
Babylon’s reasoning and demands
– at first.
Three
Enabling Lies
Babylon will
justify its origin with three
lies. The first lie will be
this: Everyone on Earth
worships the same
God. Even though He
is called by different names or given
different titles, there is one
God. This lie may sound
reasonable, but nothing is further
from the truth. The religions
of the world do not know and worship
Jesus and He is not to be confused
with Allah or any other God.
The first lie will enable religious
and political leaders to unite on two
core principles. First, all
religions believe that God’s
wrath can be aroused by decadent and
degenerate behavior. Second,
all religions believe that Almighty
God is entitled to respect and
worship. These two principles
will combine with the first lie to
produce a second lie. The
second lie will be this: God
will be pleased when mankind unites
and enforces laws outlawing
decadent and degenerate behavior.
They will think that every reduction
in sinful behavior will surely please
The Almighty. Finally, the
third lie supporting Babylon’s
theological framework will be
this: God will be pleased
when one agency on Earth represents
all of the religions of the
world. This “divinely
appointed agency” can coordinate
the worship and appeasement of The
Almighty for all nations.
As the dust
from the first four trumpets settles,
everyone on Earth will be very afraid
of God. A dramatic show of
divine power on Day One and the
overwhelming destruction caused by
the first four trumpet events will
change everything. Suddenly,
mankind will face the reality of an
angry God. The smouldering
evidences of God’s wrath will
produce a knee-jerk religious
revival. Not surprisingly, the
people of the world will suddenly
become “religious” after
the first four trumpets, but they
will be motivated by fear of more
wrath to come. Ironically, the
people of Earth, including the
religious leaders of the world who
claim to know the will of God, will
not know that it will be more than
two years before the fifth trumpet
occurs. In other words, almost
everyone will be anticipating more
judgments to fall right away and even
though a great religious awakening
will take place, a great religious
embarrassment will also unfold.
Millions of
Christians who believe in a
pretribulation rapture will be
shocked to discover that their
pastors and scholars have misled
them. The deaths of 1.75
billion people will be
unmistakable. The
pretribulation rapture doctrine will
vanish because it is fiction and a
religious backlash will follow.
On the other hand, millions of other
Christians will be forced to admit
that the seven trumpets did not occur
in the past. These Christians
will discover that their historical
view of Revelation is fiction and a
similar backlash will follow.
Catholics will be shocked when they
discover that their clergy know
nothing about Bible prophecy.
In Muslim countries, millions of
people will sit in shocked
silence. The Koran says nothing
about the seven trumpets, nor does it
explain God’s final plans or the
eternal gospel. Muslim clergy
will say that Allah is definitely
offended, but they have no further
information on God’s plans or
the revealing of Jesus Christ as
Almighty God. Meanwhile, the
144,000 will speak boldly. They
will tell everyone about the seven
trumpets of Revelation. They
will explain the eternal gospel and
their testimony will lead the honest
in heart to conclude that the
world’s religious leaders know
nothing about God, His Word, or His
plans. This will be a bitter
pill for many religious people to
swallow. Like King
Nebuchadnezzar, this discovery will
make many people angry at first.[103]
Meanwhile, Babylon will form and it
will issue a decree requiring
everyone to worship Almighty
God. Of course, Babylon’s
demand will sound very similar to the
eternal gospel, but there will be a
number of sharp differences.
The Second
Angel’s Message: An Inflammatory
Message
Revelation
14:8
And
there followed another angel, saying,
Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that
great city, because she made all
nations drink of the wine of the
wrath of her fornication.{8} I
saw a second angel descend from
Heaven and orbit the Earth. He
carried a message from Jesus that
made the leaders of Babylon
furious. He said in a loud
voice, “Lies! Babylon the Great
is promoting falsehood! The leaders
of Babylon do not speak for
God. Their presuppositions are
false. Their endeavors are
false. Their doctrines are
blasphemy. They do not know God
or His plans. Babylon has made
all nations drunk with the delusion
that men can appease God’s
wrath. This is a lie. The
censer has been cast down.
Corporately speaking, there is no
return to God’s grace.
Babylon cannot save anyone or even
itself. In fact, the Creator
will destroy Babylon and all who obey
its laws during the seven
bowls.”
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