Participants: Pr. Carlton P. Byrd
Series Code: BOL
Program Code: BOL000199A
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00:21 PB: Revelation 13:1. If you have it let me hear you say Amen.
00:26 The Word says, “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a 00:32 beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, 00:39 and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. 00:46 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were 00:52 as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the 00:58 dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. 01:04 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his 01:08 deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. 01:18 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: 01:24 and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? 01:34 who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a 01:37 mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto 01:42 him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in 01:48 blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, 01:51 and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war 01:54 with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all 01:57 kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth 02:01 shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of 02:06 the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If any man have an ear, let him hear.” 02:18 Our subject today is entitled “Do You See What I See?” Now, God, move, 02:29 move in Oakwood today and move over the airwaves, television, the Internet, 02:37 so everybody who hears this sermon, God, will after this sermon be able to 02:43 see the same thing. Forgive me for my sins, and when your appeal is made, 02:50 I pray that your people respond, respond to your voice. In Jesus' name, Amen. 03:01 When earlier this year, we know the story, a boy can sit in a prayer meeting 03:09 for an hour and listen to people pray, testify and sing, and then open up 03:16 fire and kill nine people because he wants to start a race war, 03:21 do you see what I see? And then in reverse of that action, 03:28 when a deranged man can shoot a news anchor and a cameraman on 03:34 live television in response to this proposed race war, 03:40 do you see what I see? When the Supreme Court can rule in favor 03:48 of same-sex marriage, parades can take place in major cities 03:51 promoting same-sex marriage, and then when you say you're an opponent 03:55 of same-sex marriage because you believe in the biblical definition 03:58 of a man and a woman being married, and then you're crucified, criticized, 04:04 ostracized, not to mention you become a target to human rights litigation, 04:10 do you see what I see? When fires are burning in homes in California, 04:21 tsunami waves are wiping out villages in the South Pacific, and 04:25 Hurricane Joaquin is pelting rain along the east coast from South Carolina 04:30 to Connecticut, producing flooding, storm surge and destruction, prompting 04:35 some of these states to declare a state of emergency, do you see what I see? 04:43 When the United States and Cuba, a communist nation, can restore diplomatic 04:53 relations that were severed 40 years ago, relations that were negotiated 05:00 in secret in Canada and at the Vatican with the papacy, relations that 05:08 have led to the lifting of some U.S. travel restrictions, fewer restrictions 05:12 on financial remittances, giving United States banks access to the Cuban 05:17 financial system and the establishment of a U.S. embassy in Havana which 05:23 originally closed after Cuba became closely allied with Russia in 1961, 05:29 but now we're experiencing the Cuban thaw, and the normalizing of relations 05:38 between the United States and Cuba, do you see what I see? 05:47 Speaking of Russia, when the United States and Russia debate, dispute 05:53 and disagree over the best way to end the conflict in Syria, according 06:00 to President Obama, the Bashar Al-Assad must go, but according to Putin 06:06 he should stay, and all the while we debate, people are dying daily, 06:13 fleeing Syria, do you see what I see? When a 26-year-old man with multiple 06:24 weapons and rounds of ammunition can go into a classroom at a south Oregon 06:28 community college and tell students, “Stand up. Are you a Christian? 06:37 If you are, good, because if you're a Christian you're about to see your 06:42 God in just a few seconds,” and then he shoots and kills nine people, 06:50 do you see what I see? And even that's why here at Oakwood everybody 06:58 just doesn't need to be able to walk everywhere. Everyone does not need 07:03 to be able to have access everywhere. All information, like we knew years 07:09 ago being published everywhere, can't be done today because we're 07:12 living in a sick world. Do you see what I see? 07:17 But then, when a mere man, mere flesh and blood, a mere human being, 07:27 known better to us as Pope Francis, can come to America and 07:34 then millions--not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of people 07:40 can bind and flood the streets in parades, in homage and in awe. 07:49 I mean, think about it. At the G.C. session, that was the most 07:51 Adventists we had in one place. It was only 70,000 of us. 07:54 In Philadelphia, there were two million people. When every station 08:00 on TV, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, can cover coverage of his 08:11 every move and every second, when not just Catholics, because all 08:16 three million of those people were not just Catholics, but Protestants, 08:20 Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, cogent, non-denominationals, 08:28 non-church-going folk, even Adventists, to call the Pope a great guy, 08:38 the People's Pope, the people's champ, do you see what I see? 08:47 Time magazine said he's the first pope to do a Google Hangout. 08:54 He's the first to amass over 20 million Twitter followers. 09:00 The age of authority has now given way to the age of persuasion. 09:06 The former nightclub bouncer and slum priest treats every encounter, 09:14 whether with saint or sinner, as an invitation to mercy. You're gay? 09:21 Come home. You're divorced? Come home. You've had an abortion? Come home. 09:32 The pope says that the heart of the pope expands to include everyone. 09:39 The Bible says, “The world wondered after the beast.” Do you see what I see? 09:50 But no, we don't see it because we're asleep. God's remnant church debates 09:59 and argues over the ability to essentially grant world regions the capacity 10:05 to make a decision on how to best spread the gospel in their region. 10:08 While God's remnant church issues infinite, never-ending points of order 10:16 on the rightness or the wrongness of the subject of women's ordination. 10:21 While God's remnant church argues about whether praise and worship is too long, 10:28 too loud, or too much. While God's remnant church argues about carpet colors, 10:36 nominating committee processes, the relevancy of regional conferences, 10:41 chastises millennial worship methods, and challenges the selection 10:47 criteria for church leaders. This fifth-generation Adventist cleric 10:55 wants to know, do you see what I see? 11:01 But we don't see it. Why? We're asleep. When I was a kid, I hated 11:10 to hear my mother say every morning, “It's time to get up.” In my house, 11:17 I didn't hear an alarm clock go off at six in the morning. But I heard 11:24 my mother's footsteps coming around the corner. My mother had these loud slippers. 11:34 And on the hardwood floors of our home, you could hear them, clonk, clonk, clonk, clonk. 11:40 In fact, a Christmas pastime of my family, for me and my siblings, was to each 11:46 buy my mother a new pair of slippers every Christmas. If she's watching right now, 11:53 she's probably laughing because she knows it's true. Each year we would buy her 11:58 a new pair of slippers, hoping they would be softer and more silent than the ones 12:05 she had before. Every year, my mother, for Christmas, was guaranteed three pairs 12:12 of slippers--one from me, one from my brother, and one from my sister. 12:22 To this day, Dr. Belleau, I detest slippers. In my house, when you come, 12:30 we have socks that we give people when they come through the door, not slippers, 12:37 because there's something psychological in my mind about slippers that bothers me, 12:43 because all I can remember is, it's time to wake up. 12:48 But you know what? I didn't want to wake up. I wanted to stay asleep. 12:56 Because to stay asleep was comfy. To stay asleep was comfortable. 13:03 To stay asleep was relaxing. To stay asleep was easy. And so it is in 13:11 spiritual matters. To stay asleep is comfy, it's comfortable, it's relaxing, 13:19 it's easy. But in the name of Jesus it's time to wake up. Do you see what I see? 13:34 You see, whenever we talk about the pope─Dr. Belleau, I heard you did an awesome 13:38 job Thursday. Whenever we talk about the pope and in-time events, Bible prophecies, 13:46 or anything that is eschatological in nature, we mutter, here we go again. 13:53 The pope is the beast. Ellen White is a prophet. The seventh day is the Sabbath. 13:59 The church is God's remnant, the time of trouble is coming, and we're going to have 14:04 to go into hiding. We say it with such cavalier feeling, and I feel we have said it 14:12 so much that we don't even realize we're closer now than when we first believed. 14:19 Years ago, when the preacher stood up with his Bible, he had a Bible in one hand 14:27 and he had the newspaper in the other hand. And we called that preaching. 14:34 But now if I do that, now if I don't hoot, if I don't holler, if I don't 14:43 jump up and down, if I don't start singing while I'm preaching, we haven't had church. 14:48 But when I preach what I'm preaching today, I'm now an alarmist, a conspiracy theorist, 14:56 a heretic who has lost his mind. Pastor Byrd, don't tell me about sin, don't 15:04 tell me about judgment, don't tell me about transgression, don't preach anything hard. 15:10 Just give me easy. Just give me feel good. Just give me cotton-candy preaching. 15:18 Sweet and big on the outside and ___ on empty on the inside. 15:22 Friends of mine, today we see things taking place we never thought we'd see before. 15:28 On the news channels, the Internet, social media, we see turmoil and chaos in every 15:35 place of the world. And what we're witnessing is the groundwork being laid for the 15:42 end of the world and the coming of Jesus to take place. 15:47 Now, people can be asleep and laugh at me all they want. But let's call the roll today. 15:59 For all those who thought Adventists were conspiracy theorists, let's call the roll today. 16:04 Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24 that there would be wars and rumors of wars. 16:11 In the past century we've had World War I, World War II, we've had Korean war, 16:17 Vietnam war, Gulf war, Bosnia war, war on terror in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan. 16:22 ISIS is out of control, and we're on the brink of war right now with Syria. 16:26 Do you see what I see? 16:31 Jesus also said in Matthew 24 that there would be famines, earthquakes, and there 16:36 would be pestilence in diverse places. We have starvation right now in Africa. 16:40 Fires and earthquakes in California. Tsunamis in the South Pacific. And when 16:46 hurricane Katrina and superstorm Sandy came to the United States in recent years, 16:50 we thought, man, what is this? And right now we have hurricane Joaquin threatening. 16:56 And then all these natural disasters. They're only going to get worse as 17:00 global warming rises and threatens the environment. Do you see what I see? 17:09 John prophesied in Revelation 6:12 that there would be a great earthquake 17:13 followed by the sun being black, the moon turning to blood, and we're sitting 17:19 around waiting for this to happen, not realizing November the first, 1755, the great 17:25 Lisbon earthquake took place where nearly four million square miles in Europe, 17:31 America and Africa were covered. John then said that this earthquake was going 17:36 to be followed by the darkening of the sun and the moon turning to blood. 17:40 Exactly 25 years later, May 19, 1780, the dark day took place here in the U.S. 17:47 No sun, no light, just a dark day. That night, the moon arose, but when the moon 17:53 became visible, it had the appearance of blood, just like John said. 17:58 Do you see what I see? But John also said in Revelation 6:13 that there would 18:04 be falling stars just before Jesus' coming. On November 13, 1833, the stars fell, 18:12 from Canada to Mexico, from the mid-Atlantic to the Pacific. The sad thing is, 18:19 these events, the dark days, the moon turning the blood, the earthquake, 18:23 these things were all going to happen during the sixth seal of Revelation 6. 18:29 What we don't realize is, the events that have taken place in the sixth seal, 18:34 these three things, have already occurred. Which means, friends of mine, 18:38 the only thing left is for the things to take place in the seventh seal, 18:42 and in the seventh seal is the coming of the Lord. 18:46 [Aud. reaction] Do you see what I see? It was Ellen White, 18:54 and people don't believe in Ellen White like they should anymore. 18:57 Oh, you all want to say Amen, that's all right, I'll be by myself today. 19:02 Ellen White, you better start believing in her writings, because anybody 19:06 with a third-grade education, but is arguably the most translated author 19:09 in the world, somebody better recognize, she had to be divinely inspired 19:14 to do what she did in her writings. Ellen White, she prophesied and told us, 19:21 she told us in “Life Sketches” of the destruction that would take place in New York. 19:29 On February 15, 1904, she told us, she said, When I was last in New York, 19:34 I was in the night season, called upon to behold buildings rise in story 19:38 after story toward heaven. These buildings were warranted and supposed 19:42 to be fireproof. They were erected, she said, to glorify the owners. 19:47 Higher and higher, she said, these buildings rose, and in them the 19:50 most costly material was used. She said, “The next thing that passed 19:54 before me was an alarm of fire.” Men looked at lofty and supposedly 19:59 fireproof buildings and they said, they are perfectly safe. 20:02 But these buildings were consumed as if made of pitch. 20:07 She said the fire engines are not going to be able to do anything 20:10 to stop the destruction. Now, you can talk about Ellen White 20:13 all you want, but all I know is, on 9-11, September the 11th, 2001, 20:21 I was sitting in a business law class working on my MBA degree at 20:25 Tennessee State University in Nashville, when all of a sudden I 20:27 remember the teacher in that class say, “Class is over, go home.” Why? 20:30 The mighty twin towers, supposedly fireproof buildings. Because if 20:38 a plane hits from the top, the top should fall, but does it descend 20:42 down like this? Things tumbling down. Do you see what I see? 20:54 But let's keep calling the roll. Because I may never _____. 20:58 There's a sexual revolution in the land. Adultery. Fornication. 21:09 Not outside of church, in the church. 21:12 [Aud. reaction] Pornography. Open marriage. Mate-swapping. 21:19 The sexual abuse of children. Homosexuality. AIDS and venereal 21:25 diseases are at an all-time high. Same-sex marriage is legal 21:33 in this land. Paul told us it would happen in the last days. 21:39 II Timothy 3:1-5, “This we know also, that in the last days 21:44 perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, 21:49 covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, 21:54 unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, 22:00 false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 22:04 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; 22:09 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: 22:17 from such turn away.” Do you see what I see? 22:23 But then there's the rise of the papacy. We don't even understand 22:28 the importance and significance of the most recent papal visit to 22:33 the United States and his meeting with President Obama. 22:37 Just this past week, you had the two most powerful men 22:42 on earth meeting together: the foremost leader in world 22:48 government and the foremost leader in church government. 22:52 Now, let me be clear for those watching. I'm not here to 22:54 argue about whether the pope is a nice man or not. 22:58 I am not here to denigrate, castigate or dog out Catholics. 23:03 That's not my job. I have learned over the years that you 23:08 don't maximize yourself by minimizing somebody else. 23:12 Because you can't be big as long as little has you. 23:15 I wish I had a witness in this place. [Aud. reaction] 23:17 But I'm here to preach prophecy. And I know preaching 23:22 prophecy doesn't make me popular. But you can't be popular 23:28 and prophetic at the same time. So Revelation 13 says, 23:34 verse 1, “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a 23:40 beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, 23:43 and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. 23:46 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard,” everybody say leopard. 23:49 “His feet were as the feet of a bear,” everybody say bear, 23:52 “and his mouth as the mouth of a lion,” everybody say lion, 23:54 “and the dragon gave him his power,” say power, “his seat,” say seat, 23:59 “and great authority.” What did the dragon give the beast? 24:08 Power. Seat. And not just authority, great authority. 24:15 Now, the dragon, in case you don't know the parallel, 24:19 represents Satan. But also in this instance represents pagan Rome. 24:25 Now, when we talk about water in Bible prophecy, we're talking 24:29 about people, we're talking about what, everybody? 24:32 History is clear, that the papacy received its power and 24:37 authority from old pagan Rome. Now, when we talk about a beast, 24:43 a beast in Bible prophecy represents a kingdom. 24:46 It represents a what, everybody? The continuation of the Roman 24:50 world empire is the Roman Catholic Church. [Aud. reaction] 24:55 The pope, according to Catholics, not Pastor Byrd, but the pope, 25:01 according to Catholics, is Caesar's successor. Do you see what I see? 25:09 Revelation 13:3, it says, “And the beast would be wounded to death.” 25:14 But this wound, this deadly wound, would heal. 25:18 It would what, everybody? And all the world would wonder after the what? 25:22 Wonder after what? Now, in 1798, study your history, General Berthier, 25:29 French general of Napoleon's army when Napoleon was trying to conquer 25:33 the world, took the pope captive, and the pope died in exile. 25:39 The beast would be wounded to death. Many people in our world thought 25:44 that the pope was done. He would die in exile. But the Bible 25:48 has to be truth, that he would receive a deadly wound, but that 25:52 wound would have to heal. In the concordant of 1929, 25:56 Benito Mussolini restored the power of the papacy. 25:59 Just as the Bible predicted the wound of the papacy would heal. 26:05 The papacy is now arguably the most influential power on earth. 26:11 All the world wonders after him. He's a people person. 26:18 He's charismatic. He's loved. He's admired. 26:25 He was Time magazine's Person of the Year. He looks good. 26:32 The devil is not going to come at you ugly. The devil is 26:37 not going to come at you with horns, a tail, a pitchfork and a red suit. 26:44 You all hear what I'm saying. People travel all over the world to see him. 26:49 All the world wonders after the beast. Do you see what I see? 26:57 Oh, but it gets more. Go to verse five. The beast would speak great 27:01 things and blasphemies. The Bible defines blasphemy as being 27:08 to make yourself God. And declaring to have the power to forgive sin. 27:16 The pope claims to be God on earth. But we're running around after the pope. 27:22 In fact, the pope sees himself not only as the representative of Jesus Christ, 27:27 but Catholics believe he is Jesus Christ, hidden under the veil of ____, 27:31 and that he has the power to forgive sins. But let me be clear today, even on TV. 27:37 Let me be clear. I don't have to go praying to the pope to receive 27:45 forgiveness for my sins. I don't have to go confess my sins to another 27:52 man on another side of the window and tell him all my business, 27:57 and tell him all my sins. I don't have to confess to a pope or 28:01 anybody else for my sins. But my Bible says that if we confess our sins, 28:10 Jesus is faithful and just to forgive me of my sins and cleanse me 28:18 from all of my unrighteousness. Do you see what I see? 28:23 END |
Revised 2015-10-09