Participants:
Series Code: IIWSS
Program Code: IIWSS025023S
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00:00 [uplifting music]
00:12 [uplifting music] 00:14 >>Eric Flickinger: Welcome to "Sabbath School," 00:15 brought to you by It Is Written. 00:17 We're glad you're with us today. 00:18 We are continuing our journey through 00:20 a fascinating series of subjects 00:22 looking at how to study Bible prophecy 00:25 so that we make sure we're headed in 00:26 the right direction rather than the wrong direction. 00:29 This is lesson number 10 out of 13. 00:32 And today we are looking at "Upon Whom the Ends Have Come." 00:36 These next several lessons, we're going to be looking 00:38 at some stories in the Old Testament 00:40 that help us to make sure we're on the right path, 00:42 on the right track, in understanding prophecy 00:45 as it is fulfilled in the New Testament 00:46 and in our days and the days shortly to come. 00:49 So we're glad that you are with us today, 00:51 but before we begin, as always, we will begin with prayer. 00:55 Father, thank You for being with us today. 00:57 We're asking once again that You will bless us abundantly 01:00 as we delve into Your Word and that You will help us 01:03 to understand what is going on in the world today 01:05 and what is soon to come. 01:07 We thank You in Jesus' name, amen. 01:10 We're grateful also, once again, to have the author of 01:12 this quarter's "Sabbath School" lesson with us: 01:14 Pastor Shawn Boonstra. Shawn, welcome back. 01:16 >>Shawn Boonstra: Hey, thank you. I really didn't 01:18 have a choice. I've been chained to this chair for 10 weeks. 01:21 >>Eric: Whatever works, whatever works. [Shawn laughing] 01:23 But we're being blessed as a result. 01:24 So, don't expect that chain to be let up-- 01:26 >>Shawn: Help. Help. [laughs] >>Eric: ...any time soon. 01:28 We got three more to go after this. 01:29 All right, so this week, "How to Study Bible Prophecy: 01:33 Upon Whom the Ends Have Come," 01:35 now, this particular part of the quarterly of the lesson study-- 01:39 I know that this is a favorite part of yours 01:41 because it really does help us to know 01:43 that we are on the right track, 01:45 that we don't have to be apologizing for things, 01:48 that when we look at what was-- what has happened in the past, 01:52 we can see the confirmation in what we see 01:54 over in the book of Revelation. 01:55 Walk us through some of this. 01:57 >>Shawn: You know, I find it interesting 01:58 when I'm teaching Bible prophecy publicly 02:01 how shocked the average audience is 02:03 when I tell them that the way they read prophecy 02:05 is a recent invention, 02:06 that it's just a little more than 170 years old, 02:09 1830s onward. But for 1,800 years 02:12 Christians tended to read prophecy roughly-- 02:15 now, there are obviously some variations on the theme-- 02:18 but roughly we all read it the same way. 02:20 We read it historically. 02:21 And when we were reading it historically, 02:23 yeah, we had to adjust some minor details along the way, 02:26 but we didn't have to change the entire scheme, 02:31 and I'm watching the broader Christian world today. 02:35 They have to change-- they have to do a rewrite 02:37 on their interpretation of Bible prophecy about every five years, 02:40 it seems, and they never seem to have to apologize 02:44 for the fact that they're just way off base 02:45 every five years and have to rewrite. 02:47 Somebody handed me when I was a kid 02:50 "The Late Great Planet Earth" 02:51 by Hal Lindsey, and that one was like, 02:53 okay, Israel's been reestablished in the 1940s, 02:55 we've got one generation, and then Jesus is gonna come. 02:58 There's gonna to be a rapture, and, well, 03:01 we're now about 40 years past 03:02 when that was supposed to happen, 03:04 and Hal Lindsey never seemed to have to issue 03:06 an apology for that. 03:08 I also remember in the '80s and '90s-- 03:10 even though in the '80s I was a bit of a heathen-- 03:13 but I was paying attention. 03:14 I was raised in a Christian home. 03:17 They were playing pin the tail on the antichrist, 03:19 and that game's been going on forever. 03:21 At first it was, "Okay, Ronald Reagan is the beast." 03:24 It's like, "How can Ronald Reagan be the beast?" 03:25 "Well, he's Ronald Wilson Reagan, 03:27 three--six letters in each name, that's 666." 03:30 Of all the horrible ways to read a prophecy, 03:33 that doesn't even make sense, but that's what happens 03:36 when you're not anchored in the entirety of Scripture 03:38 and you look at something and you just try to, 03:40 "Okay, I'll find some detail from modern society 03:43 that seems to fit." 03:44 After that, Obama was the antichrist. 03:48 I remember that one, right? 03:49 Luke, chapter 10 and verse 18, 03:50 Jesus says, "I saw Satan fall" from heaven "like lightning." 03:54 Well, that's "astrapé." 03:57 "Astrapé" is the Greek word for "lightning," 04:00 but if you go back to Aramaic, which Jesus would have spoke-- 04:02 somebody got really excited: "Ooh, the word's 'baraq.'" 04:05 And it was like, "Come on, man." 04:07 So you change the language of the New Testament, 04:09 and it lands on "baraq." 04:11 And then they go to Isaiah 14: 04:12 "I will ascend above the heights," Lucifer says. 04:14 Well, that's "bamah." So now we have "baraq-bamah." 04:17 And like this--it's so silly. 04:19 And now that's come and gone. That was clearly wrong. 04:21 Saddam Hussein was supposed to start Armageddon. 04:23 Never happened. My Baptist neighbor at one point 04:26 was telling me, "Oh, this is it." 04:27 We were watching the Gulf War 04:28 and the tracer bullets going through the air. 04:30 Then it was gonna be a computer in Belgium. 04:32 You remember that one? >>Eric: I remember that one. 04:34 >>Shawn: That's actually out of a William Cooper novel. 04:36 It's entirely fiction. 04:37 It's a novel that came out in the '60s or '70s, 04:40 "A Pale Horse Rides," and somebody read the novel 04:44 and said, "Well, that's gotta be it, 04:44 the supercomputer in Belgium." 04:46 They're playing pin the tail on the antichrist. 04:48 Nobody ever seems to have to own what they said 04:52 or apologize for it. 04:55 And meanwhile in the background, 04:56 Adventists have followed what our Christian ancestors 04:59 have followed. We've had a general 05:01 historic view of prophecy. 05:04 We have sometimes gotten details wrong. 05:07 Like, you know, I think in Uriah Smith's book, 05:11 we had a couple of details that were not entirely accurate, 05:14 but as a general scheme, for 100-- how old are we now? 05:17 A hundred and-- well, it depends on 05:20 where you want to start--1844, 1863. 05:24 For--going on to two centuries, 05:25 we have not had to apologize for our general understanding 05:29 of prophecy because it has held up. 05:31 It's anchored in the entire book. 05:33 It's anchored in all of history, and it has been standard. 05:39 And so, yeah, this becomes one of my favorites 05:42 because not only do we find references 05:44 in Revelation to the Old Testament, 05:46 and you find, okay, Daniel explains a lot of Revelation. 05:49 Exodus explains a lot of Revelation. 05:51 Genesis explains a lot of Revelation. 05:53 But then when you go back to read 05:55 the key stories in the Old Testament, 05:56 they seem to foreshadow last-day events, 06:00 and it's not like it was crafted. 06:02 God somehow picks real people in real places at real times. 06:06 They all happen to be in the lineage of Jesus, 06:09 and he uses details-- he doesn't tell us 06:12 all that happened to Abraham. 06:13 He got to be a really old guy. The book would be huge. 06:17 But there are details in Abraham's life 06:18 that God weaves together and says, 06:20 "Ah, here's what's coming." 06:22 Same with Jonah, same with Job, same with everybody. 06:24 And so, yeah, I love this because-- 06:27 a friend of mine once said, "Look, you know something-- 06:30 the difference between man-made and divine," 06:33 he said, "a snowflake, that's creation. 06:36 "God's got a hand in that. 06:37 "Put that under a microscope, and the closer you look, 06:40 "the prettier it gets. 06:41 Take a tablecloth," he said, "put that under the microscope. 06:44 "It looks real pretty until you get really close 06:46 "and you see that the warp and the woof is off, 06:48 "and there's flaws in it. 06:50 "If your system is wrong, the deeper you look, 06:53 the more flawed it gets." 06:54 What I love about the way that this movement interprets 06:57 the three angels' messages is I've been looking 06:59 for three decades-plus, and the deeper I go, 07:03 the more detailed and perfect it gets, 07:05 not the other way around. So there you go. 07:08 If that's all you study this week, 07:10 it's to know that there is a right and a wrong way, 07:13 and one of them results in long-term consistency, 07:16 and the other one results in having to change your course, 07:20 you know, reprogram the GPS every five years. 07:22 Which one might be right? 07:24 >>Eric: Well, I think we're gonna find, 07:25 pretty conclusively, as we study the next several weeks. 07:29 One of the stories that you draw our attention to 07:30 is the story of Noah. 07:32 Noah's a significant one. Walk us through that. 07:34 >>Shawn: Yeah, we're gonna start with the really obvious ones, 07:36 and then we'll go to some of the not-so-obvious stories 07:38 over the next couple of weeks. 07:40 But as you look at the details of Noah, 07:43 sometimes people who are into 07:45 "Okay, there's a secret rapture, another seven years of history." 07:48 I know they don't quite use the term "secret rapture" anymore, 07:51 but everybody knows what I mean when the rapture-- 07:56 the pre-trib rapture, 07:58 and then another seven years, and then Jesus comes finally 08:00 after antichrist reveals himself and so on, 08:02 and some of them have anchored it in the story of Noah 08:05 that Jesus tells in Matthew, chapter 24, 08:08 and they point out, "See, some are taken, one is taken, 08:12 the other one's left behind." 08:14 And so there's an entire popular series now, "Left Behind." 08:18 And they say, "You don't wanna be left behind." 08:20 That's the sinners, the lost, are left behind, and the-- 08:23 well, is that really what the Scriptures say? 08:26 If you read it in context, is that what that passage says? 08:28 Matthew 24, this is verse 38, the words of Jesus, okay: 08:34 "For as in those days before the flood 08:38 they were eating and drinking." 08:40 See, here's the whole theme of the nations: 08:42 Humanity is concerned with their own interests first. 08:45 There's nothing wrong with eating and drinking, 08:47 marrying and giving in marriage. 08:48 I've done all those things-- 08:50 although my drinking is non-alcoholic. 08:53 There's nothing particularly wrong with it, 08:54 but that's all absorbing. 08:56 That comes ahead of God. Our own interests come first. 08:59 "Eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, 09:00 until the day...Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware"-- 09:04 which is a tragic statement-- "unaware until the flood came." 09:08 How could you be unaware? Noah preached for 120 years. 09:11 How could we be unaware when Jesus shows up in the sky? 09:15 I've noticed in Revelation, chapter 6, 09:18 that when Jesus returns and the wicked are crying 09:20 for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them, they're saying, 09:25 "Oh no, it's the Lamb." 09:27 Oh. They know who it is. They know who it is. 09:31 It's not an entire shock. 09:32 They chose to ignore it and be absorbed by 09:34 the cares of this life. 09:35 So they're "unaware until the flood came... 09:37 swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man." 09:40 All right, in verse 39, Eric, who got taken away? 09:44 The wicked did. Who's left behind? 09:47 Noah. Noah. 09:49 That's the opposite of the way we've been telling the story 09:51 over the last 50 years. 09:53 Now we can understand the rest. 09:55 Verse 40: "Then two men will be in the field; 09:57 "one will be taken and one left. 10:00 "Two women will be grinding at the mill; 10:01 "one will be taken and one left. 10:03 "Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know 10:05 on what day your Lord is coming." 10:07 If you read the whole thing, it's obvious 10:10 you wanna be left behind, right? 10:13 When Jesus returns, the wicked are slain 10:15 by the brightness of His coming. 10:16 We can't stand in the presence of a holy God 10:18 if we're not right with God, 10:19 not covered by the blood of Christ. 10:22 Those that are left behind 10:23 are those that are right with Christ. 10:26 So because we're picking and choosing and cherry-picking 10:29 the Scriptures, we've come up with a theory 10:30 that has zero anchors anywhere in the Bible. 10:33 And fortunately, a lot of modern Christians 10:35 are now abandoning this whole "left behind" thing 10:38 because the deeper you get into Scripture, 10:40 the more silly it looks. 10:42 >>Eric: And one of the beautiful things about this 10:44 is, as you look at the story of Noah, 10:47 one group is taken, one group is left, 10:49 but neither group gets to go through 10:51 a seven-year tribulation. >>Shawn: No. 10:53 >>Eric: One group is saved. The other group is lost. 10:55 I mean, there's no second chance. It's--that's it. 10:58 >>Shawn: Yeah, and people are shocked when I show them that. 11:02 You know, people were confused 11:04 when Paul wrote his first letter. 11:05 "Oh, Jesus is gonna come any day." 11:07 And in his second letter to the Thessalonians, he says, 11:09 no, that day will not come unless the antichrist 11:12 be revealed first. And that confuses some people. 11:14 They say, "Well, no, no, Jesus is supposed to come. 11:16 The Christians leave. Then the antichrist appears." 11:19 Paul has it in the opposite order. 11:21 The system falls apart very, very quickly. 11:26 There is no second chance. 11:27 The Bible's picture of Jesus's return 11:29 is pretty simple: He returns. [laughs] 11:32 >>Eric: Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. 11:34 >>Shawn: It's not that more-- it's no more complicated 11:35 than that. >>Eric: No, but what you have 11:37 is a lot of teachers today, popular teachers, 11:39 who are teaching with authority, 11:41 and even though there may not be a biblical foundation, 11:44 when people speak with authority, 11:45 people will listen. Other people will listen. 11:47 And unfortunately, they're being led down 11:50 the proverbial primrose path to destruction. 11:53 >>Shawn: Absolutely, if you think that you've got 11:55 a bankable second chance-- 11:56 "Well, let's see how this plays out"-- 11:59 no, and that's horrible strategy anyway. 12:02 It's like even if that was true, why would you 12:04 "I'll see what happens"? 12:05 Why would you play with your relationship with God 12:09 that way? You're right. They do teach with authority, 12:12 and it illustrates a problem 12:14 that we as a people are not immune to. 12:17 Yeah, I trust preachers who are great students of the Word. 12:21 I have sat at the feet of people that were very godly, 12:24 knew their Scriptures. I learned a lot. 12:27 But at the end of the day, it is up to me 12:30 to become familiar with this book. 12:33 And so if you're just leaning on the word of popular teachers 12:37 and not doing your homework, be careful. 12:39 And that could be inside the Adventist church, too. 12:41 You know, we've got some great teachers, 12:43 but go home and do your homework. 12:45 Never take what I say for granted, 12:47 what you say for granted. Do your work. 12:49 >>Eric: Very, very true. We're gonna to come back 12:51 in a moment and take a look at Sodom and Gomorrah. 12:55 >>Shawn: Hot subject. [laughs] >>Eric: But before we do that, 12:58 there is a companion book to this quarter's lesson. 13:00 >>Shawn: There is. 13:01 I believe it's called "How to Study Prophecy." 13:03 It's not a blow-by-blow on technique. 13:05 There are good exegetical textbooks out there. 13:08 This is more looking at the themes in the Bible 13:10 that support what you find in Daniel and Revelation, 13:14 including some of the stories we're gonna look at today. 13:16 It'll really help you build your study for class. 13:19 >>Eric: Very good. If you'd like to pick that up-- 13:21 and I would encourage you to do so-- 13:22 you will find it at itiswritten.shop. 13:25 Again, that's itiswritten.shop. 13:28 We're gonna come back in just a moment, 13:29 and we are going to continue looking at how we can understand 13:32 these prophecies of the end times 13:35 in the context of things that have happened, 13:36 stories that have happened before. 13:39 We're gonna be right back. 13:40 [uplifting music] 13:44 >>John Bradshaw: An elderly prophet is cast 13:46 into a den of lions. 13:48 The king of the greatest empire on the planet 13:50 has a sleepless night, 13:52 and God works a remarkable miracle 13:54 still talked about more than 2,500 years later. 13:58 The story of Daniel and the lions' den 14:01 shines a bright light on events 14:03 that will take place in the final moments 14:05 of this earth's history. 14:07 Don't miss "Daniel and the Lions' Den," 14:09 a story of faith under fire, a story of the goodness of God, 14:14 a story that looks forward to events that will unfold 14:17 in earth's last days. 14:20 How was Daniel able to have faith when it mattered most, 14:23 and how can people today do the same? 14:26 A study of Daniel, chapter 6, in our ongoing series 14:30 on the book of Daniel. 14:31 Don't miss "Daniel and the Lions' Den." 14:34 Be encouraged, inspired, and grow your faith in God. 14:37 Brought to you by It Is Written TV. 14:44 [uplifting music] 14:49 >>Eric: Welcome back to "Sabbath School," 14:50 brought to you by It Is Written. 14:52 We're looking at this section, lesson number 10 14:55 of "Upon Whom the Ends Have Come," 14:57 looking at stories from the Old Testament 14:59 that lead us to understand New Testament themes 15:02 in Bible prophecy. 15:03 We looked at Noah, Shawn, in the last section. 15:06 Let's take a look at Sodom and Gomorrah. 15:08 This is--there's some pretty incredible parallels here, 15:11 not very pleasant ones sometimes 15:13 but instructional and informative, anyway. 15:17 >>Shawn: Yeah, this is one of those stories that's 15:18 really obvious that it's supposed to be 15:20 a type of last-day events. 15:22 Again, it literally happens. 15:24 It's a real story, but then God takes that story to illustrate 15:29 what's going to happen at the very end, 15:32 and I suppose, in one way, 15:34 that's possible because our human problem's 15:35 been the same for thousands of years. 15:38 We react the same way to God and His authority. 15:42 We--our sin--we're not very original, 15:44 and neither is the devil. 15:45 I often say he gets an A for effort 15:46 but an F for originality 15:47 because it's just the same play again and again and again. 15:50 But to know that play, you've gotta study 15:52 and gotta make sure you have enough information 15:54 to know what the play is. 15:56 So both Peter and Jude, 15:58 those two books influenced each other. 16:00 It's pretty clear that they were at least sharing a source or, 16:04 you know, sharing information or something 16:07 because there is some overlap, 16:09 distinct overlap, in 2 Peter and Jude. 16:12 We're going to go to the 2 Peter version of this story, 16:16 and it begins in verse 4, and there's probably more here 16:19 than you could cover in an hour of "Sabbath School" 16:22 because, you know, there's the obvious details 16:24 in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, 16:26 the ones we gravitate to-- and we'll touch on those-- 16:28 but there's a lot of detail here that 16:30 a lot of people don't slow down to read 16:32 because it's bigger than just the obvious details 16:35 about what was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah. 16:37 So, 2 Peter, chapter 2 and verse 4: 16:40 "For if God did not spare angels when they sinned..." 16:44 All right, there's enough there for an entire hour's discussion. 16:48 We often think, "Well, God's just too nice. 16:50 "Nobody will be lost. 16:52 Everybody's going to heaven in the end." 16:54 That's not what the Bible teaches. 16:56 God didn't even spare angels. 16:57 He said, "Really, you think you can do what you want 16:59 and God's going to spare you?" 17:01 Angels didn't make the cut when they rejected God's authority. 17:05 "If God did not spare angels when they sinned, 17:08 "but cast them into hell and committed them 17:10 to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment"-- 17:14 notice "judgment" is future; even angels are waiting for it-- 17:17 "if He did not spare the ancient world"-- 17:19 he shifts from angels to the patriarchs now, 17:22 the original people on Planet Earth. 17:25 And again, the warning is 17:27 angels weren't exempt from judgment. 17:29 The first humans weren't exempt from judgment. 17:32 Why do you think you're exempt from judgment? 17:35 It's not unlike the thinking we've got today that says, 17:39 all right--and this is part of that prophetic scheme 17:44 that we call dispensationalism we discussed a moment ago. 17:48 But God had moral standards in the Old Testament, 17:51 and He expected people to keep them. 17:53 And then, you know, after Christ comes, 17:55 He'll have moral standards and expect people to keep them. 17:57 But somehow for 2000 years now, 17:59 they're just-- it's a free-for-all. 18:02 Same thing here: We are not exempt. 18:04 God doesn't change. 18:05 His character, His morals don't change, 18:08 and our problem hasn't changed, all right. 18:11 "He did not spare the ancient world, 18:12 but preserved Noah"-- and here he comes again-- 18:15 "a herald of righteousness, with seven others"--the kids-- 18:18 "when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 18:21 if by"--here we come-- 18:23 "turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, 18:26 He condemned them to..." 18:28 >>Eric: Destruction. >>Shawn: Destruction. 18:30 What I like in one of the more recent translations-- 18:35 "destruction" is accurate-- 18:38 in the ESV it says "extinction." 18:41 "By the way, I thought God was gonna flip and fry people 18:44 in the fires of hell for all eternity." 18:46 No, the end result of Sodom-- 18:48 which is a comparison to what happens to the wicked 18:50 in the end--destruction, extinction. It's the end. 18:54 "Making them an example of what is going to happen 18:58 to the ungodly." 19:00 This is a big point: When God deals with 19:04 those who have rejected Him ultimately, 19:06 the wicked in the end, it's extinction. 19:09 You don't come back. I love that verse in Nahum 1, verse 9. 19:13 You know, "What do you [imagine] against the Lord? 19:15 "He will make a complete end; [affliction] will not rise... 19:18 a second time." 19:20 God--you know, imagine: God's a God of love, and He says, 19:23 "I'm gonna wipe every tear away. 19:25 "There will be no more sorrow, no more death, no more pain, 19:29 for the former things have passed away." 19:31 But if He takes the wicked and sticks them somewhere 19:33 in the universe and tortures them without end, 19:36 unimaginable pain for all of eternity, 19:40 is His promise to eliminate suffering true? 19:43 Yet we borrowed this from the Greek pagans. 19:46 In North Africa, when we wanted to impress the Greeks 19:49 with how intellectual we also were, 19:53 we began to do a little syncretism. 19:55 We began to blend pagan philosophy, 19:57 trying to impress people to the point where the church father 20:00 Tertullian had to say, 20:01 "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. 20:03 What hath Jerusalem to do with Athens?" 20:05 Or he might have said it the other way around. 20:06 Like, these are incompatible systems. 20:09 The pagans taught you just float on forever 20:12 to whatever your fate was. 20:14 God makes a final end: extinction, destruction. 20:17 Verse 7: "If He rescued righteous Lot, 20:22 greatly distressed"-- here we go-- 20:24 "by the sensual conduct of the wicked." 20:27 That's ESV. I can't remember what it says in-- 20:30 >>Eric: This is New King James; it says, 20:32 "Who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked." 20:35 >>Shawn: Yeah, filthy, sensual-- 20:38 those are both good senses of what it says in the Greek. 20:42 We know for a fact that-- 20:45 and people have become more uncomfortable with this story, 20:48 but we know for a fact that sexual misconduct 20:50 was a part of what was going on at Sodom and Gomorrah. 20:53 Now, we tend to zero in on that, conservative Christians do, 20:56 there was more going on, the problem was more widespread, 20:59 but this is absolutely a part of it, 21:02 and it makes me wonder sometimes. 21:03 You know, I think it was Ruth Graham that said, 21:05 famously, years ago, "If God doesn't come pretty soon, 21:07 He's gonna owe Sodom and Gomorrah an apology." 21:10 We're there again. 21:11 If you look at just the sheer rate of kids born 21:14 out of wedlock, if you look 21:16 at the sheer rate of STDs among young people, 21:19 sexual promiscuity is here again. 21:22 And, again, as we've looked at in previous lessons, 21:25 what we've done is we've put our own reason and passions 21:28 above God's revealed will 21:30 instead of anchoring it in God's revealed will. 21:32 We're entirely driven by passion. 21:34 And as a result, Western civilization-- 21:36 even if you're perfectly secular, 21:38 you've got to admit it's starting to crumble. 21:40 You can't just live on unbridled passion 21:42 and expect things to go well. 21:45 Verse 8: "(For as that righteous man 21:47 "lived among them day after day, 21:48 "he was tormenting his righteous soul 21:50 "over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); 21:53 then the Lord"--verse 9-- 21:55 "knows how to rescue the godly from trials, 21:58 "and to keep the unrighteous under punishment 22:00 until the day of judgment." 22:02 All right, what does that tell me? 22:03 Well, if there's hope for Lot, there's hope for me. 22:08 Now, Lot actually is saved. 22:11 It says he's tormented living in that environment, 22:14 but he also chose to live in that environment. 22:16 Lot's not entirely innocent in the way that he sort of moved in 22:20 and became culturally relevant to the city he was living in 22:23 and so on. He didn't escape unscathed, 22:27 but God saved him. 22:29 God knows how to rescue the godly from trials. 22:31 And I have to look at my life sometimes and say, "All right. 22:35 "There are some extremes Christians can go to. 22:37 "I can become an ascetic. 22:39 "I don't want to have any contact with sin. 22:41 "So, like the monks in the third century 22:43 "that moved out to the African desert, 22:45 I will just remove myself from the situation." 22:47 That's not what God asks us to be, either. 22:49 We're supposed to be light in the world. 22:50 We're supposed to be in the world but not of it. 22:52 We're supposed to reach out our hand to those 22:55 who are looking for Christ. 22:57 Asceticism only underline the problem. 22:59 A lot of those monks, when they got out to the desert, 23:00 realized their worst problem wasn't their neighbor. 23:02 It was their own sin. And now they're sitting alone, 23:04 contemplating how evil they are, and they were tormented. 23:07 How long did Simeon Stylites sit up on a pole and he realized, 23:11 "I'm actually wicked without my neighbors"? 23:13 That's asceticism. 23:15 But then you can become so absorbed in the culture 23:18 and try to fit in that you start to lose your way 23:23 as far as God's will for your life goes. 23:26 Somewhere between those extremes 23:27 is how a Christian is supposed to live: 23:29 in the world but not of it. 23:32 Sometimes we think "Touch not, taste not, handle not" 23:36 is appropriate in every circumstance. 23:38 And then again, I have to challenge that sometimes, 23:41 thinking, yeah, but-- here's an example: parenting. 23:45 This one's hard, and I don't know 23:47 that there's a right answer, and there's no two kids alike, 23:50 but I wanna raise godly kids. 23:52 Do I cut them off from the entire world 23:54 and let them go experience everything for the first time 23:56 at 21 on their own without me there? 23:59 Or do I wanna control what they're exposed to when 24:02 and make sure they're aware of the danger of the world 24:05 before I release them into it? And it's a gamble. 24:08 There is no guarantee with your kids, parents. 24:10 I don't want you to feel bad if you've got a kid 24:12 that has wandered away from the Lord. 24:14 You may have done your very best. 24:15 You know, I'm always soul-searching, too. 24:17 It's like, "Did I really do the right job by my kids 24:20 that I promised You, Father? I don't know." 24:24 But do you isolate, isolate, isolate? 24:27 On the one hand, I look at the Amish, 24:28 and I think I'm a little jealous. I'm a little jealous. 24:31 I could live without electricity. 24:33 But on the other hand, some of those kids, 24:35 they have the Rumspringa program. 24:37 Some of them--it's interesting to me that 90-some percent 24:40 come back, but some don't. 24:43 Do you--and that's a-- how much of the world 24:46 do I wanna understand? 24:47 And that's a wrestle that's up to every individual. 24:50 I don't want to be an ascetic; I wanna win souls to Christ. 24:53 So I need to understand the culture I'm speaking to 24:56 without immersing myself into it and adopting it. 24:58 I don't know how you feel, but it's, like, how do I live 25:01 among the people I'm trying to win 25:03 but not become the people I'm trying to win? 25:05 >>Eric: Yeah, there's--somebody once put it to me this way. 25:07 They said, "A ship, to be effective, 25:09 must be in the water." >>Shawn: Yeah, great. 25:12 >>Eric: "But if the water gets in the ship, 25:14 the ship goes down." >>Shawn: Oh, that's brilliant. 25:16 >>Eric: So we are ships in the sea of the world. 25:20 We have to be there. 25:21 Otherwise, there's no purpose, no point in being a ship. 25:24 But we gotta make sure that the world doesn't get in us. 25:26 So there is that balance that we have to have. 25:29 Shawn, let me ask you this question. 25:32 There are probably some people who are watching this today 25:36 who know people who have been caught up in some 25:40 of the more "exciting ways" of interpreting Bible prophecy, 25:43 and there are new flavors of this that pop up 25:47 with great regularity-- 25:49 some within the faith and some outside the faith. 25:51 And they just--they're a little bit more exciting, 25:53 and they're new. 25:54 What encouragement would you give, 25:56 what advice would you give to them 25:58 to try to help guide their friends, their family-- 26:02 maybe themselves--to get back to the straight and narrow 26:06 of legitimate understanding and interpreting Bible prophecy? 26:10 >>Shawn: Yeah, and you're right about the excitement, 26:12 and it seems that when you're not anchored 26:15 in the deep things of God, in the Scriptures, 26:18 that your heart is still hungry for something. 26:20 So you latch on to what is shiny and new. 26:22 It's crow syndrome: You'll grab something shiny. 26:25 "The Four Blood Moons" and John Hagee-- 26:27 that was a few years ago, 26:28 and I remember people coming to meetings-- 26:30 "What do you think of this book? What do you think of this book?" 26:32 Here's what I'm going to say: 26:33 You cannot possibly study every false idea. 26:36 There's a new one every other day. 26:38 What you can do is anchor yourself in the Word. 26:40 And so when I saw John Hagee's "Four Blood Moons," 26:44 I knew immediately. 26:46 I only had to read the introduction. 26:47 It's, like, this is false. This is not true. 26:50 How do you get there? 26:52 You read the whole thing, and you read it comprehensively, 26:55 and you find those threads throughout Scripture, 26:58 and suddenly what is not true becomes immediately obvious. 27:01 You just get--now, this is terrible talking about 27:04 "Don't immerse yourself in the culture," 27:05 but your spidey-senses go off, right? 27:07 You're just like, "Okay, this does not pass the sniff test." 27:10 And you might not know exactly why, 27:12 but if you're anchored in the Word, 27:14 that's what starts to happen. 27:16 >>Eric: Yeah, and there's not a shortcut 27:18 to getting to know this. 27:19 You just have to read it, and you have to study it, 27:22 and you have to ask the Lord to impress you 27:24 and the Holy Spirit to bless you with an understanding. 27:27 And that's the way it works. 27:28 We wish there was a shortcut. 27:29 We wish there was a microwave method. There's not. 27:32 It's crockpot all the way, and it does take some effort. 27:34 But by the grace of God, you will be blessed, 27:38 and you will be protected from a lot of those false theories 27:40 that are floating around out there. 27:42 This quarter, that's what we're doing: 27:43 We're looking at how to study Bible prophecy. 27:46 We still have three weeks left. 27:48 We're gonna look at some more stories 27:50 that will help us to understand 27:51 what's happening in the last days. 27:53 You don't want to miss any of this. 27:56 We'll see you again next week here on "Sabbath School," 27:58 brought to you by It Is Written. 28:00 [uplifting music] 28:24 [uplifting music] 28:26 [Captions provided by Aberdeen Captioning www.abercap.com] |
Revised 2025-05-27