Hello, friends, and welcome to Sabbath School Study Hour here at the Granite Bay Seventh-day Adventist Church. I'd like to welcome our online members and our friends joining us across the country and around the world for our study time together. And again, I'd like to welcome our regular members and visitors right here at the Granite Bay church. We have been studying through just a very important set of lessons entitled "preparation for the end times," looking at some prophecies in the books of Daniel and Revelation. Today, we have an important subject.
That's lesson number nine if you're following along in your lesson quarterly. It's entitled "end-time deceptions." Now you'll remember the words of Jesus were he said, "in the last days, the devil's deceptions will try and deceive if possible," who? "Even the very elect." So it's pretty important for us to study the Word of God so that we can distinguish between truth and error. And that's some of the things we're gonna be talking about today in our lesson for this morning. But before we get to our lesson, we'd like to let our friends know who are joining us on Facebook and around the country of a free offer that we have today. We have a dvd that is from the "here we stand" series and this is the free offer.
If you'd like to receive a dvd, the number to call is 866-788-3966, and you can ask for offer number 847. And if you'd like to get a digital download of that same sermon, all you'll need to do is text the code to the number 40544, and we'll be able to send you a link where you can actually download the same sermon entitled "the day of the Lord." It's part of the "here we stand" series. Well, before we get to our lesson, we'd like to begin by lifting our voices in song. I'd like to invite our song leaders to come forward. Are you looking forward to that day when we will be caught up in the clouds and reunited with our loved ones, and we get to see Jesus face to face and spend eternity with him in heaven? At this time, Pastor Ross will have our opening prayer.
Dear Father in Heaven, we thank you for the opportunity to gather together and lift our voices in song and open up Your Word and study these very important truths how we can prepare for the last days and how we can avoid the errors that are so prevalent. Lord, we just pray for your sprit to guide us as we open the Scriptures, be with Pastor Doug as he shares with us this morning, for we ask this in Jesus' Name, amen. Our lesson this morning is gonna be brought to us by our head pastor here at the Granite Bay church, Pastor Doug. Good morning. Morning.
Happy Sabbath. I want to welcome our friends who are watching on satellite right now or you may be streaming this live on Facebook or some other internet mechanism, we want to welcome you to our Sabbath School Study Hour. As Pastor Ross mentioned, we're getting into another lesson today, lesson number nine, talking about preparation for the final deception. Lesson is called "preparation for the end time." And in particular, today we're gonna be talking about end-time deceptions. And we have a memory verse.
And the memory verse is from Revelation 12:9. Now this is a good memory verse for everyone to remember. Revelation 12:9, Revelation is that great chapter that talks about the battle between the dragon and the bride of Christ. You ready? This is from the new king James version, Revelation 12:9. "So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the devil and satan, who deceives the whole world.
He was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." This is a very significant verse if for no other reason. If you've ever wondered if the devil, and the dragon, and satan were the same, and the serpent, we're talking about the same creature. This brings them all together here and tells us that this is the same creature. It's just different names and metaphors for the arch fiend, the supreme enemy, the devil. Now when we discuss, in particular, concerns about deception in the last days, it is a priority we need to think about.
When the disciples came to Jesus, in Matthew 24, and they say, "Lord, what will be the sign of your coming in the end of the world?" He answers them, first thing he says right out of the gate, he said to them, "take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am Christ,' and deceive many.'" Now that verse can be taken two different ways. First of all, Jesus can be saying, many will come, saying, I am Christ, they will be claiming personally that they're Christ. Another way that verse can be taken is many will come in his name, saying, he is Christ and deceive many. Either way you take it, it's true.
There are people who have claimed to be Christ, there's false Christ, and we know there's a delusional occults where the leader claims to be a Christ or some incarnation of Christ. And then there's a lot of people that say that Jesus is the Christ and they deceive many. And so either way that's true. And then the next thing he says, and this is still Matthew 24:24. "For false Christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the very elect.
" That's telling us that these deceptions are gonna be so convincing that if it were possible, even the very elect would be deceived. The people that are as close to the Lord as you can imagine, they're walking with the Lord, they're not safe. So how careful should we be to know what the devil's tactics are so that we are not taken by surprise. And that's the, one of the important things about the lesson here. Now the first section we're looking at, it talks about the grandest deception, the great deception.
If you look in Revelation 13:13, it says, "he performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived." Are signs and wonders important? Any of you ever prayed for signs and wonders? Did the Lord use signs and wonders to convince the early church that it was genuine? Jesus did signs... He says, "look, if you don't believe me, believe the miracles." The apostles went out during the time of Christ, doing signs and wonders. the Lord did many signs and wonders by Paul. And by Peter, they did miracles.
So it would substantiate the truth. But what's the risk of putting all of our credence in signs and wonders? Can the devil do them? Are there false Christs that do signs and wonders? And so, what's the final criteria, what the truth is, signs and wonders? No, that's not it at all. It's got to be the Bible 'cause the devil can counterfeit signs and wonders. And that's what it's telling us, he says, false Christs and prophets will arise showing great signs and wonders. And then it tells us the beast power.
There is one particular sign that he does, what did I just read? Brings fire down from heaven. What does that mean? Who brings fire down from heaven in the Bible? Let's talk about sometimes fire came down. Now if you call out an answer, I'll repeat it for those that are listening. All right, in the days of Elijah, fire came down, how many times? Three times. Once on Mount Carmel, two other times when the King tried to have him arrested, he prayed and fire came down and burnt up the soldiers who came to arrest him.
Am I right? What other times did fire come down? Sodom and gomorrah. I wasn't even thinking of that one, that's true. Now that wasn't really performed by a person, but yeah, God brought down fire, signs and wonders there, yeah. Who else? I heard gideon. Samson.
Samson, when Samson's parents prayed, fire came down to consume the sacrifice. When the temple of Moses was dedicated, did God bring fire down from heaven to put the first holy fire on the altar, when he...? When else did that happen? Cain and abel. There a fire came down on abel's sacrifice, but it did not accept cain's. What about The Sons of aaron? Did they get barbecued? For disobedience, fire came down from heaven. And how many of you remember, it's a very brief reference, but when Solomon dedicated the temple was the last time it came down in the temple, and it says, the fire, the Lord came down on the sacrifice and the glory of the Lord so filled the temple, the priests were not even able to minister 'cause there's some of the glory emanating from the presence of God.
Now you're all forgetting one other. Pentecost, fire came down. Of course, that's a good one, I wasn't thinking of that. I'm talking about the old testament. Oh, I hear the wheel spinning.
Amen. And satan went out from the presence of the Lord. And among the plagues that happened to job, fire came down and burned up his flocks and shepherds. So can the devil bring fire down from heaven? At least he did there. But most of the time in the Bible, fire coming down is a sign of God's power.
Elijah prays and the fire comes down. So when the Lord tells us in Revelation that among the things we need to be careful of, the devil's gonna, he's gonna do the greatest sign that God does is fire coming down from heaven. I've heard some pastors try to make a case that this is when nuclear war began with the atomic bomb that America is that beast that brought fire down from heaven on hiroshima and nagasaki. I don't think that's what it's talking about. That wasn't done for the purpose of proving that the power was divine.
Look at Revelation 2:13 and then we're gonna go to 2:24. Did Jesus warned the churches during the seven messages to the seven churches, they needed to be aware of satan and his deceptions. Look for instance, Revelation 2:13, "I know your works, and that you dwell, where satan's throne is. And you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days when antipas was my faithful martyr, who was killed among you, where satan dwells." And look at Revelation 2:24, "now I say to you, and to the rest that are in thyatira..." By the way that other church was pergAmos. "I say to the rest that are in thyatira, as many as do not have this doctrine, who have not known the depths of satan, as they say.
" And you read in Revelation 12, that the satan who has come down who deceiveth the whole world. And so satan is known as a great deceiver. Now what is deception? Is deception just a blatant lie? Or is deception the co-mingling of truth with a lie? So the lie is made to look like truth. Revelation 12:12, and this I just quoted to you actually, "therefore rejoice, o heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that his time is short." So what does the devil do with his power and his wrath? He tries to deceive God's people for the sake of destroying them. Now if you look in the book Great Controversy, and this is page 495, there's a quote there and you'll have this in your lesson.
"Leaving his place in the immediate presence of God, lucifer went forth to diffuse..." This is before the fall. So this is how the devil started. "He went forth to diffuse the Spirit of discontent among the angels. Working with mysterious secrecy, and for a time concealing his real purpose under an appearance of reverence for God, he endeavored to excite dissatisfaction concerning the laws that governed heavenly beings, intimating that they imposed an unnecessary restraint." And so the devil goes out among the angels and he deceives them. But with an air of piety, don't forget that cain made an offering.
There's an air of religiosity before he kills his brother. And those who kill you in the last days will think they're serving God, Jesus said. So is satan alone in his work of deception or does he have a team? Let's look at some verses on this. In a moment, someone's gonna read Matthew 12:24, is that you, John? Okay. I'm gonna do Jude 1:6, only one chapter in Jude 1:6.
"And the angels who did not keep their first estate, their proper domain, but they left their own abode, he has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for judgment of the great day." What angels is he talking about? It's the bad angels, the ones that are fallen. Look in 2 Peter. Now Jude and 2 Peter here are very similar. 2 Peter 2:4, "for if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment." You remember, when Jesus began preaching, he was in the synagogue and a demon possessed man began to speak or the demon speak through him, and he says, "we know who you are, Son of God, if you come to torment us before the time." The angels know that they have a judgment coming, that's what it says here in Peter. They know that they have been cast out of heaven and they're doing everything they can to wreck as much damage as they can on this world before.
And if you look in Revelation 12:9, let's read that again. "So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the devil and satan, who deceives the whole world." Why does Jesus call the devil the prince of this world? 'Cause is it safe to say most of the world is deceived by the devil? We're gonna talk about some of the particular last day deceptions in a minute. It says, "he deceives the whole world, he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." So 99.99999% of the time when you say the devil is tempting me, is that actually satan himself or is he working usually through one of his fallen angels? These used to be great beings. They were wonderful, they were noble, they were perfect, they had names, God knows everyone of them and their individual, angelic personalities, and now they've got their individual diabolical personalities, but they are very real intelligent spirits that work with the devil. And people talk about goblins, and ghosts, and demons, and they're all fallen angels, is what they are.
All right, please read for us Matthew 12:24. Matthew 12:24, "now when the pharisees heard it they said, 'this fellow does not cast out demons except by beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.'" So here it says, he is the ruler of demons. He's got all these fallen angels that work among him and with him. And if you look in Matthew 25, who does God specifically designed the lake of fire for? Is it for the lost? What is it for? Well, let's read it here. Matthew 25:41, "then he will say to those on his left hand, 'depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
'" Does that mean the fire is gonna burn forever and ever, or that the work of the fire is everlasting? It means that what the fire does lasts forever. It devours eternally those that are cast into it, no second chance. All right, now getting into some of the specific errors, we're talking about some of the last day deceptions. We don't have time in our lesson to talk about all the last day deceptions. I could just ask you to raise your hands, erick, name one of satan's last day deceptions.
And I'll bet you we can come up with 50. You want to try it for a minute? Yes. Yes, okay, you like interaction with the class, okay. Yeah, hold up your hand, I'll repeat it after you. What is the name a "last day deception"? There, vicki.
Day of worship. The day of worship. What day, the worship, yeah. That's actually coming up. Spiritualism, those are two that are mentioned in a lesson.
Well, you know, spring has sprung, and you'll see me up here, I don't have a cold but, boy, it's just been so windy the last few days with the pollen and stuff that, yeah, just it had been hitting me too. Okay, yeah, katrina. False Christs. False Christs. We just read that.
There's gonna be false Christs, false prophets, yes. The counterfeit baptisms is an example of some of the false teachings. I can think of lots of that, you know, lots more than this, guys, come on. Counterfeit, Holy Spirit counterfeit, trinity, I heard. What else did I hear? Counterfeit spiritualism, counterfeit state of the dead.
Counterfeit tongues. Counterfeit for every truth of God. Anyone else? I see in the back. Calling fire down from heaven. Calling fire down, or it was counterfeit signs and wonders.
And worshipping idols, and icons, and mary. And there's a lot of, you know, there's almost an endless list of things you could think of. But there's two in particular that are mentioned that are gonna be key in the last days. From the book Great Controversy, if you read in page 588, "through the two great errors of immortality of the soul and Sunday sacredness, satan will bring people under his deceptions. While the former lays the foundation for spiritualism, the latter creates a bond of sympathy with rome.
" Then you remember this. "The protestants of the United States will be foremost in stretching their hand across the gulf to clasp the hand of spiritualism. They will reach over the abyss and clasp the hand of the roman power. And under the influence of this threefold union, this country will follow in the steps of rome trampling on the rights of conscience." So it talks about two particular things that will be a glue bringing together this counterfeit alliance of apostate protestantism, apostate orthodoxy or catholicism, and spiritualism, counterfeit Holy Spirit. Is there a counterfeit version of the Holy Spirit among Christians today? Yeah, you know, sometimes I'll turn on hope channel or 3abn Friday night and right with our satellite, just north and south of those channels, you've got a number of other Christian channels.
Sometimes just for fun, I'll click and look at some of the others, many of them are charismatic channels, and you see people, you know, just going off into a trance and ostensibly under the influence of the Holy Spirit, they just begin to jabber and babble, and I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it doesn't look like anything I see in the Bible. And then they start to give out these ecstatic prophecies that are sort of disjointed oracles of delphi that don't make any sense. And benny hinn used to do that. He predicted the end of the world several times, speaking in tongues, I mean specific dates when it was gonna happen and nothing happened. So there's a counterfeit for the Holy Spirit that seems to be uniting some of these churches.
By the way, the roman catholics and many of the Greek orthodox had now accepted speaking in tongues and there's a whole charismatic branch in their churches now. All right, look at some of the ways that satan deceives here. If you look in 2 Corinthians 2:11, someone in a moment is gonna read 2 Thessalonians 2. You'll have that, okay. 2 Corinthians 2:11, "lest satan should take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices.
" So the devil's got different devices, and he says, we should not be ignorant. We should know what some of these devices are. If you look in 2 Corinthians 11:13, "for such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For satan himself, satan transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it's no thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.
" So there are a number of counterfeit that try to transform themselves into the true. All right, go ahead, read for us your verse here in 2 Thessalonians 2:9. Okay, 2 Thessalonians 2:9, "the coming of the lawless one is according to the working of satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders." So someone's gonna have power. It's real power, signs lying and wonders. Now I want you to notice something, and I know I talked about armageddon last week.
We're gonna jump ahead to... I'm gonna go, actually jump back and then we're gonna jump from Revelation. If you go to 1 Chronicles 10:13, king Saul was facing a mammoth battle. But before that battle, the Bible tells us that God wanted to speak to him. So he went and sought out a witch, and he went to the witch and she called up a medium that looked very real and sounded very real.
It turns out it was a lying spirit. Now didn't we just see power, signs, and lying wonders in Thessalonians? Look in 1 Chronicles 10:13, "so Saul died for his unfaithfulness that he had committed against the Lord, because he did not keep the word of the Lord, and because he consulted a medium for guidance." Some people think, "well, wasn't that really Samuel?" Now you can read in... If you go to Chronicles, if you read just 1 Samuel, it could leave you confused. But read the commentary there that we just read in Chronicles and it says, one of the reasons Saul died is he did not consult the Lord, where instead he consulted a witch who conjured up an evil spirit that spoke to him. That's what mediums do.
Now with that in mind before that great battle that Saul fought, he was deceived by evil spirits. What does Revelation say? Look in Revelation 16:14, "for they are the Spirits of demons, performing signs that go out to the Kings of the earth and the whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great day of God almighty." Now what specifically did the witch of endor do to deceive Saul? Because he did not understand the state of the dead, he thought he was talking to Samuel, and he was talking to a fallen angel, a devil. Isn't that right? What is gonna happen in the last days? These three unclean spirits like frogs go out of the mouth of the beast, the dragon, and the false prophet, and they gather together, the Kings, the governments, the powers of the earth to battle. And it says, "they are spirits of demons performing signs." They're gonna use spiritualism and there's gonna be, ostensibly, dead people appearing to these world leaders, saying, I am, you know, I am mary, I am Peter, I am James, John, who know, they'll say I'm Abraham lincoln. I don't know what they'll do.
But they'll be calling up him, and they'll say, I'm the ghost of ronald reagan. Listen to me, they'll be calling up all of these things and say, whoa! And under this counterfeit guidance because they don't understand the state of the dead, it's gonna play a major role in deceiving people. If you look in Revelation 20:2, it says that speaking of the millennium, the devil, "he laid hold on the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the devil and satan, and bound him for a thousand years." He's that old serpent, the one who deceives the world. And you look in Revelation 20:10, "the devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire." One of the things he's being destroyed for is, he's a liar, and he's The Father of it. He's a murderer, and he's a first of that too.
He's been a great deceiver. All right, see, it looks like we have some of our viewers that have sent in some questions, it looks like they came in on Facebook. All right, "how can we determine between true and false prophets?" Well, we read in Matthew, where it says, there's gonna to be false Christs and false prophets. Tell you what, I'm gonna put that out to you. Give me some of the criteria and raise your hand, I'll repeat.
How do you tell the difference between a true and a false prophet? I see one hand. Isaiah 8:20, they can follow the light. . "According to the law and the testimony, if they speak not according to tHis Word, there is no light in them." So it's gonna... Yeah, if what they say is not in harmony with the Bible.
Very good. Saw another hand I thought. John, you're gonna do same one, according to the Word of God. How do you know a true from a false prophet? There is about 11 things that we have in the Amazing Facts study guide to tell the difference. Yes.
Prophecies of truth. Yeah, if their prophecy fall on the ground. Now can you think of an old testament prophecy that made a prophecy and it didn't happen. Jonah, when they repented, of course, that was a conditional prophecy. When they repented, they were gonna be destroyed for their sin, and when they repented, he forgave them.
But if a prophet says something is gonna happen and it's not a conditional prophecy and it doesn't happen, Moses said, do not believe that prophet. Vicki? And like Isaiah and some of the other prophets prophesied wonderful things that would happen to Israel, but it was all contingent on if they turn their hearts to the Lord. Yeah, some prophets were contingent to Israel, were contingent on their repenting. Now what about... What is the emphasis of a true prophet? Is it to glorify self or God? Glorify God.
Will a true prophet ask for your credit card number before they give you their prophecy? Do they charge for their prophecy? Can you ever see Elijah standing before ahab and saying, thus save the Lord, now here is your receipt, now I'll share what the Lord said. All right, got another one. Their lives would bear the fruits of the Spirit, they will be holy in their lives. And so some people said they're prophets of God, but they just followed with all kinds of wicked scandal, you wonder if they're really prophets of God, okay. I see, yeah.
They want to build up the church. Yeah, their prophecies, very good point, are gonna be designed not to just bring attention to themselves but to build up the church. So, and the prophecy they give will be in harmony with other Scripture. Now I know, I talked about being scriptural, but they're gonna have the trademarks of a true prophet in the language. Okay, so there are some signs of true and a false prophet.
We got another question here. "How could it be possible for the elect to be deceived in the last days?" Well, it doesn't say they are deceived, Jesus said, if it were possible, the very elect would be deceived. It means that it's gonna be so powerful that they're nearly deceived. How powerful were the temptations that the devil brought to Jesus? When the devil appeared to Jesus, did he appear with, what, he have, you know, red leotards and goat feet, and a beard, and horns, and bat wings, and long fingernails, he plopped down on the ground and said, "I've got a proposition, if you turn these stones into bread." Would you have ever been fooled by that? Or did he look like an angel of light? It's like an angel came to Elijah when he was starving in the wilderness. And this angel said, I've been sent from God, just like an angel was sent to help Elijah, I know you're hungry, you've also fasted 40 days and 40 nights.
And just one little thing, if you're The Son of God, this is a little test, turn these stones into bread. And it seems so real. So the last day deceptions are coming and see elect are gonna border with the true. They're gonna look very similar. And that's what makes deception.
If you're gonna make a counterfeit $10 bill, what number will be on it? Six? No, so you're gonna make it as close to the real as you can, and that's what's gonna deceive people. Are there counterfeit churches and counterfeit denominations? Do they read the Bible? Do they sing some of the same songs? Do the people look like us? And there's just a lot of similar things, but in some of the teachings it's something that is deadly toxic. And so the last day deceptions are gonna be very similar. Okay, let's do a little more and I see more questions are coming in, but we'll do some of the lesson here. Immortality of the soul, so that is one of the major deceptions.
If you read in Ecclesiastes 9:5-6, in a moment someone's gonna have Psalms 115:17, you'll have, okay? Ecclesiastes 9:5-6, we all know this, so you should know this by heart. "The living know that they will die, but the dead know not anything." Right, I read that to a pastor one time, he says, "you're not supposed to take that seriously." I said, "what?" He said, "I know it looks like that's what it seemed," he said, "but Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes while he was depressed." Matter fact, I think that's in scofield's commentary. You've heard of a scofield Bible, that's why I don't like the scofield Bible. Now there are other reasons. He says, just ignore it, that Solomon was depressed, he's saying everything is vanity of vanity, and he just said, oh, we're all gonna die and we don't know anything and it's not inspired.
It's pretty sad. No, I think Solomon knew just what he was saying. Last part of the book, he says, "fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." But he knew that in death we know nothing. He goes on, he says, "their love, their hatred, their envy is now perished. Nevermore will they have a share in anything done under the sun.
" Meaning in this life, when the person dies, job says, they do not return back to their house, he says the same thing Solomon says. Ecclesiastes 9:10, just go to verse 10. "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going." The people in the grave have no wisdom, they have no knowledge. They don't know anything. They are asleep.
All right, please read for us psalm 115:17. Psalm 115:17. "The dead do not praise the Lord, nor any who go down into silence." Now, if when you die, your next conscious thought is the resurrection and it happens, you know, while we're still here on earth that you die and you're up in heaven praising the Lord. I would think the next thing you do if you're in heaven would be to praise the Lord. But here David said, the dead do not praise the Lord.
What does the Bible say about David? David was a good king, man after God's own heart. You read in acts 2, Peter says David is dead and buried and he's not ascended to heaven. Says his grave is with us to this day. It says, David slept with his fathers. I mean, how more clear can God be? Slept, dead, not in heaven, dead don't know anything.
But what about the verse Pastor Doug that says, I know most of you know the answer to this, but there is people watching. What about the verse that says, "absent from the body, present with the Lord." Doesn't that mean that once you die, you're then present with the Lord? Well, yes, as far as you're concerned if you die and you have a dreamless sleep, what's your next conscious thought? The resurrection. Now David died 3000 years ago. Does it seem like 3000 years to him? What's the next conscious thought David will have? When the Lord descends from heaven and the trumpet blows and the dead in Christ rise, it will seem like a moment, the twinkling of an eye for him, but it hasn't happened yet. And the reason it's important to know that they're not there yet.
As far as they're concerned, we're happy for them 'cause that's their next conscious thought. But they're not there yet because you could be deceived by someone pretending to be the dead if they go right to heaven. Oh, what about Elijah and what about Moses? Well, we know there are unusual circumstances. Elijah went to heaven in a fiery chariot. Moses was resurrected three days after he died.
You read that in the book of Jude 1:9. Let's look at a few more. Psalm 146:4, "his spirit departs, he returns to his earth. In that very day his thoughts perish." Breath of life goes away, they don't start thinking new enhanced thoughts, they stop thinking 'cause they are asleep. Daniel 12:2, "many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake," when the Lord comes, "some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
" When Jesus was talking about his friend Lazarus, this to me, I think is one of the most convincing. He said, this is John 11:11, "these things he said, and after that he said to them, 'our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I might wake him up.'" His disciples misunderstood. They said, Lord, if he sleep, he get well, that's good. However, Jesus spoke of his death, but they thought he was talking about taking rest and sleep. Jesus said to them plainly, Lazarus is dead, and I'm calling it sleep.
Now, how long was Lazarus dead? Almost four days, yeah, when he finally got to the tomb and Jesus resurrected him. And when Jesus resurrected Lazarus, what did Lazarus say about his death experience? Did he say, "thank you Lord for saving me from the chasm of the lake of fire." Or did he say, "Lord, why did you bring me back from the golden streets and the Tree of Life?" Did he make any comment on anything? Now if that happened today, if a person had been dead, medically certified dead, already decomposing for four days and they suddenly are reconstitute and they come back to life. Every news agency in the world would have reporters there and they would push a microphone in your face and say, "what did you see?" Wouldn't that be the question? What was death like? We've been wanting to know about death for thousands of years, you've got the answer now. What happens when you die? And Lazarus would have said, I don't remember. I don't know anything.
I knew I had a fever, I was fading in and out, next thing I knew, here I am, wrapped in grave clothes, right? He had no consciousness. Matter of fact, to me, this is I think is one of the strongest arguments. There are about a dozen resurrections in the Bible. Now we're not exactly sure because when Paul was stoned and he got back up again, some have argued, they stoned him to death, and God just resurrected him. Now eutychus fell out the window, it looked like eutychus died, and some think he was just knocked out, but I think the Bible's clear, he was dead.
So there is some question about a few of them. But there is about a dozen resurrections in the Bible. Do you realize that out of those 12 people that are raised, not a single one said they had any consciousness in death. When did you think that you should have at least one testimony? Someone will say what about the parable of the rich man and Lazarus? Doesn't say the rich man or the Lazarus never comes back from the dead and that is a parable. Did the people in heaven and hell talk to each other? No.
Can a drop of water cool a person burning in hell? No. And so does every dead person go to the bosom of Abraham? You know, a lot of acreage in his bosom if that's true. I mean, so it's obviously full of metaphors and you don't want to build your theology on that. And you go to 1 Corinthians 15, here's a couple more that I think are slam dunk verses on the state of the dead. This is an important last day deception.
How many of you have been to a funeral, where they say, "our dearly beloved sister or brother, they're now on the streets of gold, they're singing." And, you know, if these famous people die, and is that what the Bible says? When does the resurrection take place? 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says a lot about it in the 1 Corinthians. Go to verse 16, "for if indeed, the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable." Go down now to verse 22. "For as in adam all die," so Paul says here in verse 16 through 19, they have fallen asleep in Christ.
Go to verse 22, 1 Corinthians 15, "for in adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive." Are they alive now or they shall be? That's future. When? "Each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits," Christ has already risen, he is first, "afterward," talking about the others, "those who are Christ's," the saved, "at his coming." So when are they raised? At his coming. How could it be more clear than that? the Lord will descend from heaven with a shout, the voice of the archangel, the trump of God, then the dead in Christ will arise. They're not risen yet, you can't rise them if they're already risen, right? Go to 1 Corinthians 15:51, "behold, I tell you a mystery, we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible.
" That's when they're raised is when the Lord comes. Now we said that there's a couple of different major deceptions, one was spiritualism, not understanding the state of the dead. It's gonna be used by the devil in the last days and it's being used now. The other was a misunderstanding of the Sabbath and the holy day, Sunday sacredness. And so, why is that important? A number of reasons.
You look in your lesson here, it has to do first of all with worshipping God the way he says. Look in your lesson in Genesis, it says, the Sabbath and the theory of evolution. Has something changed in our culture in the last 50 years? Has there been a major shift of people going from believing in divine creation to believing that we've evolved from lower forms of life? If people were really keeping the Sabbath the way God said and the Sabbath says, "for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and sea." And look at all, and I know this is terribly, politically dangerous to say this, but look at all the confusion in our culture about the distinction between men and women. Doesn't the Bible say that Jesus said, in the beginning God made the male and female, they are different? But look at how far our society and a corrupt culture is going in trying to amalgamate men and women into one sort of nebulous thing, and they're trying to redefine it and you actually get to pick your own definition. Somebody sent me a little clip yesterday that in england, they're upset about mother's day because it's leaving out people that don't get to identify as mothers.
And so, it was the most absurd thing I've ever seen. But yeah, that people are angry at mother's day now 'cause it's too feministic as it should be for anybody. You don't have to be a mother, you may want to identify. Even if you are father, you should be able to celebrate mother's day. Yeah, you do through your wife, that's right.
But why are we having all these problems? It's because evolution that basically says, you're your own God, and you're evolving, and you're becoming like... It's like what the devil said to adam and eve, you will be God. And you sort of made yourself over millions of years. You can do whatever you want because you're not accountable to anyone because you just evolved by accident. That's the main reason for evolution is to get rid of the accountability factor that we don't have to answer to God.
So Revelation 16:13, I'm sorry, rather, Genesis 1:3, "God said, 'let there be light,' and there was light. And God saw the light, it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
" That word day, there is yom. It's talking about a distinct clear 24 hour period of time. Whenever we celebrate the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week, we are celebrating a 24 hour period of time. And when God tells us to remember the Sabbath day, "for in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth," he's telling us that he made those six days in 24 hour periods of time, that's why every Sabbath day, we're remembering what God did. That's why there are seven days in the week 'cause he made everything in six days.
He said, I'll make it one more day, 24 hour period, to remember the others. But more and more churches are trying to combine. They think, well, you know, the scientific world is laughing at Christians 'cause we don't believe in evolution, so let's say we sort of believe in evolution, get them off our back, we'll just say that God created through evolution. That doesn't work. The Bible says that God created it six literal days and there are skeptics in the church that say that God… the first 11 chapters up to the tower of babel, until you get to Abraham, they said it's all parables.
It's all symbolic, don't take it literally. And even as the catholic church officially says that Genesis should not be taken literally, and that God created that these stories are there to teach moral lessons. And at some point, you know, you've got this ape like creature, dragging his knuckles on the ground, he's dragging his wife by her hair. And suddenly, some spark illuminates his eyes and now he has a soul and he becomes man, he goes from ape to man. And that was the moment and he just kind of kept evolving upward.
And this is a concept I've actually heard. Catholic theologians say, yeah, there was a moment when God put a soul in man and made him in his own image. But up until then, he was an animal. I think it's jehovah's witnesses that say that the six days of creation were really thousands of years, and it was really 7,000 years, you can't go... That doesn't work, friends.
God made the vegetation on the third day, he did not make the sunlight for the vegetation until the fourth day. Plants can live 24 hours without the sun, they can't live 6000 years without the sun. These are not epics of thousands or millions or billions of years. Jesus said, don't forget this. Jesus said, "if you do not believe Moses, you do not believe me.
" Amen. And so, if you don't believe what Moses said in those first 11 chapters, don't say, well, I believe in... Yeah, I believe the Bible. I just believe that God used evolution to create, you don't believe the Bible 'cause the Bible's clear, he did it in 6, 24 hour days, every Sabbath is a memorial of that. Amen.
Look in Colossians 1:16. "For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through him and for him." Now just because we maybe have not observed God making light or things, doesn't mean that God doesn't do it. He did it by his divine power. "Oh, but, Pastor Doug, it takes billions of years for the light from the distant stars to reach our earth.
How could he have made those in a literal day? And it takes so long for the light to get to the earth." I always say that you just got to think of tree rings. When God made the first trees, did they have rings in them? Sure. When he made the first turtle, did he make it full grown? You know, some turtles increase the number of plates as they get older. A rattlesnake will have different Numbers of rattles based on how many times it shed its skin. The first rattlesnake that God made, I know you don't like to think about that.
First rattlesnake that God made, did he have a little button like a baby or did he have a full raft or rattles? And so when God made the stars, why can't God make the starlight already in route? Of course, he can. He can do anything. And so it's a question of do you believe. I mean just any of the evidence that you seem to see for time in the environment, God can build that time into the original creation. And so, I believe if it says, he made it in six days, he made it in six days.
And I'll tell you something else, this is very, very important. This is a Pastor Dougism. If you're struggling with how much of the Bible to believe, and you're wondering should I believe too much or too little, always believe too much. Amen. If you're gonna make a mistake and saying, I'm gonna start nitpicking and say, I'm not sure I believe this, and it seems like a contradiction there and you start saying, this part can't be trusted, you are on the road to ruin when you begin to take the Bible apart because pretty soon you won't believe any of it, you are much better off.
There are difficult passages, but you are much better off, believe it is all, the inspired Word of God and you're safe. As soon as you start to dissect it and to say, well, I can't believe that part, that didn't really mean what it says. Yeah, you're building on the sand then. All right, we got just a few moments left. I have another question.
"What can I do in my spiritual life, so I'm not the seed in the last days?" Good, good question. How do I know that I'm not deceived? Well, first of all, keep your eyes on Jesus. Thy word I have hid in my heart that I might not sin. Fortify your mind. I remember there's a quote, I think it's in Great Controversy, "only those who fortify their minds with the truth of God's Word will stand in the final conflict.
" How did Jesus fight the deceptions of the devil? It is written. It is written. It is written, but we use the same strategy. Amen. There's another question, or is that the last one there? Yes, "how do we distinguish between miracles from God, and those from satan?" Well that be some of the same things you do to distinguish between the true prophets and the false prophets.
If there is a miracle and it glorifies man or it contradicts the Bible, it's not from God. All right, counterfeit trinity, now this is very important. You notice in Revelation, it seems like the devil seeks to counterfeit every truth of God. Revelation 16, "these three unclean spirits like frogs out of the mouth of the dragon, the mouth of the beast, and the mouth of the false prophet. In Revelation, in the first chapter, it identifies the trinity.
Have you ever noticed that? And you find even the Holy Spirit, last words, spirit in the bride say come. It talks about the seven spirits before the throne, and from Jesus, and from God. They're in the first chapter and here you got a counterfeit trinity if you will. But what else does the devil counterfeit in Revelation? Well, does it tell us that Christ has crowns in Revelation? Does the beast have crowns? Does the Bible says, that Christ has a seal that identifies his people? You're still with me? Yeah. Yeah.
What about the beast? Does it have a seal? Does the Bible says, that Christ has power? It says in Revelation, it says, the beast unto him was given power. Does the Bible talk about worshipping Christ? All the angels fell down and they worship him? Yes. Does the Bible talk about worshipping the beast in Revelation? Yes. What about Christ's resurrection? Does it talk about the lamb that was slain? Does Jesus say, I was the one who is dead and now I'm alive forever more, so is the resurrection of Christ in Revelation. Is there a counterfeit resurrection? Beast receives a deadly wound, and the deadly wound is healed.
He comes back to life and all the world wonders. You know, one of the powerful things about Christ is the resurrection but the devil counterfeits that. Does Jesus have a bride in Revelation 12? Does frankenstein have a bride in Revelation 17? Just wondering if you are still listening. You get the bride of the beast in Revelation 17, right, Babylon. Is Christ, do you see in Revelation that God becomes a man in Christ? Yes.
And what about the beast does it say? It is the number of a man, there's some incarnation of that power, that's happening there. Does the Bible say Christ has true apostles? And did we read in 2 Corinthians 11, the devil has false apostles. Deceitful workers. And so, you can see Revelation, one of the reasons it is a masterpiece of deception is the devil is taking all the truths of God and I haven't listed them all, and he created a counterfeit for them. And some of you're gonna say, "Pastor Doug, I want those notes.
" And we usually post them at the Amazing Facts website, so you'll see them there. Yeah, the devil has got a counterfeit. So we need to know, we need to spend time studying the authentic, so that we're not deceived in the last days. Amen. I want to thank you again, friends, for studying His Word with us and a very interesting study.
We look forward to doing it again with you again next week. Let's face it, it's not always easy to understand everything you read in the Bible. With over 700,000 words contained in 66 books, the Bible can generate a lot of questions. To get biblical straightforward answers, call into Bible answers live, a live nationwide call-in radio program where you can talk to Pastor Doug Batchelor and ask him your most difficult Bible questions. For times and stations in your area or to listen to answers online, visit bal.
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