Welcome to Sacramento central Seventh-day Adventist Church. A very special welcome to you that join us every week as we study together from across the country and around the world - either live on the internet, through radio, television - welcome to those of you who join us every week right here to study God's Word. What a privilege it is to be able to pull out our hymnals - to pull out our Bibles all over the planet and study God's Word and get to know him better. He is coming soon and someday very soon we will be studying and learning together in heaven. I can hardly wait.
As you know, we've been going through the hymnal. We're up in the one hundreds - today is #106 - 'give to God our immortal praise' - hymn #106. And this is a request from fred in finland, claudia in Mexico and chris in nigeria - and we will sing all four verses. Let's pray. Our kind and Heavenly Father, what a privilege it is to come and worship before you.
We know that you are on your throne and we know that you are about to bring that kingdom here to this earth and that we will reign eternally with you and Lord, we are looking forward to that day when we can meet our brothers and sisters, all over the world, who have kept the faith and stayed faithful to you and there we will receive our crown of life. But until then, Lord, keep us faithful, keep us in Your Word, keep our hearts pure and clean through the power of Jesus who gave everything for us and we are so grateful. So be with Pastor Doug today, Lord, that brings us Your Words of life. Help us to apply them to our lives and to go from this place serving you to the end. I pray these things in your name, Jesus.
Amen. Our study today will be brought to us by Pastor Doug Batchelor. Good morning. Thank you very much jolyne, eunice, our singers - for the music and the hymns. Welcome, friends, to central study hour and, I know, sometimes it seems like I'm the guest now so when she asks, 'are there any visitors here?' I'm going.
..but glad to be able to study the Word of God with you and I want to welcome our extended class that are studying with us around the world. And, you know, as I travel this last year, there's been a lot of travel in romania, in germany, in europe and china - seeing all the people that say, 'oh, we study with central church each week.' And we forget, sometimes, that this is part of a great opportunity to study with our brothers and sisters around the world. And today we have a very important lesson I'll get to in just a moment. The offer today - you might wonder, 'why offer this book?' You'll understand as we proceed with the lesson. It's a new book: 'who are the sons of God?' The subtitle for the book is 'aliens, angels, or adopted' - it's offer #811 and you simply call 866-study-more - that's 866-788-3966 and as for the book 'who are The Sons of God?' That comes out in our study today and our study is dealing with 'Christ's church and the law'.
It's lesson #12 - wow, we're going to be in a new quarterly pretty soon. Lesson #12: 'Christ's church and the law' and we have a memory verse. The memory verse is from Revelation 14:12 - I'd appreciate if you want to say that with me - you ready? Revelation 14:12 in our quarterly - it comes from the new king James version, "here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." - 'The commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.' And there's actually three verses like that in Revelation. We're going to be quoting from two of them today. Now the core of the lesson today is dealing with - well, really two things.
One is it's dealing with the continuity of God's law through the different ages of the church. And we've already touched on this earlier in the quarterly - that the Ten Commandments did not suddenly appear in Exodus chapter 20 - we're all aware of that? Did God have the ten commandments before Moses? How do we know that? Did the Lord say that it was a sin for cain to kill his brother - before the law was written by God - 'thou shalt not murder'? Yeah, remember, God said to cain, 'sin lies at your door.' And was it a sin - did Joseph know it was a sin for him to commit adultery with potiphar's wife - before the seventh commandment was spoken from Mount Sinai? Joseph said, 'how can I commit this sin against God?' Adultery was a sin. And you can look at a number of examples. The patriarchs and the people before Moses - they had the law of Christ then. Of course, we know they had the law of Christ during the time of Moses and through these different stages.
And we're going to look in our study today, as you go from Sunday on through Friday, we've got the law of Christ from adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to Jesus, and from Jesus to the remnant. But, as much as anything, this lesson is teaching about the remnant - how there is a continuity of God's truth that he commits to people. And when the people sometimes - when the church of God sometimes grows into an institution and they become institutionalized, what sometimes happens is there's apostasy that creeps in. You see a pattern and then the Lord saves a remnant out of that group and he commits to them the oracles of truth so that the truth is - the law of God is not just the Ten Commandments. The law of God is the truth of God - the Word of God - so that it is preserved by this remnant and it is transferred to the new group that is usually a revival movement.
It grows, it becomes established, it spreads, and then it becomes an institution and it begins to fall again and the Lord has to sort of pluck the truth out of that group and hand it to another group. And so this study is really like a study of the remnant. How many of you - men or women - used to make your own bread or you still do? And sometimes use a little yeast. Now, today, you can buy - is it fleischmann's yeast? I used to bake, believe it or not. It's been a while.
And when you mix up some dough with the yeast and you let it sort of ferment - develop - you then, if you are wanting to save a piece of that dough - you get a good batch - you pinch a piece of that before you bake it and you save it, right? And you can use that yeast from that piece of dough and you can use it to mix it in with another batch. Even Jesus refers to this, right? How a little leaven can leaven the whole loaf. Now leaven, in the Bible, is used both in a positive and a negative way so I'm using it in the positive way now. So sometimes the Lord, he will take a remnant from that good body and then he transfers it. It's like the sacred seed.
And we're going to get to that in our study today. So we're studying Christ's church and his law and the word 'church' in Greek, it's from the word 'ecclesia' and it means 'a group that is called out'. Often his church is a group that is called out from among another group and the word 'church' that we pronounce 'church' doesn't come from ecclesia, it comes from the word that's only found a couple times in the new testament: kuriakon - kuriakon - and it actually means 'something pertaining to the Lord'. Now any of you remember the old hymnal - they used to have a song called 'come to the kirk in the wildwood'? The kirk - or if you're from england or scotland the word for church was kirk - and our english word in America - 'church' - is really a derivative of the word 'kirk' which comes from this Greek word 'kuriakon' and so just a little etymology of where the word comes from. That word is found - kuriakon - you find, for instance in Corinthians 11:20 - when it talks about something that is set aside for or pertaining to the Lord, it talks about the Lord's supper - the kuriakon supper - something specifically pertaining - so the church is a people - a called out group.
The synagogue is a sacred assembly. It's a word for 'church'. It's kind of interchangeable. It talks about the church of satan in Revelation and calls it 'the synagogue of satan'. And so these are some words that you find are interchangeable talking about the church.
The word 'remnant' - I think most of us know what a remnant means. It's where you get the word 'remainder' - it's - you'd hate to say 'leftover' but it's something that survives. It means 'part that is left over after use; a surviving trace or vestige; a remainder like in the remnant of cloth.' You ever bought a remnant from the bolt that is left? And so the Lord often calls out a remnant from this other religious body that is in apostasy and they become the depositories of his truth or his law. And so you'll see that there is a continuity of that that goes all the way from adam to our present day. And probably with that introduction I ought to - well, let me ask you a question: how many people does it take to make a church? What is the minimum requirement? I saw someone say one.
I saw someone say two. Well, let me read you a verse. Matthew 18, verse 19 - Jesus said, "again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in Heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them." Now that is not to discount the truth that you may be alone. You may feel like you're the only knee that has not bowed to baal and you might run off into a cave or in the wilderness under a broom tree like Elijah and just pray that you might die because you're the only one left and you're not forsaken.
Jesus said, 'I will never leave you or forsake you.' And many a missionary, like David livingstone and others, have found themselves alone and they - many times missionaries are the only representatives of God's church in some dark county or some dark country. And so, yeah, one person can be the vehicle through whom God brings the truth. Philip went off into the desert by himself to preach and he was the church of Jesus by himself. But, typically, you know, you think of two or three gathered - he is in their midst and but - yeah, the Lord - wherever God's presence is there is his church. Alright, so let's go back from adam to Noah and in Genesis 2:16 - let's go there first - Genesis 2 - we're starting at the beginning.
"And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.' Now the Lord gave a truth to adam and eve - the Lord gave them a test. Why did God need to give a test to man in the beginning? Probably, I believe, that this planet was not the only planet that had some kind of test of loyalty. Anywhere God has intelligent free moral creatures - in order for there to be love, there must be genuine freedom - freedom that God is willing to prove even by losing that love. And so, to have that freedom you have to choose. You know if I asked my wife to marry me and she said 'yes' and she said, 'because I have no other choice' - I'd wonder if it was love, right? So just the very nature of love, you almost need to be able to choose or then it becomes forced and forced love isn't love.
And so God gave a choice to adam and eve: 'will you love me? Will you believe me? And he said there - 'you're free to eat any tree' but in the middle of the garden you've got one that is especially dedicated to life and one that is forbidden. And if you trust me, and if you love me, you'll trust me. You won't eat that forbidden tree.' And the devil said, 'don't trust God, trust me.' Man had a choice. Proof of real love is that we can even choose death. We can even choose not to love.
And so the devil tempted the first men to doubt God's Word and that's when suffering came in. God said, 'don't eat from the forbidden tree or you will die.' So then after the curse entered God said, 'look, I love you. I don't want to lose you. I'm going to activate a plan of salvation - there'll be another chance. I'm giving the world a probationary opportunity to be saved, but there's going to be a battle in your world and you'll need to continue making the right choice to love and trust me.
' And so the Lord, very early in the Bible, he makes this prophecy in Genesis 3:15, "and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." It's interesting he's talking to the woman, but all of a sudden it turns into the masculine and says, 'he will bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.' Now the seed of the woman is who? Jesus. This man-child caught up to God's throne - the seed of the woman would bruise whose head? He would actually crush the head of the serpent. The serpent would bruise or injure the heel of the seed of the woman. And so, through history you see this battle between the seed of the woman, the remnant, the ones who embrace and hold the guardians of the law of God, and between the serpent and the seed of the serpent. The woman in Revelation 17, does she have daughters? That's the seed of the serpent, right? And the woman in Revelation 12, does she have a holy child? There's been this battle between these two groups through history.
One has the truth committed to them - or the law of God - and you see these different stages through history. Go to Revelation 12:17 and we'll read this verse again later, if time permits. Revelation 12:17, "and the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." It's amazing how long seeds can survive. The seed of truth that God gave in the very beginning to his people has somehow survived all this time. We don't have really a different truth about God than adam and eve had.
Oh, there's been different dimensions and expansion of Revelation, but the truth has not changed. TRuth does not go away. TRuth never dies. If something was true a hundred years ago, you know, truth stays truth. I know there's certain habits and patterns that may evolve and change and styles change, but truth doesn't die, it stays the same.
Just a few - a little amazing fact about seeds I thought I'd share with you while we're talking about the seed of the woman. Have some of you heard of the 'doomsday seed vault'? In one of the very northernmost parts of norway - only 620 miles from the north pole - blasted feet into virtual rock and permafrost in this norwegian mountain, they've got this 'svalbard global seed vault' - better known as 'the doomsday vault'. In this vault it's designed to keep millions of seed samples, gathered from around the world, in the event that there's some natural or unnatural disaster like a nuclear war, asteroids strike, vegetation plague, or war - sea levels rise - so that the vegetation and agriculture of the world can be preserved. And so someone's invested millions of dollars in - 9.4 million dollars - to build this seed vault up there. And they very carefully put the seeds in there.
It is powered, but it's designed in such a way that even if there's some kind of catastrophe and they lose power, because it's built in the permafrost, it keeps all the seeds at about 25 degrees. And they figure, at that temperature, many of the seeds can last 10,000 years. Now some of you - and right now they've got 4 million packages of seeds - it's capable of holding 4 million packages - or 2 billion total seeds - all different kinds of climates in all different parts of the world and they're adding new seeds all the time. So the seeds of truth have been transferred and preserved. You know, why does Paul say - Paul defends the jews in Romans as still having a unique role and he says, you know, 'God preserved them not because they were better than other people - God says, 'because you're a stubborn and a stiff-necked people.
' And if the Lord had decided to choose norwegians and make them the repositories of his truth, you would have found they had all sorts of problems. It didn't matter what people God chose, they would have demonstrated their human frailties and weakness and problems. But Paul said the reason that Israel was special - catch this - it says, 'unto them were committed the oracles of truth.' God, when he gave the ten commandments to those people - when they carried that ark, holding the law of God, in their midst, God said, 'I have given you my law. I have given you my word.' And that was transferred through the ages through his people. It was given to Noah and it was given to Moses.
It was given to adam. It was given to Abraham. And so, it continued to transfer from remnant to remnant. Well, after adam and eve - they had two sons and they didn't get along and there was an altercation - and 'altercation' is putting it mildly. Cain really said, 'I'm not going to worship God the way God says we should worship him' - with blood sacrifices - 'I'm going to worship the way I think we should worship.
I'm going to claim to worship the same God but I'm going to do it a little differently' do we still hear that battle today? People want to improve on how to worship God. Is that battle going to reappear in Revelation? Will there be a battle between those who worship God and receive the seal of God and those who worship the way the beast says we should worship? If you don't worship the beast you cannot buy or sell and so there's a battle over worship. Was there a battle over worship at the golden calf? So worship is a very important thing. Lucifer did not want to worship God. So cain separates - he takes one of his sisters who becomes his wife - I know that always sounds really weird to people but that's basically what adam and eve were - didn't they have pretty much the same father? And Abraham married his sister - half sister - and Isaac married his first cousin and Jacob married his first cousin and so it wasn't that strange back then.
It's just as the genetics of man became more frail with the defects, God said you shouldn't be marrying too close to the family tree and so the rules were made about the time of Moses. But cain took his wife and he separated and they multiplied and there was a whole new race of people that separated. He went and built a city and adam and eve had another son - his name was what? After abel died - seth - and seth and his wife who was, again, one of his sisters, they multiplied and they decided to be true to God and as long as they maintained a separation this remnant was faithful. They followed God according to the truth of his law and his word. But you know what happened? If you go to Genesis chapter 6 and you read in verse 1, "now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that The Sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.
" Now this is the question - this is the verse I get all the time. How many of you have heard before - matter of fact, some of you may even have a translation in your hands right now that these sons of God that intermarried with the daughters of men were either aliens from other planets or they were fallen angels - devils - that somehow got married to humans and had babies. And there's a couple reasons - one is because it says - it seems like there's two different kinds of groups - you've got children of men and it says the sons of God. Well, if they're not men, who are they? They must be non-men and then it says that their children were giants - they were mighty men and so they had some kind of supernatural offspring. How many of you have heard this? I think this can be easily explained and supported by the Bible that it was not demons, fallen angels, aliens from other planets that had intimate relations with humans.
Let me tell you what it was: the sons of men is the term 'enos' - it's the word that is being used to describe the descendents of cain. Cain - his family - I mean, you know, they'd not come very far from creation. The daughters of cain were beautiful. The daughters of adam and eve and seth were beautiful as well. It's just emphasizing that they were attracted by their beauty and not by their beliefs.
Now, should we marry based on looks or should we marry - it's not that looks don't matter, but we'd all be lying if we said that nobody ever considered that. But shouldn't the primary criteria be 'what is their faith?' Some people get married and they say, 'well, I just really like the looks of him or her' and they don't care what their faith is. Does the Bible talk about that being - 2 Corinthians 6:14, "do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols?" - Look at all the contrasts that Paul is making. He's being pretty clear.
Now, does that mean when Paul says these things, 'do not be unequally yoked' - does that mean as Christians we should have nothing to do with unbelievers? How are you going to win unbelievers if you don't interact with them in any way? Being yoked is different. When two oxen are yoked together they are bound together and they can't get away from each other - their heads are hooked together. It's a different kind of relationship. So, as a believer, if you get into a business covenant with an unbeliever in a partnership and you know that their values are very different from yours, you're going to end up having problems. And definitely, one of the most important ways that people get yoked together is in marriage.
And so Paul is being very clear that believers should not be yoked with unbelievers because, basically, he's saying what - if you're marrying a pagan he compares that to idol worship - what - how can that idol be in the temple of God? Isn't that blasphemy? And it just doesn't make sense. Your body is the temple of God and they're - they've got idolatry in their body - in their lives - and they're pagans. They don't worship God. And to say, 'oh, it doesn't matter.' Paul says it's light and darkness - it doesn't go together. When The Sons of seth - every now and then they'd have to go to the valley and they'd see the daughters of cain - they were called The Sons of God because they still worshiped the true God - they had eternal life.
Doesn't the Bible say in 1 John chapter 3, verse 1, "behold what manner of love The Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!" So The Sons and daughters of God were the descendents of seth that were still worshiping God - that had the law of God. But when they said, 'well, I know we shouldn't be getting married to the daughters of cain, but boy they're good looking.' And after being separated for generations - maybe hundreds of years - probably was hundreds of years - they reMained pure - the children of seth reMained pure in their worship of God. But when they began to intermarry after being separated from God for hundreds of years, cain and his daughters they had become very self-centered and vile and started worshiping nature and all kinds of things. It began to corrupt the worship of God's people and everybody was corrupted. That's why it goes on to say, immediately after it says they began to intermarry - go to verse 5 - Genesis 6, verse 5, "then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
" And this happened when? After The Sons of God intermarried with the daughters of cain - daughters of men. That's all it's saying. It's not aliens. Does Jesus tell us that the angels marry or does he say that they don't marry and procreate? Angels do not - they're not born. The Bible says, about the devil, in the day that you were created.
Angels are created by fiat from God. They do not multiply like humans and that's one reason the devil doesn't like people - because he can't procreate like we do. So Jesus is pretty clear about this. This doctrine - this teaching - I hear it all the time that somehow - it's really bizarre - aliens - can you imagine fallen angels setting up house with people? I mean, what does that look like in the family? That just - that's really a strange teaching. Or aliens? I mean, I've even read they said, 'yeah, they're from other worlds.
' Strange. It's The Sons of God. Matter of fact, you can read - well, let me finish my verse here. "Then the Lord saw" - this is, again, Genesis 6, verse 5 - then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart.
So the Lord said, 'I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.' But" - here's the remnant that will become the repository of the law and the truth - "but Noah found grace" - so God's going to pinch a piece of yeast off the bread - those that still had the truth - and he's going to take them and he said, 'I'm going to make you the repository and in that ark, all of God's truth - the plan of redemption - about the true God was there. What's the first thing Noah did when he got out of the ark? Worshiped God. Offered sacrifice, right? God ratified a covenant with him - rainbow in the heavens and so he said, 'I've given you the truth. You were the only one left that still really believed the truth - you and your family.' Oh, one more thing, just so I tie off this alien/fallen angel/sons of God thing, so why were the daughters of men intermarrying with The Sons of God? Why does it say that their children were giants and mighty men in the earth? What is - isn't that some kind of...? You know, it's a very simple law of genetics. It's called genetic vitality.
You see it in the world today. If you - how many of you know if you garden if you use the seeds of the squash this year, next year and they've been corrupted by a cross-pollination from the other zucchini and things in your garden, that you will not have as strong a squash next year? It gets weaker if you just keep using the same thing. That's why burpee's seeds - you all know what burpee's seeds are? They specifically produce genetically strong seeds so that you get those strong seeds every time. When people are separated for generations and they just intermarry - suppose they're on islands and you've got these large groups of people on the islands and they intermarry. They will have more physical defects than if they get fresh blood and they intermarry with others.
Do you know, if you cross a lion and a tiger - you know what you get? A liger. How many of you have heard of this? And you know, they're huge. They're big. It's not uncommon. You can cross a zebra and a donkey and you know what you get? A zonkey - absolutely - they have them.
And they're bigger. It's called genetic vitality. And so that's all that happened there when The Sons of God - the children of seth intermarried with the daughters of men. They'd been separated by hundreds of years of centuries. Their offspring had more genetic vitality.
So it doesn't mean they were aliens. Okay, anyway, back on with our lesson. You got all of that for free. That was not expected. So what happened? When they intermarried, that separation was lost and so as Christians we need to know where are the places we need to interact with other people so we can witness.
Does God want us to all go to a monastery and hide ourselves? How can you reach the world like that? But does he want us to do our witnessing in the bar? You know what I mean? So, obviously, you've got to know where do you draw the line so you maintain the right amount of a separation. I heard one pastor say, 'a Christian is something like a boat in the water. A boat belongs in the water but you don't want the water in the boat.' We need to be in the world without the world being in us. And there's a balance there. If the water gets in the boat then you've got a problem.
Corinthians 6, verse 17, "wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord," - and, by the way, Paul here is quoting Isaiah, I believe - "come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. And will be a father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord almighty." What was one of the main things that God told the children of Israel after he called them out of Egypt? He said, 'I'm bringing you into the promised land and you're going to be surrounded by other nations. Do not enter into marriages with them or they will draw your hearts away.' He didn't say don't do any business with them. They were allowed to do business. Matter of fact, he talked about loving the stranger and the other people and the alien.
So he had all kinds of laws to even protect the aliens among them but he said, 'do not let them marry you.' When the samaritans said, 'we want to help you build your temple.' When Nehemiah came back. They said, 'sorry, thank you very much but you will have no part of this because you worship a different God and you're going to bring your idea of worshiping our God in. And boy, the samaritans got so mad there became a war between the jews and the samaritans that lasted from Nehemiah and Ezra all the way through the time of Christ. And it started because they wanted to maintain that separation. Nehemiah and Ezra understood, 'we have been called out from Babylon.
We are a separate people. We are repositories of the truth. We're being given another chance. We need to maintain separation in the right places. If I was invited to preach in any number of other churches here in town, I would be very thankful for the opportunity and I would take it.
Would that be okay? Sure, I've done it. But if those same pastors said, 'can we now preach in your church?' I'd say, 'I'm very sorry. That goes against our policy.' There's a difference. If I really believe that we have the truth and I'm willing to go share the truth with anybody that will listen. But that doesn't mean I'm going to reciprocate and open up the pulpit to people that I know do not have the truth because that then opens up the flock.
You've got to be careful what the sheep eat, as a pastor, right? That opens up the flock to bad seed and that - those kind of compromises. That's what happened with Solomon. His wives said, 'well, if you really love us you should let us worship our Gods. I mean, that's not fair. We need more justice.
' Solomon got old and he listened to all that rationalization and he said, 'okay, well you can bring some of your idols into the temple.' And God said it was a sin. The whole kingdom fell because of that. We need to know - we need to be educated about where do you draw the lines of separation in these areas? Alright, let's go on here to - 'from Abraham to Moses.' Someone look up for me Exodus , verses 5 and 6. You got that mike? Okay, we'll get to you in just a minute. I'm going to read Genesis :1-3, "now the Lord had said to abram: 'get out of your country, from your family and from your Father's house, to a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'" Why was it that God was going to bless all the families of the earth in Abraham? In what way were all the families of the earth blessed through Abraham coming out and being separate? He came out from the area of babel. Other worship had come in to mesopotamia. God called him out and even Joshua, at the end of his life, he said, 'the Lord brought your fathers from across the river where they were worshiping other Gods. And Abraham was called out why? Because he was still worshiping the true God.
Everywhere he went Abraham built an altar to the true God. It says Abraham kept the commandments of God and God's laws. Where is that? Genesis 25? It says, 'he kept my laws and my commandments.' So the law of God was with Abraham even before the Ten Commandments were given. Do we believe in that? So not only was the seed of Christ in the genes of Abraham that would be passed on through Isaac and Jacob and so forth, but the truth was given to Abraham and he was passing that on with every generation too, right? Matter of fact, what was more important? What was the most important thing that Abraham passed on from one revival movement and from one remnant to another? Was it the dna of Jesus or was it the Word of God. I'll say that it was even the Word of God because when you get to the new testament - I'm jumping ahead now but I may not think of it later and I'm thinking of it now.
When you get to the new testament, Paul makes a very important point and he says, 'you know, something interesting has happened now. The promise of Abraham has come' - which was Jesus - and now time goes on and God still has a people but it's not the dna - it's not the Jewish genetics that makes you a jew now. It's do you have the truth about Christ? Do you have the law of God in your heart? Do you have that new covenant? Because if you are Christ's then you are Abraham's seed and you might be a jew. You might not be. So jews can still be a part of that.
But what really makes you a genuine jew is that you have the genuine seed of Abraham, which is Christ in His Word and his law, right? And so this law was passed on from one epic of the church to another - from one phase of the church to another and that's what was so important about it. Alright, back to - you're going to read now for us Exodus 19, verses 5 and 6. Exodus 19, verses 5 and 6, "now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to me above all people; for all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.'" Alright, thank you. So among the children of Abraham were all of them a remnant? How many children did Abraham have? I lost count.
He had ishamael by hagar. He had only Isaac by Sarah, then he married keturah - I forget - does anyone remember? I think he had at least five - six boys with keturah. So that's a total of what, eight? He had eight children. But the promised seed didn't come through all those other seven, it came through Isaac and then Isaac had a couple of boys - twins - what were their names? Jacob and esau. So did the promised seed come through both or did God say, 'Jacob I have loved and esau I have hated.
' Because of esau - he wanted the birthright - he wanted the beans instead of the birthright. He wanted a physical earthly satisfaction right now. He was carnal. Jacob was more spiritual. And so the promised seed went down through Jacob and the true worship.
You notice - notice how being unequally yoked was so important to God? Did Isaac - I'm sorry - did esau only marry girls that believed the true God or did he marry local pagan girls? He married local pagan girls. Isaac and Rebekah said to Jacob, 'don't do that and break our hearts, even if it means you've got to go all the way back to mesopotamia and find a girl who worships the true God from our family, do that.' And he did. He went all the way back and he got rachel and leah and bilhah and zilpah. And when it came time for Isaac to marry, what did Abraham say? 'Don't marry the local pagan girls. Go all the way back and get a girl who worships the true God.
' So having the line of truth going through his people - having parents that believed the truth was very important to God. That should tell us how important family worship is to the Lord and that we're united in our beliefs in our families. I know it's tough when we're not and you might need to carry that burden alone in your family, but be faithful and ask God to help you compensate. Alright, so you can - can you see the transition of the truth going now on from Abraham through Isaac, through Jacob, on through which tribe of - which of Jacob's sons? Later through judah but then Israel comes out and God called Israel out and they became a church. The jews really became a church, as you would think - a nation - when they came out during the Exodus and they had the passover service.
That's when you really sense that they're becoming a unique people. You can read in Isaiah 10, verses 20 to 22, "and it shall come to pass in that day that the remnant of Israel, and such as have escaped of the house of Jacob, will never again depend on him who defeated them, but will depend on the Lord, the holy one of Israel, in truth. The remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. For though your people, o Israel, be as the sand of the sea, a remnant of them will return; the destruction decreed shall overflow with righteousness." How many times - the jews are an amazing people - how many times were the jews called back to the promised land? Let's count. They were carried away when Jacob went down to Egypt so they had to leave at that point.
So they came back during the Exodus. And then they were carried off to Babylon and then they came back again. And then, I think you can make a case that they were scattered by the Romans and they came back again. And I heard one evangelist say that, you know, if no other reason - one of the best reasons for the world to believe the Bible is a supernatural book is just the jews. How in the world have the jews been able to maintain - after being scattered around the world - a unique identity 3,000 years.
Do you realize how remarkable that is? And then get their land back again. But the remnant that Isaiah is talking about is not just literal Israel, it's talking about spiritual Israel, more specifically. Alright, so then you go from Moses to Jesus. Now we see the remnant all through the time - it not only came from judah - the promised seed, you know, from the twelve tribes of Jacob - it wasn't esau, it was Jacob and it wasn't the twelve sons, it was judah and it wasn't all The Sons of judah, it was what house of judah? The house of David, right? Among the different sons of judah and all the children of judah - it wasn't all of them - it then ended up going specifically through the line of David. Alright, so go with me to - someone look up for me Revelation 12:17.
We read this, but we'll get to it again. And I'm going to read Deuteronomy 7, verses 6 through 8. So when the Lord brings Moses and the children of Israel out of Egypt, God says, "for you are a holy people to the Lord your God;" - they became his church - "the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth." Now, have you ever read that statement in 'Acts of the Apostles'? And I apologize, I don't remember the page, but I can just about quote it and it says that 'enfeebled and defective though they might be, God's church is the supreme - is the object upon earth on which he bestows his supreme regard.' It's the apple of his eye. It's the theater of his grace. God's church is the group that he especially loves and this is what God is saying here.
He says, 'I am calling - what nation is there like you that has such righteous and good laws that you have?' And so there was this truth that God committed to his people. Now, can I pause right there and just insert - does God have a remnant today? You know one reason I became a Seventh-day Adventist is I bounced from one denomination to another. After accepting Jesus and reading the Bible I knew Christianity and the Bible were true and I went on just a kind of a frantic study with Christians from all different kinds of churches. I was church hopping - even after I found the adventists I didn't join right away. I continued church hopping and I kept - because, quite frankly, some of the churches I liked their worship services more.
It was a lot more entertaining. Some of them seemed more loving. Some of them had better music. But I kept coming back to the adventists because I thought 'wow, there is no church out there that has a comprehension of the law and the truth like the adventists. I, frankly, didn't want to be a Seventh-day Adventist because, like I said, I'd go to some of my charismatic church friends - boy, their churches were a lot more kinesthetic.
And then, you know, I'd worship with some of my presbyterian friends and they just loved us and they were just so sweet. And, you know, some of the adventist churches I met were that way, but not all of them. And I thought, 'you know, I'm going to become peculiar if I become an adventist, but boy, when I read the Bible I don't know where else to go. It's the Bible.' And I said - finally I had to deal with it and I said, 'you know, they're the remnant that God has called in these last days.' And I believe the seventh-day adventist church is as important to God in the world today as Israel was in the days of Moses. The way that he supernaturally raised up a prophet, Moses, and communicated truth through him, I believe he did with the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the evidence of the way it's grown and spread around the world and they're - what people are that have such righteous laws - that have such a cohesive understanding of the Bible as the Seventh-day Adventist church? And so I said, 'this is the truth.
' Now, having said that, fasten your seat belt. What has the pattern been as we've been studying through history? It seems like as these movements of revival - God calls out Abraham and then his people begin to apostatize and then he calls out Isaac and then they're - and then he calls out Jacob and - because esau apostatizes and you see that as there's a lapse he calls out a remnant and as they become institutionalized he calls out a remnant. Sometimes they have to live in the wilderness or in an ark or in a cave, right? When I said 'ark' I meant Noah's ark, not the ark of the covenant. Is there a possibility that our church may also go through that evolution where we become an institution and we start to compromise with the world and there'll be a shaking and God is going to call a remnant who are faithful to this message? The question is: who gets called out? In the time of cain, cain separated himself from the truth - isn't that what we said? Cain went out. When lot and abram got where they couldn't stay together anymore, lot fixed his eyes toward sodom and lot left.
I think our church is facing some kind of impending separation. I mean, we all know that as time goes by, pretty soon you get more and more new theology that it just gets to be this total incompatibility of teaching and you wonder, 'what's going to happen to the church?' And I believe the church is going to go through. I mean, we've seen it all through history. You see it all the way from adam all the way up to our present day. Do you think God is going to have a people that he comes for that are faithful to the truth, that cling to His Word and his law? Yes he will.
But it doesn't mean there won't be another convulsion before Jesus comes back again. Do we all know that? I just want to be faithful to cling to the truth and worship God the way he says we should worship him as that time approaches. Alright, I've got a minute left. So, by the way, acts 7:38, it says, "this is he that was with the church in the wilderness." So did God have a church in the wilderness? We always think church is a new testament word. But in the new testament they thought about Moses as being a church.
It was the called out group. They had been called out. By the way, if you look in Corinthians chapter 10, Paul says there - 1 Corinthians 10 - you read verses 1 through 11 - everything that happened to ancient Israel is a sign for those of us - they're examples - what happened to the church then during the Exodus and all their experiences in the wilderness and coming into the promised land, is a type for what we will experience as we come out of Egypt and we get ready to enter the promised land in the last days. They were a church then. We are a church now and now we've got Jesus and the remnant.
Did the Lord have to call a faithful group out of the dark ages? Yeah. You've got the waldenses and the albigenses, and the hussites and these people that, when the church kind of became institutionalized - they forsook the truth - they combined what the world was doing and paganism with what the church was doing. But there were those who said, 'we need to stick with the word and be faithful.' And there was this separation. It turned into the protestant reformation and out of that protestant reformation a number of wonderful movements came and I believe the seventh-day adventist church is the continuation of that reformation getting back to the word, amen? So time is up. I'll have my notes.
I'll post my notes on the internet because I had a few more on the remnant and I've got my Amazing Facts in here I'll be happy to share with any teachers or students out there that are interested. And don't forget, we have our free book that explains that conundrum about who are The Sons of God. Lots - a lot more evidence in the book - 'who are The Sons of God?' Just ask for it and call -788-3966 and we'll send that to you. Thank you very much and we'll continue to study God's Word together this week and meet in our study next week. God bless.
In 3 - 2 - 1 - action! This documentary covers a span from the first coming of Jesus and what was going on in the church up until just before the second coming of Jesus. It shows the great apostasy that crept into the church and, then ultimately, the great revival through the great reformation. This is a life and death battle. It's not just something that is happening in hallucinations of a prophet. Those things are played out in real history.
The scarlet harlot woman in Revelation 17, who represents the church that has fallen into apostasy - and we thought, in the context of these two polar opposite visions in Revelation, we could tell the story of what the devil wanted to do to the church - this counterfeit church - and this persecuting power - and the real purity that God wanted for his people - the pure truth - the pure word - and just see the battle - the conflict between these two and the dragon appears in both stories. You've got the same dragon - that seven-headed dragon is persecuting this one woman and yet, the other woman is riding upon it. They're working in cooperation. They're a team. The context of these two visions creates a very clean way to illustrate the battle between truth and error.
True church - false church. Good church - bad church. Pure church - defiled church. And that's the Great Controversy going on in the religious world today. We don't want her to go to the point where it looks like, 'oh man, she's kind of scary.
' No, the face is going to be like flawless beauty - just intense eyes. I've got crazy lashes. I've got like three different options for lashes. Okay. Umm, like a really vibrant lip, you know, so just really, really intense in the face and flawless, but we could also do decorative stuff too, like we were talking about like on the hand.
And we're going to add a piece that's a fall and it's going to have braids and it's going to add more hair and more wave. And then we're going to add a bunch of jewels and a crown and gems and jewelry. She is going to be highly decorated. Yeah, decorations. The woman on the dragon also has writing on her forehead - 'mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.
' We had nicole, our make-up artist, write all the actual Scripture verse there, on her forehead, in Hebrew. Alright, take her around. Very nice. Dip the head a little bit. As an evangelist, we have preached - for years I've talked about Revelation 17 - this infamous woman - and I've never really seen an artist's concept that rightly portrays what I thought in my mind John saw in vision.
And it just - something about the vivid bright colors - everybody that walked in and saw that being shot, their mouths fell open. I expect that there's going to be a mixture of responses and that's always the case when you share truth with people. But the truth is the truth and so when people see what has happened to the church and the great compromise and the persecution that God's people have gone through even at the hands of professed Christians, I think some people are going to say, 'wow! How come I never saw this before? I'm going to take a stand for the truth. I believe this is going to affect my life. This is going to liberate me.
This is going to make me a better person. This is a better picture of God. Anything we do to distort the truth or to cover the truth, it hides or veils Jesus in some way and so this film - we're wanting to tear the veil away and really show who Jesus is through a pure view of the truth and everybody is affected by that. Have you ever wished you could do more to lead someone to Jesus? Have you ever felt the need for revival in your own life? Well, afcoe is the place for you. The Amazing Facts center of evangelism has incredible training opportunities for anyone who wants to become a dynamic and effective soul winner.
This coming fall, Amazing Facts will be conducting an industrial strength afcoe evangelism training program in albuquerque, New Mexico. From August 14 to November 23 we're going to cover a broad range of topics including personal evangelism, public evangelism, preaching, Bible doctrine, prophetic studies and much more. Students will also receive hands-on experience in giving Bible studies, health ministry training and doing community outreach and conducting a city-wide net evangelistic seminar. Go to our website 'afcoe.com' or call us at (916) 209-7249.