WYC 2011: Alive Again!

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GYC West

Media and Current Controversies: The Character of God

Steve Wohlberg

The Character of God - Part 1

The Character of God - Part 2

Character of God - Part 3: The Beast Within

Dear Father in Heaven, Father thank you for the chance, God, again to be here at this conference and to open the Bible and to share these truths.

Lord, you know probably better than anybody that I am not worthy in myself to teach your word, but Jesus is my righteousness.

Jesus is worthy and you've called me to Share these truths all around the world.

And we pray that you will help us, help me, help everybody here.

May the Holy Spirit guide us and instruct us and teach us.

All right, yesterday we talked about the issues of the character of God.

And the imbalances, some of the currents that are even within our own church that are looking at the character of God in an extreme way, in a way that I believe is unbalanced and actually a perversion of the truth that is described in the Bible.

Now yesterday we looked at Exodus 34 and talked about the description of God's character that it is a blend of mercy and justice and that really at the heart of who God is, is love.

The Bible says in 1 John 4 that God is love.

And I stated yesterday that my deepest conviction is that all of the manifestations of God's mercy are a manifestation of love.

The manifestations of God's justice are rooted in his love.

And when we deal with these issues of the character of God, his mercy, his justice, how these come together in the plan of salvation, there's no place in the Bible that these issues become more acute, more important for us to understand correctly than in the 3 angels' messages.

We read yesterday that in verse 1 it talks about how the 144, 000 are going to have the name of God written in their foreheads, which tells us that they are going to have God's character that is going to be accurately written and reflected in their lives.

Now the third angel's message in Revelation 14 is the most solemn message in the Bible.

Here you've got on the screen a picture of the 3 angels.

I think we all know this well, that the 3 angels really represent God's final message to the world.

Revelation chapter 14, verse 6 and 7 is number 1, verse 8 is number 2, and then verses 9 to 12 is number 3.

We know that these messages represent the last message to the world because in chapter 14 verses 14 to 16, we have a picture of the second coming.

And so the 3 angels give their messages right before the second coming.

I've also done a lot of study on this and this is just a separate thought, but in Matthew 24, verse 37, Jesus said, as it was in Noah's day, that's gonna be the same, it's gonna be the same when he comes.

And when Noah built the ark in his day, does anybody remember how many stories that ark had?

And Noah called people to come in to the 3 story ark so they could be protected when the flood came.

And Jesus said as it was in Noah's day, it's gonna be the same at the end.

And Revelation 14 has basically a 3 story message, kind of like the 3 story ark.

And God is calling people to come into this message and to understand it.

And this message really reflects the mercy and the justice of God rooted in His love.

Now in chapter 14, verse 9, we have the warning of the third angel, the last of the 3.

And verse 9 says, the third angel followed them saying with what kind of a voice?

A clear voice, loud doesn't mean that people are gonna be shouting.

It means that the message is gonna be clear and powerful and penetrating.

The third angel followed them saying with a loud voice, if any man worships the beast and his image and receives his mark." Now notice where does the mark go?

And then it describes what's going to happen to those people.

We already read in chapter 14 verse 1 that the 144, 000 have God's character in their foreheads, in their foreheads, His name.

In 14.9 it warns about not getting the character of God in your forehead.

It warns about having the mark of the beast in the forehead.

When you study the forehead in Revelation, it's used many times, and it's very clear that the forehead represents the mind, and that 1 of these days, everybody's gonna get something in their foreheads.

Here's a picture of somebody, this is trying to illustrate getting the mark in the forehead, and then there's the other person, the happy person, and that represents that person getting the name of God in their foreheads.

If you look at chapter 22, Revelation 22, verse 4, it talks about the saved of all ages, God's people of all ages, who are with Jesus in heaven and in the new earth.

And verse 4 says, they will see his face and his name, which again is his character, shall be in their foreheads.

So what this is telling us is that eventually everybody is going to have something in their foreheads.

God's people are going to get the name of God in their foreheads.

And Satan's people are going to get the mark of the beast in their foreheads.

So everybody is going to get something in their foreheads.

And it really impresses me that the battle that we're in is a battle that's going on right between your ears, in the back of your eyes, in your head.

I mean, where does the battle take place in you?

Everything that you do is rooted in what's going on inside your mind.

The Bible says, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

So we have to guard our minds, we have to protect our minds, and we need to understand the truth of God in our minds and have the character of God in our foreheads instead of the mark of the beast.

These are the issues that are described in Revelation.

Alright now let's go back to chapter 14 and let's take a closer look at the third angel.

The third angel in verse 9 followed them saying with a loud voice, if any man worship the beast and his image and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand, Then verse 10 says, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God.

Those that get the mark in the mind, get the wrath of God.

And verse 10 says that this wrath is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation.

And He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

And the smoke of their torment ascends up forever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name." You can read Genesis to Revelation And you will never find a more solemn passage than what we just read.

They're very powerful words, descriptive words.

And we need to try to make sense of these words.

The same shall drink the wine of the wrath of God.

I've done a lot of research in this, and as I talked about this yesterday, there are different views in our church about the wrath of God.

There is a movement within the Seventh-day Adventist church.

And many of the people that are involved in this movement are very, very sincere.

And they're just, they're as convinced as convinced can be that when the Bible talks about the wrath of God, what it really means is that God simply withdraws his hand and allows natural consequences to run their course.

That's the way they interpret the wrath of God.

And they base this on a number of verses, 1 of which is in Romans chapter 1.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with these issues, but in Romans 1 it talks about the wrath of God being revealed from heaven in verse 18, and then it talks about how because of the sinfulness of humanity God gave sinners up to certain things, to their wicked ways and it mentions I think 3 or 4 times in Romans 1 that God gives them up to this, he gives them over to this, he gave them over to this, he gave them up to their sexual sin, etc., etc.

And people look at Romans 1 and they look at verse 18 that talks about the wrath of God being revealed from heaven, and then they look at the other verses about God giving them up, and they come to the conclusion that that's what God's wrath means.

It doesn't mean that God really has any particular wrath at all.

It means that he just sadly turns his back and allows natural consequences to take their course.

Now, just for the record, I don't believe that is a correct interpretation of Romans 1.

I think they're, without knowing it, they're really twisting the Bible.

When it talks about God giving them up to sexual immorality, probably the best example of that is in Genesis 19, when it describes God giving up the Sodomites to sexual immorality.

I mean, he definitely did that, wouldn't you agree?

That when Sodom and Gomorrah, you know, were doing what they were doing, that God gave them over to sexual sin.

But that was not equivalent to his wrath.

His wrath was not allowing them to do what they did.

His wrath occurred when the fire came down from heaven and fell and destroyed those cities.

And so people aren't looking at Romans 1 carefully enough when they really, when they come to this conclusion.

And I'm going to go back to this verse in verse 10 and look at some of the details here and then we're going to go to the life of Christ And I think it'll become more clear what this wrath of God actually is.

Series

Media and Current Controversies: The Character of God

The Character of God - Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Disappointment, Depression, and Deliverance Part 2

45m

Unclean Spirits

Born Again - Part 5

1h 18m

Apologetics

The State of the Dead

58m

Special Interests

Cultivating Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms

1h 10m

Thieves of Love

1h 3m

Gardening 101

Pest and Weeds

41m

The Sanctuary

3. Buried- Dead or Alive

49m

Islam and Daniel 11

1h

Abraham: Father of the End-time Faithful

Father Abraham: Stranger and Pilgrim

42m

Receive the Power

The Purpose of Power

1h 10m

2nd Quarter Sabbath School 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

08 The Sabbath and the End

10m

Home Gardening

Plan It, Grow It, Eat It!

58m

Sound Doctrine