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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Alistair Huong

Time No Longer Part 2

It's good to see all of you here because since you're here chances are you're awake and not sleeping on Sabbath afternoon.

But I know that that is always a risk when you have a meeting Saturday afternoon after a big lunch and after a long week Your mind is in rest mode But this afternoon I'm gonna ask you to do something for me and that is you're gonna have to think.

Now the message this afternoon is, I forgot to hit the shutter.

Time no longer, let me just hit the button here.

Okay, time no longer, but specifically, we're going to take a look into the spirit of prophecy.

I make no apologies for using the spirit of prophecy.

It is a core belief of mine, and I am making the assumption that you believe that it is a source of inspired authority as well.

If that is not the case, That's not the subject of our meeting this afternoon, but perhaps we can arrange for some other study some other time to go over that.

But the message really, the purpose I should say, is 2 parts.

This morning we already talked about to a certain degree, the issue of reinterpreting the Bible, particularly time prophecies, into the future.

And this is, believe it or not, a more and more common occurrence within our denomination.

There are individuals who are even very influential individuals who promote certain views of prophecy that is not conventional and not traditional.

And that's not to say that everything that is not conventional and not traditional.

And that's not to say that everything that is not conventional and not traditional is automatically wrong or bad.

But it is to our best interest to study this out for ourselves.

It is not good enough just to take someone's word because he or she is a man or woman of authority in a certain church, in a denomination, in a conference, in a certain ministry, and it is not enough for us simply to trust someone else's study without us investigating ourselves.

And so with all that said, I am here not to coerce you, and not to make you believe what I believe.

I'm here simply to share what I have investigated in my own study and hopefully it will guide you and inspire you to go in your own study.

I'm not here to tell you you have to believe just like me in order for you to be an upstanding Seventh-day Adventist Christian.

But I am telling you that you have to study for yourself if you are to be a good upstanding Seventh-day Adventist.

If that's clear, let me hear you say Amen.

And so, the issue here, time prophecies, reinterpreting them into the future, particularly with the books of Daniel and Revelation.

In order for us to really go through this study, there are a few assumptions that I have to make.

1 of them automatically is, I assume that you believe in the spirit of prophecy as an authoritative source of inspiration.

And also, I assume that a lot of doctrines, a lot of prophecies, particularly in Daniel and Revelation is review for you.

If we have to start from square 1 to explain all of them, we would be here for the next few days.

But the good news is that most of the prophecies I'm referencing this afternoon, you can find lesson studies from our Avan Hope Revelation class online.

And some of it has to be from, it's from Daniel, and we did have a class, so maybe you were in that class, but we weren't able to record that session, And so perhaps that is something you can talk to us later, leaders of AdventHope or myself.

We can lead you to other sources where you can continue your study.

So if this is material that is going over your head, you might think, oh, I've never heard of that before.

It is still good to listen, because a lot of times we assimilate things.

And even if we don't fully understand, sometime in the future, when we get the right puzzle pieces in place, it all comes back to us.

And also part of the purpose here is to give you some principles for you to judge or for you to guide your thinking and reasoning if you are perhaps faced with certain of these reinterpretations of prophecy, if I may put it that way.

And if you have heard them before, perhaps you can apply them right away.

So without further ado, let us bow our heads for prayer and then we'll get into the meat of the message.

Father in heaven, we are thankful that you have brought us safely to this place this afternoon.

As we spend some time investigating the spirit of prophecy and what you have said through the pen of inspiration, we ask that you will give us clarity on the subject of reinterpretations of prophecies, and we know that it is important because we are living in the end times and we cannot afford to be distracted from the work that is most important and So help us to find the balance and to know what your will is for us in this matter.

Now the Bible is clear about 1 thing, very clear, and I think everyone would agree.

No man knows the day nor the hour of the Father's appearing or of the Lord's appearing, Not even the angels in heaven, but only my Father which is in heaven.

And so, it is highly unlikely that you will find any individual trying to set a date for the second coming, although it has happened in the past.

It's not likely, and if it is true that someone is making those claims, it is very easy to disprove those claims simply using the Bible.

He uses the illustration of a thief in the night.

Individuals, they subtly, sometimes not so subtly, they propose timetables for other events that lead up to the second coming, but oh, never the second coming.

We'll never know when the second coming takes place, but we can know the timing of a laundry list of events that take place leading right up to it.

Some examples are, And I can't go through all of them.

Some examples are, once the Sunday Law is passed, we will be able to understand and decipher how long it is until the special resurrection.

And that is a very subtle form of time setting.

It's not officially setting a time for Christ's coming, but the special resurrection takes place very shortly before Jesus' second coming, so if you know when the special resurrection is, practically you know when Christ is coming.

And there are other things they reinterpret related to when the when probation will close, the duration of the 7 last plagues, and the time of trouble, and even some other forms of futuristic reinterpretations of prophecy that has to do with counting the number of popes.

And when this pope takes the lead, then it will shortly be that certain things will take place.

Now, For the message this afternoon, we really cannot deal with each of those claims individually and I hope you understand why.

For 1, there are simply too many of them.

And also, many of them overlap and they contradict each other many many of them like Some say that this symbol represents that and that symbol represents that and special time prophecies lead up to different events or they cannot simply be the same thing.

And when that takes place, when we're trying to deal with them 1 by 1, it leads to a lot of confusion, and that's the last thing we want.

And finally, perhaps the most important reason is a good principle for us to remember.

Even if you're trying to disprove it, it is not good to present error, even if you are just trying to show where the loopholes are.

And of course, I am treading a fine line today.

I may be violating this important principle myself.

But whatever the case, the thrust of what we're trying to do today is to share what the spirit of prophecy does say, as opposed to what it doesn't say, or what the clear teachings of the spirit of prophecy are on this issue, as opposed to trying to go through the laundry list of all of the things that are questionable.

And hopefully by doing that, you will have some principles by which you can make decisions and judgments for yourself.

And that's really the best that I think we can do for you.

So hopefully we can focus on the truth so we have principles to evaluate all new light, particularly revolving around reinterpreting time prophecies.

Now, before we get any further, I want to dwell on this idea of new light some thoughts on new light once upon a time I was in Sacramento, California, I won't tell you which church I was there holding an evangelistic crusade and While there I was outside greeting some people and a church member was standing next to me.

He was very fervent in his faith and in his ministry, a good man.

And as we were shaking hands, he told me, you know something?

Our church hasn't had any new light in over 100 years.

And, you know, it's hard to fault the guy because what he says is true, but I understood what he was insinuating underneath.

What he went on to say was that our church must be missing something.

Maybe we aren't preaching the full message because if we are How come Christ has not come back yet?

We must be missing a special ingredient there must be something that we are neglecting and he Proceeded to rattle off some ideas.

I don't even remember what they are now but that is simply to illustrate a lot of the frustration and the sentiments that come from many individuals who promote a lot of these new ideas that reinterpret Bible prophecy that has already been established.

And what I'm trying to say is that these are not bad people.

These are by and large Bible believing, Spirit of Prophecy studying, and faithful Seventh-day Adventists.

For the most part, they genuinely long to see Jesus return, and that is the motivation behind their discovery or attempts to discover new light, new doctrines, new ideas, particularly in prophecy, So we can finish the work.

So I want to be very clear that in no way should we just neglect these people as fringe elements.

It's hard to blame them for the way that they feel.

And in fact, this is a quote that I find in counsels to writers and editors, page 35.

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Time No Longer Part 2

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