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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Norman McNulty

And All the World Wondered

Well, good morning everyone and a happy Sabbath to you it's very good to be back in Loma Linda at Advent Hope a Place that was home to me on Sabbath morning every Sabbath for Nearly 8 years of my life, so it's good to be back and it's good to see many familiar faces.

And as Loma Linda goes, the turnover cycle is such that I don't recognize most of you, but That's fine.

And just a reminder that this afternoon, for those of you who may be interested in an in-depth Bible study on Daniel 11, we're going to be looking at some concepts there that relate to the present time.

So I invite you to come out this afternoon to Cutler Hall.

But this morning I want to share with you a few ideas from the book of Revelation and elsewhere that I believe are relevant to the time we are living in.

And before we begin, I would invite you to bow your heads with me for a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for bringing us out this Sabbath morning.

And I just pray that you would pour out your spirit in a special way.

And I pray that you would speak through me.

Give me just the words that are needed, that need to be said this morning.

And may each 1 of us be in tune with your spirit.

And may we be prepared for the coming of Jesus and I pray that we would set aside any earthly distractions and just allow your spirit to speak to us now.

You know as a Seventh-day Adventist I still believe that Jesus is coming soon.

I believe with all of my heart that Jesus is coming very soon.

And I believe that we have a message of great importance to share with the world around us.

And I will say this, that as I have looked at the news in the last few weeks, looking at the news hasn't suddenly made me think, you know what, maybe we as Seventh-day Adventists got it all wrong when we interpreted Revelation 13 the way we do.

When I look at the current events and when I look at the news and when I look at what's happening in the world around us, I see more than ever that history and prophecy are unfolding before our eyes.

And you'd have to be really asleep to not see the significance of how prophecy is unfolding.

I like how 1 of my friends, he's a pastor in Texas, said, he said, What more evidence do we need?

History and prophecy are unfolding before our eyes.

If we ever doubted the genius of Adventist prophetic teaching, may today's images remove all the lingering skepticism in our minds.

You know, when you look at Scripture, in 7th Advent we have an understanding in Daniel and Revelation of the key prophetic powers that will exert worldwide influence just before Jesus comes back.

In Revelation chapter 13, beginning in chapter 13, we see this beast coming up out of the sea that has 7 heads and 10 horns and on his horns 10 crowns.

And we see it's a composite beast of a leopard, a bear, and a lion, and a mouth speaking great things.

And we know that those beasts, this is a review, but we know that these beasts are the beasts seen in Daniel chapter 7.

And after those beasts of Daniel 7, a little horn comes up and plucks up 3 horns out of 10, which were the nations of Western Europe, and that little horn has a mouth speaking great things, which is the same thing that we see in Revelation 13.

In verse 5 of Revelation 13 we see that this beast has a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies.

Specifically, this beast, the mouth is the mouth of a lion, and the lion in Daniel is the kingdom of Babylon.

So the mind of this beast is the mind of Babylon, because I can tell you as a neurologist that your speech comes from the frontal lobe, and the mouth is the mouth of a lion, so it's the mind of Babylon.

So here we see Babylon in Revelation chapter 13, and we see that just before Jesus comes back, after it has received a deadly wound, that deadly wound will be healed and all the world will wonder after the beast.

Now this is a review, I think if you've been a Seventh-day Adventist for a long time.

Now if you're new and you're a visitor and you've never heard such a thing, I would encourage you to seek out some friends who could explain this to you, because right now Revelation chapter 13 is more relevant than it ever has been.

If you've never studied it before, you want to know what Revelation 13 is talking about.

Now historically Protestants have had a very clear view of who Revelation 13 is talking about, the first beast of Revelation 13 and also the little horn of Daniel 7.

I'm not going to spend all of this hour talking about Revelation 13.

I'm simply going to use that as the introduction to contrast that with the kind of experience we need to be having right now.

But it's interesting to me, you know, when the Pope came to America just about 6 or 7 weeks ago, the news and the media, It was splashed all over the internet and the front pages of the paper and on the television.

This wasn't just a minor news event that America was paying attention to.

This was a very big deal and everybody was paying attention to what was happening.

And in fact, we've never seen a Pope address the joint session of Congress.

And that's a significant event in that these are all the elected representatives of the people of the United States of America.

I want to read to you something very interesting that Dr.

Albert Muller, who's the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, This is what he had to say during the height of the buzz of the Pope's visit.

And as a Southern Baptist, he is part of a denomination that still is a Protestant denomination.

And so This is from a leading thinker in another Protestant faith community, and this is what he had to say.

An interesting way for evangelicals to think about the Pope is simply to focus on how the Roman Catholic Church defines the papacy.

A lot of times people are like, what's the big deal about the Pope?

The Pope is here, he seems like a nice man, he's doing a lot of nice things, what's the big deal about the Pope?

Muller says, let's just look into what the Catholic Church itself says about the Pope.

This is what he goes on to say, the current pontifical yearbook includes these titles for the Pope regardless of who the Pope is, in this case this is Pope Francis.

He is known as the Vicar of Jesus Christ.

He is known as the successor of the Prince of the Apostles.

He holds the title Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church.

He is also the Primate of Italy and Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman province.

He is sovereign of the state of the Vatican City, and he is servant of God's servants." An unofficial title that has nonetheless been used in official Catholic documents also borrows a title from the ancient Roman Empire referring to the Pope as Pontifex Maximus.

The titles themselves indicate why historic Protestants in general and Evangelicals in particular reject the papacy and do not do so merely as a marginal issue." Notice that, it's not a marginal issue.

But, come to understand that the Reformation itself revealed the unbiblical nature of the Pontifical Office and the fact that regardless of who the inhabitant of that office is, the office makes claims and the Roman Catholic Church makes claims about the office that are absolutely incompatible with biblical truth.

And I say praise God that there are still Protestants who are protesting.

And I would be happy if there were some Protestants in the Seventh-day Adventist church who would protest that clearly as well.

And then he goes on to say, to understand the centrality of this, just consider the words of the current Roman Catholic catechism as it has to do with the Pope.

That catechism states in paragraph 882 that the Roman pontiff by reason of his office as vicar of Christ and as pastor of the entire church has full supreme and universal power over the whole church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered.

So just remember that when the world is saying, what a nice man, what a good pastor, look at all these things that he's doing, just remember that the Roman Catholic Church has some very specific ideas of what kind of power is invested in the Pope and the office that he has.

Now it was interesting as I was watching the news and looking at things it just struck me.

You know I'm watching his joint session to Congress and seated behind him is the now former Speaker of the House, but at the time Speaker of the House John Boehner, who is Roman Catholic, and the person he replaced in Paul Ryan is Roman Catholic, and the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, sitting right next to the Speaker, is Roman Catholic, and the Secretary of the State, John Kerry, he is Roman Catholic, and 6 out of the 9 Supreme Court justices, the same thing.

It just tells me that as a nation, we have gone far away from our original Protestant upbringing where pilgrims from the old world of Europe fled the persecution of the Roman church state system to establish religious liberty in this nation.

And now in many ways we are going back to, in fact it's interesting, some people were so caught up by the Pope's presence.

There was a congressman who actually saw the cup of water that the Pope drank from and made sure that he grabbed that glass after the Pope left the lectern and drank some for himself.

Now we laugh, but there's something significant behind that.

Muller goes on to say that he says those who can get into physical proximity with the Pope are actually being extended a sacramental grace.

That's why there is so much fascination with his presence.

And then I'm going to say 1 more thing about the Pope, and then we're going to move on to the next part of what I had to share.

1 has to do with the fact that the media has shifted the story.

When the Pope was coming to the United States, there was a great deal of attention being given on the front page of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times.

Paper after paper, a great deal of attention was being made about the political dimensions of the Pope's visit.

But now as of yesterday, especially given the public masses that the Pope held, the media has changed the story.

The media are now saying, no, this isn't a political visit, this is a pastoral visit by a religious leader.

As a matter of fact, 1 observer on National Public Radio said yesterday, let's face it, the Pope will be addressing a joint session of Congress not as a political leader but as a pastor.

Miller goes on to say this, well let's just state the obvious.

No other pastor in the history of the United States of America has ever addressed a joint session of Congress.

It is simply not intellectually honest to say that this man is appearing before a joint session of Congress simply because he is a pastor.

No there's a lot more to it and we know it and that's at least partly explained by the titles that are inherent in the papacy and all that is inherent in treating a religious leader as a sovereign monarch." And he closes by saying, this raises another interesting question, why are more evangelicals not speaking out clearly and biblically when it comes to the papacy.

That's a Baptist, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Friends, there are God's people out there who are noticing what's happening, and it's amazing to me that as prophecy is being fulfilled before our very eyes and as the world is beginning to wonder after the beast, and if you have any question as to the reality that someday Revelation 13 will be fulfilled where all the world wonders after the beast, all you had to do was turn on your television when the Pope was here to see that the Pope has universal acclamation, especially within this country.

It was interesting to me that there were even some Seventh-day Adventists that were saying, why do we always make such a big deal about it when the Pope comes?

The reality is that it's a reassurance marker as Pastor John Bradshaw of It Is Written says, that everything that we have always stood for prophetically from the books of Daniel and Revelation is actually coming to take place before our very eyes.

Now I want to transition here, that's basically the main gist of what I have to say about the recent Pope visit and of the fulfillment of prophecy.

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And All the World Wondered

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