AMEN Australia 2015: Eden Unlocked- the Secret of Healing Ministry

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network Australia

Justin Jackson

Closing Sabbath: The Open Door

It's my privilege to share the inspiration behind our conference theme for Closing Sabbath, Eden Unlocked, the secret of healing ministry.

I fervently believe the 8 laws of health we've been given are a gospel message to a dying world.

As I share, I want perhaps to focus on each of the elements of these 8 laws of health as we step through the door together.

Just shut your eyes for a moment as we bow in prayer.

Heavenly Father, tonight I just want to disappear and I want each person to be brought through the door of Eden, the cross of Calvary, into your very presence, Father, tonight spiritually, but on that great day that we all yearn for in reality, I pray.

It had been paradise, a paradise beyond words and beyond description.

Every sinew, every fibre, every impulse and thought thrilled with life and happiness.

As you breathed in the rich, fragrant air, your senses had been filled with music, sublime melodies of nature that stirred the soul and imparted vitality to every waking moment.

Everywhere was beauty beyond imagination and beyond description.

Exotic birds, exquisite flowers, butterflies vibrantly colored the deep forest green.

Animals of every shape and size and description imaginable sought your attention.

Meadows covered in wildflowers merged into forests of majestic trees as they swept down to coastlines of beautiful white sand, palms, and there the reefs with fish iridescent in color, mirroring the forest beauty.

A place beyond words, beyond description, beyond imagination.

4 mighty rivers spread out east and west, north and south in a massive delta that watered the entire globe.

As you trace the river heads back to their source, gold, jasper, and sapphire, Emeralds, other precious stones glistened under the pure crystal clear waters.

And finally, as the rivers converged in a single source, you stand at the riverhead where there is a tree of breathtaking beauty.

1 trunk reaches up from 1 side on the river to join its partner on the other side and then its branches laden with fruit spread out.

The most spectacular fruit you've ever seen reaching out invitingly, inviting you to taste the fruit of life.

But it was not even this spectacle that thrilled your heart the most.

No, no, it was the ultimate source, the creator of all this beauty.

Your creator, as the golden rays of sunlight lit the evening horizon, God stands by your side to welcome the Sabbath.

Vividly, you remember back to the first Sabbath when time itself was made holy, set apart for that intimate face-to-face communion with your God.

What implicit trust, trust in divine power.

But now all this seems an irretrievable memory.

The terrible events of that horrible day, of these last few hours, are seared forever in your psyche.

Oh, you knew it so well in all its perfection and beauty.

But why, oh, why did you desire to know evil?

Perhaps because it was masked by the servant in such an enticing and seductive way.

That was the inexcusable pathogenesis of evil, a failure to trust in divine power, the eighth law of health, a trust instead in self.

The prophet writes, Eve believed the words of Satan and the belief of that falsehood in regard to God's character changed the condition of her character and the character of her husband.

The disease of evil now dominates your entire being, infecting every cell with its deadly toxin.

The symptoms are the actions underlying, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, but always selfish and always evil.

And the final outcome, the prognosis, well, the wages of sin is death.

Death, that word brings you back to your present reality in a rush of sickening nausea and anxiety overtakes you.

Fear and helplessness pervade your being.

Your whole world has been turned upside down, and there seems no way of escape.

Your feet stumble on through the garden, through paradise, but it is now paradise lost.

Already the peace and happiness you knew has faded into a dim and distant memory.

Why, oh why, You give up trying to suppress the sobs that rack your entire frame.

Stumbling out through the gates of Eden, everything seems surreal.

Behind you, the door, the door to Eden, slams shut.

You've never heard the clang of a prison cell but that noise resonates with the strange and devastating future that you already sense.

You are locked in, locked in to a world of sickness and death, locked in to a world of sorrow, locked in to a world of crying and heartache, locked into a world of cancer, heart attacks, death, a world where life is ripped out from your hands in a moment, locked into a world of brutality, terrorism and warfare.

You are locked out, locked out from peace and happiness, locked out from health and from life.

But worst of all, you're locked out from God.

It forces you to gaze beseechingly through the barred door, past the flaming cherubim.

It fills your entire mind and you can think of nothing else.

Will the gate to Eden ever be opened again?

Come forward with me in time to the lonely island of Patmos.

After these things, not this text, text will come.

After these things, I looked and behold, a door standing open in heaven.

Have we been invited to step through that door?

If there's a door open in heaven, I want to know what's inside.

The door opens into the very presence of God himself, the ruler of the universe.

4 majestic beings, the cherubim, with veiled faces stand around the throne.

Like the original Eden, there is gold and precious stones in abundance, reflecting the blazing glory of the seven-branched candlestick burning before the throne.

The most beautiful fragrance fills the air as the aroma from the incense, the prayer of the saints, ascends before God.

The glory and sheer vastness of this magnificent structure is overwhelming.

Reflecting and intensifying the whole scene is a sea of glass mingled with fire, burning with opal hues of intense orange and purple and green.

You feel like you have seen this place before.

But no, it was the mirror image, a reflection.

We're not in Eden, but we're in the sanctuary of heaven.

You watch entranced as 10, 000 times 10, 000 angels rise to their feet.

A lamb as though he has been slain enters and stands before the throne.

What is death doing here in this perfect place?

It seems jarring and incongruous to you as the lamb enters the heavenly host, break into strains of the most glorious melody.

Worthy, worthy is the lamb who was slain.

Now you understand, now you realize, you glance back at the door to the sanctuary and see that it is the cross that you've stepped through.

Having boldness you have entered the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way which he consecrated for us through the door.

There has only ever been and there will only ever be 1 way.

Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Our text tells us it is the door that is his flesh.

The only possible way is through the flesh.

The way of the new covenant is through God's death.

He's the mediator of the new covenant by means of death for the redemptions of transgressions under the first covenant that those who are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance.

We only have access to the new covenant through Jesus' death.

We only have access to the heavenly sanctuary, to Eden in heaven, through Jesus' death.

No wonder Jesus said to his disciples so confidently and so assuringly, I am the door.

That Greek word that's there, the consecrated, echinizo, it means to inaugurate.

We should not be surprised because Eden was inaugurated, wasn't it, it was the Sabbath.

We should, when God had finished all the work that was done.

In Exodus, we read the same thing, when the sanctuary was done and it was completed, there was a dedication.

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Closing Sabbath: The Open Door

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