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Ithaca SDA Church

Unlock Revelation

Taylor Hinkle

Passing the Final Test

How to Rejoice in the Midst of Trials

How to Have a New Start- Part 3: Faith or Feeling

Our Greatest Need

Lifting Up Jesus

1. Our Day in Bible Prophecy

2. The Master Key to Bible Prophecy

3. The War Behind All Wars

4. Unfolding the Revelation

5. Revelation’s Global Peace Plan

6. Revelation’s Eternal Sign

7. History’s Greatest Religious Cover-up

8. Revelation’s Time of the End

9. The Mystery of Death

10. Revelation’s 1000 Years

11. Revelation’s Lake of Fire

12. A Thief in the Night

13. Babylon Rising

14. Buried and Forgotten by God

15. The Mark of the Beast

16. US in Bible Prophecy

17. The 144,000

18. The Scarlet Woman

19. Back From the Wilderness

20. The Unpardonable Sin

But I'm grateful to see you all here again this morning.

And how many of you have been blessed through the study of the Bible that we've gone through so far?

You know, many simple things that we've looked at through Scripture that we see the clarity of who Jesus is, right?

We're looking at the Unlock Revelation series, and we truly see that knowing and understanding revelation truly helps us to understand the revelation of Jesus Christ more clearly, right?

We see Jesus in all of the things that we've studied and as we're able to see Jesus more clearly, our hearts are drawn to Him.

Now, many of you have heard some things that have been new to you, right?

We're all learning together as we're coming together through the Bible and studying what it is that God tells us is important for today.

Now, it would be easy for anyone to come here and just say, well, I know everything about the Bible already, and I really don't need to learn anything.

How many of you think that you would be in a position to be blessed if we had that type of attitude?

No, we need to be open to whatever God says and learning through His Word and as He shows us clearly through Scripture what things are, we say, Lord, if this is what the Bible says, if this is what's important to You, then by God's grace, I want it to be important to my life as well.

You know, there's many things that we've talked about and other things that we're going to be talking about this morning that we're going to understand might be a little bit different than what we've seen before, but as we see the truth about these things, we're going to really see the comfort and the love of God more fully manifest.

Now this morning we're looking at the topic the mystery of death.

Understanding death's mystery and all of the things that surround it.

We realize that we live in a world that's surrounded by confusion on this topic, and we'll discuss that in detail in a moment.

But we also understand that as the last several nights, we've looked at things in which that Satan is trying to confuse in the Bible.

Now we've seen that Satan was trying to confuse what day that we spend with God.

We see that Satan was kind of trying to confuse when the judgment would take place, but we see that God is a fair God who makes things very clear and reveals it to us.

And tonight we're going to see that God makes it very clear what happens when we die so we don't have to have confusion and paranoia about this topic, but that we'll realize that God is a fair and just God.

But before we begin, what do we need to do?

We need to pray together and ask for the Lord to be with us.

So why don't we bow our heads and ask the Lord's blessing.

Father in heaven, we're just so thankful for the blessing of this beautiful morning that you've given us to worship You.

And Lord what a privilege it is to open the Bible together to see a clearer revelation of Jesus Christ and Lord that's truly our desire.

Lord would you just help us to understand your goodness and your character.

Lord It's because Jesus died and washed us from our sins in His own blood that we're here this morning.

And Father, as we hear about the truths of Your Word, we pray that You would give us wisdom and insight to see it clearly from Scripture.

Lord, we want to lay down our preconceived ideas and just allow you to inform us through your word what your truth is.

Father guide us, direct us, and send us your Spirit.

Now many of us as we heard about in the health talk already have been touched by the issue of death.

Everyone here has known someone or they've lost someone that they love.

And death isn't an easy thing to go through.

I was telling you last week I had the opportunity of officiating a funeral and you see the loss in the morning in the grief of all of the people who lose the 1 that they love so much and the main question on everybody everyone's mind is is god fair which we looked at night number 3 and what is gonna happen to my loved 1 who died?

Well, if you were to ask that question today, you might get a multitude of different answers depending what circles you're in.

What really happens at death has become a controverted topic, and we realize that many people don't have the answers to this question.

We're all looking to supply answers, but the question is, what does the Bible really teach?

You know, some of us think that when you die, immediately at death, you either go to heaven or you go to hell.

And this morning we're going to look at is that what the Bible teaches?

That when someone dies immediately upon death their soul goes to heaven or goes to hell.

Now there's other people who say well you don't go to heaven or hell immediately.

Well you might, but there's also a third option and that third option is known as what?

In other words, if you weren't good enough, maybe you couldn't get into heaven yet, but you kind of go to purgatory first.

Now, it's not a comfortable air-conditioned waiting room, But it's kind of, you know, you're tortured a little bit and there's some inconvenience, but once you can finally get it straightened out, then you go on into heaven.

Now, if you really don't get it straightened out, I don't know if they open the bottom door and you go into hell or how that works, but there's confusion about what takes place.

Now, to add to this confusion, I can confess that many pastors don't make it very easy for people to understand what happens when you die.

Now, how many of you have been to a funeral recently?

Anyone in the last year been to a funeral?

Now, we realize that when you go to a funeral, there's usually 2 parts of the service.

There's the part of the service that happens in the funeral home or the church or wherever it might be, and then there's the graveside service.

Now what's typical and what you typically hear from the preacher in the funeral home or the church when he's talking about the loved 1, is he says that this loved 1 is in heaven with Jesus, enjoying the realms of glory or something of that nature, right?

You've heard those words in the funerals that you've...

Now, then you get to the graveside service, and at the graveside service, the officiating minister will say, and this person is going to be resting in the grave awaiting the resurrection of Jesus.

Now how many of you have ever heard those 2 different things and wondered well which 1 is it?

Is the person in heaven or are they in the grave awaiting the resurrection of Jesus?

Now we realize that these aren't the only issues that confuse what really happens when you die, but if you looked into Eastern religion or some other influences that come into the world today, some people might believe that before you were sitting in the chair here today that you used to be a fly or an ant or a cow.

And then through the process of reincarnation and when you've gone, everything's kind of figured out, you entered into a higher life force that allowed you to have another opportunity at life, and each time you keep kind of upgrading your body.

So the question for, or the answer of death to them would be, well, when you die, you just come into an alternate form of life.

Well, we realize that Hollywood has a lot to say about what happens when you die.

It's hard to look at movie titles or anything like that where you don't see them talking about death.

The caption line here is, The dead are Allah.

Now that seems kind of oxymoronic, but you realize that Hollywood is filled with these things.

Also the series called The Medium, which was out, looking at talking and communicating with the dead and ghost whisperers and all of these other shows, and there's so much question going on, or at least should be going on in our minds what really happens when you die because can all of these theories be true at the same time what's impossible if god is god and he has truth that it's impossible for you to be dead in the grave and also in heaven It's impossible for you to be dead and also reincarnated.

It's also impossible for you to ever die if you're still alive and you never experienced death.

And if you really are dead, then how can you communicate with the dead after they've passed away?

These are all questions that we need to understand.

Books on near-death experiences have catapulted into the best sellers list.

You know, many of you can walk into a bookstore.

I was in the airport not too long ago and walked into the bookstore.

And there was a book, I think it's called, Is Heaven For Real?

It talks about a young child who had gone to heaven for a few minutes and came back and you see all of these experiences of people talking about going into heaven or out-of-body experiences and the question is with all of this confusion does God have an answer for us?

Because if God doesn't have an answer, we're just gonna have a lot of uncertainty.

But notice that Scripture does give us an answer.

Not only is there a question about, do you really die, is there reincarnation?

Some people, my family is in New Mexico, which is a large Native American population there.

And there's a large amount of people there who believe that when you're dead, what happens next?

But what we're going to look at this evening is that Jesus has the answers to our questions.

You know, as Christians, we have the privilege of having an all-knowing God who's able to tell us the end from the beginning.

In other words, we have an unfair advantage over the rest of the world.

God tells us that if you have a question, a main problem of life and a question of life, that He has the answers to those questions.

And this evening, or this morning, I'm sorry, we're going to be looking, is death the end?

Now what's very clear is that we've been understanding that Revelation has many keys that help us to be clear on what the Bible says about given topics.

And this morning, it's not going to be any different.

Series

Unlock Revelation

9. The Mystery of Death

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Finishing the Mystery of God

49m

Workshop: Biblical Examples of Conflict Resolution

The Mantle

1h

Crisis At the Close: The Trials

56m

Who Will Take the Son

1h

Unlock Revelation

15. The Mark of the Beast

1h 8m

Unlock Revelation

7. History’s Greatest Religious Cover-up

56m

The Sanctuary

01 The Sanctuary: Designed for Eternity

54m

Antichrist: The One You've Never Known

Antichrist, Episode 6: Revealed

38m

Unlock Revelation

19. Back From the Wilderness

1h 14m

Faithful Talks

4. The Sons of God

1h 1m

Unlock Revelation

20. The Unpardonable Sin

47m

The Resurrection and Life- Raising Lazarus, Part 2

46m

Sound Doctrine