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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Dave Shavlik

Great Controversy Bible Study

Dear Lord, I don't want to overstate the case, but there's a lot of very important issues that we need to know, and I'm sure that I'm only going to touch a hundredth of it, if even that.

But Lord, I do want to stand up here and represent you.

I just ask, Lord, that you would utilize the vessel, Lord, no matter how weak it is.

And I just pray, Lord, that your truth would shine in clarity, Lord.

Help me to speak with authority and with clearness, Lord.

And Lord, I just pray for your Holy Spirit to be completely present in every corner of this room.

And Lord, we thank you for this Sabbath day and just pray that this just fits right into that.

You know, I have to tell you that I have over 90 slides here.

And so basically, you know, I'm the kind of person that if you give me a job to do, and if it's in an area that I think I can do well in, then I just try to go way beyond what is necessary.

That was kind of, in some ways, a bad topic to try to pick the Great Controversy, because that's everything, right?

And So I actually spent a lot of time developing the Great Controversy up to the cross and then I decided that that's not what I'm going to do.

There's basically before the cross and what happened after the cross.

And so we're going to basically focus on some of the things at the end of time and more specifically on Revelation.

So our focus is going to be on Revelation.

Now you know of course last Christmas or winter We were in Daniel and of course we were getting into some of these things and I taught a number of the lessons and what I want to do actually is just review 1 component of that because it's a good background to this discussion.

And the longer you think about something, then the more things start to come to you.

And if you want new light on something, just meditate on it for a week or 2 and something will come to you.

That probably bears some qualification, I'm sure.

The reason why I came up with this particular arrangement was because 1 of my friends, I was trying to convince that person that the whole issue behind the investigative judgment, the whole issue to why we're still here, The whole issue with the way time just drags on is because there are other beings that are watching us.

And I was trying to convince him of this, And I read him this verse, of course, and his response was, well, somebody else could interpret that another way.

And maybe all these beings standing around the throne, maybe they're just bystanders.

Hey, they're just God's servants, they're there to clean his feet or whatever type of thing.

That's their purpose, just to do whatever little tasks he wants them to do.

And so I started looking at this, and I was like, how can I be convincing that in fact, it is these other beings that are the issue behind what we're seeing here?

The first thing I want to point out to you is that thrones is plural.

Notice here, it says, I watched till thrones were put in place, and the Ancient of Days was seated.

His garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head was like pure wool.

His throne was a fiery flame, its wheels a burning fire.

A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him.

The court was seated, and the books were opened.

Notice here that thrones is plural, and if you go on farther down here, you will see that's what I needed as a pointer I think.

Notice here that the Ancient of Days throne is singular.

Plural thrones, the Ancient of Days comes and sits down on singular throne.

So the basic point here is that we have a bunch of empty thrones.

The next question is, what are these 10, 000 times 10, 000 beings doing?

If I had, this presentation is really interesting, when we get to the end of it, if we actually make it to the end, you're going to see how thrown together the last part is.

Anyways, obviously these 10, 000 are standing here before him, okay?

If you read your KJV Bible, you'll see that it says, the judgment was set.

This is not completely on actually, this is not completely accurate.

If you notice where it says, was seated, that is the exact verb and tense as when the ancient of days was seated.

Exact verb and tense, the exact word should have the same meaning.

So here we have the Ancient of Days was seated on a singular throne and then we have 10, 000 times 10, 000 standing before him and then it says the court was seated.

Now, what I want to be clear about is, this court is not the Ancient of Days.

Well, you have more than 1 throne, but the Ancient of Days is already what?

The Ancient of Days is already sitting down.

It is not the Son of Man, 1 like the Son of Man, because why?

He's brought into the picture a few verses later, but he's not here right now.

The only people or beings that this could be are these 10, 000 standing beside the throne.

So the point is, be completely clear on this, You can prove, I think, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the court, the court are these beings.

Another misconception that I had is that, you know, when I think about Sorry, let me turn this thing off.

When I think about angels, my perspective, I think, for the longest time was, you know, angels are just God's servants, right?

They just do his things We don't think of them as actually authoritative figures as leaders Okay We don't think of them as authoritative figures and leaders.

The whole point of this is, what is a throne?

Well, just a casual reading of, for example, Revelation, it should be very clear, and many other places in the Bible, thrones designate authority.

So we're not talking about beings that just kind of, like I said, they're waiting to give God his shoes in the morning or whatever type of thing.

These are beings that have responsibilities to make their own decisions about certain things.

All right, I'm not really going to go into this.

You guys probably know that you read this in context, you clearly see that this judgment starts before the close of probation, before the powers are destroyed, so we don't need to really go into that.

7.13 I was watching in the night visions, and behold, 1 like the Son of Man, coming with clouds of heaven, he came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him.

Then to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people, nations, and language should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom the 1 which shall not be destroyed." The 1 thing I wanted to point out is that notice, right?

And it says, He came to the ancient of days.

It says, I was watching the night visions and behold 1 like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven.

He came to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him." Again, we're seeing the angels with a leading role in this situation.

And we talked about, which we're not really going to get into, we're talking about a court scene here and there's all kinds of things 1 could say about who Jesus is, that he's in fact our defense attorney, he's the star witness.

And there's a couple of texts that we could go to to prove that.

I'm just simply pointing out the role of the angels.

So here we have Daniel 7.21 and it says, I was watching, and the same horn was making war against the saints and prevailing against them until the Ancient of Days came and the judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to receive the kingdom.

725, He shall speak pompous words against the Most High, shall persecute the saints of the Most High, and shall intend to change times and law.

Great Controversy Bible Study

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