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Hohenwald SDA Church

Norman McNulty

Signs in the Heavens

Our Father in heaven, we thank you for this day.

We thank you for this Sabbath that we can worship you.

And I pray now that you would speak through me, that this message will be 1 that uplifts Christ, and that it would stir each of our hearts to be ready to meet Jesus when He comes.

The title for the message this morning is Signs in the Heavens.

Well you may have noticed by my daughter's prayers and thanks that She's excited about the eclipse in our house and we're definitely looking forward to it.

And I thought that since there is going to be a total solar eclipse so close to us here that it would be helpful to remind us just to recall what the Bible says about the signs of the coming of Jesus.

Now I may hasten to add that I am not, and I have seen some people saying this on the Internet, this total solar eclipse is not a specific prophecy in the Bible that identifies the timing of the coming of Jesus.

There are total solar eclipses somewhere on earth as often as every 18 months.

It just so happens that the United States gets to see 1 this time.

So, we're going to look at some of the signs there in the heavens that announce the coming of Jesus.

Now, just about this eclipse that is coming up, it's just 2 days away now, August 21.

And this is from 1 of our newspapers here in the United States.

It says, a total solar eclipse will sweep across America, casting millions of people into temporary darkness.

It will be the biggest astronomical event America has seen in years, watched by millions of people from within the path of totality and tens of millions more who are outside it.

1 astronomer, this is Tyler Nordgren of the University of Redlands, has said it will be the most photographed, most shared, most tweeted event in human history.

Yeah, maybe not, but it's true that this is gathering a lot of attention.

Now I may add that if you are living close enough so that you can go, you should.

Because you may never see another event like this in your lifetime.

Even if you don't have eclipse glasses, you will still experience the totality when it hits, and if it's about 2 and a half minutes, it doesn't matter if you don't have glasses at that point, you can experience that.

Some eclipse enthusiasts have spent years preparing for this solar spectacle, the first eclipse to cross the entire continental United States in almost a century.

This is the first total solar eclipse to occur solely in the United States since the country was founded.

For most Americans, this is the best chance to see a solar eclipse we will have in our lifetimes.

And this is the first eclipse in the middle Tennessee area since 1478, so I don't think any of us were around when that happened.

So hopefully many of you can have an opportunity to go find a good spot that's in the path of totality, because If you're not on the path, and I hate to say this, but if you're not on the path, it's not the same.

It'll be kind of dark, but it won't go totally dark.

So if you can get on the path, and I realize not everybody can go, but if you have a chance to go, you should try to make it.

So we are privileged to have this opportunity to see this sign in the heaven.

It's seen every so often around earth, but it's coming to our area.

But it's a reminder to me that Jesus foretold certain signs that would take place before He would come back.

And many people are not aware that these signs have already taken place.

And I want to go back to our scripture reading for today, Luke chapter 21, starting in verse 25.

And we read, And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth, the stress of nations with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring?

Men's hearts, failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads for your redemption draweth nigh." Listen friends, as followers of Jesus these signs that have come already, and that even now as we see unrest happening on this earth this should not cause our hearts to fail us for fear.

We should not be afraid of the signs that point to the soon coming of Jesus.

We should be lifting up our heads because our redemption is drawing near.

Now what are these signs in the heavens, in the sun, in the moon, in the stars?

Well they are mentioned several times throughout Scripture.

Jesus first mentions in the New Testament in the Gospel of Matthew 24 starting in verse 29 Jesus says, Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened." Now, the tribulation spoken of here is the period of the 1260 years of persecution from 538 to 1798, but the persecution ended before 1798.

Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken." Here you see the sequence of events, that the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give her light, and the stars will fall from heaven." We also see in Mark 13 verses 24-26 a similar description, But in those days after that tribulation the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light and the stars of heaven shall fall and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken and then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory." Now interestingly in the Old Testament as well in the book of Joel 2, verse 31 a description is given of this time in earth's history.

Joel 2, and I'm going to read verses 31 and 32.

The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come.

And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.

For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call." So the Lord is going to have a remnant people at the end of time who will pass through this period of time where these signs in the heaven take place and He will deliver His people.

Finally in the book of Revelation there are the 7 seals and you have the first 5 seals.

And when you get to the sixth seal this is a transition point.

You have the first seal starting in Revelation chapter 6 where you have a white horse, this represents the conquering pure Christian Church.

And then you move along to the second seal where there's the red horse, this is the persecuted Church, The black horse, this is the apostate church in the third seal.

The fourth horse is the pale horse where the church goes into complete apostasy.

And then the fifth seal describes the souls crying under the altar.

This describes the time of the Protestant Reformation where there was a protest to the persecution of God's faithful people.

And then the sixth seal starting in verse 12 it says, 12 And when I beheld, when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood, and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth." Here we see 1 further event, this great earthquake, but we see a dark day, we see the falling of the stars, and we see an earthquake.

So, interestingly you read these signs in the Heaven, Jesus mentions them in the Gospel saying that these are signs that will take place just before I come back.

When you read the sixth seal in Revelation 6, it says, after these events, in verse 14 it says, And the heaven departed as a scroll, when it is rolled together, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand.

Now the first thing I want to draw your attention to is what kind of people would be scared of a lamb?

Lambs are always afraid of people and they run away very quickly.

Lambs are not something that we are typically afraid of.

So it's this weird setting in which the leaders of this earth, the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, those who are warriors who have fought battles, they see the Lamb, and they are afraid, and they call for the rocks and the mountains to fall upon them.

Clearly this is describing the coming of the great Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

This is the coming of Jesus in the clouds of heaven.

And for those who have not accepted the sacrifice of the Lamb, this day is described as the day of the wrath of the Lamb.

And these signs in the heaven and on earth are the signs that precede the coming of Jesus.

So many of us have gone through these signs before, but it's always a good reminder to help us recall where we are prophetically in Earth's history in the setting of the sixth seal, or excuse me, the 7 seals.

In the sixth seal, the very first event is this great earthquake.

This is the Great Lisbon Earthquake of May 1, 1755, which takes place not long before the end of the 1260 days.

This Great Lisbon Earthquake was an earthquake such as the world had never seen to that point.

Now we've seen some very bad earthquakes in recent years.

There was the earthquake that triggered the tsunami in 2004 over in Indonesia and in Southeast Asia that killed over 100, 000 people.

There was also the earthquake in Japan in 2011 that triggered a great earthquake.

But the Lisbon Earthquake of May 1, 1755 was a cataclysmic event.

Ellen White says in the book Great Controversy, page 304, "...in fulfillment of this prophecy there occurred in the year 1755 the most terrible earthquake that has ever been recorded.

Though commonly known as the earthquake of Lisbon, it extended to the greater part of Europe, Africa, and America.

It was felt in Greenland, in the West Indies.

So you're talking about Trinidad and Tobago, and you have Grenada and Barbados and some of those islands.

In the island of Madeira in Norway, in Sweden, Great Britain, and Ireland, it pervaded an extent of not less than 4 million square miles.

In Africa, the shock was almost as severe as in Europe.

A great part of Algiers was destroyed, and a short distance from Morocco, a village containing 8 or 10, 000 inhabitants was swallowed up.

A vast wave swept over the coast of Spain and Africa, engulfing cities and causing great destruction.

And there's all sorts of other things you can read about this terrible earthquake.

This is the very first sign that is described in the sixth seal that announces that the coming of Jesus is very near.

Just 25 years later on May 19, 1780, we see the fulfillment of the sun becoming black as sackcloth of hair and as Joel 231 says, the moon turned to blood.

This is known as the dark day of May 19, 1780.

Here we see, and this is Great Controversy, page 3 of 6, we read, almost if not altogether alone, as the most mysterious and as yet unexplained phenomenon of its kind stands the dark day of May 1917-18, a most unaccountable darkening of the whole visible heavens and atmosphere in New England." Now let me say this.

This total solar eclipse that we are going to experience in 2 days is going to last for about 2 and a half minutes.

I mean, the sky is going to go dark and it's going to be like a sunset 360 around the whole horizon.

You'll be able to see the stars, and it's going to last for 2 and a half minutes, and then it's going to be over.

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Signs in the Heavens

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