Sermon given at Fairplain Benton Harbor, MI SDA church on 2/20/2010.

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

AudioVerse

Norman McNulty

The Work of the Holy Spirit in the Last Days

It's almost noon, but good morning anyway.

Joelle and I are happy to be back at the Fair Plain Church.

This is Joelle's home church of course growing up and many of you know her.

Not as many of you know me as well as you know her, but as Joelle was saying in her children's story, we are both about to head to Trinidad for mission service with the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

A week from Monday on March 1, we will be flying out of the Chicago O'Hare Airport down to Trinidad.

We've been talking about this for a long time.

I'll be working as a neurologist at the Adventist Hospital in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

And I am glad that I can be here with you this morning to share a message from the Lord that the Lord has placed on my heart and so before I get into the message I would like for us to have a word of prayer.

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

We thank you for the opportunity to worship you in spirit and in truth.

And I pray that your Holy Spirit will be with us in a very special and powerful way this Sabbath day.

May we block out the things, the cares of this life that would distract us from understanding the message that you want each 1 of us to understand today.

And I pray that you would speak through me and that your words would be given.

The message for today is entitled, The Work of the Holy Spirit in the last days.

How many of you want the Holy Spirit to be working through your life?

How many of you believe that the Holy Spirit is being poured out in God's church today?

We see exciting things happening in the Seventh-day Adventist church in this very day.

Things are happening now that 10 years ago, quite frankly, were not happening.

And it's very exciting to be living in this time as we see what's happening in the world and also what's happening in the church.

You know, it's interesting, Joelle and I just moved away from Loma Linda and we've been keeping track of our friends in Loma Linda on Facebook.

I just looked at 1 report today, they had 92 earthquakes in the last few days in Redlands, California.

But clearly, interesting things are happening.

You see what's happening, for example, with GYC and how God is moving on the hearts of young people to be serious about Adventism again in the last days.

And at the same time, we see this polarization taking place where some people in the church are saying, it doesn't matter what the Bible says about creation, we're going to teach something entirely opposite to that.

So here you see a polarization and yet God is pouring out His Spirit on His people to proclaim the last day message with special force and power, and God is doing so through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And I want to be part of the work of the Holy Spirit in the last days, amen?

You know, Ellen White tells us that when the latter rain of the Holy Spirit begins to be poured out, that people may not even realize that it's being poured out all around them.

And we want to make sure that when the Holy Spirit begins to move, that we are among the people that have God's Spirit being poured out in our lives so that we can share the message of God's saving grace and the 3 angels messages to the world.

What I want to look at today is what does the Bible tell us about what the Holy Spirit will do among God's people in the last days just before Jesus comes.

Now there are many things in Scripture that describe the work of the Holy Spirit, but we are going to look specifically in John chapter 16 today and go from there.

So what I'm going to do is start in John chapter 16 verse 1.

And these are the words of Christ speaking to his disciples.

John chapter 16, verse 1, Jesus says, These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.

They shall put you out of the synagogues.

Yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God's service.

The Jewish church persecuted and even murdered and put to death the Apostles of Christ.

The Jews who were the professed people of God persecuted God's apostles, His saints, His people.

And Jesus told them, this will happen to you, that when they kill you they will think that they are doing God's service.

Verse 3, and these things will they do unto you because they have not known the Father nor me.

And I would say as God's people today It is way too late in Earth's history to not know God.

Here you had a group of professed, I guess you could call them Christians, people who were the professed people of God, the Jews coming to synagogue every Sabbath, and they did not know the Father, and they did not know Jesus.

And it is very possible that we as God's people today can come to church every week, and we don't even know Jesus.

And if we don't, we will do the very same thing that the Jews did to the true Christians back in that day.

Verse 4, But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them, and these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you.

But now I go my way to him that sent me, and none of you asketh me whither goest thou." You know, this is a side point, but Jesus was basically trying to tell them, hey, I'm going to the sanctuary after I finish my work here, and you're not even asking me what I'm going to do after this.

They thought he was going to set up an earthly kingdom.

And you know, in the Christian world today, so many people are confused about the way Jesus is going to come back the second time.

You hear things about the secret rapture and escaping the tribulation.

People don't look to see what Jesus specifically says about how he will come back.

We just need to read and study for ourselves.

Now continuing on verse 6, but because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart.

It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you." Now who is the Comforter?

Jesus is saying, it is a good thing that I go away, because when I go away, The Comforter will come to you.

Now, when we read Scripture, all we have to do is go to the book of Acts and we see that after Jesus departed, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the early Christian church.

Pentecost, we have seen in the history of this earth the outpouring of the power of the Holy Spirit upon God's professed people.

And the question is, do we have that kind of experience with God today?

Do we have the fervor of the apostles, of Peter, of Paul, of the apostle John the Revelator, who were willing to put their lives on the line and go to the farthest reaches of the earth to take the gospel to the then known world in their generation.

Do we have that fervor and that zeal from the power of the Holy Spirit to take this message to the world around us?

Because 1 sign that gives evidence that the Holy Spirit is poured out in our lives is a zeal to share the truth of God's Word with a lost and dying world.

And as God's people in the last days, we have the most precious truths ever committed to mortal man, more so than the Apostles had in their day.

We have a more powerful and exciting message to give.

And so we see that when the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, the apostles in their generation went to the then known world with the gospel.

Now you know it's interesting, Ellen White tells us that in the last days the latter rain will be poured out.

And you know how, you've probably heard this, how many times more powerful is the latter rain going to be than Pentecost?

Now let me tell you something, based on this passage of Scripture, if the latter rain is 10 times more powerful than Pentecost, and if the apostles faced persecution from the professed people of God and were put out of the synagogues and were even killed and the people who did so thought that they were doing God's service.

God is gonna pour out the latter rain with 10 times more power because he knows the opposition is going to be that much more powerful.

You don't think Satan doesn't know what's going to happen in the last days?

You don't think Satan's going to excite opposition in a more powerful manner than he did with what the early Christian church faced.

So God, who is all powerful, praise God, we don't have to worry about all the opposition in the world that the devil puts against us.

Because when God pours out his power, the devil can't stop us.

But what we see is we will have to face these kind of trials and opposition in the last day.

And you know just listening to the prayer request time this morning, It's clear God's people are going through trials and persecutions.

I can attest to that even in my own family of some of the issues that we are going through right now and how the devil is ramping things up.

But you know, we should praise God for those trials.

Because it's these kind of trials that are preparing us for what is going to come.

And if the Lord didn't allow us to have our faith tested now, we wouldn't be ready for the major trials and persecutions when they come.

And so we can, even though it's not fun, so to speak, we can thank God that he is allowing our faith to be tested and to grow.

Back to Menu

The Work of the Holy Spirit in the Last Days

Transcript

Description

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Most Important Book Outside of the Bible - A Deeper Look at The Great Controversy

05-Standing Through the Final Crisis

1h

Final Events

06 Praying for the Latter Rain

1h 14m

Order of Last Day Events

57m

The Relevance of Christ’s Two-Dimensional Sanctuary Ministry after 1844

1h 16m

Preparing For Rain

44m

Sabbath School 2nd Quarter 2024: The Great Controversy

12 Earth’s Closing Events

29m

Battles in the Brain

Battles in the Brain, Part 3

42m

Plenary

The Latter Rain to Ripen the Harvest

1h 11m

ECYC 2012: Plenary Sessions

Messenger Without a Message

1h

How to Pray for One Hour!

49m

Plenaries with Norman McNulty

The Mystery of God Finished

48m

Sound Doctrine