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Village SDA Church

Michael Kusarawana

Packing Orders: Revelation 11

Our dear Heavenly Father, we come before your throne at this moment, we thank you for the Sabbath, and we thank you for your word.

You have never left us alone in these last days and you keep on giving us encouragement.

And Lord, as we open your word, we pray that your holy presence will be among us so that we learn, retain, and apply this knowledge in our lives.

The message for this morning is titled, Packing Orders.

Each time God's church is faced with a crisis, or each time God's church transitions into another period of time, God gives orders.

And if you look into the Bible and if you go back to the times of Noah, when God saw that the wickedness of the sons and daughters of men had gone up to the fullness of his wrath or the cup of his wrath, he told Noah that go and prepare an ark and he gave him specific instructions.

And also in the times of the children of Israel, when they were coming out of the land of Egypt, God gave them specific instructions.

God brought the plagues that plagued the nation of Egypt, but to his people he told them exactly what they needed to do and what they were supposed to do.

And also, in the times of Sodom and Gomorrah, God gave to Lot the instructions that night when the people of Sodom came wanting to take the angels and wanting to abuse them, Lot was given specific instructions of going out of Sodom and going to a different place where God was going to shelter him.

So God still does the same thing to his church in these last days.

Praise the Lord that God has never left us alone.

And praise the Lord, the book of Amos tells us in Amos chapter 5, verse 7, it says, "'Surely the Lord will do nothing, "'but he revealeth his secrets unto his servants, "'the prophets.'" So God wants us to know what exactly to do in the last times, in the last days, or in this time that we live in.

When I think of these last days and the things that God has given us.

I think of the verse that is in 1 Chronicles, let us turn our Bibles to 1 Chronicles 12, verse 32.

It says here, the Bible says, I'm reading from the King James Bible.

It says, and of the children of Isaac, which were men that had understanding of times to know what Israel ought to do, the heads of them were 200, and all their brethren were at their command.

So we are being introduced to a group of people who were such a small group of people in the nation of Israel.

There are 2 things that drew my attention to this small group.

Not only that, they had an understanding of what Israel ought to do.

So in our understanding of Bible prophecy, in our understanding of what God wants us to do, we are not supposed just to live by interpreting the prophecies and we do nothing.

We should combine both of these things to know the times and to know exactly what Israel ought to do.

So the pen of inspiration in the book, Last Day Events, page 95, paragraph 2 and paragraph 3 and paragraph 4, the Sermon of God says, out of the cities is my message at this time.

Be assured that the call is for all people to locate miles away from the large cities.

1 look at San Francisco as it is today would speak to your intelligent minds, showing you the necessity of getting out of the cities.

Of course, she was writing late 1800s and early 1900s, looking at San Francisco.

At that time, she was convinced that the cities are going down and the people of God should come out.

If she was living in this day and age, she would proclaim with a loud voice that like never before, you people should see what is happening.

She goes on to say in paragraph 3, the Lord calls for his people to locate away from the cities, for in such an hour as ye think not, fire and brimstone will be rained from heaven upon these cities.

Proportionate to their sins will be their visitation.

When 1 city is destroyed, Let not our people regard this matter as a light affair and think that they may in favorable opportunity, if favorable opportunity offers, build themselves homes in that same destroyed city.

She concludes by saying, let all who would understand the meaning of these things read the 11th chapter of Revelation and read every verse and learn the things that are yet to take place in the cities.

Read also the scenes portrayed in the 18th chapter of the same book.

So we're just going to follow the counsel that was given to us by Plano for Inspiration.

We are going to spend most of our time in the book of Revelation, but to be specific, in the 11th chapter.

Why are we going to spend our time in the 11th chapter?

Because the prophet of God said these things that happened in the 11th chapter of Revelation, they are going to be repeated.

So before we get into the book of Revelation, let us go to the book of Isaiah, chapter 28, verse 10.

The servant of God says here, For precept must be upon precept, precept must be upon precept, line upon line and line upon line, here a little and there a little.

So the book of Revelation is signified in symbols because the language that is given in the book of Revelation was meant by God to preserve his truth over the period of time the church was going to be in different phases.

So if you go to Revelation chapter 1, you see that God is giving his message about his son Jesus to Jesus, and Jesus gives it to the angel, and the angel signifies, which means to put it into symbols, and the angel gives that signified message to John the prophet of God and John the prophet of God gives it to his, to the church of the living God.

So having said that, having this background, let's open our Bibles to the book of Revelation, chapter 11, hope we'll be able to finish.

But if we don't finish to the portion of this chapter that I want us to study this morning, we should be like the Bereans.

Who went after Paul had spoken, they went and they studied what Paul was saying was according to the scriptures.

So I give you a challenge, whatever we don't finish, let's go and study it again.

So Revelation chapter 11 verse 1 says here, and there was given me a reed like unto a rod, and the angel stood saying, rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar and them that worship therein.

So the students of Bible prophecy or the students of the Bible, those who study the Bible, know that when a chapter starts by the word end and therefore means that there is something that has been said before which it is in continuation of.

So in context we should be able to find what happened in Revelation chapter 10 that The prophet of God, he starts this next chapter with end.

For those who have been studying prophecy, you know that Revelation chapter 10 talks about the great disappointment, how?

It shows the angel, the same angel, by the way, the angel that is being referred to in chapter 10 and in chapter 11 is Jesus himself.

It's not the cherubims or the seraphims or the angels as we know.

10 verse 1 it says, and I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven clothed with a cloud and a rainbow was was upon his head and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as the pillars of fire.

If you know the book of Revelation, you know that this same description is the 1 that he gives in chapter 1 describing Jesus.

And in the same chapter, we find confirmation that is talking about Jesus in verse 3.

It says, and I will give power unto my 2 witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand, 203 score days, clothed in sackcloth.

So the same angel is saying my witnesses.

We're going to talk about witnesses later, but which angel have we been shown in the Bible to have witnesses?

It is only Jesus Christ who has witnesses.

We're going to unpack the witnesses later on.

So the angel who is talking here is Jesus.

And John was shown, He had his foot on the other side of the waters and the other on the land.

And he had a small book which represented the small portion of the book of Daniel which had the 2, 300 days which was sealed.

And Daniel was told, and John was told to go and take that book and eat it.

And what happened when John ate the book?

It was sweet in the mouth and it was bitter in the belly.

I'm reminded of the time that I went to El Salvador last year.

I can imagine John feeling the pain and going down.

When I went to El Salvador last year, I enjoyed it so much, I ate everything that I had never ate before.

I drank the coconut water, I ate papusas, I ate different all kinds of things because I was so excited.

But lo and behold, 1 week after when I came back, I had a bug in my stomach.

It was hard to stand, it was hard to sit, it was hard to lie down.

I was there prostrated on my bed and pain was just in my tummy.

I can imagine John feeling the same thing.

Of course, it is in symbols right there, and he hears this message, Revelation 10, verse 11, and he said unto me, thou must prophesy again before many peoples and nations and tongues.

So the bitterness that was in the belly, it pointed to the great disappointment.

How can you say to someone who is in pain, prophesy again?

And verse 1 in the chapter 11, verse 1, it says, Arise.

It took faith for our pioneers to get up, to remember that the same Jesus who said to the leper, You are cleansed.

The same Jesus who said to the paralytic, get up, rise up.

The same Jesus who said to the man at Bethesda, rise, your faith has made you whole.

The same Jesus who'd give the Church of God power to proclaim the message of God around the world again.

So this is the context that we get into chapter 11.

So Jesus is moving from the holy place going to the most holy place.

So now the sermon of God is told, take what?

Take the reed, which was like unto a, like unto a road.

Cook tells us the word reed that is translated, the word that is translated reed is kana, which in Greek means the canon, or where we find the word canon, which is the scripture.

So he's told, he's directed to the scriptures, So that those who are going to move with Jesus from the holy place to the most holy place are going to be grounded in the word of God.

But at the same time, to be more specific, this is referring to the laws and to the commandments of God.

So the principles of studying the Bible, if you wanna understand a verse, you go to the chapter, the immediate context of the chapter.

If you still have something that you want to understand, you zoom out a little bit more.

You look at the chapters that surround it, and you zoom more to the books that are in the Bible.

And praise God, he allowed us to zoom out more and understand it from the spirit of prophecy.

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Packing Orders: Revelation 11

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