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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Carlis Clinton

Woke

You know, as always, as a pastor, you debate what to share and what not to share.

And so we kind of started out last night, I said I wanted to come in like a lion or like a lamb, and I came in like a lamb last night, at least according to my standards.

And so I'm not going to go out too hard, I hope, this evening.

But I've debated and I finally decided there's a message, because most of you, a lot of you as young people here, sometimes we don't know exactly how we arrived.

And sometimes as a pastor, I want us to see how we arrived where we are to know how to go forward from that place in preparing for the future and so the message this afternoon woke as you can see is designed to do that we're gonna look at Matthew chapter 25 the parable of the 10 virgins, but you've probably heard this term, woke, very familiar with it probably.

You're in California, the wokest state in the Union, right?

I mean, But if you haven't, woke is a word that refers to having like an awareness of social and or racial or justice issues.

But while not completely discounting all of those things, my goal this afternoon is not going to revolve around those things.

So if I'm not using the term in the sense that we hear it so much today, it's because you think, well why would you use it at all?

Well I want to use WOKE as the title for the message this afternoon because I want to convey a sense of awareness.

Now again we're going to be talking about the Second Coming I'm going to impress that I mean that's what we are we're seven-day Adventists and I've kind of made that a lot of a focus this weekend but in that mind I kind of want to make a transition.

And so this is kind of a sermon before the sermon, so to speak, and what I want to do is I want to introduce this message in a different way.

And so, and then we'll come back and we'll go through Matthew chapter 25 but whether a lot of people or everyone would agree or not that the United States was founded as a Christian nation I think that most everyone would agree that the principles on which we were founded as a nation were more often in harmony with Bible teachings than not.

And so this gave people, particularly Christians who came and wanted to found this nation as a place of religious freedom, So it gave them a sense of security.

It gave us a sense that we have a foundation on which we can live our lives.

We could build our future in this country.

And so I want to touch on a few things of historical significance in the last 100 years that have altered, minimized, or eradicated the biblical foundation on which we were founded as a nation.

Now there are a lot of other things that I could perhaps touch on but I just want to I've narrowed it down to as small a list as I possibly could.

But anyway, in 1925, and we'll go back to 1925, we had the Scopes monkey trial.

You've probably heard of that, where a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, his name was John Thomas Scopes, He began to, he was taken to court because he was began to teach evolution in a public high school.

And at the time, Scopes, he lost the trial.

He lost, he was even fined $100 at that time.

But, the battle between creation and evolution in the public arena was established from that point on and now here we are almost a hundred years later and evolution is the model that's taught in the public schools today.

Franklin Roosevelt was the president at the time.

He instituted the welfare system with good intentions, right?

Good intentions, I'm sure, and there are some benefits to it but what it did was it institutionalized a system that rewards getting something for nothing and in return it inadvertently strikes a blow at the self-worth of those that receive it now it not only hamstrung if you would the recipients of that those benefits but it's taken away the personal responsibility of us as God's people of taking care of our neighbors and our family members and those that hurt around us and and so we end up with all those of us who pay into the system but we've never received and so there's a bit of you know we're not real happy about some of that and so now 85 years later after this 20% of the United States citizens are on some form of welfare come down another 10 11 years in 1946 you might have heard of dr.

Benjamin Spock he published a hugely successful book on raising children that went against the biblical teachings on child rearing and to a major degree it kind of altered the landscape of being a parent and the relationship between parents and children and today the government has more say over our children than we would have ever dreamed they have the ability to say skip down to the 60s now we had the sexual revolution and the outcome of which you know we could get into a lot of that, has devalued the biblical institution of marriage itself, making sex before marriage acceptable and making marriage itself an option.

Around the time of the sexual revolution, we also had this time of tumultuous social upheaval but by and large you know Bible believing Christians still had a sense of security in spite of the societal upheaval and the changes that were taking place.

While we might or those Christians at that time might have objected to a lot of what was happening, they could still feel safe in their neighborhoods, in their homes, and in their churches.

Of course, they should have been smart enough to know that once you give the devil an inch, he's going to take a mile.

And it may take him a while, but he will exact his ways if we are not carefully guarding against those things.

And so anyway, around this time again, hallucinogenic drugs became popular with psychedelic rock was introduced at that time which was largely inspired by those drugs and this psychedelic rock would begin to transform the entire music industry and the music platform and how we did music and what music did to us and for us and then we come to the 70s we had Roe versus Wade and there is when abortion was legalized and so the more the biblical moral grip that was loosened even more and we as a country continued in this precipitous slip into biblical anarchism and now with the government's approval of pardon my plainness the murder of unborn children and the teaching of evolution devaluing mankind completely free sexual expression embraced biblical morals and instruction lost more and more of its restraining and protecting influence on the society of America.

You know music as we referred to many goes always had a very influential part in our world and so the devil he knows the power of music and entertainment so he orchestrated these great changes in our music in the 60s music begin to lower its standards and and as the music began to leave off virtue we began to shake and rattle and roll our morality off along with it.

In the 80s, society gave birth to what was referred to as identity politics.

Now let me let Wikipedia define what that means in case you're not sure.

Identity politics is a term that describes a political approach wherein people of a particular religion, race, social background, class, or other identifying factor form exclusive socio-political alliances and follow political movements that share a particular identifying quality with them.

In other words, our politics begin to become more self-centered rather than society-focused.

And So we begin to put the emphasis on what's best for me and what's best for those who are like me rather than what's best for society as a whole.

And so in this broad sweeping spirit of open mindedness, we begin to relax the standards in a lot of areas thinking that relaxing our standards a little bit here and there is going to bring some goodwill, it's going to bring some peace into our society.

And then Satan, through Hollywood, began to take more and more control and have a significant influence in our lives until Hollywood became to a large degree the driving mechanism of the social mores of our society.

Now Christians are taking note of all these things.

He finally began to come awake to what's happening and taking place but it was too late and the devil he had control the entertainment industry in Hollywood and he had strongly anchored their role of Hollywood and the entertainment industry as the biggest influencer of society and it still is today and so this ungodly influence took a larger role in how our country operates as more and more of our leaders who are now under the influence of a society that he rejected biblically our biblical morality and godly virtue they began to take the lead these new leaders under this new way of thinking in our local state and federal roles and so that's where the leadership is now And so we end up with these leaders who are bereft of a biblical foundation.

They begin to affect the inner working of our government, its laws, and its understanding of governing a free country.

Bible-believing Christians Thought it was quite unnerving when laws begin to support marriage between people of the same sex The believers cringed and we begin to voice their moral Woes against this but it was almost to no effect and they began to be as you understand now today They begin to be low label as homophobic and fundamentalist and so those folks who were opposing this, these Christian to going by what the Bible says were opposed to these things, they began to get quiet and their voices were more and more subdued.

And all too late it seemed, they began to raise their moral objections, but now it was to a world, these objections were being voiced to a world that had cast off biblical and moral foundations, a world that had been reeducated by dr.

Benjamin Spock and by Roe versus Wade and the scopes monkey trial and by Hollywood's immoral and ungodly influence And so now society has taken another step down the slope of biblical rejection by not only sanctioning people to choose what gender they will marry, but now people can choose what gender they claim to be.

Doesn't matter what your God-given biological traits might indicate.

We can now choose not just to be just the opposite of your birth gender, but you can choose a host of other options now I've heard there's over a hundred genders that you can now choose from and all the while Satan is masking his master plan under a garb of acceptance and open-mindedness Common sense as an arbiter is only a faint quaint memory from the past now.

Freedom of speech and freedom of choice is no more.

You know there was a time in our country when you could openly disagree with someone, and it was okay, we could do that.

And you could still be civil, you could still be friends when the day was over, but that day is past now.

If you disagree with the vocal majority now, you're insulted and you're ostracized.

If you don't march lock and step with a loud and angry crowd you will quite likely lose your job, you'll definitely be harassed and attacked.

And all the while this group who is doing this hypocritically proclaims an open-mindedness that is alarmingly closed-minded.

1 of my members posted here not too long ago on Facebook this little picture.

He said, you're entitled to your opinion but you're not entitled to tell me what mine is and I thought it was funny but at the same time it addresses a reality that addresses reality the masses proclaim loudly that we should be accepting of others while at the same time taking to court and taking to task anyone that does not fall in line with their agenda.

There was a time under which the biblical undergirding of our Constitution coupled with the self-imposed moral restraints of believers it made this country safe but that time of safety is no more it's a thing of the past now so now Here we are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that has so drastically upset the functioning of our society that in all likelihood we will never recover and be the same as before.

Government has stepped in time after time for our good and they did dictated where we can go when we can go it tells us if we can worship and how many can worship and where we can worship it dictates how close we can come to 1 another it tells us which businesses can be open and which ones have to be closed.

I'm not saying that all the things that we have been doing as a country and as a government are wrong and I'm not saying that some of the things that we have been doing are not helpful.

I'm merely pointing out the fact that our government is directing our lives in ways in which would seem preposterous not too long ago.

Absolutely unbelievable not too long ago.

This should open our eyes to what's going on around us.

And our end time spiritual eyes should be opening.

Daniel the prophet said, many shall be purified, made white and refined, but notice the wicked will shall do wickedly, but none of the wicked shall understand but he says the wise will understand it's time for our eyes to be open to brothers and sisters no now I want to speak directly to probably most a I don't know all of where you're from or what your background is, a religious background, but I'm going to be speaking directly for just a moment to my brothers and sisters in the 70 Avenues faith for a moment.

You know, we have been addressing these issues for 180 years or so.

You know, we were sharing Bible prophecy when Bible prophecy wasn't cool right I mean we've been doing Bible prophecy that is our thing and you know based on the teachings of the books of Revelation and Daniel and as we talked about earlier today we've been looking for we've been watching this sequence events that would finally so unsettle our country that the majority of people would be willing to surrender their rights and their freedoms for a sense of peace and Some of the things that we saw in Bible prophecy seem so far, I mean I joined this church in 1992 and some of the stuff is like wow, I don't know, that sounds pretty far-fetched.

And some of those things that we have been preaching for so long seem so far removed from reality at that time, now you don't have to see it with the eye of faith.

All you got to do is open your eyes and look around now.

We can see these things are taking place right now, right where you and I are.

So I say all of this to say Jesus is coming again.

Excuse me for trying to sound hip, but it's time to get woke.

Father, as we spend just a little more time together here this afternoon.

I just want to pray for your Holy Spirit.

I pray as we open your word and look into this story of the 10 virgins that your spirit will speak to us and impress us in the ways that we need to be impressed and we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.

Matthew 24, we're going to start in Matthew 24.

Matthew 24, we'll transition into Matthew chapter 25.

So I want to give you a little bit of context while you're turning there for this passage.

You know, as a people of Bible prophecy, as we know, Matthew 24, as I said this morning, is 1 of our go-to places.

It contains this list that Jesus gives of signs that point to his second coming.

This has been our bread and butter as a church it's been in our our meatless and potatoes right.

This is what we are This is what we are about.

So Jesus was at the Mount of Olives with his disciples.

He knows his time is short on earth at this point.

And when the disciples they point out the beauty if we go back and read through Matthew 24 they point out the beauty and the grandeur of the temple there.

And Jesus says hey that place is going to be completely destroyed not 1 stone is going to be left on 1 another and so when they begin to question him about this he launches into the clearest set of signs of his coming that's found in the Bible and he concludes those signs in verse 31 but he doesn't stop his discussion of this coming and the event surrounding he continues on into the to the end of chapter 25 but I wants to back up here to 24 again and he concluded this list with of signs in verse 31 but then in verse 32 through 35 he tells this parable to this fig tree and he stresses the importance of our watchfulness for his coming in verses 36 through 44 which we read and started the sermon this morning out.

He let his disciples know that nobody knows exactly the day or hour of his coming, but we have to be watching, we have to be ready, we have to be sober, we have to be looking for these things that are coming on the world.

And then to conclude the chapter in verses 45 through 51 Jesus tells of the faithful and the evil servants and about their attitude towards his coming and it's interesting if we were to take the time to read through that that every 1 of them in this in these verses or they're called the servants both the groups that are waiting both groups are waiting for his return they're all servants of the Lord they're waiting for the return of the master and we might could look at this and say okay this is a group of 7 day Adventist Christians.

But look in verse 48 and we'll see the main differentiation between the 2 groups listed there.

Matthew 24, verse 48 says, But if that evil servant says in his heart, my master is delaying his coming and begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with the drunkards.

So the evil servant is distinguished from the faithful 1 only by his attitude towards the return of his master.

He's grown weary of waiting and he's tired of hearing about his return.

He become convinced that he needs to make a change.

And the message brothers and sisters that we have been proclaiming as a church, a Seventh-day Adventist Church, for over a hundred and 70 years is that Jesus is coming again and that coming is soon that is the core of our message that is the heart of the Seventh Day Adventist Church and when we begin to say in our hearts my master is delaying his coming That's when we're stepping on dangerous ground.

Those preachers have been saying this for so long now.

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