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Amazing Facts

Revelation's Final Warning

David Shin

What is the Everlasting Gospel?

Father in heaven, thank you for this beautiful day and this Sabbath, this reminder of creation and redemption.

We pray for the Holy Spirit to guide our thoughts as we reflect on your word.

We pray that the Holy Spirit that inspires, would instruct, would enlighten our minds and speak to our hearts.

For we ask these things in the precious name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Our message this morning is entitled, What is the Everlasting Gospel?

And I want to begin by pointing our attention to a picture of a man by the name of Warren Buffett, 1 of the richest men in the world.

And since the year 2000, Warren Buffett has been auctioning on eBay an opportunity to have lunch with him.

The first auction and the opportunity sold for $25, 000.

And in 2019, they broke the record for the highest bid to have the opportunity to have lunch with Warren Buffett, $4.6 million.

I wish someone would pay me to have lunch.

And they would ask these individuals the question, was it worth it?

And they would always say, yes, Absolutely.

To have a conversation face to face with the greatest mind in the financial world, this encounter, this conversation with Warren Buffett worth every single penny.

This morning I'd like to talk about a conversation, a face-to-face encounter with a being that is smarter than Warren Buffett.

We're told that in the book of Genesis, in the Garden of Eden, that Adam and Eve had the unique opportunity of having a face-to-face encounter with God.

Genesis chapter 3 verse 8, and they heard the Lord God walking in the cool of the day.

Walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

You ever wonder what it would have been like to have a face-to-face encounter with God?

The infinite mind of God with a finite mind of man.

What would you do if Jesus were to walk into this room right now?

What would be your reaction, your emotion, your psychological state?

Going to the bathroom, public bathroom, opened the door.

Opened the door and there he was in the flesh, famous man.

And it was kind of weird because I felt like I knew him.

And I didn't say hi, I just was like, oh, and just walked around him and then told everybody, did you know who I saw at the public restroom when I opened the door?

What is it going to be like when you see Jesus face to face?

Is it going to be like, oh, I know about you?

Or worse yet, are you going to call for the mountains and the rocks to fall on you and hide you from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb?

The face-to-face encounter with God was a beautiful experience and we're told in the book Education, page 21, The Garden of Eden was the schoolroom, university.

And the parents of the human family were the students.

Often as they walked in the garden in the cool of the day, they heard the voice of God and the face-to-face communion with the Eternal.

This was the first university, the greatest professor, the greatest educator humans have ever encountered, and it was in Eden that they had this face-to-face encounter with the infinite mind of God, and praise the Lord, it was free.

She goes on, the book Education, page 15, face to face, heart to heart communion with his maker was his high privilege.

Had he remained loyal to God, all this would have been his forever.

So in Edenic perfection, the relationship with God was face-to-face.

The encounter, the communion with God, dynamic, educational, enriching, enlightening.

There was a story told of a man and a woman, they were married, And the man was always getting a little bit irritated with his wife because she always wanted to talk about their relationship.

Judging by the laughter, maybe you're having this conversation in your marriage as well.

Typical man, he said, why do we need to talk about our relationship?

Isn't it just good enough to be in the relationship?

And it became a irritable source of tension in their marriage.

Our lives changed slowly, then dramatically, 1 conversation at a time.

You can think of instances in your lives when you had a dynamic conversation with someone and it dramatically changed your relationship.

You end the conversation, you end the relationship, and many times we talk about a relationship with God.

Adam and Eve had a relationship with God face to face, communion with the infinite God.

And yet we see that after the fall that dynamic face-to-face encounter was no longer possible.

They were no longer able to be in the presence of the Almighty Shekinah glory that emanated from the presence of God.

They were led outside of the gate, and we see the change in the relationship in the conversation that Moses has with God on Mount Sinai.

And Moses has the audacity to ask God, show me your glory.

In answer to Moses' question, Exodus chapter 33 verse 20, and God said, you cannot see my what?

You cannot see my face, for no 1 may see me and live.

This is only 1 book removed from the book of Genesis.

In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve, able to have that face-to-face communion with God.

And he asked God to show him his glory, and God says, look, you can't see my face.

Not that I don't want to show it to you, but if I show you my face, you can't live." And God, in His mercy, says, look, I'm going to do something for you.

And you read on in Exodus chapter 33, verse 21 through 23, then the Lord said, there is a place near me where you may stand on a rock and when my glory passes by I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by then I will remove my hand and you will see my back but my face must not be seen." God says, look, there's a crack in the rock.

I'm gonna put you in the crack, I'm gonna cover that crack with my hand, and as I walk by, I'm gonna remove my hand, and you can peer out and see my back." You can imagine Moses there, hovering in the cleft of the rock as the glory of God passes by.

Maybe he's closing his eyes because the glory is so transcendent and beautiful.

And then God says, I'm removing my hand now, Moses.

And Moses peers out and looks at the back, not the face, the back of God.

Remember what happened after that encounter with God?

He comes down from the mountain and Moses's face is lit up.

It's lit up so much that the children of Israel said, we can't look at your face.

This is after looking at the back of God.

No longer face-to-face communion with God.

In 1st Samuel, the Ark of the Covenant is taken by the Philistines.

They have some trouble with that dynamic.

They decide to send the Ark of the Covenant back.

They have a bullock that is pulling an ox cart, goes straight to the camp of Israel, a town of Israel called Beshemesh.

And the Ark of the Covenant was always covered and it was taken to Beshemesh and the children of Israel gathered around the Ark of the Covenant and they uncovered the Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark of the Covenant represents the glory of God, the presence of God.

You were never to look at the ark of the covenant.

My Body His Glory

Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the fact that Jesus is coming again.

We thank you for the 3 angels' message, which is to go to all the world to prepare a people to meet you face to face.

We pray that you bless us this afternoon, guide our thoughts, remove any distractions, help us to focus on you, your word.

We ask for the Holy Spirit to guide our thoughts, for we ask these things in the precious name of Jesus.

Our topic this evening, this afternoon, is entitled, My Body, His glory.

I want to read the first angel's message.

Revelation chapter 14 verse 6, and I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven having the everlasting gospel to preach unto those who dwell on the earth, and to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to Him.

We want to focus this afternoon on the phrase, give glory to Him, and this is a reference, scholars believe, to 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 31.

Therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

In summary, we can see that God's end end-time message includes health and temperance.

This is a counter-cultural notion because we live in a culture today, even in Christianity, where you can do anything you want with your body because, after all, we say, it's my body.

In the Christian community, the idea that 1 is saved almost gives license to the idea that you can eat and drink any way that you want to.

Truth be told, The idea of temperance is viewed with raised eyebrows even in our own Christian community of faith and is viewed as being legalistic.

Does temperance have a place in the Christian experience?

So this is our thesis question and obviously it is because the 3 angels message includes health and temperance.

Before we get to the heart of today's message I want to reflect with you for a few moments on why is it that in the Christian community and even in our own community of faith, when you talk about the health message, temperance, diet, there's almost a visceral reaction that individuals have.

Now I am not by any means espousing righteousness by vegetarianism or veganism, but we can see here that temperance and health is a part of the end time message that is to go into all the world.

Why is it that health and temperance are divorced from spirituality among Christians of today?

I'd like to share with you 3 reasons why health and temperance are divorced from spirituality by many Christians, and reason number 1 has to do with this individual, Augustine of Hippo, who lived in the fourth century from 354 to 430 AD, a prominent individual that influenced Protestant and Catholic theology.

And as 1 professor of theology indicated, that 1 of the most critical and crucial mistakes that Augustine did in the very beginning when he was crafting Christian theology, which has to do with God, man, and the world, is that instead of going to the Bible, right here, to an understanding of human nature, he went to philosophy.

Because it was assumed during that day that the Greeks, namely Plato, Aristotle, these brilliant, quote-unquote, philosophers, had a true understanding of ultimate reality and what human nature was.

So, Augustine said, why should I do the work?

Why should I go to the Bible to go to an understanding of human nature if Plato and Aristotle and these great brilliant minds have done the work for me.

So the critical mistake was in the very beginning, that he imported an understanding of human nature that said that the human nature had what we call a body-soul dichotomy.

This got imported into Christian theology and if you remember, Luther was an Augustinian monk, and in his quest to go back to the Bible, he didn't go quite back far enough.

His understanding of righteousness by faith was a moment of enlightenment that brought about the Great Reformation, but the Reformation was to continue, And this critical mistake is pervasive through 99% of Christianity today, Catholics and Protestants alike.

This body-soul dichotomy has huge implications for Christian theology.

In other words, the human nature is comprised of these 2 entities, the soul, which is spiritual, and the body, which is material.

The body really doesn't matter, and that is why the Catholic theologians could harmonize evolutionary thought, macroevolution, and Catholicism.

Pope John Paul II said that Evolution was fine.

Because evolution dealt with the material.

And that is why Catholicism could incorporate evolutionary thought into their theological structure because Catholic theology is all about the soul.

This has implications for what happens when you die.

Our Catholic and Protestant brothers and sisters, if you go to a funeral, they say that they are in heaven.

Well, I'm like, well, they seem like they're right there to me.

This is because of the mistake that Augustine made.

And There is this dichotomy between the material and the spiritual everything is about the soul In other words Spirituality has nothing to do with the material.

And so this sentiment comes into lifestyle.

It doesn't matter what you put on your body.

So when you talk to a brother or sister out there of another faith and you mention this idea of health and temperance, immediately to them They say, ah, ah, ah, that is not what spirituality is about.

What is the biblical understanding of human nature?

If Augustine would have gone to the Bible, he would have seen that Genesis chapter 2 verse 7 says, And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

You don't lift up the hood of a car and say, where's the car?

You don't look at yourself and say, where's my soul?

The breath of life goes back to God and the body returns to dust.

The immortal soul was the tragic mistake in Christian theology, fourth century mistake that has implications all the way to today.

And that is why the first angel's message begins with, fear God, give glory to him.

Through what I eat, drink, or whatever you do.

Because in the end of time, there will be a false theology out there that says you can do whatever you want with your body.

You can put in it whatever you want, put on it whatever you want, you can drink whatever you want.

A soul, according to scripture, is a living person.

I wish I had corrected this slide earlier.

If 99% of the world believes in this when it comes to the theological thinkers of our day, The first angel's message is a clarion call to a true understanding of human nature.

The question is, if there is no soul, if you are a soul, and the body is just as an important part of spirituality, because there is no dichotomy.

The implication is that Christianity, spirituality, includes what you do with your body.

Reason number 1 why health and temperance are divorced from spirituality among Christians today, the body-soul dichotomy.

Salvation is reduced to the courtyard of the sanctuary.

If you were here during our morning presentation, I showed you a slide of a bird's eye view of Moses' tabernacle found in Exodus chapter 25.

This was to be made after the heavenly pattern.

In other words, the sanctuary pre-existed this model.

We indicated that Adam and Eve before the fall were in that face-to-face encounter with God after sin, the entire human race is out here, and the sanctuary is very simple.

Kindergarten, illustration of how God will bring us back.

He brings us here, brings us here, and finally here.

And they shall see his face and the Father's name will be written on their forehead we enter in here Jesus gives us pardon praise God We're delivered from the penalty of sin.

We're delivered from the presence of sin.

If you want to understand evangelical theology, it's a reduction of the gospel to this.

I studied systematic theology in my master's program.

Luther was reacting to legalism and he essentially centered his whole theological structure here.

He actually said in his German translation of the New Testament that the epistle of James was an epistle of straw.

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Revelation's Final Warning

My Body His Glory

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What is the Everlasting Gospel?

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My Body His Glory

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