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HopeLives365

2nd Quarter Sabbath School 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

Mark Finley

01 Jesus Wins- Satan Loses

02 A Moment of Destiny

03 The Everlasting Gospel

04 Fear God and Give Glory to Him

05 The Good News of the Judgment

06 The Hour of His Judgment

07 Worshiping the Creator

08 The Sabbath and the End

09 A City Called Confusion

10 Satan’s Final Deceptions

11 The Seal of God and Mark of the Beast: Part 1

12 The Seal of God and Mark of the Beast: Part 2

Welcome back to our Sabbath school lesson this quarter.

The quarter is speeding by and the title of our lesson is Satan's Final Deceptions.

I well remember that morning in Chicago waking up to the news reports that deaths had occurred after taking cyanide-laced capsules that were designed to reduce fever.

These Tylenol capsules had been tampered with.

And people took them in all good conscience, thinking that it would reduce fever, thinking that they could get well if they took the Tylenol capsules, and they ended up dying.

What had happened, we still don't finally know till this day who did it, why they did it.

The people who took the Tylenol were unsuspecting.

They thought that they were taking a pill that was going to help them, but somebody had tampered with it.

You know, the Bible says in Proverbs 14, verse 12, there is a way that seems right to the man or the woman, but the end is the way of death.

It is possible that somebody has poisoned the well, the water springs of life.

It's possible that somebody is tampered with the divine truths of God, changing those truths, and that Satan has a final deception.

They can attempt to change those truths, but truth is eternal.

The Bible says in Isaiah 40 verse 8, the flower fades.

Scripture tells us that the word of God is solid.

Verse 7, Isaiah 40, verse 7 will give us the introduction, the grass withers, the flower feeds, because the breath of the Lord blows upon it.

Surely the people are grass, the grass withers, the flower feeds, but the word of God stands forever.

There's an eternal permanence in God's word.

But Babylon, false religion that we've been studying about last week, passes around her wine cup of false doctrine to intoxicate people in error.

Now, We noted last week that Babylon represented false religion.

It represented apostasy, represented drifting away from the true God.

And as we studied last week, Babylon is a man-made religion based on human works and attempts to appease God with human righteousness, rather than accepting Christ and Jesus Christ in His matchless charms and His wonderful love as our sole source of righteousness.

See, there's nothing that you and I can do to save ourselves.

His love and grace grants to us power, changes our lives.

We also noticed last week that Babylon was the center of idolatry.

It was the center of the worship of idols.

Images flooded into the Christian church.

And we see this happen in the early centuries in the Roman church in an attempt to appease the pagans who were already worshiping images, the church often renamed those images after the saints.

And as the pagans came into the church, half converted or not converted at all, they brought in it, with them in it, their pagan practices like image worship.

But today we look at a few other characteristics of ancient Babylon.

1 of those characteristics of ancient Babylon, as I pointed out in the lesson for Monday in the quarterly, was the idea of the immortality of the soul.

Now Satan is going to use spiritualism to deceive multitudes in the last days.

Revelation chapter 16, for example, verse 13 and 14.

1 of the things that I want you to emphasize if you are a teacher in the lesson is the fact that we cannot trust miracles, signs and wonders alone, if they're not in harmony with the word of God.

Merely because there is a sign or wonder worked, does not verify that as the truth of God's, as true.

Not at all, Because the devil can work miracles.

The only miracles we want to accept are those that are in harmony with the Word of God and are leading us back to the Word, back to obedience and faithfulness to the word.

Look, Revelation 16, verse 13, puts it this way.

It says, they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world to lead them to the battle of that great day of Armageddon.

We see the same thing in Revelation chapter 18.

And we look at Revelation 18 and we're looking down there at verse 23.

And the light of the lamp shall not shine in you anymore.

David said in Psalms 119 verse 105, thy word is a what?

Lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

So when it talks about the light of the lamp, it's talking about the light of God's word.

And the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall not be heard in you anymore.

For your merchants were the great men of the earth.

For by your sorcery, all nations were deceived." By your what?

Remember in the Garden of Eden, Eve was tempted by Satan and He said to her, you shall not surely die.

She said to the serpent, if I take the fruit, God said you'll surely die.

Satan told the first lie and he said, you shall not surely die.

In other words, you have natural immortality.

The idea of the immortal soul comes through Greek philosophy.

It comes through Socrates and Plato and the idea was that the Soul could leave the body at death and that the soul could be freed from the prison of the body.

In 1800 places, the Bible, in the King James Version, talks about the word soul or its equivalent.

In fact, the Bible says, 1 Timothy 6, verse 16, says only God has immortality.

So the devil tries to deceive us through masquerading as dead loved ones, and he tries to deceive us as through false miracles, through spiritualism, through things like the Ouija board, through things like apparitions, fortune tellers.

And have you noticed the large amount of Hollywood productions that have some kind of spiritualistic theme, the large amount of YouTube videos that have a spiritualistic theme or books that have a spiritualistic theme or TV productions.

Babylon, false religion that does not understand, Ecclesiastes 9.5, the dead know not anything.

The living know that they shall die, but the dead don't know anything.

Here, very clearly in Scripture, the Bible points out that death is but a sleep.

53 times, John 11, Jesus said, our friend Lazarus, who had died, is sleeping.

So then his disciples didn't understand, and Jesus clearly said, Lazarus is dead.

Death is a rest until Christ returns, and as he does, the dead in Christ rise first.

1 Thessalonians 4, verse 16 and 17 says, the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout with the voice of the Archangel and The dead in Christ shall rise first and we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

If the dead went immediately to heaven, why would you need this glorious resurrection?

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Series

2nd Quarter Sabbath School 2023: Three Cosmic Messages

10 Satan’s Final Deceptions

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Plenary

Will We Believe?

43m

The Real Truth about the Coming Tribulation

28m

Living in Sin

1h 3m

Jesus and the Bible, and Traditions

48m

A Sure Foundation

31m

Summary and Conclusion

39m

iShare 2013 Seminar: Sharing in the Spirit

Living By the Spirit

49m

God is Love?

19-The Mark of the Beast

1h

How to Experience Peace During the Final Storm - Part 3

1h 4m

The Cross & The Great Controversy

Redemption and Conflict

35m

Last Day Events

Mainstream Spiritualism

1h 1m

Risk and Redemption

Risk and Redemption: The Last Word

44m

Sound Doctrine