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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Alistair Huong

The Wise Shall Understand

It is interesting if I recall correctly most of the sermons I give at Avanhope happen to be on the Christmas weekend.

If you look at the audio verse, I think that will bear that out to be the case.

I am a native of Loma Linda, at least I once was.

I bring greetings from Southern Adventist University where I'm currently studying in the Graduate School of Business, getting a degree in Church Administration.

But More interesting than that, I think, in my humble opinion, I'm also involved with a ministry called AudioVerse, which I mentioned a little bit before, which I hope is no stranger.

AudioVerse, hopefully, is not strange to any of us here.

But as just sort of a habit, I always put a little commercial, a little plug in for AudioVerse.

The year is coming to an end, and I think if all goes according to our projections, 2011 will be our record-setting year for number of downloads on our website, which will be just over 2.5 million downloads in the last 12 months.

And the United States of America is responsible for the lion's share of the downloads on our website, but any guesses what the second country is?

The second most or the second country that visits our website the most?

I must have given it away, but that's right And that's very exciting to us that China is number 2.

And we've had a lot of developments this past year.

The primary 1 was we have installed hardware servers in different continents around the world.

And because our previous server was right here in LA, and so when the big 1 hits and our server ends up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Audioverse will continue, Lord willing, with our Switzerland server, our Korea server, Atlanta server, and so on.

So the Lord has been good to us, but we have a lot of big ideas, a lot of plans, and we continue to pray that the Lord will sustain us into the future and that this ministry will continue to reach many more people.

And I don't want to spend all my time talking about Audioverse, but just 1 story.

It was earlier in the year, we got an email from a gentleman, a German gentleman who moved to the northern territories of Canada to minister to the Inuit people, Eskimos.

And he somehow, I haven't been able to get back in contact with him, somehow he was able to build a little shelter, generate electricity, somehow he has access to internet, and he downloads sermons from Audioverse on the little flash drives, and he goes and he plays them for the Eskimos.

And according to him, they are much appreciative, and they're blessed by the messages.

And so it's amazing what the Lord can do with a little technology and a little tenacity of his people.

Today our message is only remotely, very remotely, related to Christmas, as you will see.

I'm not in the habit of producing Christmas sermons because I can only preach them once a year.

But the message is entitled, The Wise Shall Understand.

And we're gonna be doing a little Bible study together beginning in the book of Daniel and then through other places in Scripture.

But before we get into our Bible study, I invite you just to bow your heads right where you are as we begin with prayer.

Father, this morning as we open your Word and as we study, we pray for your Holy Spirit to guide us, that our minds might be freed from the clutter, the distractions that we have accumulated through the week.

And perhaps, Lord, this message, this Bible study, may have some nugget of truth that someone here needs.

And so we pray that you may accomplish that task in spite of the earthen vessel they have chosen to be your messenger today.

So may Christ be glorified and may He be here with us now as we open your word we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Turn your Bibles with me to Daniel chapter 12 as we begin our Bible study entitled the wise shall understand.

Daniel chapter 12 the wise shall understand And we will begin reading in verse 9.

If you are there, let me hear you say Amen.

Verse 9, Daniel 12 says, And he said, Go thy way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.

Verse 10, many shall be purified and made white and tried, but the wicked shall do wickedly and none of the wicked shall understand, but what?

So you see directly where we lifted the title of our message.

So let's go back through these 2 verses and set the stage.

In Daniel chapter 12, verse 9, there's an angel that tells Daniel, go your way, go back to your own business because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end.

And so some words, the writings of Daniel in other words, were closed up and sealed until a specific time, which the angel identifies as the time of the end.

Now, our study today, we're not going to focus on what time that is.

That's a fruitful study for another time, but I want to investigate more closely the group of people that this angel identifies as the ones who will understand.

So there are 2 things that must be in conjunction.

They must come together in order for the closed words, the sealed words to be understood.

Number 1, it must be at or after the time of the end, and you must belong to a certain group of people, right?

Verse 10 tells us that the wicked shall do wickedly and none of the wicked shall understand.

So we know that the wicked don't understand, but we know that the wise understand.

So the wise who live at or after the time of the end will understand this, the words that have been closed up and sealed.

So what specifically are we talking about when we say the closed or the sealed up words?

We're talking about the Book of Daniel, of course, But is it the whole book of Daniel?

I mean, the time of the end, suffice it to say, it's at the end of time, near the end of time.

The time of the end, let's just say it's recently, I'll just, without giving away too much.

So does that mean that up until recent history, none of the book of Daniel could be opened to be understood?

Does that mean that there was some supernatural force that kept these pages glued shut in the Bible?

Like the people flip through the Bible, but all of a sudden the 12 chapters of Daniel just, you can't pry them open?

We can read the words, but we can't understand.

But was the whole book of Daniel closed up for all these centuries since the Prophet wrote the words?

I mean like can you imagine little children in the you know in the early Christian Church reading about Daniel in the lion's den and they're just scratching their heads saying, I just don't understand.

Obviously, there's something more to this, right?

As we try right now, this is still the introduction, as we try to figure out what it means, the words are closed up and sealed.

The Bible says, And the vision of the evening and the morning which was told is true.

Wherefore shut thou up the vision, for it shall be for many days.

So there's something specific that was sealed or shut or closed in the book of Daniel.

And according to Daniel 8 verse 26, it is the vision of the evening and the morning.

Now that doesn't help us very much, does it?

What is the vision of the evening and the morning?

Daniel chapter 8 and verse 14, what does it say?

And he said unto me, unto 2003 hundred days, but if you have a marginal reading, what is the word?

And so in other words unto 2, 300 evening and mornings then shall the sanctuary be cleansed so let's walk backwards now Daniel chapter 8 verse 14 the 2300 days 2300 evening and mornings the cleansing of the sanctuary that vision was closed was sealed was shut up until the time of the end.

And the only people that will understand the 2300 days, 2300 evening mornings, cleansing of the sanctuary, etc., etc., are those who are called the wise.

Daniel chapter 8 verse 14, and actually everything we've gone through so far, I sure hope is not new information for us.

I hope that was just a review of things that we've already heard and learned.

Daniel 8 14, let me just throw a couple of things out here just so we're on the same page.

Daniel 8 verse 14 is a very fundamental verse for the Advent movement.

It's talking about the cleansing of the sanctuary which is another way of talking about the Day of Atonement.

So we're talking about an anti-typical day of atonement at the time of the end or at the end of time, which is also known as the investigative judgment, also called the pre-advent judgment.

I hope all these things sort of gel in our minds because when we say Daniel 8 14, we're talking about all of those things.

And that means all of those things cannot be understood by any other group except those that the Bible call wise.

Here I'll interject a little bit of Christmas trivia for you.

The Wise Shall Understand

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