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Stateline Ardmore Seventh-day Adventist Church

Eric Walsh

What Will You Do at Midnight?

Let's start with in the book of John, just reading this scripture and then we're gonna go to the book of Acts for the majority of the message.

John chapter 9 verse 4 says, Jesus speaking, I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day.

Our message this Sabbath is entitled, What Will You Do at Midnight?

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your Word.

We thank you for this opportunity to worship together, Lord.

But Lord, as I ask once again that you just make me a nail on the wall, and upon that nail, Lord, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Lord, there's no reason for me to be seen or heard.

We need a word from the throne room of grace.

It's our prayer in Jesus's precious and holy name.

So if you have your Bible, turn with me to the book of Acts, the 16th chapter.

I'm going to go through 1 of my favorite stories from this book and apply it to end-time prophecy.

The story actually is a story that, if applied properly, helps to prepare us for what is coming upon the earth.

The Bible says, And it came to pass, this is after they just left Thyatira, And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her master's much gain by soothsaying.

The same followed Paul and us and cried saying, these men are the servants of the most high God, which show unto us the way of salvation.

The story starts after Lydia is introduced into the scripture.

There in Thyatira, if you read further back into the chapter, Paul and his friends and his co-workers had been refused the right to preach the gospel in certain places.

They moved to this place, and as they are about to go to prayer, a young girl begins to follow them.

The Bible makes it clear up front that she is possessed with a spirit.

A demon possesses her, and this demon that you see here, it says, has a spirit of divination.

What this means is that the spirit was used so that they could try and tell the future.

So people would pay money, come to her, and she would tell them what's going to happen.

This is, some think it's a parlor trick, but obviously if the demons get involved, the devil can make things, can predict something to happen and then make it happen.

She brought her masters much gain by soothsaying and so she was really being, the modern word we would use in a sense, is she was being trafficked.

She was being used to make men money and the Bible doesn't say but I'd have to believe she was not in the best condition because of what was going on.

She follows Paul and this is where the story gets interesting.

She follows Paul and Silas and cried saying, these men are the servants of the Most High God which show unto us the way of salvation.

So after they were not allowed to preach in certain places, they come to this place and a young girl is following them around.

Everyone in the town knows how she got her power and what it's used for and she is speaking truth.

Oh you can't miss this part of it She's actually speaking truth.

She's actually saying words that are applicable.

She's saying things that are true They show unto us the way of salvation, but it's a demon speaking Let me tell you something these last days there is going to be a bizarre, unique blending of spiritualism, speaking words of truth at times, but the purpose is not to lead folk to Christ it is to lead them to deception this is why you can't just take what everyone says why Jesus warns that in the land in Matthew chapter 24 there'll be false prophets false Christ Do you think the false prophets and the false Christ are gonna be so far away from God that they cannot do what Jesus warns?

But Paul being grieved turned and said to the Spirit I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ come out of her And he came out what same our pause.

There's a Paul was patient He tried to see if this thing would stop Finally Paul turns Speaks to the demon it says get out of the child.

The Spirit of Prophecy tells us that the reason he was grieved here is he did not want a demonic spirit or someone and the spirit that everyone in that town knew was working on this girl to be an authenticator of his ministry.

You know and 1 of the problems in the last days is folk will take anything to authenticate their ministry and because of that our demons are allowed to blend with the voice that should be purely biblical truth.

And a real careful thing here is, 1 of the warnings from this story, we must be careful who we mimic.

The purpose of Christianity is not crowds, it is character.

This summer at 2 different camp meetings, there was a big hubbub.

I know you guys talk a lot of good present truth here.

Where at our Adventist camp meetings, someone was speaking in tongues.

Let me submit to you that the spirit that causes that is the spirit that spoke through this girl.

You've got to be careful who you mimic and what has happened.

Let me just be plain because I saw it at another camp meeting this summer.

Someone was explaining this formula for growing your church, but how many touches the person gets in the parking lot, and how many touches they get when they come in here, and all the ways that you can guarantee, and what they were missing was doctrine and the Holy Spirit.

If you can create a formula to grow your church that is devoid of the Holy Spirit and devoid of doctrine, you can fill your church with unconverted folk.

We want to go to Rick Warren's church in Orange County, California, or we want to go to 1 of the mega churches in Texas, and we want to copy what they do and build our church in the same way.

We have not been called to create the biggest churches possible.

We have been called to create the purest churches possible the danger of this is then you the music that seeps into the church becomes music that is often overly repetitive I call them 7-11 songs 7 words 11 times We don't realize that if you go back to the Second Vatican Council, this was literally what the Catholic Church said, if we are going to paralyze the Protestant denominations, 1 of the ways that we will do it is to change the way they worship, the music they play in their churches.

Did you know most of the praise and worship songs sung in Adventist churches today and in Christendom in general come from only 4 sources.

Hillsong, Elevate, Bethel, and there's 1 more.

And so you can have the right words being sung from the wrong spirit.

Because the purpose isn't character development, it's entertainment.

Talk more about that later maybe, but Acts 16 verse 19, And when our masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they got mad.

You mess with people's money, they get upset.

They caught Paul and Silas and drew them into the marketplace under the rulers and brought them to the magistrates saying these men being Jews do exceedingly trouble our city why are they troubling their city verse 21 tells you they teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive neither to observe being Romans.

First it start because they felt that their money was being messed with but then they get to a deeper, the real issue at hand and that is it's not lawful.

This is religious freedom that is being affected now.

The law of the land says the gospel cannot be preached.

It's not lawful for us to observe this stuff they're talking because we're Romans.

Verse 22, and the multitude rose up together against them, and the magistrates rent off their clothes.

They ripped off their clothes and commanded to beat them.

Verse 23, and when they laid many stripes upon them they cast them into prison charging the jailer to keep them safely so they took them they ripped them in off their clothes in front of a crowd and in front of everyone Paul and Silas were beaten to a pulp The Bible says they laid many stripes upon them.

In the middle of the town, all the city watching.

They were being beaten for preaching the gospel and setting a child free.

Verse 24, who having received such a charge, the jailer thrust them into the inner prison and made their feet fast in the stock.

He took them and put them in the inner prison.

What that means is that in order to break out of that room, you'd have to break out of that room and you'd still only wind up in another cell.

You'd have to break out of that room, then break out of another room to break out, and then break out of the prison.

So they put them in what was the darkest, most smelly, probably least clean, where the most hardened criminals normally went, where food did not go in, where vermin lived, right in the middle of the prison.

They put them in and they put their feet fast in the stocks and they were imprisoned for the gospel and you can see as their feet are in, that is how they made sure that they couldn't run and couldn't take off.

I wanna submit to you that after we've now had 2 political conventions, Republican and Democrat, They've only shown us, in my opinion, we are closer to a time when persecution could happen.

When I think of politicians, this is a cartoon I think of.

The wolf speaking to the sheep says, once elected, I will be vegetarian.

And we have a real problem in the church where Adventists are beginning to think that 1 party or the other is a solution to the world's problems.

Let me submit to you that you can—you may like the policies of 1 or you may like a lot of things, but let me tell you something.

If you think you can vote someone into office that will turn the tide of what's happening in this world, you're sadly mistaken.

And from the pulpits of our churches, There are some who are going in front and actually advocating for 1 or the other.

1 of my friends was so happy that 1 of the candidates suddenly burst onto the scene.

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What Will You Do at Midnight?

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