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Uchee Pines SDA Church

Eric Walsh

The End in Sight

I know it's Friday evening, we have a lot to cover, and I wanna try and tie in prophecy and some aspects of the health message all at once in this talk.

So our scripture reading will come from Matthew 24, in verse 33.

The scripture says, "'So likewise ye, when you shall see all these things, "'know that it is near even at the doors.

"'Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass "'till all these things be fulfilled.'" So our message this Friday evening is entitled The End In Sight.

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

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

Bless us to this end, Lord, by empowering us with your Holy Spirit, is our prayer in Jesus' name, amen.

So, If you go to Matthew chapter 24, and if you've been, this week's Sabbath school lesson actually ties into this.

But Matthew 24 in verse 3 happens after Jesus has really shocked his disciples.

In the previous chapter, he and his disciples were in the temple and Jesus turned over tables for the second and last time in his ministry in the temple.

He leaves the temple and he says, I leave this house unto you desolate.

Those words blew his disciples away because they were trying to crown Jesus King at 1 point even by force.

And for him, the Messiah, to say that the temple would be left desolate was a blow.

When they go out of the temple, they begin to show him the stones of the temple, which were immaculately built.

Historians say that it was so well built, the stones were so well hewn and put together that when you looked at them it looked as if it was just 1 giant piece of stone.

It was an incredible feat of architecture even though it wasn't as glorious as Solomon's temple, it was an amazing edifice.

And Jesus says to them, do you see these stones that you bragging about?

The day comes when not 1 stone will be left on another stone.

This again, what in the world is going on?

He's supposed to come rid us of the Romans and reestablish the basic system that King David and then Solomon had.

So in Matthew 24 in verse 3, it says, and as he sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately saying, tell us, when shall these things be?

And what shall be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world?

They say, wait a minute, if what you're saying is true, Jesus, you got some explaining to do.

When is Jerusalem going to be in such a condition that not 1 stone would be left on another of this magnificent holy building?

And based on what you're saying, when is the world coming to an end?

The questions that the disciples asked that day, your neighbors are asking.

The world is clearly in turmoil, chaos, And it seems the more man tries to make the world make sense, the more man tries to fix the world, the more broken the world becomes.

When the war broke out in Ukraine, now It's really a war in Ukraine and Russia because 1 of the last offensives, the Ukrainian army actually struck deeper into Russia.

When that war broke out, there were people screaming and jumping up and down that they could not believe that war would have ever broken out on the European continent ever again.

The war in the Middle East now has also thrown people into a tailspin.

Here now they realize the fragility of the world.

Let me say that again, the world's fragility.

Donald Trump this week when he spoke to the business leaders in New York actually said something quite profound.

He said that while the world is worrying about the environment as its greatest threat, he said nuclear weapons are still the world's greatest threat.

Now his explanation for that lacked some depth, But the overall statement is 1 that I almost have to agree with.

If the demise of the climate is a slow, steady process, a nuclear war is an instantaneous annihilation of the planet.

So the Pew Research Center, which you will notice in this presidential election, is gonna be quoted a lot.

Pew Research Center is gonna be quoted a lot on a lot of things.

1 of the things they're gonna talk about is how Christianity is on the decline in this country.

They have really good research on this and they're gonna highlight that maybe it's time, because the point they wanna make is maybe it's time, the secular parts of our country wanna say, maybe it's time we stop caring what religion our presidential candidates are.

As you and of course, based on the same data, it is going to drive others to say we need to make America more Christian.

But Pew Research puts out a lot of good stuff.

Adults believe humanity is living in the end times.

40% of people say we're living at the end of time.

And it's not just because of biblical prophecy.

In fact, some of them say it's because of the environment.

In fact, if you go back, I tried to watch Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

It was like, I've never taken Ambien, but I can't imagine it works any better than that.

But he makes all of these predictions about the end of the world, all these climate that by now some of them should have started to come true.

Movies like The Day After Tomorrow in 2012, which came out 10 plus years ago, all predicted that by now things would be much worse.

The point really isn't whether or not the predictions are correct, it's that there is a large segment of the world's population who believe the world is sitting on the edge of a precipice, and at any moment we could all go over.

That creates fear and anxiety, and A lot of what we're treating in our patients is not a physical ailment, it's a spiritual 1.

It is the disease that is the result of not having surety in Christ.

The most important part of the New Start acronym is the final T.

Because I can tell you if you do everything right and can't trust God, sickness is still your lot.

Well, Revelation 12, 12, ''Therefore rejoice ye heavens and ye that dwell in them.

Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea, for the devil is what?

He's come down unto you having great wrath.'' Why is he so angry?

He knows something many of us don't act like we know.

He knows he has just a little bit of time.

Now, remember, Satan was cast out of heaven the first time and cast down to earth the second time.

Jesus says, I saw Satan like lightning fall from heaven.

That was when Michael beat him up and kicked him out.

It wasn't a real physical violence like that, but he booted him, right?

When Jesus died on the cross and came out of the grave, the gateway to heaven for Lucifer and his angels was eternally closed.

At the cross, the devil realized It's almost over.

And starting at the cross, he began to double his efforts to entrap man and destroy him.

And he took many blows to the head initially as you go through the 7 churches.

That initial church, Ephesus, really knocked him upside his head and the gospel went wide around the world.

Let me tell you something, if he was angry at Jesus coming out of the grave, imagine how angry he is now knowing that it can't be much longer.

Because many people ask why we as Adventists do so much focus on prophecy.

And the apostle Peter actually writes it out very nicely.

He first in 2 Peter 1 talks about his experience on the Mount of Transfiguration, that he as was an eyewitness to this transfiguration.

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The End in Sight

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