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Pasadena Seventh-day Adventist Church

Back to the Mission

Eric Walsh

Tears of the Remnant

We are living in very dark times on many levels.

We have to appreciate the light when we see it.

Not everywhere is dedicated to present truth.

And even the term present truth a lot of times now is given bad connotation.

But it is a directly biblical term, and is also a term found in the spirit of prophecy.

And the reason the term is so important is because at different iterations in history and prophetic history specifically, there are truths that are very relevant for that particular period of time.

I heard someone who I admire greatly say in an online video, maybe we should almost emphasize and maybe not say present truth, but omnipresent truth.

But there is a specificity to what must be preached now.

And unfortunately, as we'll talk about tonight, that's not always happening.

The church, therefore, is in duress in many ways.

And we are called now to stand in a time of incredible challenge.

This means we will be mocked, ridiculed, persecuted, not by the world like I was, but by the church like I also was.

You're going to get it from all angles if you stand for Bible truth.

I'm talking doctrine and character development And the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

So we're at a challenging time because for many people, church has really just become a show.

It's just become an extension of their weekly entertainment.

And so we are called now to really focus on God and what God is doing.

I can see it there, but it's all right if it doesn't come on.

So our scripture reading was taken from Jeremiah 9, verse 1.

In fact, I'll say this tonight, because I'll probably forget to say it tomorrow.

Pastor Gene, who is at the church, the Sunday church, just down from Altadena.

And I appreciate all of you from Altadena that I see out tonight.

But that church is Bible, I forget the name of her church.

And we used to do gang prevention work and stuff with her.

But I remember when I was facing all of those challenges in Pasadena, she quoted from Jeremiah chapter 1, and she said, listen, what you're about to go through is gonna be difficult.

But she said, this is where she quoted Jeremiah 1, she said, but do not be afraid of their faces.

The book of Jeremiah is a treasure trove of powerful and relevant scripture for today.

Jeremiah 9, 1, our scripture reading for tonight is 1 of those texts.

It says, Oh, that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people." So our message tonight is entitled, Tears for the Remnant.

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

I thank you Lord for the peace that as the sun sets on Friday evening, the peace that we are privileged to experience on your Holy Sabbath day.

And I am asking that you once again just make me a nail on the wall and hang your portrait upon that nail.

We need him speaking and him helping us to understand this is our prayer in Jesus's precious and holy name.

If You have your Bible, you can go to Luke 19, if not, it will be up on the screen.

This is what is often called now Palm Sunday.

Jesus, in a rare turn of events in his ministry, for the first time, is accepting adulation and praise from the masses.

This, the disciples are besides themselves with joy.

They are ecstatic in what is happening as all of a sudden now the Jesus who was so humble and would not receive any type of attention all of a sudden tells them to go and get the donkey and set things up and the crowds begin to gather and I can imagine Peter and Judas just besides themselves as they see Jesus in this situation at this time in his ministry.

The Bible says in Luke 19 and verse 36, And as he went they spread their clothes in the way.

They began to lay out their clothes before Jesus as he made the slow progression towards Jerusalem.

Verse 37, And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the Mount of Olives the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen.

The disciples begin to shout and praise God.

Look at how the weak are leading into his crucifixion.

They are ecstatic and they are present and near when he is receiving praise but isn't it funny how far they drift away when he is about to be crucified disciples they say blessed be the king that comes in the name of the Lord.

Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.

This is the pinnacle of the bright side of Christ's ministry.

After this it just starts to go downhill in terms of what Christ has to go through.

His disciples are able to confidently proclaim him king and to speak of peace in heaven and glory in the highest the disciples are filled with joy The Spirit of Prophecy tells us that this is a dim image of what it will be like at the second coming.

It's just a veiled look at what will happen at the second coming.

And it represents the fact that Christ is soon to come how many of you believe that Jesus is soon to return in fact mercy let me say it again mercy requires that his return be soon The world is in such a state of as they say in Jamaica sufferation such a hard time for so many people that it is imperative that is Nahum 1 9 says that affliction not rise up a second time.

So before I go back to the story, let me, I like to always give a little prophecy updates.

Let me show you some of what we've been looking at this week and just a couple quick things.

I'm just going to do a couple quick things tonight and maybe a little more tomorrow.

Vance meeting with the pope, really literally less than 24 hours, maybe less than 12 hours, before the pope passes away.

Vance called the meeting with the Pope Francis before his death a great blessing.

Now what's interesting is a lot of Adventists, and I heard a lot of them online say that this pope, based on some numbers that they run on the numbers of popes and the numbers after the pope's names, that this pope would be the last pope and that Jesus would have to come during this Pope's term.

Well, this is why I don't say stuff like that, because then the guy dies and it's all messed up.

So it can't happen the way it was predicted.

And now they'll have a conclave, of course, and pick the next pope, which I believe, prophetically, it may be the first Asian or African pope.

You may see a big switch, which will come with, I believe, this pope was moving the Catholic Church to the left, veering to the left ideologically, and even theologically, just moving away from, in my opinion, Christianity altogether.

But I believe the next 1 will turn back and go the other way.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist in essence, but I don't think it's coincidence that the Catholic Vice President of the United States was there on that day.

What became even more interesting to me is that then At the same time, Donald Trump, our president, made the statement he's bringing religion back as a thousands attend White House Easter egg roll.

And what does that represent for us as Christians?

Well, understand that he also said that he's calling for the Holy Spirit to fall.

Now, a lot of people are very happy because last year at Easter, the Biden administration actually had it as World Trans Day, a transgender day, And a lot of people were upset with that.

So this year, it's much more religious, much more Christian.

I mean, Trump even talked about Jesus has risen.

So a lot of Christians are very thrilled with that.

But what all of this means is that America is moving in the direction, Jesus is soon to come, moving in the direction where the church and the state, the line between the church and the state in this administration is purposefully being blurred.

I spoke at Heartland last weekend in Virginia, and I presented a lot of the evidence on this.

With Paula White and the new office of faith at the White House, it is moving in an interesting direction.

And The world is clamoring for something different.

The Battle Cry of the Remnant

God truly is faithful and he's not just faithful.

His faithfulness is a great faithfulness.

If you come back at 03:00, as we said last night, I'll talk a little bit about my experience here in Pasadena, a different presentation of the testimony, and give some details that I haven't given before since since it's like full circle to be here again I get a little PTSD almost driving around in Pasadena I'll be honest with you So I will talk more about that this afternoon, but let's get into God's Word for this morning.

2nd Timothy chapter 2, our scripture reading, verses 3 and 4.

The Bible says here, thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

No man that warreth entangles himself with the affairs of this life that he may please him who has chosen him to be a soldier.

That he may please him who has chosen him to be a soldier.

Our message this Sabbath is entitled the battle cry of the remnant.

Father God, we come before you this Sabbath here in Pasadena California asking now Lord for an extra outpouring of your Holy Spirit Lord ask in a special way claiming the blood of Jesus that you bind Satan now Bind his angels and Lord remove them from this place.

Lord remove the distractions, keep our cell phones off or away and Lord let us now turn to hear a word from the Lord.

This is our prayer in Jesus's precious and holy name.

So we're gonna go to the Old Testament we're gonna go to the book of Joshua we're gonna go to the sixth chapter Joshua chapter 6 we'll start at verse 1 now as background this is the first big battle for the children of Israel.

The challenge comes because they had failed to go into the...

I just spoke on this recently at a church in Atlanta.

Baal Peor is where Satan used sexual sin to cause the men of Israel to sin and it caused them to then fail to enter into the promised land straight out of Egypt.

Instead, the children of Israel wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years.

That whole generation basically it dies off and the only 2 men who enter into the promised land are the 2 spies who believed that they could take the land in the first place.

In this story Joshua is somewhere around 90 years old and here now they come for their first conquest of the land that God of Israel none went out and none came in they circled the city they had a barricade against it as it were verse 2 or it was under siege I should say and verse 2 and the lord said unto joshua see I have given unto thine hand jericho and the king thereof and the mighty men of valor and you shall come come past the city all ye men of war and go round about the city once this shalt thou do 6 days so the instruction is given to Joshua and the children of Israel circle the city once a day you are to march around the city.

The walls of Jericho were the way most believe, and from what the archaeology shows, and I'm going to put a picture of it, but it wasn't just 1 set of walls.

There was probably a wall at the bottom that was like a containment wall that held the dirt in place.

There would have been a space where people might have even lived and then there would have been another wall.

The walls were high and as wide as 10 feet.

In fact, you could have made the argument from a strategic standpoint that going into Jericho first was probably would have seemed like the craziest thing for God and his people to do but they go in they start marching then they give to get the instruction to march around verse 4 and 7 priests shall bear before the ark 7 trumpets of ram's horns and the seventh day you shall come past the city 7 times the seventh day you go around 7 times and the priest shall blow with the trumpets verse 5 And it shall come to pass that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn and when you hear the sound of the trumpet all the people shall shout with a great shout.

The wall of the city shall fall down flat and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him now the main wall that would have had to be breached is that would have probably been that inner wall a super high inner wall but the Bible says the wall was going to fall flat now verse 12 says this and Joshua rose early in the morning and the priest took up the ark of the Lord they took the ark to go in front of him and 7 priests bearing 7 trumpets of ram's horns before the ark of the Lord went on continually and blew at the trumpets and the armed men went before them but the rare word came after the ark of the Lord the priests going on and blowing with the trumpet so you can imagine as they're going the trumpets are blown the men of war the men the armed men are up front the trumpets are blown again you got to remember what would it have been like to be the people in Jericho looking over the wall?

First they're just marching around in circles, every day once.

And on the seventh day they go more and more and more and then all of a sudden you start hitting all of this racket well not really racket trumpets and horns going off and I'm sure some of them were inside that city laughing at the people of God the second day they come past the city once and return to the camp so they did 6 days and it came to pass on the seventh day that they rose early about the dawning of the day and come past the city after the same manner 7 times only on that day they went around the city 7 times verse 16 and it came to pass at the seventh time when the priest blew with the trumpet Joshua said to the unto the people shout for the Lord has given you the city What a shout that must have been It was the battle cry of the remnant This was just those the generations that remain the original generation did not make it in and here now they get this child chance and they shout and verse 17.

The Bible says and the city shall be accursed even it and all that are therein to the Lord only Rahab the harlot shall live she and all that are with her in the house because she hid the messengers that we sent.

There's a lesson in this part of the story as well.

Verse 18 and you in any wise keep yourselves from the accursing thing accursing lest ye make yourselves accursed when you take of the accursing and make the camp of Israel accursed and trouble it and this happens in the next chapter of Joshua we may not get there today verse 19 but all the silver and gold and vessels of brass and iron are consecrated unto the Lord.

They shall come into the treasury of the Lord.

So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets.

And it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and all the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.

In fact, it was a statement to all those who did not believe.

Now some argue if you read this story that God was cruel but I'm going to show you in the end that in fact there was great mercy in this story and that everyone in Jericho had a chance to be saved.

We are again standing outside of a seemingly walled and impenetrable city We the church of the last day are standing in circumstances.

That seems unlikely and as we talk this weekend about evangelism and our mission, the problem that comes for many in our church is that we have lost focus of what we're here for.

You see the cause that was given to the children of Israel in this story was that they were to go up into the land and possess it.

They were to establish themselves there and then they were supposed to be a nation like no other nation on earth a light in a dark world and because of their faithfulness to God the world would have come to know who Jesus is but they failed in the long run Because they could not stay consistent with the cause church Let me tell you something if at any point your faith in God you start to waver in your relationship to him 1 of the things you have to ask yourself is are you acting on the calling God has for your life?

Or are you so distracted that rather than walk the walls and give the shout, you are too busy admiring all the riches of the people of modern day Jericho.

The people were that's why they took the gold of the medals.

They took it and sanctified it and put it in the treasury of god.

They had everything and let me tell you something.

When you live in this world, sometimes it seems like the world has everything we want but they don't.

In fact, Jesus says it like this, what does it profit a man if he was to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

You hear my sermons, you've heard me talk about they're doing an NFL draft this week.

It always brings back memories to me of my cousin.

1 of the greatest safeties the NFL has ever known, in my opinion, Sean Taylor.

Drafted number 5 overall in the NFL draft, went to the then Washington Redskins, $36 million contract.

Much of our family is still heartbroken, broken over.

When things like the draft come around, I'm reminded of it.

I remember him telling me the year before, the season, the end of the season before, the season where he was murdered, him telling me, you know, the NFL isn't what it's all cracked up to be.

He said, when I'm done with football, I'm coming back to church.

When my cousin, great guy, but when my cousin passed, under those tragic events, $36 million contract meant nothing.

His BMW, when we went to the cemetery to for his burial, his BMW didn't come.

The only thing that he could have brought into eternity with him as he sleeps in that grave that would give him hope is if he went in with a character that had been transformed and what Jericho does what the world does is it makes you think that you're alright if you've got stuff in fact it goes even a step further it makes you think you're you're alright if you're just good at chasing stuff and you don't realize that that that that accumulating things on earth is not the equivalent of developing Christian character We have a city to bring down as well church.

We have a city that we have to bring down as well and this is the battle cry of the of the last day remnant.

In fact, it is given in Revelation chapter 18 and verse 1 it says this and after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven having great power and the earth was lighted with his glory and he cried mightily with a strong voice saying Babylon the great is fallen is fallen and has become the habitation of devils and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

And it says for all for all nations of drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies verse 4 and I heard another voice from heaven saying come out of her my people why?

Because the walls are about to fall because the city is about to be overthrown you better get out because if you're inside the city when this happens, you're in trouble.

Come out of her my people that you be not partakers of her sins and that you receive not of her plagues for her sins have reached unto heaven and God has remembered her iniquities.

It's not a coincidence that Joshua before they're about to destroy the city of Jericho he gives the people of God a staunch warning.

He said listen don't touch their stuff, don't get close to their stuff, do not become enthralled with their stuff you will bring a curse into Israel church if that was the call in ancient Israel as they marched Jericho and took it how much more are we to be careful we are not getting caught up in modern-day Babylon for her sins reached unto heaven God has remembered her iniquities you see this ties into another set of angels with messages.

And the angels represent the messages going forward.

But let me tell you something, we have a role to play in sharing this message.

And again, I think the problem for many is that they have lost sight of the actual purpose why you became a Christian in the first place on the 1 hand it was to get away from your old life to get out of sin You were convicted of what you were doing wrong and you came out but you were not called out of the world To come into the church as a spectator God does not have you here to just sit and watch.

We'll just read the 3 angels messages real quick Revelation 14 6 and I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth and to every nation and kindred and tongue and people that at the base of what we do as Adventists is the spreading of the everlasting gospel.

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Tears of the Remnant

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The Battle Cry of the Remnant

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