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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Restoration 2025: Revelation of Healing

Anthony Baca

O1 Revelation’s Lamb

02 By Their Testimony

03 Feed My Sheep

05 Truth or Fairy Tale

04 Case for a Creator

06 Knowing the Time

07 Understanding Faith

08 Revelation’s Lamb Part 2

09 The Mystery of God

10 Your First Love

Father in heaven, thank you for the chance to just share some thoughts with my friends.

I pray that you would just bless our time together and the food which we're eating in Jesus' name, amen.

So my name is Anthony, I'm a fourth year medical student here at Loma Linda University.

I'm originally from San Bernardino, raised in the San Bernardino area right across the 10 freeway.

And I was asked to just share some thoughts on my story, my experience, and some principles that I think would just be beneficial that I wish I knew maybe when I was your age.

Clearly, I'm a non-traditional medical student if you can't tell.

A little bit older, but that's all right.

So we started our first presentation on Monday with a very fundamental question, does God exist?

And for me, this was important because most of my life, I was an atheist.

I didn't believe in spirituality of any way, shape, or form.

I was very materialistic in my understanding, and by materialistic I mean of natural world only.

There is nothing beyond what you can see, feel, touch, etc.

And this is really most of my life into adulthood, this is how I believed and what I thought.

And I shared some ideas on this concept of faith, 1 of my least favorite words, which we'll be talking more about this evening, this idea that most people that I would debate when I was a younger person, I would debate people over their faith and over Christianity and over different religions.

The main premise that I would come at them with is this idea that most people simply believe because that's what they were told to believe.

And that's what most of us believe, what we're born into or what we're told to believe.

And for Christians, I genuinely believe that Christians only believe what they believe because their families told them or because their book said that you had to believe.

And 1 day, through a series of unique events, I eventually found this Bible verse, and we talked about this on Monday, where God says, come now and let us reason together.

That the God of the Bible specifically presents itself in the Bible as 1 who actually wants to reason together, 1 who wants to think things through, 1 who wants to challenge thoughts and then give tangible evidence for those thoughts.

And for me, this was unique, because no 1 ever told me this until I met a very unique person who said, oh yeah, no, you should never believe because you're told to believe.

He said, yeah, you should never believe because that's what your family believes.

You should never believe because you were born in a Western culture.

I was like, well, why didn't you believe?

He says, oh, I believe because I came and reasoned together and he showed me this verse.

He said, what if there was ways in which you could reason out and logically deduce what is the right answer?

And I shared with you 5 principles, there's many more, but I shared with you 5 principles in science and philosophy that led me to be open to the idea that there might be something more than what I can see, feel, touch here.

Again, so if you missed that and you wanna know more information, you can come ask me, be happy to get you some notes on that if you're very interested, but this is what started my journey.

But then this idea of there's something out there left the door wide for a lot of things.

There's a lot of belief systems out there in this world.

And when you look at these 6 principles which we talked about last night, these are 6 principles, 6 reasons, 6 evidences you could say in which I decided to actually trust the Bible.

That you can trust the Bible as 1 historically accurate, as 1 relevant and event, you know, that's really the first portion here is can you trust that it says what the authors intended for it to say?

But then the question of is it divine, is it inspired, is it the word of God?

And that really came down to these final 2 points here, prophecy and personal testimonies.

And I want us to dig a little bit more into that this afternoon in our brief time.

I try to keep these very, very short so that way you can come, enjoy lunch, learn something, think about something, challenge your thought with something and then go challenge your thoughts with many other things that you have to learn.

So today's presentation is entitled, Know the Times.

What times do we live in as we consider prophecy?

There's a verse in First Chronicles 12.32 and it says this, of the sons of Issachar who had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do.

It's a very unique verse describing a group of people who looked at the times in which they live in, they understood that they lived in a very special and unique time in their personal history, and because they recognized the time in which they lived, they knew what actions they needed to produce.

They knew that there was a mission in front of them, there was an objective in front of them, there was something which needed to be accomplished, and when you know there's a mission and an objective, it changes your normal daily activities to match what you need to do.

So I remember my first year in medical school.

I had a way of living before medical school.

I had a way of living and of getting through life and of coping with everything, and it was so beautiful.

And then I still remember, you know, I was trying to maintain that in my first year, and after that first foundation mid-exam that they give you, like in the middle, it's like an 8 weeks, and they give you that first.

I don't know if they still do that, but they give you this mid.

And I remember, I was a 4.0, I was used to that as a pre-med.

Weeping and gnashing that night in my room when I got my results for that test.

I recognize I no longer live in beautiful Flagstaff, Arizona taking 2 classes a day with a little research project on the side.

I lived in a new time of life and that required a change of action, amen?

And that's what this verse is expressing in principle.

Because how do we know the time in which we live in?

The Bible describes this as prophecy, prophetic time periods in which we can know the times that we live in.

Prophecy is the prediction of a future event, key word, before it happens.

That's what I mean when I use that word in this context.

Prophecy is the prediction of a future event before it happens.

And unlike the many failed predictions of the past, like different individuals, like Nostradamus and other individuals, there are other books that have claimed prophetic writings.

But when you look at their accuracy, they do not hold weight.

But the Bible, over 3, 500 years of predictions, has maintained its accuracy.

And out of the 800 prophetic or so verses, 90% of them have already been fulfilled with only a minute remaining to be fulfilled, and those are all referencing the end of time, as in the end of the world when Jesus returns.

This was a number of years ago when I got this quote, so it's even more so now.

But he said back when I got the quote, over the past 30 years, more scholarship, more study has been devoted to apocalypticism, that is the study of prophecy and last day events, than in the last 300 years.

Things started happening in our world and people started asking questions and they wanted to know what does the Bible have to say about the times that we live in and the times that are soon to come.

I studied this book and as a result of studying this book, I became a Christian myself.

This is the Old Testament prophetic book, 1 of the main ones.

Its sister in the New Testament is the book of Revelation.

These are the Old and New Testament major books of prophecy that you can study, that we're gonna be studying together kind of over this week together, looking at a few passages from different portions of these books.

I call them the sisters of Bible prophecy.

Why does he give this evidence in Scripture?

Why does he give things, why does he tell you things before they happen?

John 14, 29, it says here, I told you before it comes to pass so that when it does come to pass, you might what?

See, remember, God said, come, let us reason together.

It was a very long journey to come to the point where I would see the evidence, I would see the indications, I would see the different reasons for there to be a God, and especially for there to be evidence for the Bible that eventually led me to this point of John 14, 29.

I have studied enough prophecy that I've seen he has predicted before it happens.

Therefore, there must be something special or divine.

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Series

Restoration 2025: Revelation of Healing

06 Knowing the Time

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

O1 Revelation’s Lamb

55m

02 By Their Testimony

54m

03 Feed My Sheep

38m

05 Truth or Fairy Tale

46m

04 Case for a Creator

40m

06 Knowing the Time

35m

07 Understanding Faith

43m

08 Revelation’s Lamb Part 2

48m

09 The Mystery of God

52m

10 Your First Love

56m

Sound Doctrine