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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eric Walsh Weekend

Eric Walsh

01 Purified in Persecution

Tonight's message is Purified in Persecution is the title.

Our scripture reading is from 1 Thessalonians 5 and verse 6, which says, "'Therefore, let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober.'" Let's pray.

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

We thank you, Lord, for your goodness and for your grace.

We thank you, Lord, for just being there for us, Lord, and being better to us than we are to ourselves.

Lord, your mercy truly does endure forever.

I'm asking now, Lord, that you just send your Holy Spirit and let him lead us now into truth.

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

So we're going to start in the book of Acts, talking about the church at Thessalonica.

In Acts chapter 17 and verse 1, the Bible says, and when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews.

And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them and 3 Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures.

The story of the Thessalonians begins here.

In fact, you get from the text in Acts 17, 2, that Paul did like an evangelistic series and over the space of 3 weeks, birthed a church.

The way that Paul operated was he did not preach usually in the suburbs or the rural areas.

He went into the big centers of commerce.

He went into the big cities and he set up a church that would then function also as a center of influence for resources for the gospel to be spread in that region.

This was Paul's second missionary journey and as you can see he comes from Antioch, he comes over to Troas, but ultimately he gets to Neapolis and here in northern Greece is where he lands in Thessalonica.

And you can see it here, it's a very powerful place.

As you can see from this slide, Thessalonica was named after Alexander the Great's sister, actually his half-sister, and it was very important.

1, it was a strategic harbor on the Aegean Sea.

It was located on the Via Ignatia, and that means it was a major east-west route.

Well, the Thessalonians were privileged to great commerce.

There was a lot of wealth, a lot of influence that came in Thessalonica.

And culture and everything was set up here.

There were certain gods that were worshipped in Thessalonica and if you understand the gods that were worshipped there, you begin to understand why Paul writes what he writes to the church there.

Zeus was worshipped there, who is obviously was the head of the pantheon of gods there.

Dionysus, which was the god of revelry and wine, drunkenness, partying.

And from this they had, as you can see in the bottom left corner, temple prostitutes.

There was an incredible amount of sexual sin happening in Thessalonica.

But then there was this other 1 that I discovered the Cabarry.

It was a mystery cult Secret cult and so there was also this a cult working of Secrecy now we'll come back to it, but I'll say it now I believe this is what we see on display when we start talking about the Epstein files.

I believe that something like this is what we see on display when Sean, Puff Daddy, Combs, now Diddy, whatever they call him now, when they had all these parties and all these weird things are alleged to have happened.

I believe that there are secret occult practices that are done.

And Paul understood that the church was going to be in an environment like this, and it was going to be a difficult environment.

And 1 of the interesting things, You can see they had drinking festivals and pagan rituals, but it was also a place where the emperor himself was worshiped.

And so men like Julius Caesar or the Caesars, they were lord, right?

And there was a loyalty to Rome and the religion.

So it was a place where the Caesar and Rome was highly exalted.

They were great patriots for the state of pagan Rome.

The Thessalonians, many of them were great patriots to the Roman Empire and Caesar, the leader of that Roman Empire.

And the last thing is that there was a large Jewish population.

Because of the trade routes and the ability to thrive, many came from Palestine up to Greece and into Thessalonica where trade could be had.

You could get back, you know, basically by ship as well.

But it's set up so that there was a large Jewish population which also made it ideal for Paul to preach.

And what was Paul looking for when he went somewhere to preach?

He would often go straight to the synagogue.

Because with a synagogue, Paul could begin to preach from the Old Testament and bring up the prophecies of the Old Testament.

When you read what Sister White says on Paul's interactions with the Thessalonians, that was the major theme.

Paul was able to go to the Jews in Thessalonica and actually show them from Scripture why Jesus was the Christ.

Those who did not know God listened in and once you understand that the the whole thing starts to make a lot of sense.

So we'll go back to the book of Acts Acts 17 and verse 3 says this opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead and that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ.

He went in there, he began to preach like I was just saying, why that Christ had to suffer.

Because many of the Jews still thought that a Messiah would come that would not suffer, that would just be king and take over.

He goes back to the book of Isaiah, if you read it in the book of Acts of the Apostles, Ellen White has a whole section where she lays this out.

He shows them the prophecies that say in fact the actual Messiah would be beaten and wounded the way you heard Happened to Jesus the Christ just like it they said it happened And then he talks about and he had to rise from the dead.

And so here, this often baffled the Greeks because in that occult teaching, 1 of the things was that Hades, once someone died, Hades would basically hold onto them.

And so he preached that about the rising again from the dead.

And so imagine he's preaching the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And so he says, listen, and that Jesus, which I preached unto you, he says, whom I preached unto you, he is Christ.

And I mean, can you imagine the power with which Paul preaches this in the synagogue, Sabbath after Sabbath, convincing them the Holy Spirit falling down and hearts are moved.

And some of them believed and consorted with Paul and Silas, of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.

This church came into existence and somehow by the power of the Holy Spirit, there seems to have been at least proportionately a lot more Greeks that came in that would normally come into 1 of those early churches.

Verse 5, but the Jews which believed not, here it is, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort and gathered a company and set all that city on an uproar and assaulted the house of Jason and sought to bring them out to the people.

And when they couldn't find Paul and Silas, They drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city crying, "'These that have turned the world upside down "'are come hither also.'" What a powerful statement.

That in fact, the threat that Paul and his mates pose to them is that they have already turned the world upside down.

The status quo for Thessalonica is going to be overturned.

The Bible even says, I like the word that's used there, it says moved with envy.

Because their religion could not change anything in Thessalonica.

The old forms, the old ways that they practiced did not move anything.

Here comes Paul, a former Pharisee, now a Christian, and he begins to preach and all of a sudden the Greeks come to know Jesus Christ.

The Jews were furious, the ones that didn't believe.

Grab Jason, they were looking for Paul, and they grabbed Jason and unable to get Paul, they continue to be mad.

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Series

Eric Walsh Weekend

01 Purified in Persecution

Transcript

Parent Series

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