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Montgomery First SDA Church

Certainty in Uncertain Times

Daniel Pel

1. A Chaotic World? – Where is God?

2. Is the Bible Trustworthy?

A Transforming Touch

3. Has Religion Failed?

4. What is Your Picture of God?

5. How Can We Find Inner Peace?

6. Who is the Next Superpower?

7. What Happens When a Person Dies?

8. Heaven and Hell – Fact or Fiction?

9. Who Will Make it Right?

10. Where Do I Find Power to Overcome?

11. What Does the Future Hold?

12. How Can We Recognize Christ’s Followers in the End of Time?

All right, we're going to get right started into our second presentation.

I hope to have us finished by half past 8, so this will be a short presentation, but a powerful 1.

We're going to look at a prophetic book in the Old Testament, and that is the book of Daniels, same name that I have.

For those that have studied a little bit of Bible prophecy, you will know that there are 2 books in particular that deal with Bible prophecy, and specifically apocalyptic prophecy, prophecy that deals with the times in which we are living and the near future.

And that's the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, and it's the book of Revelation in the New Testament, the last book of the Bible.

Now that doesn't mean that there are not other books that contain prophecy.

As a matter of fact, there's lots of books that contain prophecy, but when you're specifically looking at apocalyptic prophecy or last day prophecy, you will find yourself often in those 2 books, the books of Daniel and Revelation.

And we will be studying both of those books in the course of this time together, this seminar.

And there's a prophecy in the book of Daniel that really is like a foundation.

A foundation that we can build on when we come to other prophecies.

We're going to look at some powerful prophecies tomorrow, Sunday, next weekend, and they're kind of going to build on this 1.

Now, as we get into our message this evening, I just want to see if this clicker is working.

Okay, try to pull it out and put it in again, maybe it'll work.

Okay, as that's getting going, I'm going to show you a couple of slides with some, just a couple of references to prophecies that have already happened in the life of Jesus in His first coming, and then we'll look at this amazing prophecy in Daniel chapter 2, which points us to the second coming of Christ.

What I find to be true is that there are a lot of Christians that talk about the first coming of Jesus that happened 2, 000 years ago, and that is central to the Christian faith.

There are not a lot of Christians, though, or there are getting less and less Christians, I can put it that way, that actually talk about the second coming of Christ.

And the Bible has a lot to say about the second coming of Christ.

But it's also an incredible news that He's coming again.

And so we'll be looking at a prophecy that points to the second coming of Jesus Christ.

As Samuel is just figuring that out for a moment, let's just have a short word of prayer again that God's Spirit will be with us this evening.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your Word, and I pray that as we study it together that You will open our hearts, open our minds, allow us to see the beauty of prophecy and help us to understand the times we are living in and that which is soon to happen in this world so that we can be prepared for the great events that are before us.

So guide us now, I pray, in Your precious name.

We're going to specifically focus during this seminar, during this series on prophecy, which is the third point here.

There are a number of claims that we could look at why the Bible is actually authentic, Why we can trust it, why it's trustworthy.

We could look at the historicity, the evidence of history.

Other places I go, sometimes I do a whole lecture on archeology, showing discoveries that have been made that are external discoveries that you can compare with biblical stories and you see this beautiful harmony.

Now we're not going to do that in this series.

If you would be interested in that, I could give you some resources or some links that you can go to, to watch these presentations online.

But tonight we're going to spend, and the majority of our time during the series we will spend actually on prophecy.

We could have also talked about the internal consistency, how all the different books of the Bible really harmonize together.

But 1 of the things that led me to become a full-on follower of Jesus, that led me to basically give up my studies in a certain direction and decide to become a preacher of the Word is prophecy.

So it's something that is very close to my heart.

I like to think of prophecy as the signature of God.

It's like, you know, something happens and God puts a signature under it and He knew it all along that it was going to happen.

He kind of confirms the events of life, the events of world's history.

Now there are a lot of prophecies that point to the first coming of Jesus.

I just put a couple of references up here on the screen regarding where Jesus would be born.

You can read about that in Micah 5, verse 2, that He would be born in Bethlehem, which took place, the fulfillment, Matthew 2, verse 1.

Regarding the circumstances of His birth, in Isaiah 7, remember a virgin would conceive, Mary, then also from which tribe He would come.

Now there are lots of prophecies here pointing to the first coming of Christ.

Some people will say, you know what, Jesus, maybe He just wanted to be the Messiah and so He looked at the prophecies in the Old Testament and He just tried to fulfill them.

Now that could maybe work to a certain extent, but it wouldn't really work because you have no control as to where you were born, Right?

You have no control as to from which, you know, what family you end up in.

There are certain things that you can say, okay, I read that prophecy, I'm going to try to fulfill that, but there are lots of prophecies in the Old Testament that are beyond the control of any human being, and yet they were perfectly fulfilled in the life of Jesus.

Regarding, again, His family, He would come from the...

He would be the son of David through the lineage of David.

The very time that He would come on to...

Into this world, amazing prophecy in Daniel chapter 9.

Also regarding His message, His ministry, Isaiah 61, about His entry into Jerusalem, His betrayal, and the very price that was paid for his betrayal.

These are all prophecies in the Old Testament and you find the fulfillment in the New Testament.

Regarding how the final scenes of his life unfolded, that he was mocked, he was spit upon, he was crucified with criminals, his bones were unbroken, he resurrected, and the very time of his death.

All these things you find, these are just references here, these are things that are prophesied in the Old Testament and we find the fulfillment in the New Testament.

There was a man by the name of Peter Stoner, and he had a PhD in mathematics, astronomy, and engineering, and he wrote a book called Science Speaks.

He made a mathematical calculation of what the probability is of 48 of the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament fulfilling in 1 man.

Now there are more than 48 prophecies in the Old Testament regarding the figure, the Messiah figure.

There are actually, there's estimated several hundreds.

But Peter Stoner just took 48 of the several hundred prophecies and he said, what is the probability of these 48 fulfilling in 1 man?

So he did all his calculations and he ended up with this figure, 10 to the 157th power.

I'm not going to ask you to pronounce that number.

But that is, In other words, it is extremely unlikely for all those prophecies to be fulfilled in 1 person.

And because of all these prophecies, we can be sure that Jesus is the very 1 He claimed to be.

These prophecies are absolutely astounding.

Now this is concerning the first coming of Christ.

Now what we're going to do is we're going to look at a prophecy that points to the second coming of Christ.

Part of this prophecy is what we could call historic, in other words it has already happened, but part of this prophecy is also apocalyptic or it points to the future.

And the historic part of the prophecy basically confirms the truthfulness and the authenticity of the predictions that are still in the future.

It's like God has already signed many of these prophecies, they've already happened, and so we can be sure that the last part is going to happen.

Now this prophecy was given in ancient Babylon.

It was given between 500 and 600 years before Christ, or 500, 600 BC, before Christ.

Now what happened was Babylon was the great kingdom, the great nation of that time, and they had invaded Judah, and they had destroyed Jerusalem, and they had taken captive many of the Jews and taken them back to Babylon.

And amongst the captives, there was a young man by the name of Daniel, and he wrote the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, and he wrote it while he was a captive in Babylon.

Now interesting, as you come to the second chapter of the book of Daniel, we read that the king of Babylon, which was a man by the name of Nebuchadnezzar, had a dream.

And in this dream, he dreamt of something that we're going to look at in a moment, but he couldn't remember it really when he woke up.

And so he knew he had dreamt something significant, but he couldn't really remember the details of that dream.

And the Bible tells us that he goes and he calls together all his wise men and all his counselors, and among that number is also Daniel, because Daniel was a captive, but he had been selected and trained in the court of the king, and so he was 1 of those wise men.

Now as all these wise men are gathered together, Nebuchadnezzar says, okay, tell me what I dreamt and tell me the interpretation of this dream.

They are not able to do that and so what happens is he passes a death degree.

Series

Certainty in Uncertain Times

2. Is the Bible Trustworthy?

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

War of Thrones

The Ultimate King

56m

Certainty in Uncertain Times

1. A Chaotic World? – Where is God?

48m

Keys of Revelation

1. The Next World Superpower

1h

Certainty in Uncertain Times

9. Who Will Make it Right?

56m

Unlocking Prophecy

1- Fools Who Fight the Future- Part 1

55m

A God Worth Knowing

01 The God Who Hears and Knows

49m

Revelation Made Simple

1. Can We Know the Future

45m

The Supremacy of Scripture

1h 11m

Certainty in Uncertain Times

11. What Does the Future Hold?

52m

The Sanctuary, God's Answer to the Sin Problem

Why Jesus Waits

1h

Keys of Revelation

7. Antichrist Evidence- Part 2

1h 16m

Restoration 2024: The Message of Healing

Our Final Conflict Part 2

49m

Sound Doctrine