Many find end-time Bible prophecy very confusing, especially the book of Revelation. But God didn’t intend for us to begin our study of apocalyptic prophecy with Revelation! This message explores the foundations of prophetic understanding, beginning with the first chapters of the Book of Daniel.

<p>Many find end-time Bible prophecy very confusing, especially the book of Revelation. But God didn’t intend for us to begin our study of apocalyptic prophecy with Revelation! This message explores the foundations of prophetic understanding, beginning with the first chapters of the Book of Daniel.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Dalton SDA Church

Prophecy and Church History

Chester Clark

A Great Awakening

Our Scripture today probably encompasses 1 of the most beautiful and hope-filled promises of God's Word.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again.

It's a wonderful thing to look forward to, the second coming of Jesus.

And you know, we've talked the last few weeks, we've talked last week about the change from the observance of the Sabbath to the observance of Sunday.

We talked before that about how tradition took the place of God's Word in the church, about how philosophy and complicated interpretations of God's Word led it to be a thing that only the clergy, the professionals could study, and lay people were prohibited from having the Word of God.

The Word wasn't even translated into their own languages that they were able to read or to speak.

And so There came in the church, in church history, a forgetting of the truth of God's Word.

And 1 of those truths, we looked at last week in detail, was the Sabbath, the seventh-day Sabbath.

But there were other truths that were forgotten.

And 1 of the truths, believe it or not, 1 of the truths that were forgotten was the truth on the second coming of Jesus.

Can you imagine such a wonderful truth being lost sight of?

That's what happens when we don't spend time in the Word of God.

The truth of the second coming was lost sight of.

What the apostles had called the blessed hope, what had animated their lives, what had given them hope for the future, what had given them joy in living their lives even of suffering or persecution was the promise that Jesus gave here in John 14 that he would come again.

Just as we've seen Him go into heaven, we're going to see Him come again.

They were anticipating the second coming of Jesus.

In fact, some of them were convinced that it was going to happen right away, and Paul in his letters to the Thessalonians had to sort of dampen their hopes a little bit because there's going to be other prophecies fulfilled, he said, before the second coming.

They were excited that Jesus was going to come again.

Why do you think they were excited that Jesus was going to come again.

I believe the main reason that the early Christians talked so much about the second coming, I believe the main reason they hoped for and looked forward to the second coming so much was simply because they loved Jesus.

They were excited about the Second Coming because the 1 whom they loved would be returning.

The 1 whom they were separated from would come again.

You know, when you love someone, it's hard to be away from them.

Talk to Michael about that after the service.

When you love someone it's hard to be away from them.

I remember when I was dating Jane long distance.

It's hard to be away from someone you love.

It's even hard for her to be way up there in the balcony and me way down here, you know?

When you're separated it's hard to be away from the person you love.

And the disciples were so excited about the Second Coming because they loved Jesus and they wanted Jesus to return.

They couldn't wait till He would be here and they would be with Him as Jesus promised here in these passages.

Many different theories came about, mostly it was just forgotten, but we we know that the the Reformation brought a revival, the study of God's word.

People knew there was going to be a second coming, but there came confusion about how that would take place or when it would take place.

And it always just seemed to be some nebulous, far in the distant future.

And some of the theologies that were developed helped to foster this sort of pie in the sky view of the Second Coming.

But there came a time in Christian history, even after the Reformation, when the Second Coming would come to prominence in the minds of the people once again.

And this was during the Second Great Awakening.

We're going to take some time to look at this and how it took place today.

We're going to be discovering how this truth was rediscovered, and we're going to be looking in our Bibles at some of the things that brought about this rediscovery and this great awakening.

But before we begin, I would just invite you to bow your heads with me for an additional word of prayer.

Father in heaven, today we're thankful that you've given us your Word.

Lord, what a privilege we have to live in a day when your Word is free to be read by individuals such as us.

Lord, we are just so thankful that we can, that we can open your Word today in freedom, in peace, and safety.

We pray that we would be led by your Spirit as we study its pages, that we might understand something of your plan for us, of your plan to return.

And as we look at sacred history, as we look at how you have worked in the past to bring light hidden by ages of neglect to the understanding of your people once again.

We pray that you would guide us and we ask this in Jesus' name.

The Second Great Awakening was a revival that took place among many different denominations.

It was during the early 19th century, late 1800s, and early 19th, late, early, sorry, late 1700s and early 1800s that this Great Awakening took place, beginning around 1790.

Keep in mind this date when the Second Awakening was happening.

Around 1790, it would gain momentum by 1800 and the early 1800s, 1820, 1830.

Probably its peak was around 1830, 1840, and membership during this time rose rapidly among Methodist and Baptist congregations, especially whose preachers led the movement.

Now why was this movement happening then?

That's what we're gonna sort of explore for just a minute and we're going to see where it led.

Well 1 of the reasons that it was taking place was there was this view of the second coming called post-millennialism.

Now post-millennialism is a big word that simply means people believed that Jesus was going to come back after a millennium of peace.

Now you understand, you've probably read in Revelation chapter 20, that's where we get the understanding of the millennium.

You've probably read about the millennium.

And you and I may have a different understanding of that.

That means I believe that Jesus actually comes back before the millennium, before the thousand years of peace, the second coming.

We're not gonna go into great detail about that teaching, but that's what I believe.

But it was very common in the churches, the mainstream churches of the day, this idea of post-millennialism, and that is that Jesus was going to return after the millennium.

What it tells you, if you believe in it, you believe that Jesus isn't going to come back for at least a thousand years, right?

Unless you believe that we've already entered the millennium, the millennium of peace that's described in Revelation chapter 20, unless you believe that it's already begun, It's going to be at least a thousand years until Jesus comes again.

It's not something we really need to worry about.

But, there were a number of reasons why post-millennialism actually began to foster a revival.

And a couple of those reasons were that, well for 1 thing, in America it seemed like an ideal place to begin the millennium.

I mean, you had a new country, sort of this Edenic type of a country, Americanism, that was this ideal nation, at least in the minds of many Americans.

This was a, you could go and start your own country, not country, your own state, your own community.

You could have your own churches and you could have sort of an ideal situation to begin a peaceful existence to begin the millennium.

In fact, this actually led to a movement which was known as the Restoration Movement.

The Restoration Movement was the idea of restoring a primitive idea of Christianity to the US population.

We wanted a purer Christianity without the elaborate hierarchy and political intrigue that had dominated the Church of Europe.

In America we didn't have a state church.

In America, we didn't have these well-established churches.

We could have more of a congregational situation where people could have the faith that they wanted to have.

So a number of groups came up, the Mormons, the Shakers, as well as this was very commonly viewed among some of the Methodists and some of the Baptists as well.

We were going to have a movement that is a pure Christianity.

And what better place to have it than here in America, where the sky is the limit.

The tradition-bound European churches seemed out of place in this new setting and so a primitive faith based on the Bible alone promised a way to sidestep the competing claims of many denominations available.

Congregations wanted to find the assurance of being right without having a national church to tell them what they believed.

And so this sort of grew in a revival across America of people who were trying to get back to the Word of God, all good things, right?

Trying to get back to the Word of God, trying to have an ideal religion and also have an ideal country.

At the same time, we have a second Advent movement beginning.

Now these 2, these 2 sort of components that grew out of the second Great Awakening, they're in somewhat in contradiction.

Because the Restoration movement, not the idea of having ideal setting or ideal country or ideal religion, That's all, both groups would agree with that.

Foundations of Bible Prophecy

Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He first reveals it unto His servants the prophets.

Are you thankful that we serve that kind of a God?

That He's not just trying to play catch me if you can?

I'm thankful that we have a God who has revealed to us so much in His Word.

And in the last few sermons together, we've been exploring early Adventist history.

This is sort of the year of history here in Dalton since we are celebrating our 75th anniversary.

We had that special celebration in April.

We've been looking at church history and we've moved now to Adventist church history.

And what we're trying to do today, we're gonna be looking more at the foundations of Bible prophecy that William Miller, who we talked about last time, and some of his associates discovered as keys to understanding what was going to happen in the future, what was going to happen at the end of time.

And so we're going to be looking at the book of Daniel today.

We're going to be looking at Daniel and sort of doing an overview of the foundations of how we get started in the book of Daniel, looking at Daniel chapter 1 and Daniel chapter 2.

And I think that as we study together today that you are going to have your faith affirmed in God's ability to take care of you.

Let's just bow our heads for an additional word of prayer as we start.

Father in heaven, today we are grateful that you have given us ample evidence to trust your word.

As we open its pages today, as we look at the first few, or 2 chapters of Daniel, as we try to understand more of the foundations of end-time prophecy.

I pray that you will send your Spirit not only to help us understand what happened historically or will happen in the future, but help us to understand more of you and your love for us, your care for us, and that we can indeed trust you.

We're going to begin in Daniel chapter 1.

So if we look at the book of Daniel, we see that it's the first book that was dedicated to end-time Bible prophecy, telling of what's going to happen in the last days.

We also notice that it gives us the framework for understanding the rest of end-time Bible prophecy.

I like to talk about Daniel as sort of being like, you know, your kindergarten class or your first grade where you're just learning phonics and some basic principles of mathematics.

And no 1 goes from kindergarten to calculus, right?

We don't just go from kindergarten to, you know, advanced, you know, vectors, physics or something.

We have that first foundations laid in mathematics.

And we learn, we build on that foundation.

When we look at the book of Revelation, we see so much confusion in the world today about that book.

And 1 of the reasons there's so much confusion today about Revelation is simply because people start there.

It's sort of like picking up a calculus textbook without going through primary school and basic mathematics.

I mean, I'm pretty sure that's what would happen.

And so, Daniel is actually the tutorial, you might say, for how to understand end-time symbolic Bible prophecy.

And so, we want to see the interpretive principles that are seen here by comparing the prophecy and the interpretation.

You'll notice for example in the book of Daniel the first few visions that Daniel has in Daniel chapter 2, well, it was really Nebuchadnezzar's dream first, wasn't it?

But then he has, Daniel has the dream or vision given to him as well.

Daniel chapter 8 and 9, we find another, or 2 more visions, actually.

What you find in those passages are the symbolic vision being given, and then right after it, in the same place in the Bible, the same chapter in most cases, Daniel 8 didn't quite get finished, got finished in Daniel 9, but you find right there the interpretation.

So what you can do is you can compare the symbolic vision with the interpretation of the vision and you begin to learn principles of how symbolic Bible prophecy works.

And then when you get to the book of Revelation, God simply expects us to already have the context of the book of Daniel.

You don't have any interpretations given.

But if we use the same principles that Daniel teaches us, revelation can be understood as well.

So this is an important book, it's important for us, and we're going to begin in Daniel chapter 1.

We won't take all the time to go through the entire story, we could just have a sermon on Daniel chapter 1 today, but some people say, well I just want to look at the prophecies in the book of Daniel.

You know Daniel chapter 1, you have Daniel and his 3 friends arriving in Babylon.

In Daniel chapter 3, you have the the plain of Dura, the great golden image, and the the fiery furnace.

In Daniel chapter 4 and 5, you have the stories of Nebuchadnezzar and the fall of Babylon.

And those are just stories, those are great bedtime stories.

Those are great bedtime stories, but they're more than just stories.

Those stories are very important to the whole understanding of Bible prophecy.

And, in fact, in the book of Revelation, John the Revelator borrows the stories.

The stories of Babylon, the stories of the fall of Babylon, the stories of the image that's set up and there's a death decree if you don't worship the image.

All those stories are borrowed in the book of Revelation, they're used as prophecies.

So they're very important for us to take some note of.

So I want us to start in Daniel chapter 1 and I want us to know what happened here.

We know that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Babylon, conquered Jerusalem and brought some of the royalty and some of the youngest, brightest minds to Babylon.

In Daniel chapter 1, let's begin with verse 3.

Then the king instructed Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, to bring some of the children of Israel and some of the king's descendants and some of the nobles, young men in whom there was no blemish, but good looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge and quick to understand, who had ability to serve in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the language and literature of the Chaldeans.

And the king, it goes on and says, the king appointed them the best food he knew, his own food.

This was carefully prepared food fit for the king himself.

And the king is being very generous in preparing this food for Daniel and his associates.

But there were others who came from Jerusalem.

And the king is going out of his way to give them great honor and a great privilege to eat at his table.

Daniel says, wait a minute, there are foods on that table that I cannot conscientiously eat.

Now some of the Israelite boys, they said, look, we don't have a choice.

Do you know those chains that they brought us in from Jerusalem?

You saw your own family members being killed.

But the Bible says in verse 8 that Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the King's delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank.

Therefore he requested the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself." Now, we could spend so much time just talking, it's an amazing story, an amazing story.

Daniel had, Get this, Daniel had, the Bible says, been brought into favor with the prince of the eunuchs.

Now, that little phrase, been brought into favor, I believe, conceals many, many sermons and books worth of character.

It's not like God just worked some sort of abracadabra and Daniel was brought into favor.

Later on in the story we're going to see that Daniel answers the king with wisdom and tact.

He was God-fearing, and I believe that God allowed him to grow in his ability to relate to people.

Brothers and sisters, friends of mine, can I just divert a little bit from the story here and say that I believe God still would have us learn to get along with other people, to win their confidence, not try to force their hands?

Horns, Winds, and Eagles’ Wings

We're continuing to look at how the early pioneers during, towards the end of the second great awakening came to an understanding that Jesus was coming soon.

And so today we're going to be taking a look at Daniel chapter 7.

Last week we did take a look at Daniel chapter 2 and Daniel 2 is sort of the introduction to symbolic Bible prophecy.

Daniel 7 continues it and you'll remember that in the book of Daniel we learn basic principles to help us understand end time Bible prophecy.

We learned last week there are a number of principles that we see because in the book of Daniel we have the Prophecy and then right after that we have the interpretation so that gives us the understanding of how prophecy works We saw that image of Daniel chapter 2 and how Daniel explained to King Nebuchadnezzar that it represented empires to come.

Today we're going to be looking at Daniel chapter 7.

Daniel chapter 7 continues down the same vein of Daniel chapter 2 but it teaches us additional principles.

Now a couple weeks ago we talked about different ways of interpreting Bible prophecy, symbolic prophecy.

There are 3 main schools of prophetic interpretation, historicism, futurism, and preterism.

We talked about how Preterism says the prophecies have pretty much all been done and fulfilled soon after the time of the prophet.

They're basically contemporaneous prophecies.

Futurism says they're basically all in the future.

There's this gap and the prophecies are going to be re-activated you might say when, for example, the tribulation begins during the rapture or whatever the event may be depending on the interpreter.

Historicism says the prophecy began with the time of the prophet and continued with an unbroken stream of predictions until the very time of the end.

Now if you look at these 3 schools of thought, if you look at these 3 schools of thought, what do we see here?

Do we see the prophecy of Daniel chapter 2 more or less representing historicism, preterism, or futurism.

And I say that it's clearly teaching the concepts of historicism.

That is to say that the prophecy began at the time of the prophet, and we have this timeline that's representing the prophet.

We can follow it down historically, event after event after event, until we find the events that aren't yet fulfilled, and that's where we are, right?

We're somewhere along that stream of prophetic time and we're going to be looking today in Daniel chapter 7 at another another 1 of those prime characteristics of historicism.

The fact that the little horn of Daniel chapter 7 is sometimes referred to as the Antichrist is not something that's yet to come in the future, as Futurism says, but it's actually something that's already come about.

And we're going to look at that more carefully.

So I believe from the very first vision of Daniel chapter 2, I believe we have good, compelling evidence that Daniel is teaching us to interpret in time symbolic Bible prophecy in the manner that historicism interprets it.

And so we're going to look at that more carefully as we go along.

So let's go ahead and begin here with Daniel chapter 7.

If you have your Bibles you can turn with me there.

We're going to notice that the interpretation is found in the same chapter, although not all the symbols are necessarily interpreted in the same chapter.

We do find the explanation, Daniel's given by Gabriel, by the angel, in the same chapter.

Other symbols we can find in other parts of the Bible, and like Daniel chapter 2, it follows a historicist stream of prophetic time, and it teaches us a new principle that we're going to be looking at here today.

In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed.

Then he wrote the dream and told the sum of the matters.

Daniel spake and said, I in my night vision by night, I saw in my night vision by night, and behold, the 4 winds of heaven strove upon the great sea.

Now the 4 winds of heaven are generally, you're referred to in the Bible, the winds of heaven, the 4 winds, they're sort of like the east, the west, the north, the south, sort of like from all directions.

So you can imagine a storm that's blowing from all directions.

That's sort of the picture that Daniel's seeing.

And the storm is blowing on the sea, right?

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Series

Prophecy and Church History

Foundations of Bible Prophecy

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

A Great Awakening

50m

Foundations of Bible Prophecy

47m

Horns, Winds, and Eagles’ Wings

44m

The Most Dependable Time Prophecy

39m

Sound Doctrine