Why, if there is a loving God, is there so much suffering? Find the answer to this challenging question that Revelation and the word of God openly reveals.

<p>Why, if there is a loving God, is there so much suffering? Find the answer to this challenging question that Revelation and the word of God openly reveals.</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

Unlocking Prophecy

Chester Clark

1- Fools Who Fight the Future- Part 1

2- Fools Who Fight the Future- Part 2

3- Revelation’s Greatest Climax

4- Lamb on the Altar, Lion on the Throne

5- The Hero of Revelation’s Seals

6- A Game of Thrones and Revelation’s Answer to Evil

7- Revelation’s Ultimate Message

8- Humanity, Morality, and Society

9- Revelation’s Call to Worship

10- The Beast’s Greatest Conspiracy

11- How to Escape the Seven Last Plagues

12- The Certain, Unavoidable Identity of the Antichrist

13- Making a New Start

14- Facing Death Unafraid

15- Good News About Hell

16- Messages from Beyond the Stars

17- Prophecy Predicts a People

18- The Best is Yet to Come!

19. Daniel’s Worst Nightmare

20. Daniel 9 and Jesus

21. Daniel 9 and the Rapture

22. Revelation’s First Beast

23. The Seal of God

24. The Mark of the Beast

Well, tonight we have an important topic to consider.

We're going to be talking about a game of thrones, Revelation's answer to evil.

And I hope that you've brought your Bibles this evening because once again we're going to be trying to understand why we live in a world where there is sin and suffering.

And I think that it's an important topic to understand and if you haven't noticed, I tend to think the topics that Revelation addresses are pretty important.

It seems as though if they're addressed in the book of Revelation, they're important for us to know in the last days.

I really believe that because these books of prophecy were written for the days in which we're living, the last days of the earth's history.

And so we're going to be looking at this from the book of Revelation and also from other parts of the Bible.

Remember the book of Revelation is not meant to be interpreted or understood just by itself, alone, standalone.

It's meant to be understood in the context of the Bible, and It borrows language from the rest of the Bible.

So this gives us an opportunity to compare Scripture and Scripture.

You know, Jesus gave Bible studies when he was here on this earth in his ministry.

And if you'll remember the Bible study that he gave on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection, He had those 2 disciples, Cleopas and his friend, that were making their way, stumbling through their tears, back to their homes in Emmaus with their disappointed hopes and dashed dreams.

And the Bible says that Jesus began with Moses and all the prophets and he opened unto them the scriptures, in the scriptures, the things concerning himself.

So Jesus didn't just take 1 passage and say, see, you should have known this, Isaiah 53.

He actually said, this says this, and this says this, and this says this.

I think that's the way he would like us to study the Bible.

And to do so, we have to spend quite a bit of time, don't we?

It means we need to spend more time getting to know our Bibles and then comparing Scripture with Scripture and looking at everything the Bible says on a topic.

Well, when Jesus was teaching 1 day, he told the story of a sower who had a farmer, I should say, who planted a field of seed.

And when he planted this seed, his workers helped him and so forth.

If you have ever planted anything, you find out exactly how it was planted, right?

When I was a kid, my parents had a set of children's books, story books that helped to teach good moral lessons.

And 1 of the stories was about a boy who decided he was being paid by a farmer to plant seed and he decided it would be easier just to dump it all in 1 hole and take his money and go.

I think the Bible says, be sure your sins will find you out, right?

Because a few days later, maybe a week later, the farmer knew the difference, right?

The farmer knew that all the seed had been put in that 1 hole.

Well, That's the way this farmer planted his seed and pretty soon the seed came up, but there weren't just the good plants that he had planted, there were also a bunch of weeds.

And his workers came to him and they asked him the question.

If we look in Matthew 13 in verse 27, it says, So the servants of the owner came and said to him, Sir, did you not sow good seeds in your field?

I mean, obviously the answer is yes, right?

The question then becomes, how then does it have tears?

Why did we sow good seed and yet we have weeds coming up in our field?

The farmer gave them the answer, and this remember is a parable.

So it may have been a true story, I don't know, I suppose this happened before, but Jesus is telling it as a parable, as an illustration of truth, spiritual truth, right?

And so Jesus gives the farmer's response.

He answered and said to them, he who sows the good seed is the son of man.

The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked 1.

The farmer, and somehow I left that out, you hope if you turn your Bible to Matthew 13 you see it there, what the farmer said, the answer to the servants was, an enemy has done this.

So somebody actually had the audacity to go maybe by night, by stealth at least, and when he saw his competitor planting his fields, He went and he took weeds, the most obnoxious seeds that he could find, and he scattered them in his neighbor's field.

That's not a very nice thing to do, is it?

It wasn't the farmer's fault, though, was it?

And Jesus here explains what it means when he describes the field as the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, and the tares are the sons of the wicked 1.

So Jesus is trying to help us understand that even though we see bad things around us, we can't blame the farmer.

That's what Jesus is trying to teach, a spiritual lesson that he's trying to teach here.

Now, when we think of the suffering and the pain that we see around us in the world, how often do we find God getting credit for the evil that happens?

Have you ever heard people say, well, you know, your insurance doesn't cover acts of God?

Natural disasters, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, whatever it may be.

I'm not an insurance agent or a lawyer, but acts of God are things that are beyond normal, I guess.

And it's as If we have in our society forgotten that there's more than 1 supernatural force out there, if we think that everything supernatural is of 1 force, then I suppose it would only make sense that we would see these supernatural things happening and say they are acts of God.

By the way, friends, let me just, while we're talking about that, let me just deviate a little bit.

You know, when I think of the world in which we live, when we watch, I don't watch much television, but when I see what's on television, I see this sort of fascination with the supernatural.

And there's this fascination with the other world, the other side, the angels or spirits or whoever they are that we see doing things.

And what concerns me, what concerns me, a number of things will concern me.

And I think when we get, we're going to talk about some of the deceptions that's very clearly spelled out in the book of Revelation in upcoming nights.

But 1 of the things that concerns me is people act as if there's only 1 set of supernatural activities going on.

And if it's supernatural, it must be of God.

I mean, if they had this vision or if they had this experience, it must be of God.

There seems to be in our society a little amnesia or maybe they don't know, maybe they've never been taught that there's actually, There's supernatural forces that aren't of God.

And that's what we're talking about tonight.

When we talk about a game of thrones, we're talking about a struggle behind the scenes, a spiritual struggle that's going on over the destiny of the universe.

And that's what the Bible unpacks and unfolds for us.

Here Jesus says, the enemy that has done this, the enemy is the devil.

And listen, I hope that no 1 goes away from here thinking, well, you know, Chester really convinced me there's a devil and I should be scared of him.

No, that's not what I'm trying to say at all.

I'm just saying there ought to be a realization that we have a devil.

Listen, when you know there's a devil, the next thing you better know is there's a Savior, right?

And you better know that the Savior is far more powerful than the devil.

And we're going to see that in God's Word.

But I want you from the get-go, not to think I'm just trying to scare you into thinking that there's a sinister force out there.

You need to remember it's not just God that's out there trying to reach you and trying to convince you and trying to fight for your soul, you might say.

There is an enemy of God and of righteousness, and if he's an enemy of God, he's also an enemy of God's people.

If God loves you and he's God's enemy, he hates you.

And the devil tries to make all kinds of pretty promises and mirages and pretty lights and candy coat his poison, but the devil doesn't have anything good out for you.

The only reason he cares about you and me is because he wants to hurt God.

So let's look in our Bibles at what the book of Revelation tells us.

I think you may have seen that already in your discussion time, but we're going to be opening God's word, we're going to be trying to understand exactly what it is that the Bible teaches us about the devil and what he's doing here on this world at this point.

Revelation chapter 12 and verse 7, 1 of the most astounding verses in all the scriptures it says, are you there?

Series

Unlocking Prophecy

6- A Game of Thrones and Revelation’s Answer to Evil

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Plenary Sessions

Revelation’s War Behind all Wars

1h 3m

Keys of Revelation

19. The Last Faithful Daughter

1h 11m

A God Worth Knowing

19 Jesus Understands

58m

Plenary

04 The Essential Lesson of Faith from the Life of David

44m

I Met God

I Met God 10

45m

Joseph

Imprisoned and Forgotten

41m

Restoration 2023

The Zombie Apocalypse

1h 21m

Overcoming Addictions (Evening Meetings)

Gaining the Victory

50m

Jesus: The Last Adam

1h

The 4C’s of Christianity

1h 24m

Testimony of Jason Shives

1h

Alan and Nicole Parker - Happily Ever After: Finding True Love, God's Way

Beauty for Ashes: Healing Past Hurts

1h

Sound Doctrine