Of course God would not be silent about such a pivotal subject as His last-day people! A movement – a message – is defined by divinely revealed characteristics. You’ll want to know about it!

<p>Of course God would not be silent about such a pivotal subject as His last-day people! A movement – a message – is defined by divinely revealed characteristics. You’ll want to know about it!</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're going to be looking at prophecy predicts a people.

You would expect, and we've sort of touched on some of these prophecies the past couple of weeks, you would expect that God would not leave us uncertain as to what He's going to do in the last days.

You would expect that He's going to fulfill His promise that surely the Lord God does nothing but He reveals His secrets to His servants, the prophets.

Well Tonight let's begin by taking our Bibles.

Let's take our Bibles and let's turn to Revelation chapter 12.

We're going to begin with just a little bit of an insight into the 2 women of Revelation.

Revelation chapter 12, let's move there quickly, and we're going to look at the first few verses.

Revelation chapter 12, what we find here, of course, in a symbolic book is that God is using a symbol, a beautiful symbol, to represent a people, a group of people.

Now this is how it starts in Revelation chapter 12 and verse 1.

A great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, a moon under her feet, on her head a garland of 12 stars.

Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth.

And, verse 3, another great sign appeared in heaven.

Behold, a great fiery red dragon, having 7 heads and 10 horns, and 7 diadems, or crowns, on his heads.

His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.

The dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth to devour her child as soon as it was born." Now, just a little bit of insight into the symbolism that we've seen already so far.

What we see is a woman, that's how the chapter begins, right?

She's clothed with the sun, God's own light, God's own creation, and it says that on her head a garland or a crown of 12 stars.

It doesn't say with 12 stars, it's of 12 stars.

You see the difference between with 12 stars and of 12 stars?

We could make a crown with 12 stars, right?

This is, you could call this a celestial woman, right?

This is a woman who is standing with the moon on her feet.

And she's standing with the moon on her feet.

She's clothed with the sun, a crown of 12 stars.

And she has an arch nemesis that's trying to devour her.

Now we already know what that great dragon represents because we've read it later in the chapter in verse 9, it says that great dragon was cast out, the serpent of old called the devil and Satan, right?

So the great dragon represents Satan, but notice that Satan always works through some sort of entity, just like God works through entities, doesn't he?

Does God use you and I to help do his work.

Satan here is working through the empire of Rome.

Now we don't have time, I wish I had time, man, we just don't have enough time.

We could have A566 more weeks of this seminar and we'd still be unpacking Revelation, right?

But here in this symbol of the dragon with 7 heads and 10 horns, you remember the dragon with 10 horns in Daniel 7?

What was the dragon that had 10 horns in Daniel 7?

And Rome is the 1 who stood ready to devour the Christ child as soon as it was born, right?

7 heads, and we read in Revelation chapter 17 that the 7 heads of the dragon are the 7 hills where the woman sits, and so this is a symbol of the city of 7 Hills, which is again Rome, right, which was where the woman of Revelation 17 would have her base, you might say.

So here you have Rome and the devil trying to destroy somebody.

Notice she bore a male child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron.

Now some would say, well this has to be Mary, right?

Well Mary doesn't stand on the moon with the sun clothing her and a crown of 12 stars.

And so we understand this to be a symbol of God's people.

Now before we get very far in this, I want you to hold your finger right here in Revelation 12, and I want us to look back a few verses, a few verses, all the way back to the Old Testament, more than a few verses, a few chapters, a few books, all the way to the book of Jeremiah.

And we're gonna read Jeremiah 6 and verse 2.

Now we've got a lot to cover tonight, so I hope that we can move quickly here.

Why don't you just say Amen when you find Jeremiah 6 and verse 2.

Alright let's go ahead and I love to hear the sound of those pages turning.

Jeremiah says, I have likened the daughter of Zion to a what?

The daughter of Zion, who's he talking about?

Now if you'd wonder about that, we can always confirm that in the book of Ephesians, You don't have to turn there, but you can put it in your notes if you like.

Ephesians chapter 5, remember the church is compared to the bride of Christ, right?

Paul's talking about how a husband should treat his wife, but then he says, but I'm speaking regarding Christ and the church.

So this isn't something that's very hard to understand when Revelation uses a woman to represent God's people.

Who is the devil particularly angry about at all times of earth's history?

A man child is born within God's people to save the earth, and the devil tries to devour him, but is he successful?

She bore a male child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and her child was caught up to God and His throne, clearly Jesus, then the woman, " who's the woman now?

The woman was, the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared for God, by God, that they should feed her there 1, 260 days.

Now we've talked about that time, times, the dividing times, 42 months, 1, 260 days, a couple of times.

We believe, I believe, that this is the great time of persecution when God's church was threatened nearly with annihilation because of the absence of God's Word, because of the prevalence of apostasy and compromise, and yet there were people, some of them hiding even in the mountains and hills of the earth, who were secretly still maintaining the Word of God.

God's truth was in hiding for a period of time.

We're going to talk more about that this evening.

Now we notice this isn't the end of the woman, right?

Because after this time, which we find again in Revelation chapter 12 and verse 14, after this time is finished, though there's still a remnant.

So If you go to buy cloth and you have a big bolt of cloth, what's left at the very end, after there's only a few yards left maybe, that they call the remnant.

Now is the remnant like what the first part of the cloth was or is it completely different?

And what God's trying to say here is, look, the woman that went into hiding, which was a pure church, is going to come out of hiding.

It's going to be the remnant of her seed.

And how is it described in verse 17 which keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ We studied about the testimony of Jesus Christ last night, right?

And so this is a this is a prophecy of what's gonna happen last days now Hold your hold your horses before we get before we get any further in this, and let's look in Revelation chapter 17 now.

Revelation 17 shows the antithesis, the opposite of the woman of Revelation chapter 12.

God is good enough to let us know not only what He's going to do, but what the enemy is going to do.

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Series

Unlocking Prophecy

17- Prophecy Predicts a People

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

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