Chris Buttery

Sacramento Central SDA Church

Never Alone

You know what's interesting and I was listening to, listening on the radio here this week, still the energy and the interest that people have in finding life outside of life on planet Earth.

Some image this week apparently was captured on film of something, some object on the south side of the moon, It kind of protruded and apparently it wasn't there before.

And so some folk got a little excited and got a little happy that perhaps, perhaps some type of alien life-form came to the moon and planted something there and then left, giving evidence that perhaps they are alive, just a sneak peek, a hint, that there is life outside of planet Earth somewhere.

You know, the search for life on other planets in our universe has really been the ambition of many.

Since earliest recorded times, man has always been fascinated with the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

Modern attempts to find life outside our sphere have caused flurries of excitement and disappointment.

Today, astronomers search for extra solar, what they call extra solar planets that they believe would be conducive to life.

Planets very similar to the planet Earth, for example, and the atmosphere and so on.

They say future telescopes will be able to image planets around nearby stars which may reveal the presence of life.

Darwin is a European search agency mission designed to find Earth-like planets and analyze their atmosphere for life.

The launch date is next year, that'd be the year after, 2016.

Another mission initiated by the French Space Agency was launched in 2006 and is currently looking for extra solar planets.

Now the failure of the SETI program, the search for extraterrestrial intelligences to detect anything resembling an intelligent radio signal after 4 decades of effort has at least partially dimmed the prevailing optimism of life out there somewhere.

The question is, is there life on other planets?

Are we alone in this vast complex universe?

Can we claim to be the only galaxy housing intelligences in over 400 billion discovered galaxies in space?

The question as to whether there are other worlds that are inhabited is a vital concern as it leads us to a much deeper issue that we'll be dealing with here today.

I think we have a even a picture of our solar system and and the pin dot of the earth that shows where we are in our solar system.

Yeah, there it is, this is the Milky Way and we are there.

You can't even see where we are here is really, but we are a pin dot in the Milky Way and Milky Way is 1 of over 400 billion galaxies, discovered galaxies, known of galaxies in this universe and when we use the word billion and I know we use the word billion carelessly sometimes cheaply because we we hear the government spending so many billion dollars on this program and this program but if you counted to a billion it would take you a very long time to get there very long time to get if you worked out at 12 hours a day 7 days a week it take you more than several years to count to a billion.

And so we are truly 1 fine speck in this vast universe.

But the question as to whether there are other worlds that are inhabited is a vital concern to us because it does lead to a much deeper issue that we're going to deal with here today.

Science and education haven't been able to help us answer this question as hard as they've tried.

Consider that our nearest star is 3 and a half light years away.

Light travels at the speed of 186, 000 miles per second.

So we would need to travel at that speed, 186, 000 miles per second for 3 and a half years to reach our nearest star.

And yet as marvelous as it is, we've only been able to send probes up there to our nearest planet, Mars.

Now, of course, we've got satellites floating around out there, taking pictures and doing different things.

But as only as we explore the content of Scripture, can we discover the truth of this matter?

I'd like to invite you to turn with me to Hebrews 11, and we're gonna read verse 3.

We're gonna look at several verses here this morning in our study together.

The Apostle Paul, and I believe it was Paul who wrote the book of Hebrews, says through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." God...

Notice that God said, or the Bible says that God made the worlds plural...

Now we can only understand that this took place through faith.

Evolution must also be accepted on the premise of faith as there's no proof of evolving life forms according to this theory.

Man can take matter and turn it into energy, but God took energy and he turned it into matter.

And we understand this according to what the Apostle Paul writes here we understand this by or through a thing called faith science now agrees that matter hasn't always existed as once believed but that is that it had a beginning so The question would be why not accept biology's 101's premise, life begets life, that an intelligent creator made all that there is.

So the Bible says that God made the worlds, plural, which begets or begs rather a question.

Was it to simply fill the vacuum of space only to be left out there unattended, uninhabited, without any purpose or plan?

Now I'm gonna invite you to go to the Old Testament with me.

Isaiah 45, I've had lots of practice, I've been working on it.

I want you to notice what the gospel prophet tells us here.

Why is it that the world was, Why is the world inhabited?

Look at this, Isaiah chapter 45 and verse 18.

It says, for thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, God himself that formed the earth and made it, He hath established it.

God made the world and we could say the worlds to be inhabited.

He decided to be filled to the brim with the work of his hands.

It wasn't to exist in vain for no purpose at all.

God definitely had a plan in mind when He created the worlds.

Like a parent, for example, who readies their homes for a new arrival, making sure the crib is bought, the clothes are in the drawer, all the necessities are accounted for, not in vain.

Not in vain, but for the arrival of that someone special.

You see, God made the world in readiness for our entrance.

He made the world in 6 days, and on the sixth day, He created man and woman, and planted us here.

He made everything in readiness for it to be inhabited, you see.

Now over in Isaiah chapter 40, verse 22, we read something interesting.

Isaiah chapter 40, we're gonna be in Isaiah a little bit here this morning.

It is He, talking about God, the Creator, it is He that sits upon the circle of the earth and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers that stretches out the heavens as a curtain and spreads them out as a tent to do what?

Notice the heavens are spread out like a tent to dwell in.

By the way, long before we discovered the shape of the earth, a sphere, The Gospel prophet, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, declared God's sitting, as it were, upon the circle of the earth.

Now, Greek mythology, Greek mythology taught that Atlas held up the world.

Greek mythology taught that Atlas held up the world and that an elephant actually was propping up Atlas.

But no 1 ever cared to explain what was keeping the elephant up, you understand.

And so the Bible says that God hung the world in space, you see, and he sits, as it were, upon the circle of the earth.

The inhabitants of the earth are as grasshoppers.

And it says that God spread out the heavens as a tent to dwell in look at verse 15 same chapter Isaiah 40 verse 15 it says behold the nations are as a drop of a bucket and are as counted as the small dust of the balance.

Behold, he taketh up the aisle as a very little thing.

God says here that we are like a drop of water in a bucket.

If I were to reach in and put my hand in a full bucket of water and I were to pull my finger out and on the very tip of my finger would be a drop of water.

If you were to look into the bucket, could you tell if something were missing from the bucket if I pulled my hand out and I had a drop of water on the tip of my finger?

Would you be able to tell any substantial difference or any difference at all with regards to the amount of water in the bucket?

Reading Revelation

Shawn Boonstra

Voice Of Prophecy

Smyrna (Reading Revelation- 9)

I've heard a lot of modern Western Christians complain about persecution, but honestly, I still tend to think that we live in the freest society in the history of the world.

Now, that doesn't mean that popular culture doesn't dislike biblical Christianity, but that's always been the case.

Today of the Voice of Prophecy, where today we're going to continue our series on the Book of Revelation.

And right now, we're partway into Chapter 2 and we're looking at Christ's message to the believers in Smyrna.

Now if you're just joining us, if you haven't been following along, then what you might want to do is visit the website VOP.com and listen to the previous episodes.

What we're doing is reading the entire book of Revelation, essentially verse by verse.

And as you can imagine, that's a pretty big project, so we're doing it in bite-sized pieces in kind of an on-again, off-again fashion.

And right now we're looking at the 7 messages Jesus gave to the 7 churches of Asia Minor.

You've got Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

Now those were not the only churches in Asia Minor, not even by a long shot, but they were 7 churches that were located along a key road in that Roman province, a road that was kind of shaped like an upside-down U or a horseshoe.

On the bottom left of the horseshoe, if you can imagine it, you've got the city of Ephesus and then you make your way north to Smyrna and Pergamos and eventually you head east and downward again until you end in Laodicea.

Now in all likelihood, when John wrote the Book of Revelation, it was first read out loud to the congregation in Ephesus, And then it was sent along the road to the next of the 7 churches, and it went to all of them in the order that they're listed.

But you'll notice that there are several key churches that were there in the first century in that same province, and they're not on the list.

For example, there was a thriving church in the city of Colossae, which is the congregation Paul wrote to in his letter to the Colossians.

There's no question those were key players in the development of first century Christianity, but they're not in the list of 7 churches.

This is just 1 more reason that students of Bible prophecy have come to the conclusion that the 7 churches represent more than just literal churches from the first century.

Anytime you have 7 of something in Bible prophecy, it's a pretty strong indicator that the items in the list have a deeper symbolic meaning.

7 is the number of completeness and perfection.

It's considered to be God's number, the number of wholeness.

So The 7 churches point to a complete set of something, and Bible students have long recognized that they represent the entire span of Christian history, all the way from the first century church down to the second coming of Christ.

So while these letters addressed very real issues in very real churches 2, 000 years ago, they were also prophetic, and they pointed forward to different phases the Christian church would pass through as it waited for Christ to return.

So last time we met, we looked at the message to the believers in Ephesus, which also turned out to be a description of Christianity right back at the starting line.

It was describing the first century church.

Now we're going to look at God's message to Smyrna, which begins in Revelation 2 and verse 8.

So if you have your Bible handy, go ahead and open it there to the book of Revelation, Revelation 2 verse 8, and let's get started.

And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write, These things says the first and the last who was dead and came to life.

Now you'll remember in every 1 of these letters Jesus starts out by identifying himself with some of the symbols used in Revelation chapter 1.

To the church in Ephesus he was the 1 who walks among the candlesticks.

And to the church in Smyrna, he's the 1 who died and came back to life.

The resurrection of Christ was particularly meaningful to the Christians who lived in the second phase of Christian history because the wrath of the Roman Empire started to turn against them.

This is the phase of history that people are talking about when they mention Christians being thrown to the lions.

At first, the Roman Empire really had no problem with Christianity.

They just thought of it as another Jewish sect, and the Jewish nation had some special protections under the Roman Empire.

They were exempt from having to recognize the Roman Emperor as a god because of the assistance they once gave to Julius Caesar.

While other nations were on more than 1 occasion required to offer a pinch of incense to the Caesar, an act of worship, the Jews had an exception.

They only had to promise to pray for the Emperor.

So in the beginning, when the Christian Church was largely a movement centered in Jerusalem and organized around the teachings of a Jewish founder, the Romans didn't really make a difference.

They didn't distinguish them from the Jews.

But later on, especially as the animosity between Jews and Christians grew, the Romans did make a distinction, and the Christians didn't have the same exemption.

They were not a national state religion like the Jews.

Now they were viewed as just a religious sect, and they were perceived as a threat, a possible threat, to the unity of the whole empire.

This is a period of history that really begins around the end of the first century and gets worse and worse until it culminates with a specific and brutal ten-year persecution of Christians under the Emperor Diocletian.

Now that happened at the beginning of the fourth century, so really the time period represented by the letter to Smyrna is from about the end of the first century to the beginning of the fourth.

If you were a Christian during that period of history, you might pay for it with your life.

So Jesus approaches this group of believers by clearly identifying with them.

I understand persecution, he said, because I'm the 1 who went to a Roman cross.

But I came back from the grave, so don't worry about what's going to happen.

I know this isn't easy, but at the end of the road, there will be a crown waiting for you.

Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer.

Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation 10 days.

Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life." Now, in Bible prophecy, a day is often used to represent a year.

That's why Bible scholars see the 490 days of Daniel chapter 9 as 490 literal years.

Generally speaking, in prophecy, it's a day representing a year.

So when Jesus says there will be a tribulation that lasts for 10 days, it actually fits exactly with the 10 years of harsh persecution under Diocletian.

Diocletian essentially outlawed Christianity in 303 AD and he kept it up until Constantine reversed the policy of persecuting Christians with the Edict of Milan in 313, exactly 10 years.

It was the worst period of Christian persecution in all of history, and it was predicted in Revelation more than 200 years before it happened.

Be faithful until death, Jesus says, and I will give you the crown of life.

And do I know that I can give you a crown?

Well, the whole universe is mine, Jesus is saying.

I'm the 1 who died on a Roman cross, and the grave couldn't hold me and I'm alive.

I know what you're facing, and I promise you, it will be worth it.

You know, that's a far cry from the prosperity gospel you hear so much from modern-day Christians.

There's no promise that Christians will be rich or that life will be smooth.

Instead, it virtually guarantees that the world will reject genuine biblical Christianity.

And a passage like this 1, the letter to Smyrna, should set off alarm bells for people who have been taught that Christianity is a guaranteed ticket to Easy Street.

We have 2, 000 years of faithful Christians who did not have a ticket to Easy Street.

Now, I'm up against a break, so I'm going to have to defer to the break, but when I come back we'll back up and look at verse 9.

So keep your Bible open here to Revelation 2.

Do you feel as if you have more questions than answers in your life?

Are you searching for answers to some of life's biggest questions?

Well the Discover Bible Guides can help you find the answers you're looking for.

Visit BibleStudies.com and begin your journey today to discover answers to life's deepest questions.

And we are back from our break, So I hope you have your Bible open to Revelation 2.9.

We're partway through this letter to Smyrna.

Verse 9, I know your works, tribulation and poverty, but you are rich.

And I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan." Now, here's what you need to remember.

This whole letter to Smyrna is written in the context of fierce persecution.

This is describing that period of history after the Romans caught on that Christians were not really Jews, and they started to apply pressure on the Christian church.

In fact, the name Smyrna is a derivative of the word myrrh, a sweet-smelling perfume, and it was very valuable.

You might remember the wise men who came to visit Jesus at his birth.

They brought 3 valuable gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Not only was it sweet-smelling, but It was also 1 of the key spices ancient people used to embalm the dead.

So it fits right in with the whole motif of dying for your faith.

But the only way you could get myrrh as a perfume was to crush a myrrh plant.

And the juice that ran out of the plant was very bitter to the taste, like persecution is very bitter.

Ephesus (Reading Revelation- 8)

Jesus gave a personal message to a group of believers living almost 2, 000 years ago in a region we would now identify as the country of Turkey.

And the amazing thing about it, it's also a personal message to you.

Today on the Voice of Prophecy we're continuing our series, Reading Revelation.

♪ Music Playing ♪ Thanks for joining me on today's edition of the Voice of Prophecy.

I'm your host, Sean Boonstra, and today we're going to pick up on a project that I started, oh, quite some time ago.

We were actually reading our way through the entire book of Revelation.

And after the first 7 or 8 episodes, we really had only made it through the first chapter, because the first chapter is just got so much content.

Today I want to pick up where we left off and start in on the 7 churches of Revelation chapters 2 and 3.

And I'd really encourage you, if you can, to grab a Bible so you can follow along.

Of course, if you're out driving or doing something else that makes reading dangerous, just listen.

Because it really helps with things like comprehension and retention.

It's 1 thing to listen to the Bible—and Actually, that's the way the Bible was originally delivered to most audiences.

But your understanding really does go up if you engage more of your senses.

So if you can, grab a Bible and follow along.

I believe that when we started in on the 7 churches, I mentioned that Bible students have long believed that the churches were actually real literal places in the ancient world.

But they also represent the history of the church in advance.

In other words, these 7 letters to the 7 churches are actually prophecies.

You'll notice back in Revelation 1 in verse 20 that Jesus refers to the mystery of the 7 stars, which represents the angels of the 7 churches.

In other words, there is a meaning behind the 7 churches, a meaning that would be discernible to Christians in those days.

Back in those times, a mystery wasn't something you could not know, but it was something that would only be understood by those who were on the inside, by believers.

Remember, Jesus told his disciples that it was, and I quote, given to them to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

You find that statement in Matthew chapter 13.

But on that same occasion, there were those who were not disciples who did not understand Jesus' parables.

A mystery is something that people on the inside understand.

Now, the same thing is happening here in the book of Revelation.

On the surface, here are 7 letters to 7 very real churches.

They actually existed over in Asia Minor.

To this day, you can visit the cities or the ruins of the cities where these churches were located.

And the descriptions of the churches actually fit things that were happening back in the first century.

But there's more to the story than what was actually happening in John's day.

The prophecies of Revelation follow the same general pattern as the prophecies you find in the ancient book of Daniel.

If you go and look at Daniel chapter 2, you'll find a progression of world kingdoms that stretch from ancient Babylon down to the fragmented Western Roman Empire, and stretching all the way down to the second coming of Christ, for that matter.

In Daniel chapters 7, 8, and 11, the prophet goes over those same prophecies, but then he adds all kinds of details, looking at the situation from different perspectives.

Now, the same thing happens when you read the book of Revelation.

There are 7 churches, 7 seals, 7 trumpets, and so on.

And the general pattern for each set of 7 is historical.

Generally speaking, each of these sevens is a prophecy that starts in the day of the prophet or at some other important point in history, and moves forward down through last day events all the way to the judgment or the second coming.

That's what we have in the prophecy of the 7 churches.

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Never Alone

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Smyrna (Reading Revelation- 9)

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