Shawn Boonstra

Voice Of Prophecy

Falling Prophets

It's been a few years now since the whole Mayan calendar 2012 business, and of course, our world did not come to an end, and that's not a surprise.

What is a surprise is the way we kind of let all the scaremongers off the hook.

Nobody's going back and holding them to account.

And I'm not going to let that happen, so stick around because today of the Voice of Prophecy.

I'm your host, Sean Boonstra, and today I'm going to look at a distinctly prophetic topic, namely, the apocalypse that didn't happen in 2012, when half the world seemed to be gearing up for some kind of major disaster.

Of course, nobody seemed to actually know what that disaster was supposed to be.

An asteroid was going to pulverize the earth.

The north and south poles were going to switch their polarities.

Some kind of super virus was going to wipe us out.

Nobody knew exactly what it was, but something was going to happen.

And I remember that back in the year 2010, a couple of years before this supposed apocalypse, I was in the city of Rome giving lectures on Bible prophecy And 1 of the major TV networks invited me on the air to talk about the book of Revelation.

When I got to the station, I discovered that 1 of the reasons I was invited was because the program host had just seen that movie 2012.

And I guess the movie spooked her a little bit because she was desperate to know about the end of the world.

And she asked me, look is it all really going to end in disaster?

And I suppose she was hoping I'd feed the audience some of the doom and gloom she'd seen in the theater but honestly I wasn't about to do it because all that 2012 hype was just hype.

And it was hype that does not match the key message of the book of Revelation at all.

Now, I know that most people think in terms of cataclysmic apocalypse when they hear about the book of Revelation.

But honestly, that's because they've spent more time listening to Hollywood than actually reading the Bible.

I mean, absolutely, there are some scary sounding things in that book.

You've got this beast crawling up out of the sea, you've got a death penalty for believers and 7 last plagues.

There's lots of stuff in there that Hollywood tries to cash in on.

But the key message is not death and destruction.

The key message is not the end of humanity.

I mean, just listen to the way that the book of Revelation ends.

It's got to be 1 of my favorite Bible passages.

Listen to this, and you tell me if the Bible ends with the utter annihilation of the whole human race?

Men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people.

God Himself will be with them and be their God.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.

There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away." Now listen, I understand that doesn't exactly make for a scary apocalyptic movie.

In fact, thanks to Hollywood script writers and producers, this might just be 1 of the most misunderstood books of all time.

The Book of Revelation is probably the most misrepresented book of all time.

Because I really think that people who crank out this garbage in the movie theaters aren't even trying to understand this.

They just know that you and I find the book a little scary and they're cashing in on our fear.

They're taking something that clearly demonstrates God's existence, clearly exhibits His real character, and they don't care about what God's actually trying to say.

They just want to use the mystique of the book for the sake of the bottom line.

And in my humble estimate, that probably qualifies as adding to the book or taking away from the book, something that the book of Revelation condemns in no uncertain terms right at the end of the book.

But I guess I'm digressing for a little bit and I gotta come back to the year 2012 because there's something that really bothers me about that whole phenomenon.

The people who promoted that stuff, the people who worked so hard to fuel public anxiety, they just walked away from the whole thing on the morning of December 22nd.

And the irresponsible clowns who cashed in on fear never had to apologize.

They've never come back and said, I'm sorry.

Now listen, I'm telling you, if some notable Christian preacher had done the same thing.

If some Christian preacher had predicted the end of the world on December 21st and it didn't happen, they would bring it up again and again and again and rightly so.

People would have made an example out of him.

He told us Jesus would come May 21st, 2011, and that the world would be destroyed later that same year.

Even before his prediction failed, he was the butt of jokes.

And yet, Harold Camping had the decency to apologize when the whole thing was over.

We haven't heard from the TV networks who aired all that sensationalistic garbage.

We haven't heard from the authors and public speakers who promoted this stuff, we haven't heard a peep.

So today, I want to hold them all to account.

They might have stopped talking about it the morning after, but I'm not ready to let this go because, trust me, these people are going to do it again.

They did it in the year 2000 with the Millennium Bug and they did it in 2012 and believe me they're going to do it again.

And they're going to do it because it gives them 15 minutes of fame.

And they're going to do it because it taps into our collective sense of anxiety and it sells a lot of books.

So today, I want to ask all those people who promoted all that fear, where in the world did you go?

I think you need to come back on TV and tell us where you went wrong.

I know that doesn't sell books and I know you're going to have to eat a little crow, but honestly, I think you owe it to everybody to own what you did.

Harold Camping apologized and now it's your turn.

I mean honest and for true it really is time to fess up and apologize.

Show your face 1 more time and tell us why you were wrong.

Get on the air and tell us why the world didn't end.

Write another book and admit that you were doing this for the money or at least admit that you were way off base.

And of course I'm not holding my breath because I've got my doubts.

I don't think anybody has the courage to do it.

I'm gonna take a short little break to tell you about the Discover Bible School and then I'm gonna come back and talk about the whole 2012 thing and I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about the 1 name that seems to pop up every single time the Hucksters try and get us to buy their books.

I'm going to talk about the so-called prophet Nostradamus and I'll be back in just a minute.

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 us at BibleStudies.com or call us at 888-456-7933 for your free Discover Bible Guides.

Your journey today to discover answers to life's deepest questions.

Okay, we are back from the break and I'm hoping you wrote down the information during the break because the Discover Bible course is a great way to figure out what the book of Revelation actually says.

It's time, I mean it's really time for people to stop getting their information from TV specials and horror movies and it's time for people to actually look at what the book of Revelation actually says.

Unlocking Prophecy

Chester Clark

Dalton SDA Church

19. Daniel’s Worst Nightmare

You know, we barely have scratched the surface, and so this is just an opportunity for us to look a little bit further at what we can learn.

And we have a very important topic this evening.

We're going to be talking about Daniel's worst nightmare, and this weekend we're going to be unpacking Daniel chapter 8 and 9 and looking at the teaching that is commonly known as the rapture.

So the 70 week prophecy of Daniel chapter 9 is usually interpreted in light of the rapture and those type of end time events.

And I think that as we study together tonight, Daniel chapter 8, and even tomorrow night, when we get into Daniel chapter 9, I think you're going to agree with me that these 2 chapters, these 2 visions are clearly linked together, and so we have to understand them together.

You know, we get into trouble when we start taking 1 part of the Bible and interpreting it without its context, don't we?

There's a saying that goes something like this, a verse taken out of context is a pretext.

You can say it this way, a text out of context is a pretext.

And you can really make it say whatever you want it to say, right?

And so we're going to be looking at the context of Daniel chapter 9, so hopefully it'll be very clear when we come to understanding it, what it means, and also what it can't mean.

I don't know about you, but I think you're here because you want to know what the Bible says, amen?

You're not here because you're just interested in what the popular teachings are, what the theologians say.

I want to understand God's word for myself.

I don't want to take what other people say about it.

And I hope that 1 thing I can share with you is as we study these chapters, I hope that you can see what it says for yourselves, that you can be satisfied that you understand what it is talking about.

Now there are some passages here that we're not going to have time to go into complete exhaustive detail as we explain them, as we study them.

Some things we'll have to leave for future nights, right?

But there's a lot that we can unpack in just the short time that we have together tonight.

I know, I believe, and I think that if you were here through the Unlocking Prophecy series last fall, I think you would agree with me that we are living in the last days of Earth's history.

When we study Daniel chapter 2, we're gonna review it here in just a minute.

When we study Daniel chapter 7, when we read what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 24, we believe that Jesus is coming soon and that the time of the end, you might say it, is upon us.

Now, that doesn't mean that we're setting dates and we've decided that we only have a few more years or Jesus is gonna come at a certain time.

Jesus even says, behold I come quickly, right?

And that's the anticipation that we have as we've studied prophecy together.

Now, we remember that when Jesus came the first time, right, when Jesus came the first time, his own people weren't ready to receive him.

They were looking for a Messiah that was going to overthrow the Romans and free the Jewish nation from their bondage to another nation.

They were going to be the kingdom of kingdoms and Jerusalem would be the capital of the world and that's what they wanted.

In fact, the reason that they had these expectations was because of a misunderstanding of Bible prophecy.

It wasn't that they didn't study the prophecies, it's just that when they studied it they came to conclusions that weren't warranted in the Scriptures.

For example, in the Old Testament we do find predictions of Jesus' first coming, don't we?

We find, for example, Isaiah chapter 53 would be 1 that comes to mind, wouldn't it?

He comes as a lamb to the slaughters, a sheep before his shears was done.

There was no beauty in him that we should desire him.

But is that what the priests and the Pharisees of Jesus' day were reading when they looked for a Messiah?

No, because they actually took passages from the Old Testament that predict the final restoration of all things in God's eternal kingdom, and they tried to apply it to his first coming, overlooking all of the teachings that they should have seen in the Jewish sanctuary service, of the Lamb's coming and being offered as innocent sacrifices.

They looked instead at the prophecies of Jesus coming as King of Kings and the new earth being recreated and Jerusalem being the center of peace and prosperity.

And they applied, listen to me carefully, they applied the prophecies of Jesus' second coming to His first coming.

Now I think it's just, it's just not reasonable to assume that if the devil figured it worked that well once, he might not try something like that again, don't you think?

You see, we not only want to study prophecy, we want to be careful that we rightly apply the prophecies, right?

And so in our studies this weekend, we're going to be looking at Daniel chapter 9, 8 and 9 very carefully.

I speak of them as 1 prophecy because I think, and I'll try to show this to you as we go on tonight and tomorrow night, that they are 1 prophecy.

But as we study this prophecy, I think it's very important that we make sure we're applying the prophecies of Jesus' first coming to His first coming and His second coming to His second coming.

Because I don't want to be caught in the same trap the Jews were caught, God's people were caught in, in His first coming, of studying the prophecies but confusing between the first and the second advent.

All right, well, let's begin with a little bit of a review, shall we?

We remember that our first nights, we discussed the very primer, the very beginning, the ABCs of end-time prophecy that we found in Daniel chapter 2, remember that?

And in Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar dreams a dream.

He has some sort of an amnesia incident where he can't remember the dream, but he knows it must have been important.

He woke up, perhaps his heart pounding and his palms sweaty.

He was having a nightmare of his own, right?

And you remember how the wise men couldn't interpret it.

They couldn't, of course, even tell it to him.

They said, what the king asked is very hard, the only 1 that could do that are the gods, and their dwelling is not with flesh.

Well, they didn't know the God of heaven, did they?

Because the God of heaven does dwell with flesh.

In fact, he said to his people, let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.

And so Daniel comes and has a prayer meeting with his 3 friends.

Daniel receives a dream or a vision that night.

He knows not only what Nebuchadnezzar dreamed, but he tells the king what he was thinking about before he fell asleep.

If there's any confirmation that Nebuchadnezzar could have that Daniel really was on to what he had dreamed, it was confirmed when he told him what he'd been thinking about before he fell asleep.

And finally, he not only told him his dream, he told him what it meant.

That head of gold represented Nebuchadnezzar himself, the kingdom of Babylon, the chest and arms of silver, the next kingdom that would follow after, that of Medo-Persia, the belly and thighs of Greece, the legs of iron represented Rome, and feet part iron and part clay.

And then at the end there was this stone cut out without hands that destroyed the image and filled the earth and became a great mountain.

And Daniel explained that these 4 succession of empires that would take over that part of the world would be followed by a mixture of some nations strong and weak, the iron mixed with clay, and then that stone cut out without hands, he explained, was God's kingdom who would set up, God would set up an eternal kingdom, an everlasting kingdom, right?

We looked at how the same prophecies were given, the same kingdoms were depicted, this time instead of metals, they were depicted as beasts or animals.

And God made it very clear that the king or kingdom was represented by each of these animals.

And the first a lion, the second a bear, the third a leopard, again representing Babylon and Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome.

We found, we studied together and if you didn't get a hold of, if you weren't here during those nights, 1 thing you can do, you can either get some CDs or DVDs or you can go online at unlockingprophecydalton.com and you can listen or watch all of those messages for free.

But we studied how this prophecy gave an additional detail that wasn't in Daniel chapter 2.

It talked about what would happen after Rome.

There would actually be another power during that time of the metal and clay mixed together.

It wouldn't rule the whole earth as the others had, but it would be a power nonetheless.

Let's just review here real quickly these empires.

First of all, the head of gold, Babylon, 605 to 539 BC.

Second, we have Medo-Persia from 539 to 331 BC, represented by the chest and arms of silver and the bear in Daniel chapter 7.

Then followed by the kingdom of Greece from 331 down to 168 BC.

This would be the belly and thighs of brass In Daniel chapter 2, the leopard with 4 heads and 4 wings.

In Daniel chapter 7, followed by Rome, the legs of iron.

And in Daniel 7, a great and dreadful beast.

Rome would be the longest lasting of all of these empires.

Life To It's Fullest

Chris Holland

It Is Written Canada

The Right Focus

God's book, the Bible, still relevant in today's complex world.

It is written sharing messages of hope around the world.

Judah was enjoying the reign of 1 of their 2 greatest kings.

King Hezekiah had built the empire up to the greatest prosperity it had known since the time of David and Solomon.

They had averted the destruction that their counterparts in Israel had experienced.

And although the Assyrians had come to take Jerusalem, God provided their deliverance.

Much of this can be attributed to the tremendous amount of religious reform that had taken place in Judah.

But in approximately 712 BC, Hezekiah was very ill and he received a visit from the prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah gave him the kind of news you really don't want to hear.

Isaiah told him that it was time to set his house in order because he was about to die.

Hezekiah was very troubled, as any of us would have been.

He prayed that God would deliver him and allow him to live.

God heard this prayer and granted him 15 more years of life.

2 significant events happened in that additional 15 years that Hezekiah had been granted.

1 of them is significant to our study today.

The other is not so much, but an interesting note.

That first event was the visit of the Babylonian delegation.

Hezekiah welcomed this delegation and showed them all of the items in the palace in the house of God.

Those Babylonians would never forget this, and they would wait about a hundred years before they would come and take it all in the time of Daniel.

Now the second event was the birth of his son, Manasseh.

The story of Manasseh can be found in 2 Kings 21 and in 2 Chronicles chapter 33.

Now the Bible reports nothing of Manasseh's early childhood.

But at the age of 12, he ascended to the throne to be the king of Judah.

Manasseh did not follow in the footsteps of his father, however, and he was evil in his heart.

The Bible reports that Manasseh was more evil than any of the other kings of Israel.

He began by erecting altars and worship places for the Canaanite sun god, Baal.

He wasn't satisfied with that, so he erected what the King James Version calls a grove.

Now this word in Hebrew is actually the word Asherah.

Asherah was the formal name of the sensual fertility goddess Astarte, who was the counterpart to the Assyrian fertility god Ishtar.

But places of worship for Asherah were literally groves that had been set up and each of the trees in this grove would be cut and trimmed to make some image or some semblance of a God.

And these groves would be the home to worship and festivals and various sacrifices.

Manasseh erected many altars to the various gods in the temple of God in Israel.

Manasseh was so corrupted, in fact, and so evil that he sacrificed his own baby son and had him burned alive.

This was the demand of the god of the Ammonites, Molech, who was called the purifying god.

Now traditional Jewish history records that it was Manasseh who killed the prophet Isaiah.

Manasseh had him placed in a hollowed out stump of a tree and then had that stump sawed in half.

Anyone who tried to remain faithful was in danger of strong persecution from this evil king.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Falling Prophets

30m

19. Daniel’s Worst Nightmare

1h

The Right Focus

24m

11- Regional Ordination: A Path to Congregationalism?

58m

9- The Third Option: A Way Forward or a Step Backwards?

58m

8- The Present Relevance of 1 Timothy

1h 53m

Episode 13- LIGHT (Lay Institute for Global Health Training)

28m

11. Proverbs: Living By Faith

26m

What to Do With Doubt

36m

The Privilege of Prayer

38m

A Knowledge of God

41m

The Work and the Life

43m

Sound Doctrine