A Happy New Year to all. If we have a true understanding of God’s law, we will not compare our character and spiritual growth by the character of others. We will judge our own lives by the standard of God’s law which is “holy, just, and good.”Rom. 7: 12.
Twelve months have passed on to eternity never more to return. Have we increased correspondingly in faith,hope, and charity (1 Cor. 13: 13)? “Faith,” says E.G. White, “is not a happy flight of feeling; it is simply taking God at His word and believing because God said He would do this.” A.T. Jones wrote: “Faith is the expecting the word of God to do what it says, and depending upon that word to do what it says.” (Lessons on Faith, p. 16).
“Christ is the Reason for the Season.” If so you would think that more people would be drawn much closer to Christ during Christmas time. Is that the case? Or is the reverse true? Many who say so with great emphasis continue to celebrate Christmas much in the same manner and spirit everybody else to whom Santa Claus, not Christ, is the giver of their gifts. Or as those who couldn’t care less about Christ’s birth only that “Christmas is the happiest holiday of the year,” a time for feasting, partying, and family reunions.
There are those of course, in whose hearts and minds Christ is enshrined throughout the year and come Christmas time they do everything they can, by word and deed to help refocus those around them—
All who will stand in the last days need to pay close attention to currents events, judiciously selecting those only that are relevant to the plan of redemption and the true nature of the great controversy, both central parts of the everlasting gospel given in the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14.
Our omnipotent God chose prophecy as the last vehicle to unveil to “every nation, kindred, tongue (language), and people” (Rev. 14: 6-12) the fullest and final revelation of His perfect love, power, grace, long-suffering, mercy, justice, and supreme authority alone over all creation in heaven and earth and throughout the entire unfallen universe.
Internal Peace in a World at War and the Calm before the Storm
We address important, late-breaking developments showing how theThird angel’s message is “swelling into the loud cry of Revelation 18,” also referred to as the “fourth angel,” and “the events connected with the close of probation.”
See http://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-opens-st-peters-holy-door-launch-102813909.html. Fast-tracking pope Francis (he speeded up the canonization process of John Paul II and John XIII, April 27, 2015, breaching the standard 5-year waiting period and waiving the Vatican’s two-miracle requirement. See Bloomberg.com/new/articles), launched Tuesday, December 8, the “extraordinary Catholic Jubilee Year ofmercy by opening a “holy Door” in the walls of St. Peter’s, saying, “This is the door of the Lord. Open to me thegates of justice.”
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FUTURISM AND THE THIRD ANGEL’S MESSAGE
See Romans 2: 25-29 first. Here Apostle Paul settles once and for all the issue as to who the spiritual Jew is. As the Passover, first observed on the last night of their Egyptian bondage, the first of their three annual festivals, began with the birth of the Hebrew nation, New Testament Christianity, which Christ introduced, replacing Old Testament Judaism, grew rapidly from the Day of Pentecost. The Jewish apostasy made the work of the first apostles especially difficult. The first bitter persecutors of Christ and His followers were the Jewish people led by their spiritual leaders.
WHAT IS THE TRUE INTERPRETATION OFREVELATION 16: 12-16?
(The Threefold Union in the Battle of Armageddon (Continued)
It’s shopping mania season, again. And nobody is complaining, “Oh no, not again!” In fact, with the introduction of e-commerce the demand is getting greater and the activities more frenetic. Nothing seems to satisfy this insatiable appetite—“the lust of the eye and lust of the flesh for the things of this world” (1 John 2: 15-17), one of the undeniable signs of the times. The giant retailers are amping the buying melee, vying for the multi-billion business. They’ve given it new names: Gray Thursday, now [sadly] AKA “Thanksgiving;” Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Sofa Sunday, and Cyber Monday. Emarketer predicts “A Happy Holiday Season Expected for Retailers.” It forecasts that “U.S. retail sales in the months of November and December 2015 will increase 5.7% year over year, reaching $ 885.70 billion.” www.emarketer.com/Articles/Happy-Holiday-Season-Expected-Retailers/1012898.
In sharp contrast, few give serious thought to the Bible forecast of the rapidly-approaching final test of every individual’s professed faith in God to be waged by the tripartite union of the prophetic “dragon, beast, and his image” before earth’s probation closes permanently.
WHAT IS THE TRUE INTERPRETATION OFREVELATION 16: 12-16? (The Threefold Union in the Battle of Armageddon (Continued)
French poet Charles Baudelaire once said that “the greatest trick the devil pulled was fooling the world into believing that he doesn’t exist.” Ellen G. White revealed back in 1884 that this deception is indeed one of the most successful agencies and heresies of the great deceiver: “Another subtle and mischievous error is the fast-spreading belief that Satan has no existence as personal being; that the name is used in Scripture merely to represent men’s evil thoughts and desires.” (Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 4, p. 348).
Again: “The position that it is of no consequence what men believe is one of Satan’s most successful deceptions. He knows that the truth, received in the love of it, sanctifies the soul of the receiver [John 17:17]; therefore he is constantly seeking to substitute false theories, fables, another gospel [1 Tim. 1: 4; 4: 7; 2 Tim. 4: 4; Titus 1: 14; 2 Pet. 1: 16; 2 Cor. 11: 4]. . . .The discord and division which exist among the churches of Christendom are in a great measure due to the prevailing custom of wresting [twisting] the Scriptures to support a favorite theory. Instead of carefully studying God’s word with humility of heart to obtain a knowledge of His will, many seek only to discover something odd or original. . . . Whenever the study of the Scriptures is entered upon without a prayerful, humble, teachable spirit, the plainest as well as the most difficult passages will be wrested from their true meaning . . . The word of God is plain to all who study it with a prayerful heart. “Light [of truth] is sown for the righteous.’ Psalm 97: 11. And no church can advance in holiness unless its members are earnestly seeking for truth as for hid treasure [Prov. 2: 4; Matt. 13: 44].”- Ibid, Maranatha, p. 132.
WHAT IS THE TRUE INTERPRETATION OF REVELATION 16: 12-16? (The Threefold Union in the Battle of Armageddon (Continued)
As we drive down the highway of divine prophetic chronology, we see all sides along the busy route getting more crowded, cluttered, and raucous with competing and confusing sounds of wars and rumors of wars, lilting swan songs, flashing colored lights of various virtualyet really fantasies, alluring peace-and-safety messages cranked out by religious charlatans, the promise of earthly honor, pomp, and prosperity offered by a thousand and one deceived-turned-deceiver purveyors of error, and encounter all manner of wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing.
And yet all these affirm that we are entering the long-looked-after final stretch of the prophetic journey mapped out by the 2300-day prophecy of Daniel 8: 14. The sudden and strange turn of events in the current political cycle in America (more of this later!), the groaning of our tired, abused old earth and its polluted atmosphere manifested in the so-called natural and man-made (never Satan-caused!) catastrophes etc., all speaking of the approach of the most momentous time of earth’s history.
