FRIDAY MORNING MANNA
October 18, 2013
Nathaniel Fajardo
Email: [email protected]
Preparing for the Latter Rain and the Seal of God–Part I
Today, Preparation Day (the Greek parasceue, the way by which the sixth day of Creation week, our Friday, is designated in modern Greek), the day preceding each Sabbath (Matt. 27: 62; Mark 15:42; Luke23:54; John 19: 31, 42), we start a series on preparing for the promised latter rain of the Holy Spirit and seal of God, specifically among the remnant of the last days identified in Revelation 12: 17, and those of Revelation 7: 1-6; 14: 1-5.
Genuine revival and reformation is a central part of this final work of preparation. What are they? “A revival and reformation must take place, under the ministration of the Holy Spirit. Revival and reformation are two different things. Revival signifies a renewal of spiritual life, a quickening of the powers of mind and heart, a resurrection from spiritual death.
Reformation will not bring forth the good fruit of righteousness unless it is connected with the revival of the Spirit. Revival and reformation are to do their appointed work, and in doing this work they must blend.” – E.G. White, Review & Herald, Feb. 25, 1902/ Selected Messages, vol. 1, p. 128.
Confession of sin without corresponding reformation is not acceptable to God (SC 39). “Are we awake to the work that is going on in the heavenly sanctuary, or are we waiting for some compelling power to come upon the church before we shall arouse? Are we hoping to see the whole church revived? That time will never come.
There are persons in the church who are not converted, and who will not unite in earnest, prevailing prayer. We must enter into the work individually. We must pray more, and talk less. Iniquity abounds, and the people must be taught not to be satisfied with a form of godliness without the spirit and power [of godliness, 2 Tim. 3:5].” – E. G. White, Selected Messages, vol. 1, p. 122.
Moreover, a true understanding of Revelation, the supplement of the book of Daniel, would bring about a genuine great revival. “When we as a people understand what this book means to us, there will be seenamong us a great revival. We do not understand fully the lessons that it teaches, notwithstanding the injunction given us to search and study it [Rev. 1: 1-3]. “- Ibid, Testimonies to Ministers, p. 113.
True, with all the unprecedented, record-shattering events taking place in America and in the world today, the skies are not yet falling. That time is still in the near future which the prophets described as “the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll” (Isa. 34: 4; Rev. 6: 14) but earth’s time of probation has been shrinking by the day since God “opened the door that no man can shut and shut the door which no man can open” (Rev. 3: 7) in 1844!
“We are in the great day of atonement, when our sins are, by confession and repentance, to go beforehand to judgment. God does not now accept a tame, spiritless testimony from His ministers. Such testimony would not be present truth. The message for this time must be meat in due season [Matt. 24: 45] to feed the church of God. But Satan has been seeking gradually to rob this message of its power, that the people may not be prepared to stand in the day of the Lord.
In 1844 our great High Priest entered the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary, to begin the work of the investigative judgment. The cases of the righteous dead have been passing in review before God.When that work shall be completed, judgment is to be pronounced upon the living.
How precious, how important are these solemn moments! Each of us has a case pending in the court of heaven. We are individually to be judged according to the deeds done in the body [it being the temple of the Holy Spirit and God [1 Cor. 6: 19, 20].
In the typical service, when the work of atonement was performed by the high priest in the most holy place of the earthly sanctuary, the people were required to afflict their souls before God, and confess their sins, that they might be atoned for and blotted out. [See Leviticus 16]. Will any be less required of us in this antitypical day of atonement, when Christ in the sanctuary above is pleading in behalf of His people, and the final, irrevocable decision is to be pronounced upon every case?
What is our condition in this fearful and solemn time? Alas, what pride is prevailing in the church, what hypocrisy, what deception, what love of dress, frivolity, and amusement, what desire for supremacy! All these sins have clouded the mind, so that eternal things have not been discerned. Shall we not search the Scriptures, that we may know where we are in this world’s history?
Shall we not become intelligent in regard to the work that is being accomplished for us at this time, and the position that we as sinners should occupy while this work of atonement is going forward? If we have any regard for our soul’s salvation, we must make a decided change. We must seek the Lord with true penitence; we must with deep contrition of soul confess our sins, that they may be blotted out [not merely covered or forgiven].
We must no longer remain on enchanted ground. We are fast approaching the close of our probation. Let every soul inquire, How do I stand before God? We know not how soon our names may be taken into the lips of Christ, and our cases be finally decided. What, oh, what will these decisions be! Shall we be counted with the righteous, or shall we be numbered among the wicked?” – Ibid., Selected Messages, Vol. 1, pp. 124-5.
In Manuscript 1, 1849 (see also Early Writings, pp. 42-25/LDE 137-8), E. G. White wrote what she was shown in the following:
(1) The commandments of God and the shut door could not be separated.
(2) The time for the commandments of God to shine out to His people was when the door was opened in the inner apartment of the heavenly sanctuary in 1844. Then Jesus rose up and shut the door in the outer apartment and opened the door in the inner apartment and passed into the most Holy Place, and the faith of [spiritual] Israel now reaches within the second veil [see Heb. 10: 19, 20] where Jesus now stands by the ark
(3) That since Jesus had opened the door to the Most Holy Place the commandments of God have been shining out and God has been testing His people on the Holy Sabbath. The test on the Sabbath could not come until the mediation of Jesus was finished in the Holy place [first apartment] and He had passed within the second veil; therefore, Christians who died before the seventh month [in] 1844, and have not kept the true Sabbath, rest in hope, for there was no condemnation until the true light on the Sabbath came.
(4) The adversaries of the present truth and God’s remnant have been trying to open the door in the outer apartment and to close the door in the inner apartment, where the ark is, containing the two tables of stone, on which are written the Ten Commandments by God’s own finger. Deut. 9: 10; 4:13; Exo. 19: 5, 6; 32: 15, etc.
(5) Satan has been using every device in this sealing time to keep the minds of the people from present truth and cause them to waver; that he was [is] working through agents in a number of ways—through ministers who had rejected God’s truth and had been given over to strong delusions to believe a lie, that they might be damned [2 Thess. 2; 10, 11 ]; that while they were preaching or praying, some would fall prostrate and helpless, not by the power of the Holy Spirit, No, no, but by the power of Satan, breathed upon these agents and through them to the people
(6) Some professed Adventists, who had rejected present truth, while preaching, praying, or in private conversation, used mesmerism [hypnotism] to gain adherents and that the people would rejoice, thinking it was the power of God; and even those that use it [hypnotism] themselves were so far in the darkness and deception of the devil that they thought it was the power of God given them to exercise. . .these men had made God altogether such as one as themselves
(7) Some of the agents were affecting the bodies of those [whom] they could not deceive and drawn away from the present truth. Some of them were even trying to afflict some of the saints unto death! “Oh,” she says, that “all that all could get a view of it as God revealed it unto me, that they might know more of the wiles of Satan so as to be on their guard.)
(8) Satan was [is] at work in these ways to distract, to draw away, and deceive God’s people, just now in this sealing time more than ever before. . . . some were not standing stiffly; their knees were trembling, their feet were sliding, because they were not planted firmly on present truth, that the covering of the Almighty God could not be drawn over them. While they were thus trembling, Satan was trying his every art to hold then where they were until the sealing was over and the covering drawn over God’s people, and they were left without protection in the time of slaughter [see Ezekiel 9: 1-9].
(9) God has begun to draw this covering over His people, therefore it will very soon be drawn over all those who are to have a shelter in the time of trouble or the day of the Lord. [Dan. 12: 1, 2; Joel 1: 20; 2: 1-17; Zephaniah 1: 12-18; 2: 1-3, etc]
(10) As God worked for His people, Satan would also work, and that they mysterious knocking [of the Fox sisters, introducing spiritualism in America) and signs and wonders of Satan, and false reformations would increase and spread. The reformations shown me were not reformations from error to truth, No, no, but from bad to worse, for those who professed a change of heart had only wrapped about them a religious cloak which covered up the iniquity of a vile heart so as to deceive God’s people. But if their hearts could be seen, they would appear as black as ever.”
(To be continued next week).