Today is April Fools’ Day. Wikipedia says some precursors of this “day of fools” include the Roman Festival of Hilaria, the Holi festival of India, and the Medieval Feast of Fools.
But fools and their follies date back much further but much more so in the future. See 2 Samuel chapter 26. When David for the second time spared the life of his insanely jealous and murderous father-in-law, Saul, the first king by popular choice of Israel, obtained by their persistent clamor to God to have a king rule over them like the heathen nations surrounding them,
Biblical Numerology: NUMBER THREE – Part XXXIV “Three Mediums of Communication: Visions, Urim & the Prophets: Lessons for the Nations and the Church(es) Today – Part B”
“Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and Idolatry.” 1 Samuel 15: 11, 23, NKJV.
What is the right faith we must now possess while Christ is closing up His work of atonement in the most holy in heaven simultaneous with the work on earth in preparation for the close of probation, followed immediately by Christ’s glorious second coming?
“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—
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.”
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.
First, it can never be overemphasized that “spiritual things are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2: 10-16). The sealing work of the plan of salvation is to fit up, moral character-wise, mortal, commandment-keeping living saints with the “fine white linen” of Christ’s righteousness (Rev. 19: 8). Thus dressed for “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19: 7-9), they are blessed with the “right to the tree of life and may enter into the gates into the city” (Rev. 22: 13), and claim “the place” in the “heavenly mansions” Jesus ascended to prepare for them (John 14: 1-3).
It is at His glorious second coming that these saints received the finishing touch of “immortality” and their “corruptible flesh was changed to incorruptible at the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump” (1 Cor. 15: 50-56)—the eternal reward of all who remained faithful to the end (Rom. 2: 7; 1 Tim. 2: 16; 1 Cor. 15: 53, 54; Luke 12: 36). It began with conviction and concluded with the transformation of the same faculties of the mind before conversion—that “mind which was also in Christ Jesus,” characterized by “humility and obedience to death” (Phil. 2: 5-8).
THE PROPHETIC TIMETABLE FROM THE COVENANT WEEK TO 538 A.D.
“It suits the policy of Satan that men should retain the forms of religion if but the spirit of vital godliness is lacking. After the rejection of the gospel, the Jews continued zealously to maintain their ancient rites they rigorously preserved their national exclusiveness, while they themselves could not but admit that the presence of God was no longer manifest among them. The prophecy of Daniel (9: 24-27) pointed so unmistakably to the time of the Messiah’s coming, and so directly foretold His death, that they discouraged its study, and finally the rabbispronounced a curse on all who should attempt a computation of time [of the seventy-week prophecy]” –E. G. White, Great Controversy (1911), p. 378.
The late Australian evangelist and eminent Bible scholar, Louis F. Were, authored the book The Certainty of the Third Angel’s Message (among others), which I strongly recommend to all serious students of prophecy–not merely as a must-read but as one of your major reference book for interpreting prophecy correctly. Undoubtedly, I have been enlightened by this Scripturally-comprehensive and scholarly work; it certainly has “clarified the issues, creates order in a confusing number of different prophetic portrayals, and installs new confidence in God’s absolute providence. But above all, L.F. Were exalts Christ Jesus as the center of all Scripture and inspires the soul with new hope and enthusiasm to meet the world’s Redeemer.”
