69 - Understanding of End Times, Part 1

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70 - Understanding of End Times, Part 2

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy. This is a ministry of striving for eternity. I am

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Andrew Rappaport, your instructor, and yes, I got a little bit too much sun at the reason rally.

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Yes, I know. I did have suntan lotion. It's not that I didn't, it's just that I ended up wiping it all off and therefore

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I got burned. This is actually a week old, but that's okay. I was out yesterday evangelizing and got a little bit more burned.

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But we're glad to have you with us. This is, as I said, the Striving for Eternity Academy. This is our school of systematic theology.

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And in this school, as we've been going through, this is lesson number 69, 69 lessons.

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And we're in book number four. In other words, we've had four different basically sections that we're doing in this school.

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And this is all in an introduction to theology. This is what we're calling

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God's program for the ages, the doctrine of the church and the doctrine of last things.

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And so this is the lesson number five in that book. And this is what we're calling the understanding of last things.

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And I encourage you to pick up a copy of the syllabus. You can get it at the website strivingforeternity .org.

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In fact, more specifically, you can go to the store and pick it up at store .strivingforeternity .org.

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While you're there, you can pick up a lot of other good products. I think they're good anyway. And pick up some other syllabuses.

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By the way, there is a way to get bulk discount on the syllabuses. So if you were to, say, want to get all four of the syllabuses for the systematic theology, you could pick those up for $75.

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Or you can get all six that we currently have, or all six of the syllabuses, you can get any six syllabuses actually, for $100.

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So you get better volume and discount, or better discount in volume. I said that backwards, didn't

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I? Yeah. All right. So, with that, we're going to look at the study of end times.

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And I know there are some students, Joe Conkle, that have been waiting for a very long time for us to finally get to the doctrine of end times.

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And some thought we would never get here. Actually, some thought the second coming of Christ may appear before we got to this.

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And, well, we may still be, that's still a possibility, because we're not going to get to everything this week.

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But we're going to start, and we're going to be looking into a lot of different things. Now, this is an area where it gets, shall we say, controversial, a lot of disagreement.

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There's people who feel very strongly on their position in this area.

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And one of the things I want to, at the outset, encourage you with is the fact that we have to remember that, though we think we're really, really, really, really, really right on this issue, we could be wrong, all right?

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This is an area where Scripture is not as clear as we would like it to be or as we think it is.

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You know, many people were confused at the first coming. Many people did not expect

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Christ to come the way He did in His first coming because they had an expectation of how

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Christ was to come in His first coming, and they were mixing up some of the first coming with the second coming.

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And so what they were looking for was some of the things that are prophesied in His second coming in the first coming.

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So the whole thing that I'm trying to say with that is that we know that there has been confusion in the past.

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We should not think that there won't be confusion in the future. Now one of the things I also would like to say by way of warning is that we really need to be careful.

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I like what one of my friends had said that he said, referring specifically to the book of Revelation, but this actually works for all of the study in the area of what's called eschatology.

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We're going to get to that in a minute, but the study of end times. The issue is that you could look at it as more of like a political cartoon.

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In other words, years ago you could see a political cartoon in America where there's an

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American eagle swooping down and picking up a bear, and back when the United States and Russia were kind of at odds with one another, people would see the

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United States as the eagle, the bear as Russia, and they would get this idea of a general picture of this eagle swooping down, picking up a bear, meaning like basically

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America winning or taking off with Russia type of thing.

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I'm saying that to say you get an idea of generalities in a political cartoon, but it doesn't give you all the details, and that's the thing.

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I think that where we see is that as we look into these lessons, you're going to see a lot of people focus a lot of time on lots of details, and yet how could there be such disagreement on these areas with all these details?

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And I think a lot of it, as we're going to see, is going to come to how you interpret the Bible, the study of hermeneutics.

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We have a whole class on hermeneutics that's part of our, you know, really it's going to be,

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I guess as we reshift things, it'll be part of the School of Systematic Theology. That's probably where it would fit. But the whole idea of hermeneutics is how to study the

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Bible, and that comes into play. How do we deal with these many, many passages that talk about Christ's second coming?

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This is the issue. There are lots of debates, and we have to be careful on how we dialogue with one another on these issues.

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I'm spending this much time to give a warning because of the fact that there is so much in this particular doctrine, in this particular area, where people seem to want to fight and argue, and it's one where I think that it's not like the

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Calvinism or Minionism debate that people have, where typically what most of the time is happening in that debate is mischaracterizing of the other person's position.

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This one is one where I think really what it is, people are arguing from what the Scripture does not say. A lot of people are arguing and making a case for what they think

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Scripture says, but don't really look at it and say, well, the Scripture doesn't actually say that.

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They're drawing conclusions based on presuppositions that they don't question where they have that presupposition.

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What you're going to find is that the way that you handle your interpretation is going to affect the way you look at end times.

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We're going to see that as we go through this lesson, maybe not all this week.

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I'm going to try to see how much we can get through. The point being is if you look in your syllabus, and I hope you have a syllabus, but if you look in your syllabus, the doctrine of end times is often called eschatology.

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That's a big word to impress your friends. What does eschatology mean? It is the doctrine or the study of end times.

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This is a study of the Scriptures which promotes one of the most exciting and intriguing topics among students.

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It's because there's great confusion and endless speculation when it comes to the doctrine of end times.

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There's really no end to the different views and speculations that occur. Actually, I kind of find it funny.

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There seems to be more and more speculation and more and more views that come up. It seems almost yearly.

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It's important to study end times though. This is the thing. What we want to do is we want to look today at the benefits of this study because a lot of people will say, why should

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I bother? Isn't it better to study that which has already been revealed?

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His first coming, the Old Testament, study things that we know, less speculation. I agree with you, but we have to admit that a majority of the

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Old and New Testament deal with Christ's second coming. And because of that, it's not a topic we should ignore.

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That's the point. Since so much of Scripture focuses on end times, I think that it is something that God wants us to study, but we're not going to have all the answers.

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And some people, wow, does that make them uncomfortable. It does because we want to have all the answers, but you know what?

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Deuteronomy 29 .29, it says that the secret things belong unto the Lord, but that which He has revealed to you, obey and teach to your children.

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You see, we want to have all the answers, but we are not going to have all the answers.

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As much as we would want to have all the answers, it's not going to happen. And it's for that reason that we study these things, and you know what this should do?

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It should cause us to depend upon God because it should reveal to us, the most important thing it reveals to me, and it should to you, is that you and I are not

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God. We don't have all the answers, and we won't have all the answers, and in fact, we shouldn't look to think that we will have all the answers.

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We should depend upon God and look to what His Word says. Could we be wrong in this area?

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Yeah, someone is. I mean, we can't all be right, but is it something

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I'm going to separate over with other Christians? No, it's not. How should we approach the information on the doctrine of end times in the

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Scriptures? These are some of the questions that we're going to deal with today. There's two key areas that we desire to answer, and that's going to be foundational to an understanding of last things.

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The first is going to be the benefits of the doctrines, and then the approach of the doctrines of last times, or last things, end times, alright?

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So that's going to be a thing. And as we go through this, it's important to understand there are people that's, when

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I say endless speculations, let me get my, this is just one of many charts that you will see.

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If you go and look at end times online, you're going to see tons of charts, but I'm just going to hold this up because, well, it covers my face.

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There I am. Alright, but just take a look at this, and look at all the detail that's put in to, this is someone put an awful lot of detail,

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I had someone that gave this to me, and just look at all the detail that someone put.

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Can I get that all on? Well, I can get most of that on to the screen. Look at all the detail. There's, I mean, throughout this thing, there's all these, whoop, that just scrolled up.

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There's all this detail that's in a chart like that, and there's tons of those charts online. Everyone seems to have their own little chart.

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There's all these charts that people have for all the different views of end times. Okay, granted, more so in pre -millennialism, just saying, but, and we'll get to what that means in a bit, but they're more known for all these different charts of showing the details of end times, what's going to happen in what order, things like that.

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And as much as we want to have, ah, it'd be nice to get all that detail, have it all, know that it's right, know that we got it all, we can follow the line.

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We just can't. I mean, those details might be right. You know, a lot of them

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I think would be, but there's going to be things that are wrong. You know, this is the issue. I mean, I will say this, you should not base your doctrine or understanding of end times on like a novel, a fictional novel series like Left Behind, okay?

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I'm just saying, fictional novels should not be the basis for your theology, okay?

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There's probably some things in there I might, I actually, to be honest, for, you know, complete, you know, disclosure,

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I haven't read the Left Behind series, so I really don't know if I would agree or disagree with the theology taught in that, but I don't think that that's probably the best source for your theology on eschatology, all right?

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I think you should go to the scriptures, or maybe go to the syllabus, just saying.

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You could pick up a syllabus and go to that. Just grab one of those right there, the syllabus on the camera, on screen.

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All right, thanks. So let's start with the benefits of the doctrine of end times.

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So let's look at the benefits, and with this, I want to say that while many may study the doctrine because it's interesting, it's intriguing, it's one of two areas

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I find that when people want to get into some study, there's a couple of doctrines they focus on.

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They focus on salvation or end times, and we've talked about this, especially if you were in book number three,

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I guess it was, where we talked about the doctrine of salvation. We talked about this, and I mentioned how so many people get into their theology at the doctrine of salvation or the doctrine of end times, and a lot of it's because there is some interest here.

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There is some speculation. It is kind of neat to look for these different things, but the one point I want to point out is that's the bad place to start our theology.

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This is lesson number 69, and we're just getting to the end times now.

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That means there's 68 lessons that came before it. You should study those. You should really, really, really, really, really start at the beginning on the first few lessons where we talked about the attributes of God because all of our theology, and I've said this throughout these classes, our theology is built on the character of God.

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Theology, God, study of. It's a study of God, and everything is going to be based on who

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He is. If you have a right understanding of the character of God, you're going to have a better understanding of the end times.

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You're going to have a better understanding of salvation. These doctrines where people fight over, you're going to see that there's a lot more clarity if you have the nature of God right.

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That's why it's so important to focus there, to start there. Start with those lessons. I'm not saying to shut this off right now and go there, though that might not be a bad idea just saying, but the point being is you do want to have that foundation set first, okay?

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There's many people that study this because it's an interesting thing, there's a speculation. There's a number of practical benefits, however, to studying the doctrine of end times.

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This is a thing that in all of my study in this area, and I had to take a class in seminary and read many books on eschatology from many different points of view.

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One of the things I saw very little of is giving some explanation to why should we bother?

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I mean, why should I take the time to study out a doctrine that seems confusing?

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Something that seems like we can't get answers. We can't be as exact and absolute as we would like to be.

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That causes some of us to be like, well, why should

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I even bother? Why should I spend the time to do this kind of study?

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And I understand that. And so what I want to do is start before we get in, because we're going to spend several weeks, several lessons going through the doctrine of end times, looking at different topics, getting into some controversy, just saying,

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I'm not afraid of that. I hope you're not either. I'm not going to agree with everything you believe.

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You're not going to agree with everything I believe, but that's okay. The goal here is going to be that we at least fairly represent one another's positions.

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That I hope we do. Second, that we would be able to dialogue. Granted, it's me talking to you.

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I don't get to hear you unless you, well, email us. You could email us. You know that? Email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

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That's one way you can email us. Okay, just saying. So you can email us. I threw you for a loop on that one.

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Engineer was not expecting that slide to have to go up. All right, enough fooling around.

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But you could dialogue with us and it'll get to me if you want me to respond.

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You could let me know. But the thing is, is that we are saying that we're cautious to say that there's an absolute that we could know this side of heaven.

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I think that in hindsight, we're going to have 20 -20 vision. On the other side of heaven or the other side of these events, we're going to know exactly how they were going to happen.

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This side, not as much as we would like. Okay? All right, so let's look at some benefits.

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The first benefit you see in your syllabus is it teaches us something of the greatness of God.

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The greatness of God. That's your blank, greatness. It teaches us something about the greatness of God. Let's take a look at Isaiah chapter 26.

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Isaiah 26 and verses 9 -11. Isaiah 26, 9 -11 says,

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My soul yearns for you in the night. My spirit within me yearning, uh, wait, earnestly, sorry, let me start again.

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My soul yearns for you in the night. My spirit within me earnestly seeks you.

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For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

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If favor is shown to the wicked, it does not learn righteousness in the land of uprightness.

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He deals corruptly and does not see the majesty of the Lord. Oh Lord, your hand is lifted up, but they do not see it.

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Let them see your zeal for your people and be ashamed.

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Let the, uh, let the fire for your adversity, adversity,

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I can't speak, adversaries, I can't consume them.

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I'm sorry. So, but the point there is you see, you see how

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Isaiah had this view of the greatness of God. He, he, in these things he could not see, in these things, his future judgment that he looked forward to, what that caused

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Isaiah to see is how great God is. And I want to point that out to say that we don't study these things so we could say, oh, look at how

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I figured all this out. Look, you know, look at all the details on my chart and how I figured out this versus that and this and this and this.

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And I can tie this verse with that verse and I understand there were many people that do all that. They, they want to tie all these details together all through the scriptures and show how they all work out together.

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But the question is, as you're doing this study, are you learning something about the greatness of God?

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Do you see the greatness of God in his plans for the future?

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Isaiah did. Isaiah looked to the future judgment of God and was like, God, you're so good.

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You are so great. That should be our approach. Our view should be that we see

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God as being greater than we did before. That when we think about, we look at the world around us and we can ask like the psalmist asks in Psalm 10, like, why is it,

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Lord, that the wicked prosper? I mean, if you read Psalm 10, and I wish that we had time to, to go through all of it.

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I actually started using Psalm 10 as my open air preaching text when I want to open air preach. I know a lot of guys have been going to Romans 1.

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I used to do that. I go to different passages. I used to go to 2 Corinthians 5. But now my kind of new favorite one is

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Psalm 10. I like it because he says, oh Lord, do you stand far away?

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Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble, in arrogance? The wicked pursue the poor.

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Let them be caught in their schemes they have devised. For the wicked boast of the desires of his soul.

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And the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord in the pride of his face.

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And the wicked does not seek him. All his thoughts are, there is no

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God. We'll stop there in verse 4 of Psalm 10. But you see that, the psalmist is going, the wicked seem to prosper.

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It looks like they're prospering, and they're denying God, and he goes on to say why. He goes on in this psalm to explain that these wicked people, they look for the poor and needy and helpless, and they take advantage of them, and they boast about taking advantage of them.

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And they do it because they think God will not see them. And they end up saying that in verse 13, why do the wicked renounce

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God and say in his heart you will not call me to account. They think if God doesn't exist,

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God won't call me into account. I can do this wickedness. And the psalmist is saying why does it seem like the wicked that deny

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God's existence, that think they're not going to come to account, why does it look like they prosper here on earth as they take care, not take care of, but they abuse the poor and the helpless.

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But he doesn't end that way. See in verse 14 he says the king is forever.

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The nations perish from his land. Oh Lord, you hear the desires of the afflicted.

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You will strengthen their heart. You will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and to the oppressed so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.

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So what you see in Psalm 10 is the psalmist is saying it seems like the wicked are prospering but you know what?

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It's only for a short time. They won't prosper forever. No, in fact what you see the psalmist looking to at the end of that psalm is he's looking to the future.

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God is the king of kings and there is a day that these people who say I won't have to give an account for my evil, they're going to have to give an account.

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What is the psalmist appealing to? Future judgment, the end times. That's what he's looking to.

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And what does he get out of that? He sees that God is greater. He sees the greatness of God.

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That should be our focus. We should focus on the greatness of God. Another thing that we see is

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John, the writer of the book of Revelation, as long as the book of John, 1st

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John, 2nd John, 3rd John, but John says, John proclaims blessings. That's your blank there, blessings.

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John proclaims blessings upon those who read, hear, and obey the prophecies in the book of Revelation.

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This is Revelation chapter 3, Revelation chapter 3, and you see here it says, blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it for the time is near.

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John is saying, and this may surprise some, but John is saying that there is a blessing in just reading this book of Revelation that talks so much about end times.

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The first three chapters are not, but after chapter 3, the rest of it from chapter 4 to 21 are all end times.

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They're all focusing on future events and John says that you will receive a blessing from reading this book.

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And for some, that seems strange, like wait, Andrew, what do you mean? What did John mean that we receive a blessing from this?

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What kind of blessing is this? This book confuses me. It talks about, you know, some, you know, these, well, a lot of different things, you know.

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It talks about these beasts and these, you know, different things that aren't clear and it's so confusing.

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How could you say I get a blessing? Well, here would be the real issue and this is where I think the primary blessing is going to be.

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I like what Richard Mayhew says in his commentary on Revelation. He basically says he can summarize the entire book of Revelation into two words.

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And it's really, it's true. You really can. The entire book of Revelation can be summarized in two words.

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God wins. I love that. You know, when

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I read through Revelation and I look, I watch the news and I look at what's going on in the world today, you could sit there and get frustrated at things.

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But it's good to know when we look at the, we know the ending of the story. And the ending of the story is

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God wins. Maybe you're one of those types of people who likes to read a mystery novel by the last chapter first.

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You want to see who did it so that then you figure out, you read, so you could put all the pieces together.

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I know. I don't do that, but some seem to like to do that. My suggestion is read through it twice, you know.

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But, you know, it's a thing where that's what we have. We have the ending. And as we read the book of Revelation, you should start the

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Bible again and read through it now knowing God wins. And as you see the wickedness, like we read parts of in Psalm 10, go read all of Psalm 10, see what the psalmist is saying.

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And it's like, it seems on earth like the wicked are prospering from ill -gotten gain and wickedness.

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But you know what? In the end, God wins. God wins.

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I can rest assured that as evil as the world is getting, as these professing atheists want to start to persecute

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Christians and punish Christians for having a belief in the truth, the reality is

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God wins. When we see this evil in our world, God wins.

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When we go, as I did yesterday, to New York City to evangelize, and as much as I hate it, the fact that New York City's passed a law that now public nudity is okay, and we're sitting there and we had a believer who's from out of town, he's not from the area, and he saw that he was outraged as he should be, as I am.

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And he was like, we should call the police. The problem is the police won't do anything. And we can look at this and see the wickedness and the evil that our country and our culture is giving itself over to.

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It's really a Romans 1 culture. They have so far gone beyond just the homosexual issue that you see in Revelation 1.

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No, they've gone beyond that. And they've given themselves completely over to wickedness.

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And they want to call good evil and evil good. And as we look at all that, God wins.

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God wins. That's the purpose of the book of Revelation. That's why it's such a blessing. As you read through this, it's going to be confusing.

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And there's going to be things you're not going to understand. But God wins. And we can rest in that.

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We can rest in the fact that all like all the other prophecies, all has been fulfilled quite literally and exactly.

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So the prophecies that have yet to be fulfilled will be fulfilled just as literally and just as accurately in the second coming.

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And what we see in that is God wins. Are you getting the point? Is this starting to hopefully be a blessing to you already to know that as we look into all these things that have lots of speculation and lots of confusion, the one thing we can rest on, the one thing we can look at our culture and look at and then compare to this study of end times and know is that God wins.

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One other point is if you're a believer, you're on the winning side. Everyone wants to be on the winning side, right?

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We're on the winning side because we're on God's side. One of the things that was asked of Abraham Lincoln was, is

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God on our side? And Abraham Lincoln said, I don't know if God is on our side. The question is, are we on his?

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And that's a good outlook. He wanted to make sure that we are following God, not that we ask

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God to follow us. So, studying the end times should show us something of the greatness of God.

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According to John, it should give a blessing to the reader. Letter C there is the tremendous amount of scripture given to this doctrine demonstrates the benefit of the study.

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For example, for every verse speaking of Christ's first coming, there are eight speaking of his second coming.

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Is that a lot? Does that surprise you? I think John MacArthur said a third of the

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Bible refers to prophecy. It could be a third of the Bible or a third of the

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Bible refers to the second coming. I forget which, but I think it's like a third of the Bible. Or it might be two -thirds of the

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Bible is prophecy and one -third is just Christ's first and second coming. Something like that. But there's an awful lot.

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When you think about it, for every verse, and there are many verses talking about Christ's first coming, for every verse speaking of his first coming, there are eight speaking of his second coming.

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That tells me that this is something God wants us to study. If it was something that he wanted us to put on the shelf and not think about and just leave that for the theologians, then he wouldn't have put so much scripture dealing with it.

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I think that you and I, as human beings, we need the repetition. We kind of forget things, and I think that so much of the

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New Testament, so much of the Old Testament focuses on the second coming because what is our tendency?

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If we can't comprehend it, if we can't understand it, what do we want to do? We want to put it on the shelf. And so many Christians, that's what they do with the study of end times.

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They put it on the shelf and leave it to the theologians, leave it to the pastor, leave it to someone that wants to study it.

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And they don't study these things. I'm not saying you have to be an expert in it. But I am saying we shouldn't avoid it because much of the

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Bible is focused on this topic. Letter D is that studying this doctrine provides comfort.

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Comfort, that's your blank there. Comfort for those who grieve. Studying this gives comfort to those who grieve.

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Let's take a look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4

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And this is verses 4 Sorry, this is verses 13 to 18.

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So 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verses 13 to 18 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that they may not grieve as others who have no hope.

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For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep.

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For this we declare to you by a word from the

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Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the

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Lord, will not proceed those who have fallen asleep.

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For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

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Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the

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Lord in the air. And we will always be with the Lord.

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Therefore, encourage one another with these words.

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See, he's saying that should be an encouragement. Encourage one another with these words.

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What words? The words of the future, the words of Christ's second coming, His return.

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The fact that those who are in despair could rest assured that though our loved ones have gone and been with the

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Lord, they're coming back again. Now, if the Lord should tarry and we fall asleep, it means to be dead.

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It's a polite way of saying, we would say in our day and age, in some cultures, that they passed away.

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That's the same as that they went, they're asleep. It is a polite way to say they died.

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And so he's saying to those who've died, and if the Lord tarries when we die, we will come back with the

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Lord, according to that verse. So, that was interesting.

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That beep beep was Siri thinking I was calling her. I have Siri here, so it's actually my clock telling me how much time we have left.

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Only 15 minutes left in class. Yikes, I better get moving. But every once in a while,

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Siri thinks I'm talking to her. She thinks everything's about her. Anyway, all right.

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So, I don't know what I said that made her think to kick on, but anyway. So, it should give comfort.

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Letter E. The second coming is a source of strength. That's your blank there, strength.

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The second coming is a source of strength for believers enduring these trials. Because you know what?

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We're not all, I believe, going to be with Christ in heaven.

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I think there's going to be some believers that endure these trials. There's differing views between this.

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And so, some think that, well, let's go to 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 4, 2

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Corinthians chapter 4, verses 16 to 18. Some would say we're going through this, this is a description of the church today, and this is what it's describing.

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Others, like myself, would say this is still, you know, a future that people will struggle. But 2

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Corinthians 4, verses 16 to 18 says, So we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day, for this light momentary affliction is preparing us for the eternal weight of glory, beyond all comparison.

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As we look, not to those things that are seen, but to those things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

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And so, this is something that I think, this is something that I think would apply to those who are, does it apply to us today?

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Yes, of course, it was, even though it was written years ago, that applies to us. But I also think that this will be a source of strengthening to those who go through the end times as I'm going to view them.

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Some, you're going to see, some people think that when we talk about these disasters that will happen on earth, some see that as today, and they will find that verse as a source of strength.

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I find it a strength for what we're going through, but I don't think it's as bad yet as it's going to be.

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And those that go through those trials are going to see that as a sense of strengthening as well.

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And so, let's look at letter F here. The motivation for evangelism, that's your blank there, motivation for evangelism should be the result of our understanding of the doctrine of end times.

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We should have a greater desire to evangelize because of an understanding of end times, because we know that the

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Lord could return. Let's look at 2 Corinthians chapter 5. 2

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Corinthians chapter 5 verses 9 and 10. 2 Corinthians 5, 9 and 10 says,

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So whether you are at home or away, we make it our aim to please

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Him. And home, by the way, means whether we're with Christ. Away means whether we're on earth.

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So whether we're in heaven or on earth, we make it our aim to please Him for we, this is verse 10 now, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

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And so what you see there is you see this idea and if you look at the context of 2

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Corinthians 5, he tells us that you and I have been reconciled to God, that God has given us a ministry of reconciliation, that's evangelism, that we are called to be

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His ambassadors on earth. So the whole idea there is as we look at that judgment seat of Christ that is coming one day for everyone, that should motivate you and I to get out there on the streets and telling others so they too could be reconciled with God.

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You and I have been reconciled with God because God reconciled us to Himself. We shouldn't hold it to ourselves.

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The fact that the judgment is coming should cause us to want to go out there and warn people because we do not know what will be their last day on earth.

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And without knowing that 160 ,000 people die every day. We should be out warning people of the judgment to come that they may turn from trusting themselves and turn to trusting

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Christ as the means of escaping the punishment of sin. As the only way to be reconciled to God.

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We should be delivering the message of reconciliation because we as believers know that the judgment is coming.

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That is what a study of end times will get us to be motivated to do. Two last things.

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Letter G in your syllabus. God's future plan should encourage the believer toward godly living.

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It should encourage us to live a godly lifestyle. Just take a look at 2

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Peter chapter 3. 2 Peter chapter 3 verses 10 to 13.

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Peter says here but the day of the Lord will come like a thief and then the heavens will pass away like a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned and dissolved and the earth and the works that are done in it will be exposed since all things are thus being dissolved what sort of people ought you to be in lives of be in lives of holiness and godliness waiting for the hastening of the coming of the day of God because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn.

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You see there Peter makes this case that you and I knowing that Christ could come as a thief in the night that he can come at any time that this could be our last breath on earth this could be a person we're talking to who's last breath on earth we should be living a godly life not just because we want to evangelize but you see it personally we should want to be pleasing to God we should want to please

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God in everything that we do and for that reason we should be going out and seeking to live godly because we know that judgment's coming so we see first that studying in times teaches us something about God's greatness we see number two that God through John says that we'd be blessed to study these things number three that there's a tremendous amount of scripture given to these doctrines four, the fact that it brings comfort to believers who grieve five that it strengthens those to endure trials six, it should motivate us toward evangelism seven, it should give us a greater desire a greater encouragement for godly living and now number seven or letter

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H in your syllabus the doctrine of last times should promote us toward the confession of sins confession of sins the doctrine of last things should prompt us to confess our sins you can see this in first John chapter three verses two and three first John two and three says beloved we are

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God's children now and what we will be has yet appeared but we know that when he appears we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself and is pure the idea of purity there is this idea that we would talk about with the idea of of a pure living it's about the way that we are going to live our life okay and so with that as we look at that we need to understand and we need to realize that we need to and we need to take this serious we need to look at these things look at these seven things that come out of studying in times and we really should evaluate that and say you know what this is something

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I should take serious this is something I should look into this is something of great importance and so we shouldn't take it lightly we shouldn't put it on the shelf we shouldn't ignore it this is going to be a great study and I didn't even get into it

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I know so some people drunk uncle are probably still upset going oh I still have to wait next class we are going to get into this but I do need to let you know there will be no class next week for those this is a programming note for those who watch live no class next week

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I will be traveling so I will be coming back from Ohio I will be speaking in Ohio next weekend and so I will not be able to make it back in time

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I might make it back in time but there's some different things that I'm doing I will not be able to do class next week the following week we won't be having class and I know some people are probably going he's just trying to delay to getting into all the controversial issues of end times he might have a point there just saying but no the week after what

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I'm going to be doing is going to be a case where I'm going to Manti that's a big

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Mormon pageant out in Salt Lake City Utah and so I will be out there with Matt Slick and Bill McKeever Eric Johnson and others

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Eric Johnson and Bill McKeever from Mormon Research Ministry great Mormon Research Ministry mrm .org

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highly recommended great great guys and so I'm going to be going out with them and you know as much evangelism as I do

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I'm going to be learning from those guys how they do evangelism to Mormons. I do a lot of discussion

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I've talked to Mormons a lot but I don't live out in that area and it's going to be very different when they're in masses and so because of that we may do a special I might just do an update on the outreach the

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Manti outreach with some of the guys from mrm and that's what I'm hoping to do so we won't teach the class but we're going to do that so just a quick programming note so if you have a question about this or anything else with these classes feel free to email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org

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academy at strivingforeternity .org academy at strivingforeternity .org like I said earlier if you go to store .strivingforeternity

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.org you can buy the syllabus I strongly recommend that you go and do that you can get the syllabus you can also go and get my book

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What Do They Believe you can pick up the copy of What Do They Believe a systematic theology of major western religions you also could go there and sign up to maybe host one of our bible interpretation made easy seminars lastly the thing

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I will say four weeks away from the broadcasting from this broadcast is

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Jersey Fire I strongly encourage you would you do us a favor would you start sharing on social media about Jersey Fire like often we need to start letting people know that in four weeks we are going to have this event

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July 8 and 9 2016 Matt Slick from CARM Justin Peters is going to be out we are going to talk about how to interpret the bible we are going to talk about sufficiency of scripture the characteristics of scripture does scripture change for example in Matthew 5 we are going to talk about the reliability of scripture it is going to be

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I believe a great great conference and then afterwards we are all going to go out and evangelize on the boardwalk

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I really want to encourage you to come on out for that and join us if you are afraid to evangelize that is why you should come it is so much easier to evangelize at Jersey Fire or one of these events because you have so many other brothers or sisters that are with you to encourage you to work with you to go through the scriptures with you if you have questions

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I mean so much and so with that it becomes a lot easier to evangelize at events like Jersey Fire if you are an experienced evangelist well it is fun there the nice thing about Jersey Fire is we go to the boardwalk and there is such a change of venue you go from a family friendly to the drunkards and everything in between because it is on this boardwalk it is a lighthearted it is a fun environment because of all the games they have there and the rides and things like that and it becomes a really enjoyable time and you see people just walking around you can start conversations we go through lots of gospel tracks and so I strongly want to encourage you go to jerseyfire .org