. . . By prayer and now by the study of His Word. A couple of weeks ago I started studying with you a theme that I said would easily take sixty or eighty sermons to cover. As we have time this year, I want to study this subject with you. I read a statement from Selected Messages, Volume 1, 406, that I want to refer to again.

Ellen White says that God had showed her this again and again. Now, I want you to think about this. If God shows a prophet something over and over and over, what would be your first conclusion about that? It must be important. What does she say in that statement that God showed her over and over again--or just again and again, as she states it?

She said that the condition of the Jewish people before the first coming of Christ would be similar to what? To our condition before the second coming of Christ. I did not quote it, but that is the thought and you can read it, Selected Messages, Volume 1, 406.

Well, I have read the book Desire of Ages a number of times, I do not know how many times. But recently I have started reading it again. Incidentally, if there is somebody here and you are going through a crisis in your life, I have found Desire of Ages to be one of the most powerful and wonderful books to read if you are going through a crisis. I have read it in times of crisis and I have found that it is a wonderful and powerful book,

But sometimes what you receive from reading a book depends on the perspective that you are thinking about when you are reading the book. Has that ever happened to you? I used to have a world history teacher who was always talking about that. He would tell you some fact of history and then he would say, Well, now, it depends on what perspective you look at this from, what it means. That was an interesting class for me because I did not have the same perspective on world history as my teacher did at all. So that gets to be very interesting.

Lately I have been reading The Desire of Ages with this statement from Selected Messages, Volume 1,406, in the back of my mind. Whatever I read here, I am going to find something that is parallel in their experience to the experience of Gods people, Gods chosen people, in the last days. Do you believe that we are in the last days? Do you believe we are right down at the end?

As I read Desire of Ages I say, Now, if I am paying attention here, I should be learning something about what is going on today from reading this. Because the way it was then, she said, it is going to be that way again just before the second coming. And when you start to read the way it was then, you are in a state of shock. You say to yourself, Now, really, can it be that way again? Could it be that bad? That is what the prophet said, I did not make that up.

I want to study with you again some parallels that we find in Gods last day church and the way it was when Jesus came the first lime. Now before Jesus came the first lime (You can read this in Desire of Ages about page 28 about the chosen people.) They had had many reformations. Many. Some of them are recorded in the Old Testament, but they even had a reformation just before Jesus appeared through no less a person than John the Baptist.

This is point number one. They had had many reformations. But, she said, after every reformation, there was something terrible that happened. Do you know what that was? They went into a worse apostasy than had been before they had the reformation. That happened a number of times. So, they had gone very deep into apostasy but,--catch this point--although they were deep in apostasy, they were very religious. That is something that a lot of people do not understand.

I have found that a lot of people think that you cannot be an apostate and be religious at the same lime. They think that if you are apostate, you must be a bank robber, a murderer, a liar, a chiseler, or something. But these people were in a deep state of apostasy. Somebody asks, What do you mean by deep? Well, it was bad enough that Ellen White says in the first part of Desire of Ages that often the office of High priest was secured by murder. That was fairly bad, I thought.

In other words there was a lot of politics in their church. At the same time there was apostasy, and they were very religious. The Bible says that man, looks on the outside of people. And if they look very religious, we think they must be very religious. God does not look on the outside. The older you get, the more wonderful that sounds, by the way.

God does not look on the outside. Where does He look? He looks in your heart, your mind. So on the outside, well, let us read what Jesus said about it. "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tomb which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead mans bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men. But inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." Matthew 23:27,28.

On the outside it looked really good; until you got inside. You got into the system and found out some of these people did not get to be high priest because they got murdered first. You also found out a few other things going on. When you got inside, inside it was rotten.

Now the most awful thing about it is that what happened then is a type of what is to happen at the end. It was good on the outside, but on the inside it was full of lawlessness. It is happening around us and many people cannot see what is beyond the outside. So they are fooled and that is what happened to the Jewish people in the time of Christ. Most of them could not see beyond the exterior and as a result, they were fooled. When Jesus came, they listened to Him and they were attracted to Him but their religious leaders told them something else. They said, That Man is an apostate, He is deceptive, and He is telling you lies and He is not the Messiah and they had Bible studies prepared to prove it.

Those Bible studies were very powerful. Ellen White give us some of the proof texts that they used. One of their proof texts was the statement from Jeremiah that as long as the ordinances of heaven, the moon and the sun would stay there, that for that long Israel would be Gods people. They would say to the people, Is the moon still there? Is the sun still there? Well, then, we are still Gods people. This Man is an apostate.

The people were deceived. The great majority of the people were deceived. We do not like to think that that could ever happen again, but it has been predicted for a longtime, clear back in Testimonies for the Church, Volume 1, 608. Now Volume 1 was the first series of testimonies that Ellen White wrote, actually several testimonies combined into a book.

In that book, pages 608 and 609, Ellen White says that the majority of Seventh-day Adventists will be lost. I did not say that. Do not say that I said that. I am not a prophet. I am just reading to you or quoting for you what the prophet said. Why? Because your salivation, friends, depends not on what is on the outside or the profession you make, it depends on what is in your heart.

So, point number two is, Here was Gods chosen people and they had been looking for the Messiah for over one thousand years and when the Messiah came, they rejected Him. They were not ready. Does it sound possible? That a whole group of people were looking for something to happen for over one thousand years, but when it happened, they were not ready.

It is going to happen again. It will happen again through the great majority who profess to be waiting and watching for the soon coming of Jesus. When it actually happens, the great majority will not be ready.

Now the devil had been working prior to the first coming of Christ. He had been working for thousands of years on the people in the heathen religions, so that they would be under his control and under his power and become degraded. In fact, he hoped to make them so degraded that the Lord would give up on them. Ellen White said that was the devils goal. To get men so degraded by sin that God would say, There is no hope and give up.

But the devil won a bigger victory than he had already won with all the pagan world. The devils big victory before the first coming of Christ was when he succeeded in overcoming and taking over Gods chosen people. Surely that could not happen again. It is prophesied.

Read Manuscript Releases No. 13, 379. She said, In the last years among the chosen people of God, those blessed with His grace and power that the leaders will do something. Do you know what she says they will do? She says they will do the same thing that Israel did, they will listen to the voice of Lucifer. If you are listening to the voice of Lucifer, what happens? The devil has taken over.

Ellen White says in The Desire of Ages that before the first coming of Christ the devils great victory was when he took over and conquered the Jewish people. Now, they did not know it. They still thought they were worshipping the Lord. When Jesus came, they said to Him, and they said it with scorn when they were in an argument with Him, They said, We are not born of fornication. God is our Father. Jesus said, If God were your Father, you would love Me. And they hated him.

Jesus said, If God were your Father, you would love Me, because I proceeded and came forth from God. Neither did I come for myself, but He sent Me. Why can you not hear my speech? Because you cannot understand my word. You are of your Father, the devil. The lusts of your father you wish to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and did not abide in the truth because these is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it.

The chosen people of God had become the children of the devil. The representative of Satan. You may read that also in The Desire of Ages, 36, Gods chosen people and their leaders had become the representatives of Satan. Satan had taken over. It could not happen again, you say? It is prophesied.

Oh, friend, let us study these things. I am studying these things. I am reading The Desire of Ages again and it is opening up to me more than ever. I want to tell you that I am not proud about what I am studying. I am very humble. I realize as I am studying it that when the devil takes over in your life, you do not know it.

Ellen White says that those who are in the coils of the devils snares, none of them know that they are there. I want to tell you, Friend, it is lime for all of us to go to our closet and say, Lord, am I deluded? Am I not seeing clearly. Please open my eyes so that I will be able to see spiritual reality and realize what is going on around me.

Is that a problem for Laodicea that they cannot see? That is what it says. That is the problem for Laodiceans, they are blind. They cannot see what is going on and they do not know it, that was their problem. It seems inconceivable when you read it. She says that they (the Jewish people) had become representatives of Satan! How could that be?

But it was. And when the devil took over the Jewish people, the chosen people, when he got control of their organizations, he got control of their system. He was in control of the Sanhedrin, remember the Sanhedrin decided to crucify Jesus. It is obvious who is in control. He was in control of the priests, the Pharisees and the Sadducees--even though they were all fighting among themselves, the devil was in control of the whole thing.

That is one of the ways, by the way, that the devil deceives human beings. He has all these different groups and they are fighting. People say, Which side are you on? Any choice you make is wrong. It did not matter whether you were a Sadducee, Pharisee, priest, Levite, Scribe, Sanhedrin--who you were did not matter on what side you were on. They were all wrong

When the devil got control, he introduced a basic principle. I read about this. This is in The Desire of Ages, along about page 35. He introduced the basic principle, and I read this when I was a teenager. I do not remember now the lime I first read The Desire of Ages, but I know that I had gone through it before I was twenty.

When I read it, I thought, Those poor people. Not me, I would never fall for anything like that. We are Adventists; we would never fall for anything like this! Do you know what the devil introduced among them? He introduced the concept of salvation by works. Ellen White says that is the basis of all false religions. It is the basis of all pagan religions. The devil introduced that principle among the Jewish people when he got control. Ellen White says that wherever this principle is introduced, men have no barrier against sin. That is bad, because you and I have a sinful nature.

How are you going to overcome? Jesus was tempted in all points like as we are and He came to this world to show us how to live and to give us power to overcome. That is one of the principle reasons why Jesus came. But when the devil introduces the concept of salivation by works, then men have no barrier against sin and they are going to go down.

salivation by works, then men have no barrier against sin and they are they are going to go down.

Now, people say, "That could not happen to me because I am a Christian." Just remember, there are hundreds of millions of Christians right today that still believe in salivation by works. We dress it up. Let me explain how it has been dressed up.

The church during what we Protestants call the Dark Ages--and they were dark ages--they said, Now, there are some things that you have to do in order to get the grace of God. Do you need grace in your life to overcome sin? To overcome sin you need to have grace in your life. And they said, There are things that you have to do to qualify to get the grace.

They said, There are seven ways that you can get it. They call them the seven sacraments. Have you ever heard of that? They said, It is through the seven sacraments that you get grace into your life. Do you know what you have got as soon as you believe that? You believe in salivation by works. Because you go through a certain religious ritual and then you have grace. That is salvation by works.

That is what the Jews said, they said, You come and you bring these sacrifices and when you kill the sacrifices, Ellen White says, they began to look to the sacrifice itself as a means of grace instead of realizing that it was just a symbol of something. That is the same thing that the Christian church did with the sacraments. The same thing. No difference.

Whether you kill a lamb or whether you go and you are baptized in order to get grace, if that is what you are doing to get it, there is no difference. It is salvation by works. Baptism is called one of the seven sacraments. I have had a lot of thought about this salivation by works lately. We thought that we would never have to worry about that. lam not so sure anymore. I have become very concerned about it in my own life.

Ellen White says, It is the basis of all false religion. Somebody says, I am going to memorize this many verses of Scripture every day. Well, that is wonderful. But that had better not become your religion, because that is Romanism. As soon as you start setting up human requirements and rules, you are going to live by these so that you are going to be a better Christian, you are in danger of the salivation by works experiment. There are people who do this all over all the time.

There was a Seventh-day Adventists preacher a few weeks ago and some of you have seen this tape because it was on television and this will introduce us to our next point. It has to do with salvation by works. He told the people, he said, Now, if you want your name to be written down in the Book of Life in heaven--, do you want your name to be in that Book? Well, Revelation 20 says that if your name is not in that Book, you are going to hell fire. so that is important to have your name in that Book.

If you want your name written down there, he said, you had better get your name in the church book of a Conference Church. I thought, well, that is interesting! That is salvation by works, Friend. I am not against having your name on the books of a church. That is not the point. But if that is the requirement to get it up there, you are in trouble. If we have gotten to the point where we can control what goes on up there, we are in deep trouble!

That is salivation by works. It is happening right here in Wichita. People are being told, You have to go to this church and you cannot go to that church or you will be lost. That is in effect what they are told. You are not really a Christian. You are not really a Seventh-day Adventists. That is salvation by works. Because, if that is what you believe, then you are in control of the Books!

But, friends, I want to give you good news. You and I are not in control of the Books. You can neither write your own name up there, neither can you have somebody elses name written or deleted. You and I do not have any control. God looks on the heart and it is what is in your heart that determines where your name goes up there.

Well, we could spend a lot of time looking at that subject. I am looking at it in my own life. I believe in good works. The Bible teaches good works and I believe that we should be zealous and enthusiastic to fill our lives full of good works. Jesus filled His life full of good works. But your good works are not what gets your name written in books and what saves you. Salivation by works, Ellen White says, is the foundation of all false religion. As soon as you start to think that way, you are on the wrong path going the wrong way.

But let us come to the next point. Another problem with the Jews was their exclusiveness. Now, when I read that when I was a boy, I thought, Those poor people. Now, I never thought that could ever happen to us. But it has already happened to us. When we start telling people, You have to go to this church, and you cannot go to that church; you can listen to this person, but you cannot listen to that person; you can read this book, but you cannot read that book, we have done the same thing as the Jews have. We have done the same thing as the church in the Dark Ages had.

You know, the church in the Dark Ages had a list of forbidden books, things that you were not supposed to read. Now, do not misunderstand. There are some bad books in the world and you cannot follow Jesus and read every book that has been written in the world. I recognize that. But, on the other hand, it is not up to you and me to play God with each other.

The Jews had developed an exclusiveness. They thought that the kingdom of heaven was for them alone. It is not for anybody that does not join our group and is part of our organization. If you do not join our group and if you are not part of our organization, you are going to be lost. That is exactly the way they felt. That is exactly the way the Papacy felt in the Dark Ages. They said in the Dark Ages that every human being that does not submit to the authority of the Pope is going to go to hell.

I believe in religious liberty and if a person really believes that, that is their privilege to believe that. But I do not believe it. Exclusiveness. That is one of the biggest reasons Jesus died in so much trouble and they rejected Jesus. One of the biggest reasons, because Jesus did not have any of this exclusiveness. Jesus manifested kindness and courtesy and friendship to all the people the Jews had cast out and said were lost.

Like the tax collectors. For a man, if you were a tax collector, as far as the Jews were concerned, he was just lost. There was no more hope. For a woman who got involved in prostitution, for her there was no more hope as far as the Jews were concerned. That was it! Those were the lowest levels of society and Jesus not only went and associated with those people and befriended those people and told them that they could be saved, but notice what He told the Jewish leaders.

This is what got Him in trouble. Look in Matthew 21:31,32. "Which of the two did the will of his father? They said to Him, 'The first. Jesus said to them, 'Assuredly I say to you that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him. But tax collectors and harlots believed him; And when you saw it, you did not afterward relent and believe him."

Jesus said, The thing that makes the difference on whether or not you can be saved or not is if you are willing to repent and follow the truth. I want to tell you, Friend, if there is somebody here who maybe has been discouraged by people in the church, maybe you have been discouraged by people who have been long-lime Christians. I find out that people who have been Christians for a long lime some-limes make sinners discouraged.

Maybe you have been discouraged because of all these apparently holy people and you say, I will never be able to live like they do. I will never be able to come up to the standard they are living at. I am stuck. I want to tell you, friend, Jesus went to all those kinds of people in His day and told them that they could have eternal life. They accepted it and they were saved.

I want to tell you that there is nobody who is so bad a sinner that you cannot be saved. You can be saved! If the Holy Spirit had not been working on your heart so that you had a desire to be saved, you would not be here. Jesus said, Anybody who comes to Me, everybody who comes to Me, I will in no case cast him out. John 6:37.

Oh, friend, I want to see the day in my own personal life and in the lives of Gods people when we have a Christ-like spirit and people will not feel like they are cast out because people in the church have the exclusiveness that the Pharisees had. How about you? In the world today we are busy putting up signs that say, Keep Out. Just look around. There are all kinds. If you go to a museum, there are ropes across the things. You do not touch anything.

If you go to a fancy houses, businesses and places and there are all kinds of signs here and there, No Admittance. Keep Out. In fact, we can see that in our farm property. I was driving the other day and I looked over and here along the fence of one of my neighbors was a great big sign that said, Keep Out. I said, Why would anybody want to go in there anyhow?

But anyway, we are busy drawing circles and keeping people out. And God wants to bring people in. Jesus invited people to come to Him. That is one of the reasons he was rejected. He did not have this exclusiveness. He taught that salivation was an exercise in divine mercy that was extended to the entire human race. It did not matter where you were born, or how much money you had, or how much education you had, or what race you were, or what your background was, or how bad a sinner you were, you could be saved--IF you would come. He said, Come unto Me all ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

If you will listen and choose to surrender to Him and choose to follow Him, you can be saved no matter how bad your background or past has been. But the Jews were exclusive. Ellen White said they bordered the living manna and it turned to corruption.

Let us look at the next point. This one, to me, is a very encouraging one. I spent a lot of time studying this one because I wanted to find out for sure whether it was going to happen again. I found out that it is. I did not bring the reference with me. It is in Manuscript Releases, volume 21. We are promised that it is going to happen again.

If you want to turn to a text on this one, it is in Galatians 4:3-5. It says "Even so we, when we were in children, we were in bondage under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons."

When the fullness of the time came. You see, it was decided in heaven--not this world --thousands of years ago, God looked down the stream of time. In heavens counsel God looked down the stream of time. He saw everything that was going to happen in the world. The exact time that Messiah was to come was decided. He made it known to Daniel the prophet about five hundred years before it happened, so that everybody could know.

When that time came, as bad as it was--we have already looked at that this morning, how bad it was, and it was BAD. It was so bad that Ellen White says that people were saying to themselves, they said, "The time is prolonged and every vision fails. We have been looking for redemption and look at all this trouble." Everything is in chaos! and there were faithful, holy people who saw that the Jewish nation had been taken over by the devil. There were people who saw that.

They said, How can the prophecies ever be fulfilled? How could it ever happen? They were ready to give up hope. Have you ever met anybody like that? They say, Well, Pastor John, you talk about the second coming of Christ. It has taken so long, how do I know? How can I know that it is really going to happen?

Well, it says, When the fullness of the time was come, what happened? God sent forth His Son. It happened! That is going to happen again. As bad as it is, incidentally, Ellen White tells us that the really bad things we do not even know about. She tells us that point blank. The REALLY bad things, we do not even know about. In another place she says that God does not let us know most of what the devil is doing because if He let us know, we would get discouraged. So, God does not let us know a lot of things. We do not even know how bad it is.

But, when the fullness of the time is come again, Jesus is coming again. Do not think, friends, that you cannot be surprised. Do not say, Well, you know, things are so bad today, I think it is going to take fifty or eighty years before the Lord can finish His work. Do not start talking or thinking like that, friend, because you could be surprised. Were they surprised? They were not ready. At the appointed time, Jesus is going to come again.

Now this time He has not told us when the time is. That time He told them. This time He has not told us. But just because He has not told us that does not mean that there is not an appointed time. There is an appointed time. It is just that we do not know when it is. But it is appointed. Jesus made it very clear at the time He was talking. His Father in heaven knew the time. He said that the angels do not even know, but My Father knows. He knows the time. Nobody else knows, nobody in this world.

I want to tell you, friend, because we do not know the time but we know that at an appointed time, when the appointed time came for Jesus to come the first lime, He came whether they were ready or not. Is that what happened? Is that going to happen again? Now, friends, none of us can say that God has not given us lime to get ready. But, we do not know when lime is going to run out.

So, the only safety is to be ready all the time. When time does run out, we have been told that it will come unexpectedly and men will think, Well, yes, we have a little bit more time, but all of a sudden they are not going to have any more time. It is going to run out. The appointed lime will have come. The way it happened the first lime, is the way it will happen again.

We have three more points to look at quickly, we will try to do that. We have seen that after every reformation, there was a deeper apostasy. We have seen that they looked for Him for a thousand years, but when He came they were not ready. We have seen that they got taken over by the devil, became representatives of Satan and the devil introduced the concept of salivation by works.

We looked at the fact that He came at an appointed time. We looked at the exclusiveness of the Jews and now something else that really caught my attention this lime as I read through The Desire of Ages and it is really shocking. At the time when Jesus came the first time the Jewish people, the chosen people, were under the control of Rome, but they said they were not. Remember what they said to Jesus? They said, We are Abrahams seed and we have never have been in bondage to anybody. And that was a lie! You can read that in John 8:33.

They were under the control of Rome, but they said they were not. Very interesting. I think we will not even try to illustrate that. I think that is something you ought to think through, though. Remember, Gods chosen people, when Jesus came the first time, were under the control of Rome but they said they were not. Remember that is a parallel of what is going to happen just before the end.

Then, here is something almost entirely opposite. They said they were not under the control of Rome, but they knew they were. They knew they were lying. The reason they wanted the Messiah to come was because they wanted to be delivered. The Messiah was to be the Saviour and what did they want deliverance from? They wanted deliverance from the Romans! They did not want deliverance from sin.

Now, let us just turn that around a little bit. When they said they wanted deliverance from the Romans and not deliverance from sin, that is another way of saying, They wanted the glory without the virtue. They wanted the glory without deliverance from sin. They wanted the glory without the virtue.

Let us state it another way. They wanted the power without the character. Did they want power? Yes, they did. How is it with you, friend? We are looking for Jesus to come the second time. He came the first time to set up a kingdom. The whole book of Matthew is full of this, talks about the gospel of the kingdom all the time.

They were looking for the kingdom to be set up, but they were mixed up. They did not understand what the word "kingdom" was talking about because the first coming was to set up the kingdom of grace. The second coming is to set up the kingdom of glory. Both comings involve the setting up of a kingdom.

The setting up of the kingdom of grace was established when Jesus died on the cross. That is what established it so that it could not be overthrown. It was established. The devil and all his hosts cannot overthrow it. It was established. Up to that time, the devil hoped he could overthrow it, but after that happened, he knew he could not.

The second time when He comes, he will set up the kingdom of glory. But here is the problem. The Jews wanted the glory without the character. They wanted the glory without the grace. They wanted the power without the character. Any chance that will become a problem again? Well, it has become one of our worst problems in Adventism the last twenty-five or thirty years. One of our worst problems.

People saying that you can go on and sin until Jesus comes and then be saved. We are not against the people, just like Jesus was not against the Jews. He came to save them. But we are against that theology because it comes from the devil and it will cause you to be lost. The Bible says we are to pursue peace with all men and holiness without which no man will see the Lord..

Jesus said, Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. It is only the righteous, only the holy, only the purified, only those who have been delivered and had their sins blotted out who will be at peace and joy when Jesus comes.

Now, there is one thing today that is different than it was back then. That is simply this, when the kingdom of grace was established, when Jesus went to the cross, those Jews that had rejected Him and hated Him and persecuted Him, those Jews still had a chance to change their minds. At Pentecost some of them did change their minds and after that more changed their minds, but, friend, when Jesus comes the second lime, it will be too late to change your mind. That is something that is different. We need to keep that in mind, too.

Revelation 22:11,12, there is going to be a pronouncement made before Jesus comes again and it quotes there what Jesus will say. He will say, Whoever is--what? unjust or unrighteous, let him remain unrighteous. Whoever is holy, let him be holy still. So, if you are unrighteous or filthy, you are going to stay that way. If you are righteous and holy, you are going to stay that way. Your destiny will be fixed because your character is going to be fixed.

So, it was extremely dangerous back then, but I want to tell you that it is even more dangerous today. Oh, friend, do not sucker for the devils lie that you can get the power without the character, without the power of the Holy Spirit. That you can get the glory without deliverance from sin. That is not the way God works.

Just study your Bible. Study the life of Jesus. Before the apostles were given the Holy Spirit, they had to have a lime of character development first when they had to confess and repent of all their sins. They had to be in harmony and unity and decided that they were going to obey the Lord all the way. That is the only people who can participate. It did not matter how many refused, that was the only people.

That is why there were only one hundred and twenty in the room. There was thousands of Jews around at that time because that was one of the feast days. There were millions of Jews around that area, but there was only one hundred and twenty that experienced Pentecost that day.

Look at one more point. This is a really important one, too. Ellen White says so much about this in the first pages of The Desire of Ages that we could never encompass everything that she talks about, so we will try to encapsulate it very briefly and this should be of interest for anybody who is a parent who has children or any young person who is interested in getting an education or wants to become wise and knowledgeable.

This is something that happened to the Jews before Christ came the first lime. They went down to Alexandria in Egypt and they started studying Greek philosophy. They mingled the study of the Old Testament Scripture with the study of Greek philosophy. That is how the Pharisees got so mixed up.

Now, there was another group called the Sadducees and they decided to reject all this Greek philosophy--now listen carefully, we have both groups today--they decided to reject all this Greek philosophy, this idea that there were no angels, no resurrection. The Greek philosophers said, No, that is not the way it happens. When you die, you do not really die. Some part of you keeps going on living. That came from Plato.

So, you have this group that have gotten very educated, but they had mingled Greek philosophy with the study of the Scriptures and so they were all mixed up. Then you had a second group. the second group is actually more interesting than the first group. The first group is the liberal group. They have a worldly education and understands worldly philosophy and they believe that more than they believe the Word of God.

Jesus told the Sadducees, You do not know the power of God. You do not know the Scriptures.

But the second group, the Pharisees, they saw what the Sadducees were doing and they said, We are not going to do that! We are going to be faithful to the Word of God. In fact, what we are going to do, we are going to put a fence, a wall around the Law of God. Let us just think of what they thought.

If you put a fence or wall around the Law of God, then you will not sin at all will you? Because before you ever get to the point of sinning, you will run into the fence. Right? That is what they thought. They said, We will put this fence big enough around the Law of God so that you will never break the Law of God, because before you ever get anywhere near breaking it, you will run into the fence.

So, to do that, they wrote up all these explanations of the Law. That is how Jesus got in trouble, by the way, Because He did not abide by all their regulations. He kept the law of Moses, but not all the regulations. They had a bigger Church Manual than you ever saw. It was called "the Talmud." They still study it. Now, I am not going to go into a study of the Talmud and I would not advise you to study the Talmud. I think the Talmud would actually be one of the most dangerous books that you could study. I would not advise anybody to study it.

You know what happened in their efforts to make a fence around the Law, do you know what actually happened? If you kept what was written in that book you ended up breaking the law. Interesting, isn't it. You decide you are going to make a fence around the Law, but if keep reading that book, you actually break the Law.

I want to tell you something. You will never know until the day of judgment how many millions of people have been murdered because of the Talmud. In fact, it may be in the billions. We do not have the faintest idea today, the curse that the Talmud has brought on the human race. We have no idea.

It is a diabolical book. Remember the Jews had become the representatives of Satan, Ellen White says. What should we learn from that? Oh, friend, I need to be careful that I do not take this Book. The Jews had this Book, the first part of it. They did not have the last part because the New Testament had not been written yet. But they had all the first part and the first part is the biggest part of the Book. See there is the first part right there.

They had most of it. They had it, but they tried to add something to it. God knew that we would have that trouble and so in the Book Revelation--If you were writing a book like the Bible and you were in the position of the Holy Spirit, what would you have put down as the final instruction? Do you know what the final instructions of this Book are? The final instructions are this: If anybody adds anything to this Book, God is going to add the plagues to you. If anybody takes away anything out of this Book, God will take his name out of the book of Life. That is the final instructions to this Book.

Well, friend, why did God give us all this information? Why did He tell us exactly how it was going to be by showing how it was? What is the reason we have all this instruction? So that we will learn and not make the mistakes they made. Jesus is coming soon and the most of the Christian world is going to be bitterly disappointed when He comes. But there are going to be a few people, like there were then, who will listen.

I want to be one of those. Do you? Do you want to listen? Do you want to be ready? If you will listen to the instructions in this Book, if you will obey, you will be ready. You can avoid what is going to happen to the majority. It is going to happen, friend, to people all around you. But it does not need to happen to you.

The day of the Lord does not need to be a day of disappointment, grief, and a terrible surprise. It can be a happy surprise, if you are willing to listen to the instructions and just live by this Book. When the devil tempted Him, Jesus said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. If you are willing to do that, you are going to be saved.

Let us pray before we sing our closing song. Friend, the time is serious. When we meet and worship together, I realize every time, one day the day is coming when every single person in this room is either going to be saved or lost. It would be nice if every single person in this room were saved, would it not?

Do you want to make a commitment to the Lord and say, Lord, help me to live by every word that proceeds out of Your mouth? If you do, please bow your head while we pray:

Father in Heaven, we thank You for the rich instructions that You have given us to help us understand the confusing, deceiving, perplexing times in which we live. I pray that Your Holy Spirit will work on the heart and mind of each person here. Help us to realize that we must not look around at what is going on around us to determine our course of action. Oh, Lord, save us we pray from deception. We pray that we may not become the representatives of Satan and go down a deceptive path that we think is going to lead to eternal life and wind up too late in the wrong place. I pray for each person here as we open our hearts to You. You have promised that if we will to do Your will, that we are going to know whether it is from God or not. And I pray that you will fulfill this promise to each person here as we open our hearts to You and chose to follow You. We pray that you will lead us in the path that leads to eternal life. Keep us, we pray, under the direction of the Holy Spirit and we pray that we may not be controlled by evil spirits, but that we may be led by Your Spirit. Make us a blessing to those who are in darkness around us we pray in Jesus name. Amen.