I'm so happy to see so many friends here today. I was wondering earlier this week who would be in church this week, so many people told me that they were leaving for labor day week end. So we're so happy that some people decided to visit us. Since so many of our people decided to visit some place else. And we want you know that you are welcome.

Some weeks ago we studied in our preaching and revival service on Saturday night about how the Protestant world got mixed up on who the antichrist is. When you study religious history you find out that Martin Luther, John Calvin , and John and Charles Wesley, and all the other Protestant reformers who are less known than those, all knew and preached about who the antichrist was, and they all agreed. But between that time and now, the Protestant world has become mixed up on who the antichrist is. And that is an intriguing story about how that happened. We have obtained a book that goes into that in more detail if any of you are interested, called Tearing Away The Shroud From The Antichrist. So you find out how it happened that all the Protestant reformers knew who the antichrist was, but now the Protestants don't know who the antichrist is.

But today I want to study with you a more broad subject than even that, which is only one piece of the puzzle. But I want to study with you a general outline about how Protestantism has gotten to where it is today.

When I was a small boy our church was actually just right down the street. The Seventh Day Adventist Church was just one block away from the Roman Catholic Church and there were many other Protestant churches in the town, where we lived. From the study of prophecy when I was a small child I was taught that the time was coming when most of the Protestant churches were going to link up with the Roman Catholic church again, with the Papacy. Now we were taught from prophecy, and if you went and talked to the average Protestant when I was a boy, they would tell you that could never be. See when I was a boy President Harry Truman decided that he was going to send a representative, an ambassador from the United States to the Vatican. That was in 1951. Now maybe a few of you can remember what happened when President Truman decided to do that. The Protestant churches in the United States rose up in arms, and said "no, you are not." And he didn't do it because of pressure from Protestant churches.

Now that didn't happen in 1983 when President Reagan finally did the very same thing that President Truman tried to do in 1951. What happened? There has been a tremendous change and prophecy predicted this change. And what we want to understand is how did this happen . How did this happen? How did Protestantism get to where it is today?

Protestantism has long roots. People don't realize that there were Protestants clear back long before the time of Martin Luther or even John Wycliffe, who was called, the morning star of the reformation. There were Protestants long before that. There were people who were called the Vaudois or the Waldenses who lived actually in Italy it self, in northern Italy up in Milan, Turin. And then finally in 1059, because of persecution, they had to flee even from Turin. They had to flee up into the mountains. And they lived their in seclusion for hundreds of years.

They had the Bible in their native tongue and they also had the original (I shouldn't say original), not the manuscripts that the Apostles actually wrote. But they had the Bible in the original languages, Hebrew and Greek. And they had the Bible in their own mother tongue, in the common tongue that people could read. And they didn't have a printing press in those days so they used to copy off sections of the Bible and Waldenses missionaries went all over Europe with them. And this is what prepared Europe for the reformation.

They went all over Europe. They didn't have super markets in those days. They didn't have what we would call trucks, or airplanes, or trains. And so in those days it was a common marketing practice for traders that went to the Far East and they came back with spices, precious stones, jewels, and other precious things. Then peddlers would take these things and go from door to door all over the country and sell them. And the Waldenses became adept at this common trade. They worked as peddlers. And they sold precious things. But with these things that they sold they had copies of parts of the Bible some times they would see if somebody was really interested they would sell them a whole copy of the Gospel of John which was quite expensive. Others couldn't afford a whole copy. They just had maybe, the Sermon on The Mount, or they had a little piece of scripture. And that is what prepared the way for the reformation.

But when the invention of printing occurred, all of a sudden the Bible became available to many people. The Bible was first printed when the printing press was invented, and the Bible was the first book to be printed. At first there were only a few people that knew about printing, but Gutenberg had to have some assistants to help him. It appears that he himself did not intend to just tell everybody in the world how to print, because this provided a way where he could become wealthy. But he had some assistants who traveled, and very soon there were people all over Europe that knew about printing. Printing presses started to develop all over Europe And they started to print and one of the main books that were printed was the Bible. First just parts of the Bible but eventually the whole Bible.

Bibles were expensive in those days. People gladly would spend all the wages that they had earned for months in order to get a Bible. The Bible was precious, and people began to read the Bible. When they began to read it they found that what the Bible said and what they had been taught by the church, didn't agree.

Let me read this to you from a book called Facts of Faith and it documents what actually happened during that time. It says, "Printing presses were kept busy printing the Scriptures while colporteurs, land book sellers, sold them to the eager public. Every honest intellect was at once struck with the strange discrepancy between the teaching of the sacred volume and that of the church of Rome.

"In the book of God there was found no purgatory". Does the Bible talk about purgatory? It never mentions it. "No infallible Pope. The Bible says that all men every where are to repent." Acts 17: 30 If you are infallible you don't need to repent. The word repent means to change your mind. "No masses for the dead, no sale of indulgences, no relics working miracles, no prayers for the dead, no worship of the Virgin Mary." Do you find anything about the worship of the Virgin Mary in the Bible? Nothing is mentioned, in fact it condemns it. It says you are to worship the Lord only. Jesus told the Devil that "you are to worship the Lord your God. And Him only shall you Serve" "No worship of the Virgin Mary or the saints." And so without the invention of the printing press there actually would not have been a Protestant Reformation.

But as a result of people reading the Bible, people said, "this is a new kind of religion." And they loved the religion they found in the Bible. Because in the Bible they found about the Loving Saviour, and the chief of sinners could come to Him directly and confess. They could come to the Father in the name of Jesus and confess their sins, and receive forgiveness for free. They didn't have to pay money.

Paul said in Ephesians 2:8 "For by Grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; It is the gift of God." Salvation is what? A gift. It's not something that you get by paying money. Now we took up an offering this morning but no body appealed to you to pay an offering to get salvation. You don't earn salvation by giving an offering to support God's work, or by doing any work, you don't earn salvation.

And this brought such a state of affairs that the Roman Catholic clergy said among themselves. They said, "We are either going to have to destroy the printing press or we are going to get destroyed our selves." But they found it impossible to destroy the printing press. They did try to destroy the people that were using it.

Did you know that they put out a decree one time to burn the printers. Why did they want to burn the printers? Because they were printing the Bible. And not only did they put out a decree to burn the printers, they gathered all the scriptures where ever they could find them .and they publicly burned the scriptures. And they said the laymen must not have the scriptures in the vernacular, that is in their native tongue. It must be interpreted by only the church.

Well people that had read the Bible saw through that argument right away. They said, "What you have been telling us and what the Bible says just doesn't agree." The Pope put out a band on the Bible. It was put in the list of forbidden books, no body was to read it. But that didn't work.

The printing press produced so many Bibles, that when they burned more, they printed more. The printing presses made so many Bibles that they couldn't get them all burned up, and so they were stuck. So in the council of Trent, which met in 1545 to 1563, they decided they had to follow a new tactic, and they said, "Now we don't object to the Bible." (This was after they had burned thousands.) They said, "We don't really object to the Bible we just don't like the Protestant Bible."

Now the problem with that was this: the Protestant Bible had been translated from the best original sources in Greek and Hebrew, by the best scholars in Europe. It was a very accurate translation. In fact our translations that we have today, are still based on those Protestant translations in the fifteenth and sixteenth, mainly the sixteenth century.

Tyndales' was one of the first. In fact, many expressions in the King James Bible and the New King James come directly from William Tyndale. By the way, do you know what Tyndales' reward was for translating the Bible? He was martyred. And the reason he was martyred was because of the crime that they said he committed for translating the Bible into the language of the people. It is through that, that the English speaking people owe a great debt of gratitude for the English Bible. Martin Luther did the same thing for the German people. Well the attempt to attack the Bible by just destroying it didn't work. It didn't work because it was made obvious to every body that the Roman church was against the Bible.

And so they said, "no we're not against the Bible we are just against the Protestant Bible." Well then if you are against the Protestant Bible, what is the real Bible? What is the Bible that you are not against? Oh they decided in the council of Trent that the Bible that they would accept for the Roman church was the Vulgate, which was a Latin Bible translated by Jerome, one of the church fathers. Now there was a little bit of a problem with this. When the scholars started looking at the Latin Bible, even Roman Catholic scholars said there are thousands of translation errors in the Latin Bible.

Let me just read to you a little bit about that so that you can see the trouble that they had with the Latin Bible. Isadorus Clarius noted eight thousand erroneous places in the Vulgate Bible. The Divines of Luvain, Roman Catholic Scholars, and Johanus Benadictus observed twice as many differences from the original Greek and Hebrew, and so they said , "Well we've got to correct these mistakes." So they decided to correct these mistakes. And there was a Pope by the name of Pope Sixtus, who not only corrected it, he actually put in changes in the Latin Vulgate. When he got done he said, "now this is the infallible Bible." The trouble was, the Roman Catholic scholars themselves, when they looked at it said, "this is awful." They found two thousand errors in it. But it had already been passed by law that this was the infallible Bible in Latin. Most people couldn't read Latin.

Well another Pope said we will appoint a committee and we will correct all those mistakes. So another Pope made a committee and they took the Bible that the previous Pope did and they corrected as many mistakes as they could. Then they put out another Bull and they said now this is the infallible Bible.

Interestingly enough as late as 1907 they decided that they had to take that second one and get some corrections done on it again. It's interesting how you have to correct things that have thousands of errors that is supposed to be infallible. And obviously Protestant scholars saw all this going on and it made their position look ludicrous or unreasonable and so something more had to be done.

So there were Jesuit scholars that said what we will do is this; we will translate the Bible too. The Protestants translated the Bible. We'll translate the Bible too and we we'll get it translated right from the Greek and the Hebrew. And so they translated the Bible . This is in the latter part of the sixteenth century. They translated the Bible called the Douay Relms version of the Scriptures. And they translated that and brought it out. And they had the wording close to the Protestant Bible. However they changed some things, to try to support Roman Catholic doctrine. We will not look into those changes right now. And they said no body must read a Protestant Bible, you must read only a Catholic Bible.

I worked some years ago with a very godly evangelist and one of the things that he loved to do was to use a Roman Catholic Bible. In fact I still have a copy in my own library and I've used it myself sometime in my evangelism. And I love to do it myself when I'm studying with a Roman Catholic. He said, "I want you to know that what I preach you can find it in either the Protestant or the Roman Catholic Bible." We used to take the Roman Catholic Bible, the Douay Confraternity version, which they don't publish anymore. They put out some new Bibles now because that one was too good, it was too accurate. And when you took the Douay version and you looked at the foot notes, you looked what it said about who Babylon was. You know what it said who Babylon was in the Douay Confraternity version? It said Babylon is Rome. It said that right in the Catholic Bible in the foot notes. It said that is what it is. Babylon is Rome in first Peter five.

Well so you could take one of those Catholic Bibles and if you took the Bible it self, even the Catholic Bible and studied it carefully, you could find the truth . So something more had to be done than just to tell people that they were using the wrong Bible. Because even if you used the Roman Catholic Bible and studied it carefully you could find the truth you didn't have to use a Protestant Bible you could use a Catholic Bible. Something more had to be done and it was done.

You see the Protestant foundation rests on the Word of God, that is the bottom. The Word of God. Now the Roman Catholic church does not rest on that. What is the foundation of the Roman Catholic church? The foundation of the Catholic Church is tradition, especially the tradition of Apostolic succession.

Now Apostolic succession is the theory that Peter was the first Pope and he received the keys of the kingdom of heaven and divine authority from Christ Himself, and he passed that authority down to each successive pope all the way down to the present. And so they say the church by reason of it's divine mission changed Sabbath to Sunday. The Catholics don't deny that they changed the Sabbath to Sunday. But they say we did it by reason of our divine mission. The Lord gave us authority that we can get rid of those kind of things. But the Protestant says, "no the Bible is the bottom authority. The Word of God is the bottom authority."

Maybe we should read a familiar text again about that so you could see what the Bible says. They can't both be right. Did the church produce the Bible? This is the Roman Catholic position. Or did the Bible produce the church? Which is it? Look in the Book of James, the first chapter. James is writing here, and he says in the first verse. "To the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad." Now what are those twelve tribes that are scattered abroad? Was this written late or is this written early? Who is this? Was this written after 34 AD? Yes a long time after 34 AD. Who are these twelve tribes scattered abroad? That is spiritual Israel, the church.

The Apostle Paul makes it very clear in Galatians 3. He says, "If you are Christ's then you are [what?] Abraham's seed." You are part of Israel. He says the same thing in Ephesians two and he says the same thing in Romans eleven. So James is writing to the twelve tribes scattered abroad. Who is he writing to? He is writing to the Christian church all over the world. This is called catholic, that is a general or a universal epistle. Now notice what he says to the church, here in verse 18 "Of his own will He brought us forth by the word of truth." Now who is the us? That's the church. And he is speaking of God the Father. He says , "Of His own will He brought us forth." That is the church. He brought us forth by what? By the Word. How did the church come into existence? By the word. The word did not come into existence by the church, the church came into existence by the Word.

You wouldn't like it if your son or your daughter had gotten mixed up as to who were the children and who were the parents would you? Now this is clear. The Roman Catholic position and the Protestant position are opposite. The Protestant position is that the church was brought into existence by the Word because that is what the Bible says here. In James 1: 18 "Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth that we might be an kind of first fruits of His creatures." So for a Protestant the bottom line of authority is the Word of God, what God says. For a Roman Catholic the bottom line authority is what the church says, or more specifically what the pope says.

So lets think something through. If there is an attack on the Bible, and people loose confidence in the Bible, will that destroy the Roman Catholic Church? Absolutely not. It won't affect them at all, because that is not the foundation on which the Roman Catholic Church is built. But let's turn it around. If you loose confidence in the Word of God what will that do to Protestant churches? It'll destroy them.

Now remember the Catholic Church tried to destroy Protestantism by burning the Bibles and burning the printers, and forbidding people to read it but that didn't work. And then they said you have the wrong Bible, but that didn't work. And so they had to forge new weapons. And starting in the seventeenth century they began to forge new weapons. They called them conjectures. That is exactly what they were made by Roman Catholic scholars. I have the evidence right here in a book, a historical book. We don't have time to read lots of history. Roman Catholic scholars introduced a new philosophy into the world. It took hundreds of years for it to really take hold. In fact not much at all happened with it for at least seventy five years after it was first published.

A Roman Catholic went into the book of Genesis and he read through here and he said Moses didn't write all the book of Genesis. How did he know that? He didn't. He was just conjecturing, in fact he said he was just conjecturing. That was the name of his book Conjectures concerning the authorship of the writings of Moses. He said Genesis wasn't written just by Moses. It was written by at least two people. Moses could have been one of them. But at least two people wrote it. People had no idea how dangerous that was. But that started to be propounded. And people started to look into this. He said one writer calls God Elohiem and the other one calls God Jehovah . What do you do about the times when it is referred to as Elohiem Jehovah? Call Him Lord God. What do you do about that? It was conjecture but it began to take hold after a while in the academic world.

And so people that were trained in the schools said the law of Moses wasn't written by Moses. It was written by two or three people. And if it wasn't written by who it claimed to be written by, then what does that do to it's authority? Now who did the Jews believe wrote it? Moses. For thousands of years both Jews and Christians said it was written by Moses. But if it wasn't written by who it claimed to be written by, tell me this: what does that do to it's authority? It destroys it.

Well as they kept studying this they went up to Psalms and they found out that Psalms and a lot of other books in the Old Testament, referred to all these things that were in the books of Moses and they said Moses said it. And they said those people are wrong. Those people are wrong. More conjectures. And by the late eighteen hundreds they got into what is called the science of higher criticism.

By the late eighteen hundreds they got into the New Testament. And I want to read to you a few texts from the New Testament about this. First of all let's see what Jesus said about it. Before you get done with higher criticism you completely destroy a persons confidence in Jesus as the Messiah and as the Son of God. Now you can still be a good Roman Catholic and not believe anything in the Bible. But you can't be a Protestant, because Protestantism is based on the Word of God. And if you destroy confidence in it Protestantism is destroyed.

Look in John the fifth chapter, let's see what Jesus said. Is it important? Now we see the result of this today. People think that the first three chapter of Genesis really don't mean what they said. This is a result of higher criticism. People don't believe in Noah's flood any more. And of course they don't believe in the story of Jonah and the fish. Now let's just see what Jesus said about it. Look in John 5 verses forty five to forty seven This is what Jesus said. "Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father, there is one who accuses you--Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me but if you do not believe his writings how will you believe My word." Jesus said if you don't believe in the writings of Moses you can not believe in me. That's impossible.

Now higher criticism took hold ; and I want to tell you that today higher criticism has taken hold in all seminaries just about through out the United States. There are a few that have resisted. The Missouri synod of the Lutheran church, just a few years ago went into their seminary at Saint Louis and found that higher criticism was being taught through out the seminary. They fired most of the faculty and brought in some other faculty to get rid of it. So they are one church that took definitive action against it. There are some conservative Baptist groups that have taken definitive action against it. There are a few, but in the main line churches it's in all the seminaries. I've talked to many people that have gone to different seminaries through out the United States. They've studied higher criticism.

When I went to the seminary, operated by the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Berrien Springs Michigan, the very first semester I was given a book on the New Testament and I was intrigued to look at it, to find out that this was a Roman Catholic book, written by a Roman Catholic author. So I thought, this is interesting. What are we supposed to learn from this?

You know what it was about? It was about 2 inches thick. It was a book to show how to investigate the author ship of the different books of the New Testament. By the time people got through studying that book they weren't sure exactly what they believed. In fact there were students in the Seventh Day Adventist Seminary that came to the conclusion, that the Early Church must have given us the Bible. That is an absolute false hood.

If you believe that the Early Church gave us the Bible, you are a Roman Catholic in your thinking already. You may not know it yet, but you are. Because the church did not give us the Bible, the Bible produces the church, just the opposite. And Jesus said, "If you don't believe the writings of Moses you will not believe in my words." What did Jesus believe about Jonah and the fish? Have you read about that in the New Testament? He talked about it as a historical fact, over and over again. Matthew 12:40 is one place, and you hear this all the time.

If you go to a seminary to day, the question is not what does God say, but the question that people are asking is "well, who wrote it?" who wrote it? And the result of that is that it does not have divine authority. People are looking at the Bible as a human book instead as a book that is divinely inspired. And here is what the result of that is. and this has been going on a long time. I want to read to you a report that was published in a national magazine in the United States about this problem. Now this was published , I think it was in 1909. It was published in the Cosmopolitan Magazine from May to August in 1909 This is a report by a man who spent two years investigating American Colleges. Now this is over eighty years ago. Listen what he found. "The result of higher criticism is to take away the concept of a moral absolute and replace it with what is called, 'relativism.' Now here is what was going on in American Colleges as reported in a national magazine in 1909. "In hundreds of class rooms it is being taught daily that the decalogue" The Decalogue, what's that? That's the ten commandments. "is no more sacred than a syllabus, that the home as an institution is doomed. That there are no absolute evils, immorality is simply an act in contravention of society accepted standards, and that the daring who defy the code do not offend any deity, but simply arouse the venom of the majority." And he goes on with more blasphemy, reporting what is being taught in American Colleges.

Now what is the result of that? The result of that is the state of society that we see today where everything is relative. When I was going to the seminary, I listened to a so called preacher preach on the radio, who believed in relativism. And this is what he said about the ten commandments, He said, "Before every one of the ten commandments you should place the word ordinarily." Now what does that do? That destroys them. It leaves it up to your own personal judgment what is right for you to do, and what is wrong for you to do You see the Bible believing Christian never asks the question. "Is the Bible true?"

Now when I was a young person I don't know if you have ever been tempted with skepticism but I wanted to know for myself. Is this book true, and I spent a long time investigating it. And that is not wrong to do. But, when I looked carefully for the evidence, I found that there was plenty of evidence to substantiate the fact that this book is true. So, once I know that I don't have to spend the rest of my life asking the question when I read this book, "Is it true?" The only questions I have is, "what does it say? And what does it mean? And how do I follow it?"

Once you destroy the foundations of this book , you have gutted out, you have taken out, the foundation of Protestantism, and there is nothing left. And that is what has happened in the world today. So there are many other pieces of the puzzle that we don't have time to look at this morning. Another one is the whole Sabbath Sunday issue. But if a person looses confidence in this book, Protestantism is destroyed.

And so today the Protestant churches are searching madly for something solid to hang on to. And there just isn't anything because their preachers and most of their theologians don't have confidence in this book any more, like Martin Luther had. So what are they finding? Well they are finding two things. Number one: They are finding increased manifestations of what they call, 'the Holy Spirit'. However, we studied this carefully in our Prophecy seminar last spring. The Holy Spirit always operates in harmony with the Bible, and especially with the law of God. In the Bible Jesus said it very clearly "If you want to receive the Holy Spirit you must keep the commandments" That is John fourteen.

And so people today are receiving spiritualistic manifestations. They think this is something solid to hang on to. And what's happening is that the Devil is getting control of the entire religious world.

And at the same time that's happening there is another power that is come to the fore front. And this is exactly what I was taught as a little boy. I learned from Bible prophecy the time is coming when the Papacy is going to again have world dominance. Is that happening today? It is happening today. And they are saying we're solid. And the Protestant world is floundering in higher criticism. The destruction of faith in the Bible has left them with no foundation, no anchor point.

And so they are getting hold of these two forces. And there is going to be a three fold union between, the Protestants, and the Roman Catholic church, and these so called manifestations of the Holy Spirit, that are not in harmony with the law of God. And that is where Protestantism is today. It is a result of loosing confidence in the Bible which is loosing confidence in the Word of God.

And friend this scenario that Bible students--students of prophecy-- started preaching about over a hundred years ago, clear back when the Papacy was enslaved or confined in the Vatican and was not a world influence or power at all at that time. They said the time is coming when the Papacy is going to have the same dominance in the world that they had in the dark ages. The time is coming again when there is going to be a manifestation of the power of Spiritualism, and it is going to be so deceptive that almost the whole world is going to be deceived. And people said, "Oh no, that will never happen. We are a Protestant country and that won't happen." They didn't know that the foundation of the building was being dug into. It was in the process of being destroyed right then.

So that this is what has happened. Look in Revelation 12:9 It says, "So the great dragon was cast out that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives," [how much of the world?] "the whole world ." First the world was deceived because they didn't even have the Bible in the dark ages. When they got the Bible, Protestantism began. Protestantism is simply the religion of the Bible, Protestants that say "I'll follow the Bible, I'll obey what ever it says and do it." That is what Protestantism is and that is all it is. The Bible is the religion of the Protestants.

And so the devil had to attack the Bible. Now he has many types of attacks. During the nineteenth and twentieth century we have seen attacks on the Bible that there have never been in previous ages. For instance, dialectic materialism which is Atheism, took over for a while more than half of the world, and it is still a major power in the world. And where ever they took over, in order for people to even read the Bible , we had to smuggle them into the country. It was against the law to even have or read one or to print one. That was an attack against the Bible.

Higher criticism was an attack against the Bible in the most insidious form. Because people that claimed that they believed the Bible, lost confidence in it, as a divinely inspired book that had divine authority. And then at the same time while that was going on, there was a man by the name of Darwin that developed a theory of evolution.

When I was at graduate school I studied the theory of evolution over and over again and compared it with evidence. It's just like higher criticism. It is a mass of conjectures that will not stand up to a candid investigation of the facts. It will not stand up. In fact, the Bible talks about people that don't believe in the authority of God, as the result of what they see in the natural world. You know what the Bible says in Romans one? It says, "That people that don't believe in His Eternal power and the God head, because of what they can see in the natural world are with out excuse."They will find out in the day of judgment.

People that have studied the marvels of nature (now there are many marvels in nature), but the greatest marvel of it all is the human mind and body. When I was in graduate school I never ceased to be amazed, as to how anybody could study how the kidneys worked, how the heart worked, and how the lungs worked; how could anybody take gross anatomy, how could anybody study histology, how could anybody study bio chemistry, and not believe in God, and not believe in His Word? Well I don't know.

The Bible says, that in the last days the Devil is going to deceive the whole world. In fact it says it so many times that you can not miss it as you are reading through the book of Revelation. It says it over and over again, It says it in Revelation twelve. It says it again in Revelation 13, it says it again in Revelation seventeen, in fact twice in Revelation seventeen and it says it again in Revelation eighteen. And it says almost the same thing in Revelation sixteen. The whole world is going to be deceived at the end of time.

But there is going to be a remnant of people that will not be taken in by all the deceptions of evolution, higher criticism, atheism, or all the theories about the Bible just being a human book. And this remnant that are not deceived, are characterized in the book of Revelation as God's people who make it all the way through. We are living in the time that the Bible calls the last days, when Paul says that perilous times would come. We are living in those perilous times, when the errors would be so great and so deceptive that Jesus said, that if was possible it would deceive the very elect.

Now the people that aren't deceived by all this that is going on, how are they described in Revelation? Look at just a few texts. Look first of all at Revelation 12:17 it says, "And the dragon was enraged with the woman and he went to make war with the rest of her off spring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." The dragon is the Devil, we read in verse 9. Who does the woman represent in Bible prophecy? The church. And the remnant or the rest of her seed who would that be? That would be the last. And who are they? Well they are the ones that keep all of God's commandments and they have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

What is the testimony of Jesus Christ? It is the Spirit of Prophecy, Revelation 19:10. God's last people that He will have in the world have two characteristics. They keep God's commandments,[you can't be a commandment keeper if you break one of them because James 2:10 says, "If you keep the whole law and offend in one point, you are guilty of all."] They keep God's commandments and they have what? They have the prophetic gift.

When I was a young man I wanted to know for sure about that. I had heard the claim that Ellen White was a prophet. I decided that I would check it out for myself, which I did for many months, very carefully. I have a whole stack of books and notebook of research that I did on that subject. Now that is not our topic today. But I'll tell you that I personally became convinced that the evidence was over whelming that she was a prophet. And that the church does have the prophetic gift.

But look over to Revelation the fourteenth chapter and it describes God's last day people again. In Revelation 14:9-11. It talks about the warning against worshipping the beast or his image, or receiving his mark. And then you have the contrast with the people that don't receive the mark of the beast. Now here is how they are described in verse 12. It says, "Here is the patience of the saints, here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." And then so that no body will make a mistake, it's repeated again in the last chapter of the Bible, almost the last verse in the Bible Revelation 22:14. It's repeated again. Here is who is going to be on the inside, and who's going to be on the outside. People on the outside are described in verse 15. The people on the inside, who are saved, are described in verse 14. It says, "Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city."

Now in past ages; we just studied at the beginning that there was a time when people didn't even have Bibles. There were no printing presses. Very few people had the Bible and people felt that they were most fortunate if they had one of the gospels in their possession that had been hand copied. So, there were people in the past that were living up to all the light that they knew. They were not committing any willful sin, as Paul condemns in Hebrews ten. They were living up to all the light that they knew. And their sins of ignorance will be covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, they will be saved.

But in the last generation something very different than that is going to happen. In the last generation there's not going to be anybody that will come right up to the second coming of Christ and say "Lord, I didn't know. I was trying to live up to all the light that I had, but I didn't"t know about your law, I didn't know about your commandments." That's not going to happen. Because it says in Revelation 14:6,7. That before the end the gospel is going to be preached to, how many People? Every tribe kindred nation tongue and people. Every body is going to hear the message . And when Jesus comes again there is going to be only two kinds of people in the world, only two kinds of people. There will be those that have the mark of the beast, and there will be those that keep the commandments. That is all there will be.

Some will deliberately have the mark of the beast. The mark of the beast is not something that is just slipped in when they don't even know what has happened. It's not like that, it's something that you make a conscious decision to break God's law. And those that keep the commandments are those who make a conscious decision to keep God's law. That's why those that are lost, (as it says both in Matthew 24 and Revelation 1) are going to mourn when Jesus comes. Why are they going to mourn? Because they know that they have rejected God's law and His authority.

Every body in the world is going to be on one side or the other. This is the question that has to be decided by every single person in the world that has reason. Are you going to obey God's law or not? Are you going to be faithful to His government or not? Are you going to follow Him or not?

Protestantism had a glorious past. But as a result of loosing confidence in the Bible, it is right at the point right now of joining hands with Rome again. It's in all the papers. If you read the papers and the magazines. It's all over the news. They are right in the process of joining Rome again and in getting involved with Spiritualism again. But there is going to be a remnant in the world, that are going to be faithful to the end. They know what God's word is and they are going to obey His law.

nd the question that every person has to answer for themselves before the end is, Who am I going to obey? Who am I going to follow? Who is going to have my allegiance? It's a question that everybody must answer. It's the question that you have to answer. It's a question that I have to answer. Who are you going to obey?

Back in the days of the children of Israel Joshua said to them before he died , he said, "And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." He didn't know what the rest of the people were going to do but he said "as for me I'm going to serve the Lord"

That's what Martin Luther said. "If I have to stand all alone, if this is what I have to do, I still have to be faithful to the word of God." And friend that is the decision that you have to make whether you are going to do it or not. That's the decision that I have to make. What side are you going to be on.

What determines the side you are going to be on at the end of the world is, who do you obey? Are you going to obey God's law or are you in violation of God's law? What is going to happen to you is determined by your own decision. And friend the hour is getting late, the hour is getting late. We don't have an infinite amount of time to make a decision who we are going to serve and who are we going to follow.

Do you have friends do you have neighbors? Don't give them the impression that they have until they die to get ready for the Lord to come, because the Lord could come before they die. The time is now. The Bible says. "Now is the day of salvation. "That has always been the case, because it has always been true that a human being could die in an accident and then there would be no more chance to be saved. That's always been true.

But now even if you don't die in an accident, it's more urgent than ever before to choose who are you going to serve. Because time is running out, time is running out. And when the last decision is made it's just going to be a matter of days from that point of time until the Lord is going to return again. You see the reason that Jesus hasn't come again already is very simple. It is because there are still some people down here that He is trying to get ready. Is there anybody here like this? There is still some people down here that He is trying to get ready so He can save them. That's why He hasn't come yet.

Some day the Lord will give the last invitation. Remember the story of Noah and the ark? It can't be postponed forever. The time is going to come when everybody is going to receive the last invitation. And then there is not going to be any more invitations: not going to be any more gospel preaching; not going to be any more evangelistic meetings; not going to be any more prophecy seminars; there is not going to be any more Bible studies; it's all going to be over. Where are you going to be when it's over? Well where you are going to be when it's over will be the result of the choices that you are making, right today. Don't wait for a more convenient time like Felix did. A more convenient times don't come. Don't wait.

I've seen people who said like a man I knew one time. He said, "When I retire from my job then I'll be a Christian." Do you know what happened when he retired from his job? You can't repent unless the Holy Spirit works on your heart. When he retired from his job he just went right on living the way he had always been living. The last I saw him he wasn't a Christian yet. Don't wait for the more convenient time, because it doesn't come. Now is the time to make a decision. Say, "Lord I'm choosing to follow you." It's not a decision between you and me. It's not a decision between you and the church. It is a decision between you and God. Are you going to obey His Word, and are you going to order your life by His Word? That's the decision everybody has to make if they are going to be saved.

And before we sing our closing song I would like to have a word of prayer with you, because I know that when we study these things that the Holy Spirit works on peoples hearts and their minds. And while I'm praying for you , you may have a burden on your heart that you want to say something to the Lord. You know the Lord, says, in Psalms one hundred thirty nine that the Lord knows your thoughts. He reads your thoughts. And if you know today that you need to make that decision to follow Him all the way, I hope, that while I am praying for you, you will cry out in your heart and say, Lord I want to do your will, I want to be saved, I want to be used by you to save people in my family, my friends. The best way for you to save other people in your family or you friends is for you your self to take a position on the truth. That's the quickest way, that's the fastest way. When they see that you believe it and you are living it, it will have the greatest affect on other people that you know that aren't saved.

Let's kneel and pray together: Father in Heaven we thank you for the light of Bible prophecy that shows us the time in which we are living, that shows us that we are living in that culminating time, when everybody in the world is going to be on one side or the other and either receive the mark of the beast or choose to obey your commandments and follow you all the way. Oh! Father in Heaven we know that everybody in the world ,including ourselves, must make a decision as to who we are going to obey, who we are going to follow. Lord I pray for each person here. As your Holy Spirit speaks to Our hearts, we pray, help us to yield ourselves totally to Jesus, as our Lord and Saviour and to follow Him and obey Him, to do His will so that we can be among that group which will escape the terrors of the last days and will be taken home to that place that You prepared for those that love you. Oh Lord help us to see the reality, and the solemness of the decisions that we make and to realize that the decisions that we make today affect and determine our eternal destiny. And we pray that we may be among those that have chosen to obey your commandments and to do your will so that we may be accounted worthy, by the Grace of Jesus, to be taken to that home for those that love Him. We pray in His name. Amen