Participants:
Series Code: IIWSS
Program Code: IIWSS025017S
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00:00 [uplifting music]
00:12 ♪♪♪ 00:14 >>Eric Flickinger: Welcome to "Sabbath School," 00:15 brought to you by It Is Written. 00:17 Glad that you could join us again this week. 00:19 We're continuing a 13-week journey 00:22 through some of the major prophecies 00:24 of the Bible and learning how we can best study them 00:27 and understand them. 00:29 This is week number four. 00:31 We are taking a look at "The Nations." 00:32 This is actually part one of a two-part short series, 00:36 miniseries that we're going to be doing, 00:38 looking at the relationship of the nations 00:40 to Bible prophecy, delving ever so slightly 00:43 into politics and some other fun things. 00:46 So, we're glad that you are here with us. 00:48 Let's begin with prayer. 00:50 Father, thank You for being with us today. 00:54 Thank You for allowing us to be with You. 00:56 As we study Your Word, as we study the Bible, 00:58 we gain a clearer picture of You 01:01 and a better understanding of the world in which we live. 01:03 So we're anticipating that as we do that today, 01:05 You will do as You have always done 01:07 and given us some more hope and encouragement 01:10 and perhaps even challenging us a little bit along the way. 01:13 We thank You for doing so. In Jesus' name, amen. 01:17 Well, we're happy to have back with us again 01:18 the author of this quarter's "Sabbath School" lesson, 01:21 Pastor Shawn Boonstra. Shawn, welcome back. 01:23 >>Shawn Boonstra: Hey, I'm surprised you had me back, 01:25 but here we go, week four. 01:26 >>Eric: So far people seem to be enjoying it. 01:28 We'll see what week five looks like, whether you're back again. 01:31 >>Shawn: If I get removed from the premises. 01:32 >>Eric: That's right. 01:33 >>Shawn: But I've been thrown out by all kinds of people. 01:35 >>Eric: So nothing new. >>Shawn: No, nothing new. 01:37 >>Eric: "The Nations"-- this is interesting. 01:40 As I mentioned, we're looking a little bit into politics. 01:44 >>Shawn: Yeah, we are. 01:45 >>Eric: Give me a little bit of your history. 01:46 I think some of us are familiar with kind of where you came from 01:50 into where you are today, but a little bit of history 01:52 that gives us some background here. 01:54 >>Shawn: Yeah, out of everything that appeared 01:55 in this quarterly, this one probably was my favorite theme. 02:00 We ended up with two weeks on it. 02:02 And I think it's a major, major theme in prophecy. 02:05 Before becoming a Christian, I was a political activist, 02:08 and I mean a very busy one. 02:10 I was the president of a certain party. 02:14 It doesn't matter what party I've left, 02:15 but certain parties organization on our university campus. 02:19 I sat on an advisory board for the political party. 02:23 I still to this day once in a while get communications: 02:25 "Hey, you wanna work on Senator so-and-so's campaign?" 02:28 No, I really don't. 02:30 It was my entire life. 02:32 I've got firsthand experience with how the kingdoms 02:35 of the world run. 02:36 And man, we could spend the entire time 02:40 on what actually happens. I'll just say this. 02:44 I believe almost nothing I see on TV, 02:46 almost nothing because I used to be a part of making that happen, 02:50 the appearance it's on TV. 02:52 Now, there were a lot of people that went into politics 02:55 who went in for all the right reason. 02:56 I will say this: They wanted to serve. 02:58 They wanted to--almost an evangelist heart 03:00 but in a secular sense-- 03:01 they wanted to serve their fellow human beings. 03:04 They wanted to hold office to make a positive change. 03:06 The number of people, however, that stayed that way 03:10 in that environment was really quite small. 03:14 We're all human beings. We're all fallen. 03:16 I saw fallen nature up close. 03:19 Eventually, your self-interest rises to the surface. 03:22 It occurs to you, "I now sit in a seat of power, 03:25 and I can start appropriating resources around me." 03:30 And they'll say anything and do anything to retain that seat, 03:34 make promises. I mean, 03:36 how many election cycles do you have to go through 03:38 before you realize they're not keeping any of these promises? 03:40 There's very few that actually keep them. 03:43 And we've also seen this willingness to say 03:47 or do anything to destroy your political opponent. 03:52 Sometimes everyone knows that what you're saying 03:55 isn't even true, but it doesn't matter. 03:58 Just put it out there, make sure they lose. 04:00 It brings out the very worst in us. 04:03 I've seen it up close. 04:05 I remember one time-- and this is actually 04:07 a part of why I became a Christian. 04:09 I know that I'm taking a bit of time here, 04:11 but this will give you a sense for why this theme 04:13 is so important to me. 04:15 I was at a fundraising dinner for a political candidate, 04:19 and I was waiting on tables. 04:22 I mean, I'm 18 years old. I'm there as a volunteer. 04:24 I can't afford $1,000-a-plate, $50,000-a-plate dinner, 04:27 so I'm a busboy and a waiter. 04:30 And at one point I had to go do what little boys have to do 04:33 halfway through an evening, and I ran over to the men's room, 04:35 and I opened the door, and on the floor, Eric, 04:39 was one of the most influential, powerful people I know of. 04:44 His face was common in the news. 04:46 He was wealthy. He was powerful. 04:48 Who it is doesn't matter. 04:49 I will always protect his identity. 04:53 But he was on the floor of the bathroom sobbing, 04:56 clearly drunk, and his face was stuck to the tiles. 05:01 You know, he'd been laying on the tiles, facing the tiles. 05:03 The alcohol probably got him down to that position, 05:05 and he's sobbing. 05:06 And he pulls himself up when he hears me come in, 05:09 and he looks at me. 05:10 And it was just gross. There's slobber everywhere. 05:13 A string of drool goes from his cheek to the floor, 05:15 and he looks at me and says, "I'm worth nothing." 05:20 And I looked at him, and I thought, 05:22 "You've got everything I'm trying to get. 05:24 "You've got power, you've got money, you've got notoriety, 05:27 "you're on TV every single day, people chase you around, 05:31 "the world in your hand, and you're on the floor 05:33 thinking you're worth nothing? This is a dead end." 05:38 And I walked--I'd love to say I quit that day, I didn't, 05:41 but that started to bother me, and I think the Lord 05:43 let me see that so that I could walk away 05:46 from that life into the one that I currently have. 05:49 I have firsthand experience in how the nations work. 05:52 And we could spend the whole time on stories 05:55 on how self-interest operates in that realm, 05:58 but it is definitely-- even those that start well, 06:01 most of them end up--it's just a game of self-interest. 06:05 >>Eric: As we look at this week's lesson 06:07 and next week's lesson, it's apparent, it's clear 06:09 that you're very passionate about this, 06:11 and there are elements in here that you've woven into it, 06:15 like Genesis, chapter 10. 06:17 Talk about Genesis, chapter 10 and why this chapter is, 06:21 just holds so much fascination for you. 06:23 >>Shawn: Yeah, I'm currently making 06:24 a documentary series on Genesis, chapter 10, 06:27 tracking mythology through different cultures 06:29 all over the planet and how they all seem to lead back to here. 06:32 When you get to Genesis 10, some scholars 06:34 will call this "the table of nations." 06:36 And this is foundational, again, for Bible prophecy. 06:40 Everything's in here. You find the beginnings of Babel in here. 06:43 And if you're not familiar with the book of Revelation, 06:46 you know, that one has a star on its door in that cast. 06:50 It's verse 10: "The beginning of his kingdom was Babel." 06:54 And if you look at this, this is a little bit different 06:56 than mythology. There are real people and places in here. 07:00 In verse 6, you've got Kush-- it's Ethiopia. 07:03 You've got Egypt; Put, which is Libya. 07:05 These places are still on the map. 07:07 I mean, the people on the map, 07:09 there are cities named after them. 07:11 And Genesis, chapter 10 is actually 07:13 the story of real people. 07:15 Now, what's fascinating about this is that up until 07:18 about the late 19th century, we were tempted to believe 07:21 that this is just more mythology; 07:23 this may as well just be Zeus and Saturn and--no. 07:29 There was a guy by the name of Hormuzd Rassam. 07:33 And Hormuzd Rassam is the first Assyrian-born archaeologist. 07:38 He was working with a British guy 07:39 who decided to go into politics. 07:41 He left, and they were digging up the ruins of Nineveh. 07:43 In there they found the library of Ashurbanipal. 07:46 And Hormuzd Rassam found 07:49 what we now call the Gilgamesh tablets. 07:52 And the Gilgamesh tablets got everybody excited, 07:54 so excited, in fact, that George Smith, 07:56 who was the person who finally cracked the code 07:58 on the cuneiform and translated them, got so excited, 08:02 and I verified this story at the British Museum, 08:04 he stripped himself naked running around. 08:06 He was so excited. He just started peeling off his clothes. 08:08 "Woo, look what I found." 08:10 It's a weird response, but that's how excited he was 08:13 because they found the first mention of the Flood 08:15 outside of the Bible ever. 08:18 And the Gilgamesh tablets, it turns out, 08:21 well, they're in the Bible as well. 08:23 Gilgamesh is a character that's very big in Mesopotamia. 08:28 He founded a bunch of cities. 08:30 The number one city he founded was called Uruk. 08:33 It's where we get the name for the nation of Iraq. 08:35 It's still on the map today, Uruk. 08:38 He was a terrible tyrant who wanted a god named-- 08:43 oh, what was the name that they gave him? 08:44 It was just almost identical to Yahweh--Huwawa. 08:49 Huwawa, they wanted him dead, and he's terrified 08:53 when his best friend dies. What is the answer to death? 08:56 And someone says, "Did you know your great-grandfather 08:58 "Utnapishtim survived a great flood, 09:01 and he's still alive, and he has the secret of eternal life?" 09:03 My goodness, what are the odds, right? 09:06 Utnapishtim is Noah. He goes and finds him, 09:08 and because Noah can't give him a magic formula-- 09:11 you know, he's found eternal life in Christ. 09:14 The story is anti-Noah, anti-God. It's the other side. 09:18 It's the Babylonians telling the same story. 09:21 But it turns out that Gilgamesh is actually Nimrod. 09:27 Nimrod is not a proper name. The Hebrews use it. 09:30 You know, when they're telling the story of Haman in Purim, 09:36 the Jews make noisemakers-- "Let's not hear his name." 09:39 The same with Gilgamesh; they won't use his name. 09:41 Nimrod means "the rebel," "the bully." 09:43 It's just a nickname for him. 09:46 He's the founder of the city of Erech here. 09:49 Uruk, it's the same thing. And so we have this verification, 09:54 and I find it fascinating. 09:56 In a previous episode we said, look, 09:58 Daniel 12 is talking about knowledge of the book of Daniel. 10:01 Wouldn't you know it, when we start in the 1830s 10:03 to really start digging into Bible prophecy, 10:07 suddenly we start finding all the ancient cultures. 10:09 In the middle of the 19th century, 10:11 somehow by accident we find Nineveh; 10:13 we find all these things; we dig up the tablets 10:14 that verify what we're reading in here. 10:18 Gilgamesh--Nimrod-- is the original rebel. 10:23 He's the founder of Babel. 10:24 "I will do things my own way, sir." 10:27 He opens up the first kingdom. 10:28 I don't know how-- I mean, I think, 10:30 I've probably underlined why I find Genesis 10 10:32 so very important and so foundational. 10:36 But here is where we get this divergence 10:38 between the kingdoms of men and the kingdom of God. 10:42 >>Eric: And we continue to see that divergence going on today. 10:45 You hit in this week's study on Abraham 10:50 and the significance of Abraham. 10:52 Why was it important for God to call Abraham, 10:56 and how does that help us to see this divergence of the two? 10:59 >>Shawn: Well, it's fascinating to me. 11:01 Why couldn't Abraham be Abraham where he was? 11:04 If you look at where he was required to move from, 11:06 he moves from Ur in the Chaldees. 11:08 He's a Chaldean. 11:10 And he goes way up north and then comes way down south, 11:12 takes forever to get there, and he's in a strange land. 11:15 And I sometimes laugh to myself, like, 11:16 how did he sell his wife on this move? 11:19 "Where are we gonna go?" "Well, way out there." 11:21 "That's full of barbarians. I'm pretty sure they eat people." 11:23 You know, it's like, not a--but he trusts God. 11:26 It's one of the reasons he's held out as a hero of the faith. 11:28 He moves. And I keep asking myself, but why? 11:31 Why didn't he stay at the center of civilization? 11:35 Why did he have to move? 11:38 Well, number one, we have some indication, 11:41 I don't know if it's reliable, 11:42 but if you read Josephus, Abraham had run-ins with Nimrod. 11:48 Maybe, maybe not, maybe the timelines don't work. 11:51 But he wasn't much loved once he became a monotheist. 11:54 That part of Jewish history is the memory. 11:56 He wasn't loved around there. Would they have wanted him dead? 11:59 You know, maybe God moved him so he wouldn't end up dead. 12:03 He could go somewhere and build a new world. 12:06 Secondly, where is Canaan? 12:08 It's the crossroads of the ancient world. 12:11 If you lived in Europe, you went through there 12:12 to get to Africa or Asia. 12:14 If you lived in Africa, you went through there 12:16 to get to--everybody had to go through there, 12:18 and Abraham's about to raise up a people 12:20 that foreshadows the coming Messiah 12:23 and God's plan of salvation. 12:24 Moving him, I think, had to do with preserving him, 12:27 and I think it had to do with the fact 12:29 that it's the right place. 12:31 >>Eric: So God orchestrated all these things in His knowledge 12:35 of the future and knowing what would need 12:38 to take place and how ultimately the plan of salvation 12:40 was going to come through this, which is pretty powerful. 12:44 Again, Shawn, we struggle with lack of space in the quarterly, 12:49 in the study guide and inability to put everything in there 12:53 that you would have liked. 12:55 We have the companion book. >>Shawn: Yep, we do. 12:57 And this one, you'll get a little more detail 12:59 here in particular because my favorite subject-- 13:02 it's politics in the light of Bible prophecy. 13:05 And so you'll find extra material there that I think 13:07 we'll find--really, it casts a lot of light on your study 13:12 of Genesis in particular. >>Eric: Very good. 13:14 So if you would like to pick up that companion book 13:16 to this quarter's "Sabbath School" lesson, 13:18 you will find it at itiswritten.shop. 13:21 Again, itiswritten.shop. 13:24 It's going to have more stories, more in-depth research, 13:28 a lot that Shawn has gathered 13:30 through his life experience and through his research 13:32 that will help you to understand the role of the nations 13:35 in Bible prophecy. 13:37 We're going to come back in just a moment 13:38 as we continue looking at the nations 13:40 and the significance of understanding them 13:42 so that we can better understand the prophecies of the Bible 13:44 and better understand the plan that God has for us. 13:47 We'll be right back. 13:48 [uplifting music] 13:52 >>John Bradshaw: It's one of the most remarkable stories 13:54 in the Bible. 13:56 And although it's the story of an historical event, 13:58 it's also a story with prophetic implications, 14:02 allowing us to see ahead into earth's last days. 14:05 Don't miss "The Fiery Furnace." 14:08 Three young captives in Babylon dared to defy a powerful king, 14:12 willingly choosing to honor God, 14:14 whatever the consequences might be. 14:16 It's a story of faith and faithfulness, 14:18 an inspiring account of what God can do 14:21 for those who choose to put Him first. 14:23 "The Fiery Furnace," three young men 14:26 who'd been taken from their homes 14:27 and marched across a barren desert, 14:30 who stood boldly for God when everyone else 14:32 chose to worship a golden image, 14:35 three young men who speak of God's saints in the end of time, 14:39 choosing fidelity over fear and truth over tradition. 14:44 "The Fiery Furnace," 14:46 brought to you by 14:48 It Is Written TV. 14:52 [uplifting music] 14:56 >>Eric: Welcome back to "Sabbath School," 14:58 brought to you by It Is Written. 15:00 We're looking at the role of the nations 15:02 in understanding the prophecies of the Bible. 15:04 And, Shawn, you on Monday's lesson 15:07 talk about how it wasn't just the temple and its rituals 15:10 that foreshadowed Christ, but you actually have 15:13 the people themselves as a type of Christ. 15:16 How does that show us Christ a little bit more clearly? 15:19 >>Shawn: Yeah, it's a huge, huge subject. 15:22 But Israel was never supposed to be like other nations. 15:25 That's pretty clear throughout the Old Testament. 15:27 We'll touch on that a little bit today. 15:29 They were supposed to be different. 15:31 They were also a type of Christ. 15:33 And so there's this concept in the Old Testament, 15:36 the "bechor," the firstborn. 15:38 The firstborn was usually the oldest child, 15:41 not always but usually. 15:42 And the job of the firstborn was to carry the name-- 15:45 big concept in prophecy, 15:46 Father's name written on our foreheads. 15:48 The "bechor" is to carry the father's name, 15:51 culture, reputation forward into the next generation. 15:56 This is how you persist. 15:58 And so God, on more than one occasion, 16:00 calls Israel His firstborn. 16:02 You see it in Exodus, chapter 4: "Thus you shall say to Pharaoh, 16:06 'Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son.'" 16:09 Hosea 11: "When 'Israel was a child, I loved him, 16:12 and out of Egypt I called my son.'" 16:16 The parallels from that point forward are stunning. 16:20 Israel goes into Egypt because of a problem, stress: famine. 16:25 They spend time in Egypt; they come out of Egypt; 16:28 they cross the Red Sea, 16:29 which Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 calls a baptism. 16:33 They were "baptized" in the Red Sea, 16:35 and then they spend 40 years in the wilderness. 16:39 Then we get to the story of Jesus. 16:41 Because of trouble, persecution by Herod, a death sentence, 16:44 the family moves to Egypt. They come back out of Egypt. 16:47 At the beginning of His ministry, 16:48 Christ is baptized in the Jordan River 16:51 and then goes into the wilderness for 40 days 16:53 to be tempted of the devil. 16:55 Israel itself was intended to foreshadow Jesus, 17:00 and where they failed provides us with contrast, 17:03 and where they succeeded in following God 17:05 gives us comparison. And it's not by accident. 17:09 Israel was supposed to be entirely different 17:11 than every other nation. 17:13 Every other nation, if you think about it-- 17:15 we talked before the break about Gilgamesh and Erech 17:19 and Babel and so on. What are these places? 17:22 They're artificial paradise. 17:23 All right, God says, "I can restore you to paradise. 17:25 "You can come back into the garden, 17:27 wait for the seed of the woman." 17:28 Human nature, selfish, says, "You know what, 17:30 "we can build our own paradise. 17:32 "Put up a wall that deals with enemies. 17:34 "Get a workforce; we can grow our food. 17:35 Agriculture will keep us fed." 17:37 That's a replacement for the trees and the garden and so on. 17:40 The issue is that you put a bunch of sinful people 17:42 inside of a walled city, 17:44 and the most powerful guy rises to the top, 17:46 becomes self-interested, and becomes a king. 17:49 And Gilgamesh--Nimrod-- they were tyrants. 17:52 The Nephilim were tyrants. They're not space aliens. 17:55 The word literally means "bully." 17:57 They were bullies running these cities. 18:00 And they're artificial paradise. 18:02 It's man-made solution to the problem of death. 18:04 And they fail. They fail on every front. 18:07 Israel was supposed to be completely different 18:09 and show what the kingdom of God looks like. 18:11 >>Eric: So they were supposed to be different, 18:13 but they looked around at these different nations. 18:15 >>Shawn: Yeah, I know. 18:16 >>Eric: And one of the things was, "Oh, they've got a king." 18:19 So walk us through 1 Samuel, chapter 8. 18:21 >>Shawn: 1 Samuel, chapter 8 is an interesting chapter. 18:24 The people are saying to Samuel, "Look, 18:26 "you're getting old, and we don't have a succession plan. 18:29 What are we gonna do about leadership?" 18:30 And he says, "Well, I got my boys," 18:32 you know, Abijah and Jehu. 18:33 "We don't want your boys. They're corrupt as all get-out." 18:35 And the Bible is not flattering describing the boys. 18:38 You wouldn't want them for leadership, either. 18:41 And Samuel says, "What do you want?" 18:42 "We want a king. We've looked at the other nations. 18:44 "Look, it's time for Israel to grow up, 18:46 become a proper nation." 18:48 And Samuel's like, "You don't get it. 18:50 "You're not supposed to be like the others. 18:52 You're not supposed to have a king." 18:54 And when he talks to God about it, God does this. 18:56 God is amazing. 18:58 He says, "Let them have what they're asking for." 19:00 "What do you mean, Lord? That's not right." 19:02 He says, "I know it's not right, but, Samuel, 19:03 they haven't rejected you. They've rejected me." 19:09 Now, what's fascinating about it is from that point forward, 19:12 kings do in Israel what kings did 19:14 in all these pagan false paradises. 19:18 They get more and more and more and more corrupt. 19:21 I don't know if we touch on this in a coming lesson. 19:23 Maybe we do, maybe we don't, 19:25 but what you find fascinating is that by the time 19:28 you get to the end of 2 Chronicles, 19:31 you get this long string of really wicked kings. 19:34 In fact, it calls their acts an abomination. 19:39 And all those abominations take place and the next thing 19:41 that happens is that Nebuchadnezzar 19:43 rides into town and says, "Oh, you don't need this temple. 19:46 You're not all that different anyway," 19:47 rips down the temple. 19:49 And there you have what the Bible refers to 19:51 as "the abomination of desolation." 19:53 I think we're gonna touch on this in another lesson again. 19:55 We may end up repeating, but that's a big concept 19:57 in the Bible. 19:59 And as we discussed in a previous lesson, Eric, 20:01 what often happens is we look outside. 20:03 Where's the antichrist? Where's the antichrist? 20:05 No, the big problem's inside, and the same is true 20:07 with the abomination of desolation. 20:09 It was the abominations of God's own people 20:11 that led to the desolation of the temple. 20:14 Babylonians take it down. 20:15 Jesus says the same thing in Matthew 23: 20:18 "Behold, your house is left [to] you desolate." 20:21 Why? Because of the abominations of God's own people, 20:24 which tells us something about the abominations 20:26 described in the book of Revelation. 20:28 Again, it's not the outside. It's the professed people of God 20:31 that are committing the abominations 20:33 that lead to desolation. 20:36 So yeah, they ask for a king, and it was a big mistake. 20:40 And what I find fascinating is that God loves them enough 20:44 to start describing what it is that the king's going to do. 20:48 First Samuel 8 and verse 11: 20:51 "These will be the ways... the king...will reign over you: 20:53 ...take your sons... appoint them to his chariots." 20:54 There's gonna be conscription. 20:56 He'll "appoint for himself commanders of thousands... 20:58 commanders of fifties"--you're going to be going to war-- 21:00 "some to plow his ground and...reap his harvest." 21:02 You'll be working for the king, not yourself. 21:04 He'll "take your daughters." 21:06 He'll "take the best of your fields." 21:07 There's taxation for you right there. 21:09 Now, that doesn't mean you don't have to pay it, 21:11 'cause Romans is pretty clear: As a Christian, pay your taxes. 21:14 But it was the natural outfall of wanting this. 21:17 "Take the tenth of your grain," put everybody to work for him. 21:20 "And in that day you will cry out..., 21:22 but the Lord will not answer you." 21:23 You asked for this, I'm gonna let you have it. 21:26 This is how we ended up in the situation 21:28 we ended up in the medieval period. 21:30 As we get into the 1600s, what happened in England 21:35 was that Henry VIII looks around Europe and says, 21:38 "Look, all the German princes, 21:40 "they get to break away from Rome? 21:41 I'm breaking away from Rome, too," 21:43 but for all the wrong reasons. 21:44 He just wanted an annulment, wanted to run his own church. 21:47 Some of the Bible-believing people in England at the time 21:50 thought, "Aha, we're gonna be free. 21:52 Now we're really, really free to do what we want." 21:54 No, no, no. The Church of England was almost worse. 21:57 They were told, "No, you can believe what you want 22:00 "in your head, but when it comes time to worship, 22:02 "you'll follow the Book of Common Prayer. 22:04 "You will do what you're told. 22:05 "You wanna baptize adults by immersion? 22:07 "No, you will do infant baptism. 22:09 You wanna keep the Sabbath?" 22:10 There were Sabbath-keepers in the 1600s. 22:12 "No, you won't. We all go to church on Sunday." 22:14 It actually got worse. 22:16 Some of them actually fled. Some of them went to prison. 22:21 Bunyan, who wrote "Pilgrim's Progress," 22:23 wrote it in prison because he was there 22:25 for matters of conscience during this period. 22:28 John Locke, who wrote the Second Treatise of Government-- 22:30 it was one of the foundational documents 22:32 of the American Constitution-- 22:34 he goes to the Netherlands to get away 22:35 because he's been accused of a plot against the king. 22:38 And as they're in the Netherlands-- 22:42 happy to say it was the freest republic of the day; 22:44 I'm a Dutch kid-- 22:46 they meet Jews who were fleeing the Inquisition, 22:49 and they start to study the Old Testament together, 22:50 and they come across this passage. 22:52 It's like, do you think this is the source of our problems? 22:54 We have a king. Look at that. We've lost all of our liberty. 22:58 And then they discover--we're gonna crack open an egg here; 23:02 we'll never be able to finish. I hope that's okay. 23:04 They discover Deuteronomy 17. 23:07 And in Deuteronomy 17, God anticipates 23:10 that they're gonna ask for a king, and He says, 23:12 "All right, you're gonna do this one day, 23:14 "I'm gonna let it happen, but I'm gonna draw 23:15 some boundaries around it." 23:17 The boundaries are fascinating. 23:18 You'll find this in Deuteronomy 17: 23:21 You will say when you get there, "I will set a king 23:23 over me, like all the nations that are around me." 23:25 God anticipates it: 23:27 "You may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord...will choose. 23:30 One from among your brothers." 23:32 The chief executive officer in your country 23:34 cannot be born a foreigner. 23:36 Where else do we have that? Hmm, hmm. 23:38 >>Eric: It sounds familiar. >>Shawn: It sounds familiar. 23:40 "Only he must not acquire many horses for himself... 23:43 cause the people to return to Egypt." 23:44 There's all these checks and balances designed 23:47 to keep the king from getting rich in verse 18. 23:49 "When he sits on the throne of his kingdom"-- 23:51 this is Deuteronomy 17-- 23:52 "he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, 23:56 "approved by the Levitical priests.... 23:58 "He shall read...it all the days of his life, 23:59 [and]...learn to fear the Lord." 24:01 When you have a king, God said, 24:02 "He's got to be from among your own people. 24:04 "He has to write himself a copy of the law and live under it. 24:07 "The rule of law applies to everybody, 24:08 including the person at the top of the chain." 24:11 So in Europe, as they're reading these 2 chapters, 24:14 it starts to occur to them: 24:15 Maybe God never intended for us to have kings. 24:17 Maybe the day we brought a king into the Christian church 24:20 under Constantine was a mistake. 24:22 Maybe we did the same thing Israel did in the Old Testament. 24:25 And it blows their mind. 24:27 We marry church and state, and that's the same thing 24:29 that Israel did. 24:31 And so they thought about, what if we could have--this is one 24:34 of the biggest terms in that period, the Hebrew republic; 24:37 you will find books about the Hebrew-- 24:39 they had a written constitution, the Scriptures, 24:43 and they all lived under it, and it was that that actually led-- 24:46 well, the Enlightenment had a role in writing 24:49 the American Constitution as well, but so did this story. 24:53 We made a big mistake. 24:55 They were so in tune with some of this 24:57 that I think the original seal for Virginia 24:59 was Moses leading the people across the Red Sea 25:02 and on their way to the Promised Land. 25:04 I think we abandoned that. 25:05 But this is where we get the birth 25:08 of the American Constitution, 25:10 the first real republic in centuries, 25:14 and it's the very place that the remnant church emerges. 25:16 It couldn't have emerged anywhere else, 25:19 anywhere else at all. 25:20 >>Eric: So God brought all of these pieces together 25:23 and organized--we're seeing how the nations of the world 25:28 work together with Bible prophecy. 25:30 God works through the nations of the world to help things 25:35 come to pass the way that He knows that they need to. 25:38 So if we've got somebody who's watching today 25:41 and is looking at the politics of the world and is concerned-- 25:47 I don't know why anybody would be concerned 25:48 looking at the politics of the world today, 25:50 but if, hypothetically, that were the case, 25:52 how would you give them some hope? 25:54 >>Shawn: Take a glance through Revelation 18, 25:56 even if you don't understand all of the symbolism and so on, 25:59 you get Babylon the Great, 26:01 and you get the kings of the earth weeping over her. 26:04 Oh, it fell apart in a heartbeat. 26:06 What you're seeing right now, 26:08 it's the beginning of the unraveling. 26:09 It was never going to work. 26:10 The kingdoms of this world were never going to work. 26:14 And I understand a lot of you have tried going to church, 26:17 and you hear more politics coming out of the pulpit. 26:19 That's not where you need to be. 26:21 You need to be in a place where the Kingdom of God 26:23 is being preached, 26:24 where the Scriptures are being preached. 26:25 Politics does not belong in the pulpit. There's a division. 26:28 There's the Kingdom of God, where you belong, 26:31 and the kingdoms of the world. 26:32 The kingdoms of the world are gonna fail. It's guaranteed. 26:36 They've been unraveling for thousands of years. 26:38 Revelation 18-- they just collapse in a day. 26:41 But there's one thing that lasts forever. 26:43 Read Daniel, chapter 7, potent prophecy in the Bible, 26:46 Daniel 7, verses 13 and 14. 26:49 It's the kingdom of Christ that endures forever. 26:52 God takes all the kingdoms of the world, 26:54 pushes them aside and says, "Had enough yet? 26:57 How about the kingdom of God?" 26:59 He invites us back to what was supposed to be 27:01 before we fell from grace. 27:03 And He's put out the welcome mat for you, 27:05 and you can be a part of that kingdom. 27:07 You can actually look at what's going on in the world, 27:10 pay attention to it, and smile 27:13 because you knew it was gonna go that way 27:15 and that there's something better just around the corner. 27:17 >>Eric: Shawn, thanks for giving us 27:19 a little bit of perspective on this. 27:21 And we're going to continue digging into this subject, 27:23 the subject of the nations, how politics and history 27:26 and geography all links together in the prophecies of the Bible. 27:30 Next week is "The Nations" part 2 and we're gonna see 27:34 a lot more pieces come together as we dig into this. 27:38 And you're going to be encouraged by the grace of God. 27:41 So we look forward to seeing you again when we come together 27:44 again next week here on "Sabbath School," 27:46 brought to you by It Is Written. 27:48 [uplifting music] 28:24 ♪♪♪ 28:26 [Captions provided by Aberdeen Captioning www.abercap.com] |
Revised 2025-04-17