Sealed With Truth.

What do you do if you leave one organization to enter another that clearly has eye opening truth--revealed prophecy, only to realize that organization has perverted the very truth they once held dear?

First, being able to recognize that your long held cherish beliefs are nothing but traditions and fallacies, is spiritually shocking, a jolt to the spiritual system. The awakening to the truth, the revelation of so many Biblical facts that you'd been blinded to for years and years, is life changing. You can't help but wonder how the organization you belonged to could ignore so much truth. You can't help but feel deceived because they never once explained the truth to you or told you to even look for it, beyond simply trusting the words they gave to you. You want to shake them all and get them to wake up and see. You want so much to knock the blinders off of their eyes so they have to comprehend the light being given to them. Finally you realize that they don't want truth, they don't want light, they are comfortable where they are and believe you to be fanatical.

Then, only to find out within the new organization that revealed so much truth to you- are lies and corruptions- it is heart breaking, it is discouraging, it is life changing once again. You thought you were standing on the solid rock of all truth, only to find out that you are living on the very edge and teetering off that rocky ledge. Do you let yourself fall with the lies, the misdeeds, the deception, the corruption of pure truth or do you leave that falling, lie filled organization and hurry onto a solid foundation where there is no organization but the truth, no building but the spiritual covering of the Holy Spirit?

There will be no organization prepared wholly for Christ, but rather those who are sealed from within the organizations.  We can't cling to any organization as if we are safe as long as we are among them. Safety alone resides in our Savior and our personal relationship with Him and all the truth He gives to us to hold fast to until He returns.

May we be sealed for Christ! May we warn all we can that they too must be sealed with truth and only truth!

God help us all!

*******

ANALYSIS -- Part 3 -- (The Times of the Gentiles)

In this analysis, we shall cover four different areas of thought which are interrelated. The conclusions drawn result from the fact that the prophecy of Luke 21:24 given by Jesus Himself has been fulfilled. We might call it "The Fall-Out" from fulfilled prophecy.

The Sealing

When God arose      "from the cherub, whereupon He was,"    He ordered the sealing work to proceed in      "the midst of Jerusalem."  1    God has borne long with the disobedience of His professed people. It has been written: The Lord God is a jealous God; yet He bears long with the sins and transgressions of His people in this generation. . . . Because the people are disobedient, unthankful, unholy, as were ancient Israel, time is prolonged that all may hear the last message of mercy proclaimed with a loud voice. The Lord's work has been hindered, the sealing time delayed. Many have not heard the truth. But the Lord will give them a chance to hear and be converted.  2

Because the church appointed to proclaim the final message has failed in the trust committed to it, God has taken things into His own hands, and will provide the means whereby those who have not heard the truth will have opportunity to do so. God arises and orders the delayed sealing to commence - the selection of the 144, 000 through whom He plans to make His final witness.  3

The ones sealed are found in the "midst of Jerusalem". They are concerned about what is taking place in that city. We are told plainly that in Ezekiel's prophecy, Jerusalem represents the church. We read:      Mark this point with care: Those who receive the pure mark of truth,

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wrought in them by the Power of the Holy Ghost, represented by a mark by the man in linen, are those "that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done" in the church.  4 

These sealed ones receive a special mark. On their foreheads is written      "God, New Jerusalem, and a glorious star containing Jesus' new name."   5    These members of Old Jerusalem, receive a new citizenship. They obtain a "new" mother. As Paul wrote -      "But the Jerusalem, which is above is free, which is the mother of us all."  6    Let us face the fact, painful though it may be, that those who are presently calling for us to be loyal to "The Church, Our Mother", indicating it to be the earthly corporate organization, are deceivers of the people, giving the trumpet an uncertain sound and lulling the laity into a fatal security.

If the prophecy of Ezekiel 9 teaches anything, it teaches plainly that the church as presently constituted will not go through, and only those sealed from it will reach the New Jerusalem. This prophecy also answers the question left unanswered in regard to Laodicea. The Faithful Witness declared  -      "Because thou art lukewarm . . . I am about to spue thee out of my mouth,"   7    The sealed ones are classified with the overcomers of Philadelphia, for the Philadelphian church is pictured as a group bearing the      "name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem."  8    Thus Laodicea - if the prophecy of Ezekiel 9 means anything - is spued out.

The Final Form of the Church

In the light of the prophecy of Ezekiel 9, and the comments found thereon in the Spirit of Prophecy, what will the church look like in its final conflict with the powers of earth that will be marshaled by the dragon host?   9    We have not studied the work of "the third angel" as we should have. It should have engrossed our whole mind, our whole attention, for we read:      I then saw the third angel. Said my accompanying angel, " Fearful is his work. Awful is his mission. He is the angel that is to select the wheat from the from the tares, and seal, or bind, the

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wheat for the heavenly garner. These things should engross the whole mind, the whole attention.   10

First note - the Angel said - the third angel "is to select the wheat from the tares."  Surely heaven knows which way the process of selection and separation is to be carried out. It is not the tares that are to be removed from the wheat, but the wheat from the tares. Many today are thinking and writing, as if God had not arisen from the cherub whereupon He was, as if God had not commanded another work to begin. What might have been, and what is, are two different things.

Blessed are they who are willing to follow the unfolding scroll of prophecy, and who discern in the events taking place, the message of God for this hour. The expression in Early Writings where the angel is quoted direct as saying that the wheat is selected from the tares is not an isolated instance as found in the writings of the servant of the Lord. In another place we are told -      "The gold will be separated from the dross in the church"      not the dross from the gold.  11    Also, "the little company" is plainly set forth as distinct from the "many" who continue the forms of religious service even though the glory of the Lord had departed from Israel.   12

The question comes as to how the wheat sealed and bound for the "heavenly garner" will be organized? The same accompanying angel also revealed this to the servant of the Lord. The description reads:      He bade me look in an opposite direction, and I saw a little company traveling a narrow pathway. All seemed to be firmly united, bound together by the truth, in bundles, or companies. Said the angel, " the third angel is binding, or sealing, them in bundles for the heavenly garner."   13

These little companies are bound together, not by human organization, but by truth, and truth alone. This and this alone will firmly unite them. And is it not also of deep interest that "the righteousness of Christ, ... is pure, unadulterated truth,   14    and that those sealed are settled "into the truth, both intellectually

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and spiritually, so they cannot be moved.  15 

The Final Witness

The pure mark of truth is stated to be wrought in the sighing, crying ones in Jerusalem by the Holy Spirit.  4    We are also told that those who are sealed "reflect the image of Jesus fully."  16    In the light of this, it is noteworthy to observe before Jesus gave a detailed account of the specific signs in Luke 21, He warned His followers that they would be brought before synagogues, kings, and rulers for His name's sake. This opportunity was to     "turn to (them) for a testimony."  17    Mark connects this witness directly with the witness of the Holy Spirit through the lips of those who are thus delivered up. It reads: When they shall lead you and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.   18

Only as we reflect the image of Jesus fully can this be our experience. He emptied Himself, so that Father alone appeared in His life. The words he spoke; the deeds He did, were not His, but the Father who sent Him.  19   And only as we understand the incarnation in its reality - Christ in our fallen, defiled human nature, letting the power of the Holy Spirit act for Him - can we come to reflect that possibility. And when this does occur, God will have that group through whom He can give the final witness to the world - before courts of justice and legislative assemblies. Then those who have been deprived of hearing pure, unadulterated truth because of the failure of the church appointed to bear that witness, will be enabled to hear and make a decision before it is eternally too late.  20    This is the time in which we are living, the gathering of the personnel for that final testimony. If we cannot now yield ourselves to let the Holy Spirit use our voices, and pens to reprove, counsel, and entreat in regard to the abominations that are being done in the midst of the church, how can we

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stand up, and let the Holy Spirit use our voices to call the religious federation gathered to the place called in the Hebrew tongue, Har-Magedon, for just what it is - the agency for the deification of Satan.   21    Well did Jeremiah ask -      If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace [the comfortable pew], wherein thou trustest, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of the Jordan?   22

Significance of the Date 1967

In the very year that the servant of the Lord told Dr. P. T. Magan that we would have to remain here many more years because of insubordination, she also wrote that we should study Luke 21 regarding what was to come upon Jerusalem.  23    She did not include Matthew 24, nor Mark 13 which are parallel chapters. The only item that is found in Luke 21 in regard to Jerusalem that is not found in the other two books is the prophecy which relates to "the times of the Gentiles." In other words, God intended to give His chosen church every possible opportunity to accomplish its appointed mission. He would bear long with them, but He was also telling the church that there would be a limit beyond which He would go no further, and He gave a sign to mark off that limit. This we have exceeded, and God let events on earth take their course.

However, in this mercy of God, there is a challenge to those who have run ahead of God. Various groups - the Reformed Seventh-day Adventist body, the Rod Brinsmead - Decade I - and others too numerous to mention, sought to anticipate the decision to be rendered in the balances of the heavenly sanctuary. Instead of sighing and crying in the "midst of Jerusalem", they sought to create their own city". God did appoint a corporate human organization to fulfill His intended mission on the earth - the final warning to the inhabitants of earth - the nations. And until God would so indicate that He had weighed this organization in the balances of the sanctuary, no human authority was in a position to so judge, or
 

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to act as if God had already done so. And no human being had the insight to know what the decision of heaven would be until it was announced through the sign He Himself permitted to take place. Thus there needs to be a deep heart-searching, and repentance on the part of all those who have thus run ahead of God.

There is another side to this coin also. Even as Israel of old sought to take the land of Canaan by storm after God said that generation would die in the wilderness, so the corporate body will seek to take the Latter Rain by storm to show that God is still with the organization. But to know what God has said in letting Luke 21:24 be fulfilled will keep us from being deceived by a false latter rain. We will be able to rest on the Word of God instead of our senses.   24

Keep in mind that the leadership of the church today is just as defiant as the Pharisees of old who      "defied earth and heaven to dispossess them of their rights. But by lives of unfaithfulness they were preparing for the condemnation of heaven and separation from God."   25    This is not stretching a point for we read -      " As it was in the days of Christ so it is now; the Pharisees do not know their spiritual destitution. To them comes the message . . . "      and Revelation 3:17-18 is quoted. The leadership of Laodicea unmindful of the decision rendered in the balances of the sanctuary, continue to defy heaven to remove their candlestick out of its place.   26    But the message of Ezekiel 9 is simply that the candlestick has been removed, and given to a group who will render to God fruit in due season - even the group known in prophecy as the 144,000 on whose foreheads will be put their destination - New Jerusalem. 

1 -- Ezekiel 9:1-4. 

(((Eze 9:1  He cried also in mine ears with a loud voice, saying, Cause them that have charge over the city to draw near, even every man with his destroying weapon in his hand. 

Eze 9:2  And, behold, six men came from the way of the higher gate, which lieth toward the north, and every man a slaughter weapon in his hand; and one man among them was clothed with linen, with a writer's inkhorn by his side: and they went in, and stood beside the brasen altar. 

Eze 9:3  And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon he was, to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed with linen, which had the writer's inkhorn by his side; 

Eze 9:4  And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. ))))

2 -- Ellen G. White, Letter 106, 1897 quoted in The Faith I Live By, p. 288

3 -- Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 3, p- 266

4 -- Ibid., p- 267

5 -- Ellen G White, Early Writings, p -15

6 -- Galatians 4:26

(((Gal 4:26  But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. ))))

7 -- Revelation 3:16 Greek 

(((Rev 3:16  So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. ))))

8 -- Revelation 3:12

(((Rev 3:12  Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. ))))

9 -- Ellen G. White, Testimonies, for the Church, Vol. 5, p. 213

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10 -- Ellen G. White, Early Writings, p. 118

11 -- Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 5, p. 81

12 -- Ibid., p. 210

13 -- Ellen G. White, Early Writings, pp. 88-89

14 -- Ellen G. White, Testimonies to Ministers, p. 65 

15 -- Ellen G. White, Manuscript. 173, 1902, (4BC:1161)

16 -- Ellen G. White, Early Writings, p. 71

17 -- Luke 21:12-13

(((Luk 21:12  But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name's sake. 

Luk 21:13  And it shall turn to you for a testimony. ))))

18 -- Mark 13:11

(((Mar 13:11  But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost. ))))

19 -- ) Philippians 2:7 RSV, John 8:28; 12:49-50; 14:10

(((Php 2:7  but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, having become in the likeness of men  LITV))))

(((Joh 8:28  Then Jesus said to them, When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM; and from Myself I do nothing; but as My Father taught Me, these things I speak. 

Joh 12:49  For I did not speak from Myself, but He who sent Me, the Father, He has given Me command, what I should say, and what I should speak. 

Joh 12:50  And I know that His command is everlasting life. Then what things I speak, as the Father has said to Me, so I speak. 

Joh 14:10  Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The Words which I speak to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who abides in Me, He does the works.))))

20 -- See Footnote #12

21 -- Ellen G. White, Testimonies to Ministers, p. 62

22 -- Jeremiah 12:5 (((Jer 12:5  If you have run with footmen, and they wore you out, then how can you compete with horses? And if you trusted in the land of peace, then how will you do in the swelling of Jordan? ))))

23 -- Ellen G. White, Manuscript, 184, 1901; Letter 20, 1901 See Counsel to Writers and Editors, pp. 23-24

24 -- Ellen G. White, Great Controversy, p. 625 -"Are the people of God now so firmly established upon His word that they would not yield to the evidence of their senses?"

25 -- Ellen G. White, Christ's Object Lessons, p. 294

26 -- Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 280

NOTES AND COMMENTS

 Bauer Tape of the Month -"The Review & Herald Fire"

Seventh-day Adventist Ecumenism -- "Robert Hunter, pastor of the Morganton, North Carolina (SDA), district, and a member of the local ministerial association, joined in PULPIT EXCHANGE DAY, exchanging pulpits with (Father) Thomas Burke of St. Charles Roman Catholic church. The theme of the city-wide program was "Blest Be the Tie." Southern Tidings (Official Organ of the Southern Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventist) April, 1975, Telex Notes, p. 12.

Correction --  In the Special Report -1, we reported that the Northern California Conference had a loss from playing in the stock market of over Seven Million Dollars. A member of the Subcommittee on Organization and Finance advised us that "the figures you show in the right hand column are not cumulative." Thus the "paper" loss on the stock investments for the six year period covered in the report would be $2,053,298.42, if each loss is reflected in the following year's total. We arrived at our figure by adding the losses for each year together. But be it only Two Million dollars such practices by the hierarchy of the money of the laity is inexcusable. We have wondered what the total losses for the church as a whole have been. An unconfirmed report coming to this desk indicated a loss on paper of over Fifty Million Dollars. It would be well if the leadership of the church would either deny or confirm with facts and figures this loss so that the truth might be known. 

Quotes regarding WWN Thought Paper June, 1975 -- (Analysis -- Part 3 -- [Times of the Gentiles]) --

QUOTATION 1:      Spiritual death has come upon the people who should be manifesting life and zeal, purity and consecration, by the most earnest devotion to the cause of truth. The facts concerning the real condition of the professed people of God, speak more loudly than their profession, and make it evident that some power has cut the cable that anchored them to the Eternal Rock, and that they are drifting away to sea, without chart or compass.   Ellen G. White, Review & Herald, July 24, 1888 - written about two months before the GC where Jones and Waggoner gave the message of Righteousness By Faith at Minneapolis.

QUOTATION 2:      Think of Christ's humiliation. He took upon Himself fallen, suffering human nature, degraded and defiled by sin. He took our sorrows, bearing our grief and shame. He endured all the temptations wherewith man is beset. He united humanity with divinity: a divine spirit dwelt in a temple of flesh. He united Himself with the temple.

"The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," because by so doing He could associate with the sinful, sorrowing sons and daughters of Adam."    Youths Instructor, Dec. 20, 1900. Bible Commentary, 1147.

QUOTATION 3:      What is the seal of God? It is a sign or mark which angels, but not human, eyes can read; for the destroying angel must see this mark of redemption. The intelligent has seen the sign of the cross of Calvary in the Lord's adopted sons and daughters. The sin of the transgression of the law of God is taken away. They have on the wedding garment, and are obedient and faithful to all God's commands."  EGW, Letter 126, 1898. Ezekiel confirms this . . .Mark a Tau. 

QUOTATION 4:      I am often referred to the parable of the ten virgins, five of whom were wise and five foolish. This parable has been and will be fulfilled to the very letter, for it has a special application to this time, and, like the third angel's message, has been and will continue to be present truth till the close of time. In the parable the ten virgins had lamps, but only five of them had the saving oil with which to keep their lamps burning. This represents the condition of the church. The state of the church represented by the foolish virgins is also spoken of as the Laodicean state.   (Review & Herald, Aug. 19, 1890)

JUNE 1975  -  "Watchman, What of the Night? " Thought Paper.  Adventist Laymen's Foundation.