watching online, at home or around the world, we welcome you to our worship service today. And uh I’m going to be sharing today uh my topic, my sermon is
entitled money, money, money. And um I want to share about this because money is a very important thing in life. And uh we all most people want more money.
But money actually has an important part to play in end times. And so uh my message today uh is going to be focusing
on on the role of money and it ties in with the other talks that have been given over this religious liberty weekend. Um this afternoon, uh Eva
Tomkins, a lawyer from New York, she’ll be sharing with us about what CBDC’s are, how they operate, and how they’re going to impact us and our religious
liberties in the very near future as we enter what will essentially be a digital dungeon. But today, this morning, I want
to talk about money and how it relates to the mark of the beast and how we going to live in these troubled times.
Because I don’t want you to come away with this message with a sense of fear.
I want you to come away with this message with a sense of renewed determination to light a candle in the midst of the gathering darkness. A
renewed faith in the reality that Jesus has promised, I will never leave you nor forsake you, and I am with you always,
even to the end of the age. A recognition that the gifts that God gives his church do not stop sometime in the year 2000. But the gifts that God
gives his church are to bless his church and to bless a dying world up until the moment of the close of probation just before the coming of Jesus Christ. And
if God gives gifts to his church is because he has a task for all of us to engage
in. So money, money, money. There’s the uh there’s our journey today.
We’re going to be looking first at the meaningless mark from the disappearing dollar, then the heavenly
currency before we come to our conclusion. So, as we’re all very painfully aware, we’ve all experienced
inflation in one way or another over the last three years. Is that true? Yes,
that is true. Whichever country you happen to be watching uh this program from today, you have experienced inflation in your country. Many people
have experienced incredible economic hardship because of the inflation that has hit them. Inflation levels have
varied from country to country. In for instance the country of Turkey, they’ve had inflation raging between 60 and 100%
over the last few years. It has impoverished huge swaves of that nation and reduced their middle class and their
business workers to absolute penury and poverty.
The overall cost of living has risen for everybody and as the cost of living goes up so the real value of your incomes has gone down. Would you agree with me? Yes.
Thank you. Inflation has a devastating impact on society. Particularly hyperinflation which is technically
defined as inflation running at more than 50% increases in prices on a monthly basis.
Now there have been 53 cases of hyperinflation in recorded history and other than the French Revolution they all took place within the last 100 years
and all were involved in economies that had fiat currencies that were not tied to any commodity such as gold. And a
fiat currency is one that is issued by a central bank by the will of the central bank and it has nothing ultimately backing it up. It only survives be-
because people accept it as a store of value and as something that ranges a double coincidence of once in the marketplace. Now that’s an economic
phrase. What does it mean? If you are a potato farmer and you want a new window put in your house, you go to the market and you have, you know, a couple hundred
pounds of potatoes, you need to, if there’s no such thing as money, you need to find a manufacturer and seller of windows who’s willing to sell you some
glass for for some potatoes. But that may not be possible. And so money acts as a lubricant in the marketplace. And
if I have money as a potato farmer, I I sell my potatoes to someone who has dollars in their pockets. And then with those dollars, I go and buy the glass
that I need. And so money arranges what is known economically as a double coincidence of wants. And if you don’t have that double coincidence of wants
provided for by money, then you’re reduced to barter. And your chances of finding people to do what you need go
down dramatically. For instance, I’m flying to Papu Nu Guina next week. The chances of the airlines I’m flying on
giving me air tickets to Papa New Guinea and back in exchange for a few pounds of potatoes are pretty much
zero. And so money performs a valuable function in society. But how does inflation take
place? Well, this is the general theory here. You start out when an economy is hit internally by poor and unwise
economic policies or externally by things such as war, a trade dispute or a pandemic. This leads to reduction in
economic output. This in turn means a loss of tax revenue for the government.
Governments don’t like to lose tax revenue. They want to ev spend ever more increasing amounts of money. So they turn to money printing to make up the shortfall in tax revenues.
This then leads to an excess of the money supply. And when you have too much money chasing too few goods, you end up
with what is known as inflation. And as people experience inflation, they start to lose trust in
their currency. When when people’s money is losing value, then the traditional virtue of saving is now counterproductive.
Why would you save money in a bank paying you 1% interest when inflation is running at 10%. It makes sense to receive your
wages and immediately spend them immediately to gain as much purchasing power from that money in your pocket and it makes no sense to save money, one of
the traditional virtues of society around the world uh because of the impact of inflation. So people lose trust in their currency. They no longer
save for a rainy day. They learn to spend their paycheck immediately to avoid losing purchasing power. And if
everybody acts rationally and when you receive your wages, you immediately spend it, that increases what is known as the the speed of money flowing
through the economy, known as the velocity of money. So if I receive my wages on the first of the month and I spend it all on the first of the month
and everybody else spends their money on the first of the month, what does that do to inflation in the immediate term?
It pushes it up even higher because it’s everybody spending all of their money at the same time. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Are you
following this? When you believe there is inflation, the rational thing to do is not to save but to spend immediately.
And when everybody starts spending immediately, that forces the prices up and that means there is more inflation.
So when you get your next paycheck, you spend it immediately again. it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and the currency starts to lose its value on a
regular basis. But while we focus on the symptoms of inflation, we all complain about the
rising prices, the cost of gasoline. If you’re living in a rental in America in the last 3 to four years, you’ve seen your rental prices
skyrocket. Rentals have gone through the roof. People are now having to choose between rent or food.
Rental prices have gone up very high.
When inflation comes in, yes, we have rising prices. Yes, we have an increase in the cost of living. But the cause of inflation is not the rising in prices.
That is the symptom. The cause is the devaluing and the debasing of your currency. That’s the problem. As one author put it this way,
if you wish to destroy a nation, you must first corrupt its currency.
Thus, must sound money be the first bastion of a society’s defense. The problem in inflation is not
just that prices are going up. It’s the fact that the currency is being devalued. And as the currency is devalued, you are devalued as a human
being. Why do I say that? If hypothetically, you earned $1,000 a month in 2019 and that paid for your
basket of goods for you to live. Now, in 2024, you have to raise $1,200 a month to obtain the same basket
of goods. That means you either have to work 20% harder for the same output and outcome four years ago, or you accept a
20% reduction in the standard of your living. What this means is that your labor, your skills are being eroded with
the inflation. The value of your contribution to society is eroding with inflation. And you reach the point and many already have reached that point
where they say there is no point in working because my labor and my skills do not provide for the basket of goods I
need to live. Are you following this? So your skills, your qualifications, your ability to put bread on the table and
pay for a roof over your head are all eroded with inflation. And your contribution, the value of you to
society is being eroded as well. It’s not just that prices are going up. You as an individual are being eroded in value in the terms of the contribution
you make to your community. And the net result of this is people increasingly are saying it is not worth working because the wages I earn don’t pay for
the bills I have. I need to do something else such as rising crime. Inflation is not just a rise in
prices. If left if left unchecked, it will destroy any society. and the trauma of systemic and unre unresolved
inflation prepares that nation for economic authoritarianism and for false worship where liberty of conscience is
denied. I’m going to go over this morning a prime example of this that has parallels to what is happening today in the United States and I’m going to talk
about the VHimar Republic in Germany from the end of World War I to 1923 and the collapse of the German mark. So in
1914, World War I broke out. The British and the Germans both expected a quick victory. Everybody was singing about
we’ll be home by Christmas in 1914. But the reality of modern warfare and trench warfare set in. And by 1916, both the
British and the German economies were in deep trouble. In Germany in particular,
because they were unable to secure a speedy victory, the German authorities decided to finance the war through abandoning the gold mark. the the the mark that was tied to the value of gold.
So you could theoretically hand a mark into the German central bank and receive a certain amount of gold in exchange for it. Because they needed more money to pay for more weapons and more munitions,
they decided to turn on the printing presses and start printing German marks. They started raising war loans. They said to the population of Germany,
“If you pay us this money, give us a loan. We call it a war bond here in the United States. We will pay you a certain amount of interest on this war this bond
that you’ve given us.” And uh after so many years it will mature. And many patriotic German citizens bought the German bonds just as they did in Britain
just as in America people bought war bonds during World War II. It was your patriotic duty. They raised war loans.
They printed money and they abandoned the gold standard of the mark. Now, by the end of World War I, with the loss of her colonies, her economy devastated,
millions of men dead, Germany needed to make colossal war reparation repayments to the Allies, in particular to
France. And part of the reparation deal was that Germany would send coal and iron to France.
What this did was there was not enough coal uh to keep the German homes warm in the winters which were cold and people were freezing in their homes across
Germany. And when all this free coal and iron went into France, the unintended consequence was that the ger the French mines and the French iron works all
started to close down because they couldn’t compete with the free iron and coal coming from Germany. So these war reparations were counterproductive for
everybody and that the the bitterness the seeds of bitterness they swed uh ultimately re reached a bitter harvest 20 years
later in Germany 1918 prices were rising millions were living in poverty. So what did people do with their situation of
inflation? Well one of the first things they did was they started gambling and speculating on the stock market because you can make rapid gains that way.
Another thing they would do is they would buy and sell foreign currencies because it was better to hold a dollar,
a pound um or a Swedish croner rather than a German mark because those foreign currencies held their value. So citizens
sold their marks as fast as they could and turn them into foreign currencies in order to maintain their purchasing power and avoid holding on to their rapidly
depreciating German marks. Individual citizens were making rational decisions and in the process they were exacerbating the national catastrophe.
German businesses held large foreign currency accounts overseas. They turned their marks into anything that had real value. Land, industrial equipment,
artwork, pianos, jewelry, and precious metals. What happened on the streets of Germany?
Well, if you know your history, you know that the German government was fearful of a communist takeover. And when
economies collapse, there is a rise of extreme political parties on the right and on the left. There were daily street
battles between right-wing nationalist militias, sometimes known as the frycore or the free corps, and communist groups such as the Spartacists. There was uh
civil unrest. Uh there were people who were um pillaging the stores. The city of Vienna was looted by a mob of 30,000
people desperate for food. People were desperate to get anything of value and anything that they could eat. The
government started printing money to keep the economy going and to keep citizens in employment. Nobody recognized the underlying link between
the massive increase in supply of marks and the resulting price inflation. And as the government printed more money to
meet the increased prices and the needs the wage demands of the unions, so the increase in money supply led to more inflation which meant to higher wage
demands which required more printing of money. It was a bitter downward vicious circle. By 1920, the smaller salaries in Germany had increased two to four times.
But from 18 1918 to 1920, the cost of living had risen over 10fold. In August 1920, it became clear that Germany would
not be able to make her reparation payments to the Allies. And so the mark started to collapse on the international exchanges. And when a currency
collapses, not everybody is impacted in the same way. We saw in the pandemic that when when a government imposes a
lockdown, for some people it’s absolutely it’s not that bad actually and for some people it’s devastating.
Would you agree with me? When the lockdowns came to our family, because we live in the countryside, we could go for a fivemile walk every day and we were
quite happy to be all locked down at home because we could walk out in the countryside. But if you were living in a in an apartment in Manhattan or New York, it was a very different
experience, the lockdowns. And so when the government when the money collapses, different sectors of society do well and other
sectors of society are impoverished. So for instance, when the currency collapsed in Germany in 1918 to 1923,
people stopped spending on legal issues because they were too worried about daily survival. So lawyers mostly went out of business. When the currency
collapsed, people couldn’t afford for uh more advanced surgeries. Uh so they just accepted they were going to die and so there was a lot of unemployment among the medical professions.
When the economy started collapsing,
corruption became rampant in the public sector. As public officials wanted bribes to do what they were being paid to by the government, but because their
official salaries were worthless, they wanted money from every person they met in order to do their job. Corruption
became rampant in the public sector. Uh when the when the economy collapsed,
unions became extremely powerful. And Sister White tells us about the power of unions at the end of times. Unions became powerful because when when
workers got together, they could negotiate inflation busting pay rises with their employers. And what they
agreed was that payrolls shifted from being paid on a monthly basis to a bi-weekly basis. And by 1923, payrolls
were being paid on a weekly basis. And in some cases, people were being paid on a daily basis because if your if your if your salary was let’s say 500 marks in
the month and you were paid on the first day of the month, you could exchange that for a few goods. But if you were paid at the end of the month, those 500
marks wouldn’t pay for anything. And so people want to be paid in shorter and shorter pay cycles to make sure they got some value out of their income before
their income the real the real purchasing power was eroded by the inflation. Shops were overwhelmed by
shoppers desperate to turn their goods into cash. There was a buying frenzy in Germany 1920 through 1923. If you had
money, you went and you spent it. And in cities across Germany, the authorities would close the stores at 2 p.m. every afternoon because if they didn’t, the
shops would be sold out completely and there would be nothing for the next day.
There was a frenzy of buying. And because people saw a frenzy of buying and a frenzy of material acquisition and a frenzy of financial speculation,
financial markets, people thought the economy is booming. No, these are the death throws of a dying
economy. Local authorities shut the stores to stop them selling out completely and prices rose dramatically.
There are these urban stories of you going into a cafe and asking for a cup of coffee at 5,000 marks and when you
paid for the cup of coffee 30 minutes later it was now 8,000 marks. This is how fast the prices were rising by the
minute and people simply couldn’t keep up because of the collapse in the economy. The taxation system collapsed.
See, if you paid t if you were paid on a weekly basis, which was mostly the the lower segments of society, they had to pay taxes on a weekly basis. Therefore,
there was some value to the taxes that they paid. But if you were paying your taxes on an annual basis at the end of the financial year, you were being you
were paying taxes on stuff that happened 12 months ago and the economic value of those taxes was now worthless. So because the taxation system collapsed,
the wealthy achieved more wealth because the real value of their taxes was ev evaporated by the inflation and the poor were paying the burden of the taxes.
However, by 1922 only 4% of government money came from taxation and 96% of the German
budget came from the printing of money. 96%. Now in America, we’re
running a $2 trillion budget deficit year on year.
Now, yeah, we’re almost printing half of our annual federal budget. We’re not far behind where the
Germans were in their stage of economic collapse. How did the government meet this demand for money? They set up dozens of print shops in Berlin.
Thousands of printers worked 24/7 to print stacks and stacks and stacks of marks. Trains were sent out from Berlin
night and day, shipping um truckloads of money to people who were desperate to spend it as soon as they got it before
it lost its value. There are stories of people carrying their money in a wheelbarrow to the market. When they turn their back, somebody steals the
wheelbarrow but leaves the money behind because the money is worthless. The wheelbarrow has real value. There was uh the rise of the
hatred of foreigners and ethnic minorities. Anti-semitism started to rise. There were lootings, mass protests, and street violence across the
streets of Germany. As I mentioned before, Vienna was wrecked one weekend by a mob of 30,000 people desperate for food. Political violence and
assassination increased and the hatred of other nations and xenophobia increased. In response to this, the farmers decided they would no longer
sell their food into the cities. As we heard this morning in the sermon of Pastor Hines, growing your own food is
important in times of crisis. And time and again through history, food is weaponized by authoritarian governments.
The government gives rations to those who support the government, and it withholds rations from those who do not support the government. Malnutrition and
chronic hunger became widespread. People sold their valuables, their jewels,
their pianos, their artwork, their tools, their clothes. They sold their own bodies for a bag of potatoes. Life became a daily struggle
for food and all family assets, private morality and civic um standards were sacrificed in the struggle for a daily
meal. There was a British diplomat in Dirt Berlin, a man called Dr. Joseph Addison. He wrote home to London. This is what he said. He says the daily
creation of fresh paper money which the government requires in order to meet its obligations both at home and abroad inevitably decreases the purchasing
value of the mark and leads to fresh demands which in turn brings about a further decline and so on add infin item
end quote. So this British diplomat understood that the more you print money, the more you devalue money. And the more you devalue the money, the more
you have to print money until eventually society collapses around you. Nobody knew or seemed to care about
this, though. It appeared to many people on the streets that the value of the dollar was increasing and that the price of food was increasing, but people
didn’t seem to realize the underlying problem was the collapse in the the intrinsic value of the mark. And to just
give you an indication of how the mark declined, in January 1914, before the outbreak of World War
I, there were 20 marks to the pound. By the end of World War II, August 1920,
there were 310 marks to the pound. By November 21, there were,040 marks to the pound. And then hyperinflation kicked in. April 22,
2,200 marks to the pound. August 22, 9,000 marks to the pound. Christmas 22,
35,000 marks to the pound. At this point, the German government stopped printing the money on both sides because that was too much time and effort. They
just started printing money on one side of the paper. January 23, 227,500 marks to the pound. July 7th,
1923, 800,000 marks to the pound. July 23, 1923, 1.6 million marks to the
pound. July 31st 23, 5 million marks to the pound. And November
1923, there were 18 with 3 6 9 12 zeros behind it marks to the
pound. This here is one of those marks. This is worth 50 million
marks. That’s what it was. This was printed in let me take November 1923 at the height of the crisis. This
was 50 million marks and at the start of World War I um there were 20 marks to the pound. You could live on 20 marks
for a week as a laboring man with your family or a laboring woman with your family. But by the end of 1923, people
were carrying around wads of notes just like this, which were essentially worthless, printed only on one side because the government didn’t have time
to print on both side and the paper was worth more than the than the markings on it anyway. So that’s how the currency
collapsed. So what happened socially? Well, how did the government resolve this problem? They appointed a new um commissioner for national currency in 1923. His name was Dr. Sh.
and he argued they’re going to introduce a new mark called the Reton mark which was the equivalent of one gold mark or a million million old marks. And he said
this is allegedly backed up by the collective land and property of Germany and it was a confidence trick but people were so desperate for any option to the
disappearing mark they adopted the rent mark across Germany. Inflation dropped and then the economy started to improve.
But German society had been irreparably damaged by the trauma of this hyperinflation because when the nation’s
currency collapsed, those on fixed incomes were impoverished. I’ll list up the the the impacts here. There was poverty for those on fixed incomes. The
savings were wiped out of pretty much everybody in the country. So if you had retired in 1915 or 1918 and you hoped to
have, you know, 10 20 years in retirement on your savings, you had a rude awakening. your money was now worthless. And there are people today in
America who are retiring and discovering that the value of their life labor that is their savings is now disappearing in front of them. It’s a great tragedy.
They the middle class was destroyed. There was rampant financial speculation.
There was a collapse in a sense of civic responsibility. There was a collapse in personal morality and national morale.
Unions became very powerful negotiating inflation busting deals. Trust in public institutions collapsed. There was
extreme social division and political polarization. The center collapsed politically and people started voting for the extreme right-wingers or the
extreme left-wingers because they seem to have clear-cut solutions. There was mob violence on the streets. The looting of stores went unpunished. Petty crime,
the police turned a blind eye to it.
There was a daily struggle on the part of every citizen simply to find food to eat for the day. There was a rise in anti-semitism and hostility to
foreigners in general. There was malnutrition and starvation spread across the nation. This wasn’t just physical malnutrition. There was a
spiritual starvation that spread across the nation. And the support for extremist political parties increased across the board. And the net result of
all of this was in 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power. He promised to restore
Germany. you might say, to make Germany great again. He blamed certain groups for the collapse of the economy. He blamed certain groups for the stabbing
in the back that led to the German defeat in World War I. And to solve the economic and political problems of Germany, he introduced political
totalitarianism together with economic fascism. And what bound it all together was a false worship. That is the idolatry of the furer. In the Roman Empire, they did exactly the same thing.
What held Rome together in the period of the emperors in the first, second and third empire centuries was not the economy of the empire. It was the
adoration of the Roman emperor. You had to worship the goddess Roma. You had to sacrifice at the statue
of the emperor. That was the social glue that that brought the whole empire together. Which is why Christians were so persecuted because they would not say
kaokurio caesar is lord. They would say yus curios jesus is lord. They were undermining the whole glue that held the empire together. It wasn’t just a matter
of a few words. And Adolf Hitler understood this. So he introduced political totalitarianism with economic fascism. And it was held together by the
glue of idolatry or false worship. That is the idolatry of the furer. So inflation therefore is not
just increases in price of gas at the gas station.
Inflation can lead to terrible consequences if unchecked in a nation.
It destroys a society from within. And the trauma of unchecked inflation and a disappearing currency prepares a nation
to accept economic authoritarianism on the one side, political totalitarianism as well. And the denial of liberty of
conscience as false worship replaces true worship as the glue that holds society together.
So, there’s the historical backdrop. And where are we today?
Well, World War II ended with the United States as the dominant economic power on planet Earth. We owned 80% of the
world’s gold reserves. We had nuclear weapons. We had a global military reach.
We were the only power capable of standing up to and defeating the Soviet Union. But we have enjoyed three three
de um generations of incredible wealth and global power. This has not brought us happiness or peace within. This has
brought us moral degeneracy and the philosophy of despair that plagues our schools today. As a nation, we’re not
just abandoning our past. We are abandoning God. And we’re replacing God with a philosophy of despair. We’re now facing a currency crisis, a debt crisis,
and a pensions crisis. All of which will lead to a political crisis unseen in our national history. Now, empires have
different stages. The age of the pioneers, the age of conquest, the age of commerce, the age of affluence, the age of intellect, and the age of decadence. And we are in that age of
decad decadence and decline today. In the stage that we are now as an empire,
the energy, youth, vision, and values of our founders are long gone. Our civil institutions are failing before our eyes. Cynicism and pessimism have set in
across the nation. These in turn hasten the internal social and political decline. The the byproducts of despair are frivolity and sensual indulgence.
These are the frequent frequent companions of pessimism. Let us eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.
Decadence is a moral and a spiritual disease resulting from having too much wealth and too much power for too long on the part of those who never earned it
in the first place which is where we are as a society today. This produces cynicism, frivolity, moral decadence and
a decline of religion. This is where we are as a nation today. And I’m sorry to say it. I became
a US citizen in 2016 and one of the greatest privileges of my life. But first and foremost, I and I hope we are citizens of God’s kingdom. And that is
where our primary loyalties lie. And when Jesus comes again, every ner earthly nation will be destroyed by the
glory of his coming. So we are to preach and live for and uphold the principles and values of the coming kingdom of
glory rather than any empire that still exists on our planet today. The United States’s end time role is described in
Revelation 13 11-18. You’re familiar with that passage. We were founded on the twin principles of republicanism and
Protestantism. But we know, as we heard this morning, that the founding principles of our republic will be repudiated, including the Bill of Rights
and including freedom of worship. The deep state will replace a functional democracy. The globalist narrative of
lies will replace truth in the public square. We saw that for the last three years. Coercion will replace liberty of
conscience. Totalitarianism will replace tolerance. The creature rather than the cre creator will be worshiped. We see
this in pride month. And as God is increasingly rejected by our political and social and economic elites. So the
USA inevitably will end up speaking like the dragon that is Satan. and satanic forces will dominate our political system and we will become a totalitarian
deep state authoritarian system that tramples on liberty of conscience. We know from prophecy that the USA will use its economic and military power to
enforce global economic mandates and uphold false worship as dictated by the papacy and those faithful to God will
face persecution up to and including death. We know this as Adventists. But for this to happen, the US dollar has to die. To be replaced with a new currency,
the digital dollar, which will allow the chair of the Federal Reserve, to exclude any individual, any family or any
denomination or any church from buying or selling globally merely at the touch of a button. That is what is happening
with the CBDC’s that are being rolled out. And as we speak and as we will learn about this afternoon, the banking,
legal and technical infrastructure for those global CBDC’s are being put in place as we sit here today. And is the
dollar dying? Absolutely the dollar is dying. This here is a chart um from the Federal Reserve. The US dollar purchasing power as measured by gold.
You can see there in 1971 we came off the gold standard. Uh that had been part of the Bretonwoods agreement from 1948 on at the end of World War II. But by
1971, America could no longer afford to link the dollar to gold. We needed too many dollars and didn’t have enough gold to back it up. So, we abandoned the gold
standard and the purchasing power of the dollar visa v Gold collapsed. Uh we this is another chart from the Federal Reserve uh the department down in St.
Louis there. The purchasing power of one US dollar against gold. And you see there the the rising price of gold in
the chart corresponds with the declining purchasing power of the US dollar. And this comes from 1971. I was born in 72.
So this is in my lifetime. The value of the dollar has spectacularly slumped.
Here you have another chart from visual capitalist. This goes all the way back to the founding of the Federal Reserve back here. I think 1913, the Federal
Reserve Act. That’s where the dollar was originally. And since then you it rises there in World War II and then Breton
Woods and then we come off the gold standard and it’s been a steady decline ever since. Another way of looking at this is here. This is again um the US
purchasing power and currency in circulation. The red line there is the amount of dollars in circulation. And as you see the amount of money, the money
supply is increasing and increasing and increasing. And as the money supply goes up, so the value of the dollar goes down and down and down. So if you’re a
retiree and the government prints $2 trillion this morning out of thin air,
that means that the value of your savings is dropping dramatically. The real value for everybody on fixed incomes, every time the government
prints $2 trillion and creates out of thin air, that devalues the dollars that you have saved up over your lifetime to live on through your retirement. Here’s
a here’s a chart recently from the Federal Reserve. These are all on the Federal Reserve website. This is the money supply in America from 1960
through to the year 2021. And you can see that there’s been a dramatic increase in the money supply particularly from the year 2010 onwards.
And during the pandemic, there was a massive increase in the money supply. It is no surprise that we have inflation when we’re printing trillions of dollars
out of thin air. Another chart here from the Federal Reserve. This shows the consumer price index for urban
consumers. These are 1981 is is is the the the benchmark. That’s where it’s at 100. And so before 1980 on the chart
there, you see that um there’s 1981 there. That’s the 100 mark. So before that, that’s where price inflation was
from the 1940s to 1980. And then urban price inflation steadily increases with the increase in the money supply. And
from 19 2020 onwards, it’s jumped up rapidly. So um you know politicians make their promises but we as a people pay
the price. F the federal government interest expenditure for the national debt. I want you to look at this
closely again 1980. What did I do there? Let me go
back a chart. Me go back a slide here. There’s our interest
payments. They started rising in 1990. A lot of foreign wars coming in here. And
then we we have a massive increase during the pandemic. And why has that gone up so much? Well, because we
printed so much money. The government’s raised interest rates to um reduce the amount of money in the economy. And as the government raises interest rates,
they end up paying a lot more money in interest payments. Now, the national interest payments are maybe the single largest item of expenditure in the national budget. And if you just look at
the projections, within five or 10 years, maybe the only thing in the national government budget will be interest payments, which tells you the
economy will have collapsed. So, we’re not looking at a bright future in terms of our US dollar. As in Germany, a huge increase
in our money supply is wiping out our middle class and it’s destroying our national currency. Our debt is spiraling out of control. Our official debt is
about 34 trillion. But our unfunded liabilities such as our Medicare,
Medicaid, Social Security, military retirement benefits, that unfunded liability is over 180 trillion. Essentially, we are bankrupt
as a nation. The world knows this and so they are ddollarizing as fast as they can. China now pays for oil in digital
one, no longer in dollar. We are insolvent and the rest of the world knows this. Treasury bonds from the US Treasury are being dumped around the
world and our currency is dying. All fiat currencies around the world are dying. Some are just dying faster than
others. And I believe based on my study of scripture that as in 1920s Germany,
the VHimar Republic, there will be a new currency to replace the dying dollar that is known as the great reset in the CBDC. that will facilitate the economic
fascism and state sponsored false worship that we read about in Revelation 13 11-18. But this time it’s going to
have a global impact. So what about the heavenly currency? I imagine that we’re all sitting here thinking, well, what do we
do about this? How are we going to survive? I’ve got a family to feed.
Where is God in the midst of this crisis? Well, how are we to live today?
The first thing I would say is this. We are not to cower in fear.
We are not to live in fear. Jesus described it this way. He said, “There’ll be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth,
distress among nations, confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and forboding of what is coming upon the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
Then they will see the son of man coming in a cloud with power and with great glory.” Now when these things begin to take place, that is when men’s hearts
are failing them for fear and the natural world seems to be going crazy around us. What is our response as followers of Jesus? We are to stand up.
We are to raise our heads because our redemption is drawing near. Can somebody say amen? We are not to live in fear because we know the end of the story
which is there is a new heavens and a new earth and an incorruptible,
imperishable, immortal body coming to each one of us. And we will walk those streets of gold in heaven above before we create new homes down in the new
heaven, new earth here below. So we can look forward to a glorious ending of the story. And we don’t have to have our hearts driven by the fear that is
driving our markets and our societies today. We are to be as Zechariah said in Zechariah 9:12, prisoners of hope. And
God has given us a prophetic voice in uh for these last times. And we are to live in the light of that prophetic voice.
Now, if you have a flashlight at home and you get up in the middle of the night and you hear a bump somewhere and you go to investigate, what what is that
bump in my house? What was that noise I heard? Um, if you don’t put the flashlight on, you’re likely to stub your toe on the side of the bed or the side of the door. And that’s an
extremely pleasant unpleasant experience. If you put your flashlight on, you can avoid the unnecessary bumps and pains along the way.
We have been given the flashlight of prophecy in order to walk with confidence during these final
times. In Luke chapter 19, Jesus discussed the destruction of Jerusalem. And this is what he says. He says, “As he came near and saw the city,
he wept over it, saying, if you, that is Jerusalem, if you only you had only recognized on this day the things that
make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you
and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave within you one stone upon
another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God. In this passage here and the
parallel passage of Matthew chapter 24 and 25, Jesus linked the destruction of Jerusalem with the events leading up to
the second coming of Jesus Christ. The two are linked. They’re not random events. There’s intrinsic relationship
between the two of them. We read about this in the book Great Controversy page 25 where we read as follows. Christ presented before them, that is the
disciples, an outline of the prominent events to take place before the close of time. His words were not then fully understood, but their meaning was to be
unfolded as his people should need the instruction therein given. The prophecy which he which he uttered was two-fold
in its meaning. While foreshadowing the destruction of Jerusalem, it prefigured also the
terrors of the last great day. And so what Jesus said about the the destruction of Jerusalem is a foretaste
of what is going to happen before his second return. And we see a parallelism parallelism here in Matthew 24. Jesus
speaks about the surrounding Roman armies. And he says there in the lefth hand text on the screen. He says, “So when you see the desolating sacrilege
standing in the holy place as was spoken of by the prophet Daniel, let the reader understand, then those in Judea must
flee to the mountains.” And you say how are we to understand that? Well, if you look at the parallel passage in Luke’s gospel, Jesus doesn’t say um the
desolating sacage standing in the holy place. What Jesus says there is this is the parallel explanation. He says when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies,
then know that its desolation has come near. Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains and those inside the city must leave it and those out in the
country must not enter into it. So what is the meaning of this prophecy? Jesus spoke of when the Roman
armies would approach in AD66 at the start of the Jewish rebellion. The Romans came up to Jerusalem and they
surrounded the city and they established their their pagan banners in an area just outside the city walls known as
holy ground or the holy place. This constituted according to Luke 21 and Matthew 24 the abomination of desolation
standing in the holy place not to be confused with the holy place in the temple. Sister White describes it as follows. She says, “When the idolatrous
standards of the Romans should be set up in the holy ground, which extended some furlongs outside the city walls, then the followers of Christ were to find
safety in flight. when the warning sign should be seen, those who would escape must make no delay. That is how she
comments on this passage from the teachings of Jesus. And she goes on to say this. She says, “When the after the Romans under Cestius had surrounded the
city, they unexpectedly abandoned the siege when everything seemed favorable for an immediate attack. The besieged that is the people of Jerusalem
despairing of successful resistance were on the point of surrender. when the Roman general withdrew his forces
without the least apparent reason. And this is exactly what happened in history. The Romans surrounded Jerusalem. It looked like they were
going to conquer Jerusalem. And then for some unknown reason in history, nobody’s figured out why he did this. The Roman general just marched his soldiers back
to Syria. And the Christians took this as the sign that Jesus had spoken of and they left Jerusalem immediately. Sister
White says this, “But God’s merciful providence was directing events for the good of his own people. The promised sign had been given to the waiting
Christians, and now an opportunity was afforded for all who would to obey the Savior’s warning. Without delay, they
fled to a place of safety, the city of Pella in the land of Perea beyond the River Jordan.” And so history tells us
that when Jerusalem was eventually destroyed in AD70, as far as we know,
there were no Christians in the city in that cataclysmic event. Over a million people perished. The survivors were sold
into slavery in such large groups that the price of slaves collapsed in the Middle East. And they were selling Jewish slaves off in batches of 30 or 50
at a time simply to get rid of the numbers of prisoners that they had.
But no Christians perished in the collapse of Jerusalem.
Why? Because they listened to the Savior’s voice. And when they saw the sign that had been given them by Jesus,
they took note and they followed their Savior’s warning and they left the comforts of Jerusalem for a crossing the River Jordan. And there they were safe
from the from the events of AD70. Sister White comments further on this passage.
She says this, “It is no time for God’s people to be laying up their treasures in the world. The time is not far distant when like the early disciples,
we shall be forced to seek a refuge in desolate and solitary places. As the siege of Jerusalem by the Roman armies
was the signal of flight by the Judean Christians, so the assumption of power on the part of our nation in the decree enforcing the papal Sabbath will be a
warning to us. It will then be time to leave the large cities preparatory to leaving the smaller ones for retired homes in secluded places among the
mountains. So, Sister White compares the arrival of the Roman armies with the arrival of a Sunday law in the United States as being signs to leave the large
cities for smaller cities and towns. And uh you stay in there until the national Sunday law comes in. She says instead of
spending our means and self-gratification, we should be studying to economize. Our missions must be sustained. New missions must be open.
That is, we are not going to retreat into the mountain as preppers. God has given us a task to do. We we we may
leave the large cities in order to set up outpost centers in order that we might be a light to the Gentiles and a light to the dying world. That this is
how God wants us to live. Just because we leave the large cities doesn’t mean we abandon the people in those cities. We have still a
heavenly commission to share the gospel with the people in the cities. Houses of worship, she says, are needed where the people may be invited
to hear the truths for this time. For this very purpose, God has entrusted a capital to his stewards. God has given you today, if you’re watching this program or you’re here in the church,
God has given you capital for a heavenly purpose. Let not your property be tied up in worldly enterprises so that this work shall be hindered. Get your means
where you can handle it for the benefit of the cause of God. Send your treasures before you into heaven. Now, I would say
today as a preacher that when the National Sunday law comes in in this nation that will be enforced globally,
that is not the first sign to leave the cities. That’s the last sign. It’s not the first sign. That’s this is the last sign.
But there is a parallel between what happened with the fall of Jerusalem and what’s going to happen in the end of times. We do see this in the
history. We read as follows. Why is this parallel made between the arrival of the Roman armies and the papal Sabbath, the Sunday?
Because Sunday sacredness is the self-proclaimed mark of the authority of the papacy. The papacy says this Catholic record 1923 Sunday is our mark
of authority. The church that is the Roman Catholic Church in particular the pope is above the Bible and this transference of Sabbath observance is
proof of that fact. So the question is in when Jerusalem fell there was the initial arrival of the Roman armies in
AD66 and it looked like they were going to conquer Jerusalem but then they withdrew and the Christians took that as a sign from Jesus to leave the city and
to to flee across the Jordan. So when the final crisis arrived in the fall of Jerusalem no Christians period in that final cataclysmic event. Has that
happened in our nation? Well I believe it has. In 1888, many of us are familiar with the fact that Congress held its
first ever hearings on the first ever National Sunday Law introduced by Senator HW Blair from New Hampshire. At
Jones was voted by the Minneapolis GC session to lead a delegation of three to appear before the Senate Committee in Congress on Education and Labor. and
quote from the GC um vote, the GC voted in the interest of religious liberty to use every reasonable effort to secure
the ble the defeat of the Blair Bill and the bill failed. Praise the Lord. And we think, well, that was the end of the Sunday law. No, it wasn’t. There was
another Sunday law came out almost immediately that was passed into law,
but we don’t talk about it today. That Sunday law was happened in 1893.
There was um a bill for federal funding of the Chicago the Colombian Expo in Chicago requiring that in order to receive federal funds the the fair had
to close every Sunday and honor the Sunday is sacred. This was the bit the the rider in the bill that some um senators introduced. There were many
days of debate, but eventually the Sunday closing advocates won. And President Harrison signed the first ever Sunday law into law in America on August
the 5th, 1892 to fund the 1893 Columbian Expo in Chicago. As John’s writes in Deline
Sunday, he writes this. Congress had cap had capitulated to religious pressure in 1892 and given its authority to religious establishment.
So, we do have on the books a federal law mandating Sunday sacredness. That may not apply to us today, but we’ve
received an advanced notice that this is what Congress is willing to do. It has already been voted back in
1893. Ellen White recognized the significance not of the Blair Bill, but of the 1893 bill to fund the Colombian
Expo. And this is what she says about it. She said the Protestant world have set up an idol Sabbath in a place where God’s Sabbath should be and they are
treading. She’s not saying they will tread. She says they are treading in the footsteps of the papacy. For this reason, I see the necessity of the
people of God moving out of the cities into retired places. And so, Sister White argues in her writings that just
as the appearance of the Roman general um um in AD66 was assigned to the Christians, get out before the Romans
come back for the final time. So, the passing of the 1893 Sunday law bill in America is a warning to us today that
this is what is going to happen and you need to take this seriously. I need to take this seriously. If you’re watching at home,
you need to take this seriously. It’s important that we know our history.
Without a history, we are without moorings and we can be blown by the winds of fortune or or lies wherever the powers of this world may wish to blow
us. It’s important that we know our history and our scriptures and we’re reading the spirit of prophecy.
So I believe that our ever after the late 1890s, we have received warning as a nation that our Congress is willing
and as hatch and has actually passed Sunday legislation um uh upholding the Sunday as the Sabbath of this
nation. So we’ve had the first warning as the Christians had outside Jerusalem in
AD66. Now country living brings certain benefits. And Sister White talks about it here. She says, “There is not one
family in a hundred who will not be improved physically or mentally or spiritually by residing in the city.
Faith, hope, love, happiness can far better be gained in retired places with our fields and hills and trees. Take
your children away from the sights and sounds of the city and their minds will become more healthy.” You know, if you live in the city, there are people today
who believe that milk comes from Walmart.
There are people today who believe that potatoes come from whatever your local grocery store is. There are people today who genuinely do not know that you need
farmers and kitchen gardeners to grow the crops that you eat on a daily basis.
That Burger King produces the wheat that goes into its burgers and to its buns.
There are people who genuinely don’t know this. When you are living in a city, you are divorced from the agricultural cycles. Therefore, you are
divorced from your creator. When you are in touch with the agricultural cycles and you understand the need for the early rain and the latter rain and you
understand the need for sunshine and rain and gentle breeze, so you become much more reliant upon your heavenly father to ensure you have your food for
that coming year. But when you live in an urban environment and everything you get comes from Walmart or whatever supermarket you may shop at, there is a
divorce taking place between you and your heavenly father. You don’t see his importance in your daily life because there’s always stuff on the shelves in
Walmart. The second benefit we find is that country living avoids satanically inspired violence. We read in the GC
bulletin of 1903, “These cities, the cities of America are filled with wickedness of every kind with strikes and murders and suicides. Satan is in
them controlling men in their work of destruction. On his influence they kill for the sake of killing and this they will do more and more.” And today we see
the direct fulfillment of this writing. Our cities are becoming lawless, violent
places. Few people in their right mind would willfully move into a large American city these days. The murder
hotspots in the world, many of them are found in our major cities. And crime and lawlessness abound. Small shopkeepers
know that they can be looted and the the thieves will not be prosecuted. So the shops are closing down. We now have food
deserts in our major cities and uh many migrant communities are suffering because they cannot get the healthy food
they need. The result of violence, out of control satanically inspired violence. Another benefit of country living is that it spreads the gospel. I want to dwell on this for a few minutes.
Sister White says, “Go out and establish centers of influence in places where nothing or next nothing’s been done. Break up your consolidated masses.
diffuse the saving beams of light and shed light into the darkened corners of the earth. And I want to speak as a member of this church here. About 10
years ago, Pastor Kelly stood up here and he gave a sermon. And in that sermon, he said this. This church is like a jumbo jet flying at 200 ft.
Nobody knows whether it’s taking off or whether it’s coming into land. Some of you remember that sermon. And we were challenged to be a mission-minded church.
And I’ve seen in this congregation more than any other congregation in my life in the Adventist church that when a church focuses on mission, God builds up
that church. God binds the members together with a common purpose and a common vision. And we share our resources not for ourselves but for the
needs of the lost in our community and around the world. So if you’re sitting and watching this program from a congregation that may be struggling
somewhere, don’t say we need money to spend on ourselves. raise funds and spend your time and the gifts that God has given you to bless your community.
Be intentional about establishing centers of influence as we are setting up a new health ministry here. We are doing what we’ve been commanded to do to
bless our community so that people may know not just on Sabbath but through every day of the week that we care about you and that the the followers of Jesus
Christ have a healing ministry that touches all areas of your life.
So when a church wants to face revitalization, when a church wants to grow, the best thing we can do is to
focus on mission and outreach and evangelism. And so yes, we are to live in the country, but that doesn’t mean we forget about the cities. It means that
we open centers. I last year I was in a in in Eastern Kentucky. There’s the Red River Outpost down there, and they’ve got a large area. They’ve got agriculture, they’ve got health, they’ve
got wellness programs, and there is a cycle of continual evangelism in all the neighboring towns. And people come from neighboring communities every month to
be blessed and to learn about God in those facilities. And so we are not to go to the countryside just to abandon the people in the cities. We go to the
we set up these peripheral areas in order that we might bless the people in the cities with the everlasting gospel. We are to yes establish centers
of influence, but we are to diffuse the saving beams of light into the darkened corners of the world.
and country living prepares you for the endtime problems of no buying and no selling. Again and again, the Lord has
instructed that our people are to take their families away from the cities into the country where they can raise their own provisions. For she says, in the
future, the problem of buying and selling will be a very serious one. Get out of the cities into rural districts where you’ll be free from the interference of enemies. And people ask,
well, what is a rural district? Well, if you come from Chicago, Bering Springs is a rural district to be honest. If you were raised in Bering Springs, maybe rural Alaska is a rural district to you.
So, there’s no like hard and fast measure of what is a rural district. But we all know what a big city is. And we do know that even secular Americans are
fleeing the cities of America today because of the violence, the crime, and the urban breakdown. But Sister White
counsels us that we are to learn to raise our own provisions.
I believe churches really should be teaching their members how to raise kitchen gardens. When Joseph Stalin died, there
was a food shortage in the Soviet Union and there was a potential of mass starvation. So Kushchoff allowed um he
he passed some laws and he said every Soviet citizen is allowed to have a small kitchen garden of so many square
meters. It was a very small patch of land. I mean like like 20 square meters, very small. And when he allowed that,
that was the first re-entry of private market capitalism into the Soviet system. It was those small kitchen gardens that saved the Soviet Union from
starvation in the early 1960s. And you can still go to the Soviet Union today,
the former countries, and many people still have on their window sills, they have kitchen window boxes where they’re growing the herbs that they need.
Because when you grow a kitchen garden,
you worried about nutrients and calories, two things. And you may not be able to grow your calories for the year,
but you can certainly grow your nutrients for the year in a few um window boxes. And Kushche recognized this and he saved the Soviet Union from
starvation by allowing people to grow just a few herbs and vegetables for themselves. So we are counseledled here
to to invest our time and our effort not just in missionary work and evangelism into the cities, but we are to learn how to provide for our own provisions.
This is the council that has been given us.
Now you may say to yourself, I don’t think that this would ever happen. Our time is coming to a close here. But I
want to tell you today that historically the papacy has been only too willing to impose no buy no sell sanctions on
heretics on those who disapprove or disagree with the official narrative. In 1130 1163 in the council of tours, Pope
Alexander III, he was the head then and they issued this statement against the Albagenians. There were some heretics in southern France in Tus. And this is what
the the council voted. They said, “But neither let any commerce be held with them, that is with these heretics in selling and buying that the comfort of
humanity having been lost, they may be compelled to return from the error of their ways.” And so the papacy has
already installed in the past no buy no sell rules to force people to bow to the papal narrative. Again it happened in
1179 at the third lateral ciran council where they condemned certain heretics.
And this is what they said in their anthemas. They said condemning a certain group they said on of their defenders and harborers to an anathema that is
under papal um papal rejection and and you can’t go to church you can’t be baptized. can’t be buried and so therefore you are condemned to eternal
hellfire. This is a serious thing the papacy is doing under their theological worldview and to forbid under an anathema that any should presume to keep them in their houses or on their lands,
sustain them or transact any business with them. So the papacy already has on
record on at least two occasions issued no buy no sell sanctions against those who disagree with the papal narrative. So don’t think that it won’t happen again.
And the history of the 20th century when the single largest cause of death was not guns but governments. That is true.
Governments killed tens of millions of people in the 20th century. The single largest of cause of death was governments. And every
totalitarian government restricts the supply of food to its supporters. And if you disagree with the dominant narrative, you will be cut off
from the bare necessities of life. That is why no buy no sell is so powerful. It’s a historical reality and we are only
deluding ourselves if we think it will not come in the final crisis against those who are faithful to God and who uphold the law of God and its ongoing
sanctity. So what do I want to say in conclusion here today? Inflation coming back to what we where we started our journey. If
unchecked it will destroy any nation. In preWorld War II Germany, the collapse of the mark and the transition to a new
currency prepared the way for political totalitarianism, economic fascism, and false
worship. You see it on the screen there on the left. The collapse of the mark led to a new currency, political totalitarianism, economic fashion,
fascism, and coercion of conscience and false worship, the idolatry of the furer. And in the pre-second coming United States, the collapse of our fiat
currency, which is happening before our eyes, will lead, we know from revelation, and we see it in front of our eyes. If you don’t see the growing authoritarianism, then you’re
asleep. The collapse of our dollar will lead to a new currency, which is in the works, the dig, the digital dollar, the rise of political totalitarianism, the
rise of economic fascism, you will own nothing and be happy, and the coercion of conscience and false worship. And this will now long it will not be the
idolatry of the furer. It will be the idolatry of the mark of the beast. This time the false worship will not involve
the furer but involve the pope. It will not involve the mark but it will involve the mark of the beast. That is Sunday sacredness. Once again as in uh 1930s
Germany liberty of conscience will be threatened and once again uh there will be a few people who will stand true to God and will endure to the end. But the
good news of Jesus Christ is that those who endure to the end will be saved. So what are you going to do about
what I’ve been sharing today? Well, I want to encourage you today to covenant with God that you’re going to light a candle in the storm. I want you to
realize again today that Jesus has said to you wherever you may be watching this program, I am with you always, even to
the end of the age. I want you to remind yourself that again today, God has given you spiritual gifts that are unique to
you. And he’s asking you to use those gifts in a world that says we will not have this man troo over us from Luke the parable of Luke 19. He wants you to use
those gifts so when the master returns in heavenly glory and kingly authority,
he will bless his faithful servants who stood tall for him in a world that says we don’t want him to rule over us. God has given us a task to do and that task
is to share the gospel to the ends of the earth wherever people may be living.
So there are many ways you can get involved. You know if you if you’re thinking about agriculture at the Great Lakes Adventist Academy up in mid Michigan run by Michigan conference they
run um every every year at the camp meeting season they’re running an introduction to kitchen gardening classes. And if you want to learn about
that right write right to Heidi Sanvig there’s her email there. It’s a growing ministry. We heard about it in our Sabbath school a few weeks ago. If you
don’t know how to grow a vegetable garden or a kitchen garden, there are people out there who can teach you and who can show you. And if you got YouTube, there’s almost nothing you
can’t learn about kitchen gardening. Here in our own church here,
we have brother Christo with his sewers purse farm just a couple of miles up the road here. He’s now teaching classes on how to identify rural properties and the skills you need on homecale growing 101.
Um season close and cover cropping to make sure you take care of the land in unhospitable climates such as Michigan in winter and how to extend your season.
And uh you can write to him there if you want to be in those classes. And there’s his uh his social media platforms that you can take a look at. And this sermon
is on the village church website as are the talks from this morning and for this afternoon. You can download this and look at these links for yourself. So
there God has not left us alone. If you’re interested in setting up an outpost center, Outpost Centers International based down in Ulta. They
provide training and coaching for Adventists in setting up evangelistic centers around the cities. They have a great program. And if you’re thinking
maybe God is calling me to do this or maybe God wants me involved in mission work somewhere, they’ve got a great program at Outpost Centers International. I’d encourage you to
check them out. They’re a leading member of ASI. And if you want to serve as a missionary somewhere and you feel God calling you like I’ve achieved all I
want to in my first career and now my house is paid off. I have no more debt.
My children have left home. I have mature spiritual gifts and technical skills and I want to go where Christ has never been proclaimed before. then check
out AFM online or write to me personally and we’ll help you launch out to serve among the unreached who today represent
more than 40% of planet earth and Jesus will not return until there are no unreached people groups left. So there
is something for us all to do. I want to encourage you today do not sink into despair but stand tall and lift up your heads because our redemption is drawing
nigh. We know there’s going to be a bumpy road ahead, but we know the end of the story, and that is heavenly glory and walking the streets of gold. So get in the
fight. Be active for God. Ask on your knees tonight, Heavenly Father, how would you have me serve you with the gifts I have, the abilities you’ve
blessed me with in these dying days of Earth’s history. And what you do between now and the coming of Jesus will be
studied throughout eternity when the rest of the universe wants to know what God will do through the life of an individual who has wholly given over to
love for God and love for man and wants to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. Your life, your ministry will be a subject of discussion and analysis and
intrigue and wonder on the part of unfallen beings who want to know what God can do through a sanctified life in
fallen planet Earth in 2023. Get in the fight. God has a place for you. He has a plan for you. God has given us in his
prophetic word this this guidance, this counsel so we know what is coming upon this world. Our hearts are not to fail us for fear. We are Adventists. We are
awaiting the coming of Jesus. And that is only good news for those who are faithful to Jesus Christ. We are, as we said before, to be prisoners of hope. We
know how the story ends, the glorious second coming. So, I want to challenge you today not just to receive messages about the light that God has given us,
but to choose to live and walk in the light that God has given us, the light that God has blessed his end time people with. Because when Jesus comes again,
he’s coming for you and he’s coming for me. And when he comes again, I want him to look in the Lamb’s book of life for
my name. And I want him to look in the Lamb’s Book of Life for your name as well.
So get involved in ministry, love your neighbors. If you’re in a church that’s dying, choose, choose
faith, and choose to serve your community in ways that you’ve never done before. God will bless your church. God will bless your walk with God. God will
bless your community, and people in that community will receive the everlasting gospel and the gift of eternal life. We
are to be men and women of compassion. We are to be men and women of courage.
We are to be men and women of conviction and we are to be men and women of conscience. If the Holy Spirit has moved
upon your heart this morning, do not harden your heart. Do not quench the motions of the spirit. If the Holy
Spirit has convicted you to take some actions for God’s glory in this coming week, covenant with God today that you will follow through and see what God
does through you and with you and for you. May God bless you. May God shine through you.