Welcome, once again, it's good to see everyone.
We are continuing our discussion today on
the blood of Jesus. We've been looking at it in the light of the High Sabbath
List, and in today's talk we're going to be looking at that from a
different perspective, especially from the perspective of the wicked,
because they also have a relationship to the blood of Jesus.
But I've titled today's presentation, Which Way to
Orion, and that will become clearer as we move
along, the reason why I chose that.
But to be sure, we're living in a time when we
need to make decisions. It's a time for decision.
It's not a time to be indecisive or inactive.
And I want to start with a reminder from Elijah.
In 1 Kings 18, the story begins, and where I start here,
Elijah came unto all the people and said, How long halt ye between two opinions?
If the Lord be God, follow him.
But if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him, not a word.
As we have been presenting on the sign of the Son of Man and on the heavenly themes,
we have seen many different aspects of how the Word
has been fulfilled or is being fulfilled in the sign of the Son of Man or in
other heavenly signs. And yet, the people,
by and large, are silent. Elijah called the people to a decision,
and that's what all of this is leading to.
God doesn't present these truths, these harmonies, and these
fulfillments in heaven just for our amusement or our curiosity
to say, Wow, we know how the Bible is fulfilled.
It's to bring us to a decision, and that's where we need to come,
because either God is speaking through these signs or he's not.
And if he is, then our lives should reflect those things that he is teaching.
In Deuteronomy, chapter 30, Moses also
called the people to a decision point.
He said, I call heaven and earth to record this day against you,
that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.
Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.
So, we have that choice. One way leads to life.
The other way leads to death, to cursing.
And it's our choice. Which way will we go?
The evidence has been made plain, and we're going to see more of that again today.
We need to make that choice. Moses continues, that thou mayest love the
Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him,
for he is thy life and the length of thy days.
Notice, what is it that makes that possible?
He says, choose this day. Where is it?
I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.
Therefore, choose life. That choice of life is what makes it possible,
that both thou and thy seed may live, that thou may love the Lord.
We don't have that in ourselves until we make that choice, and that choice has been made possible
by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
And he continues with the potential as a result of making that choice,
that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord swear unto thy fathers,
to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.
So, entering the land, we see that as the heavenly promised land.
That is the result of the choices that we make.
So, these two paths are represented in the sign of the Son of Man as well.
We've seen this before, but it's good to look at that once again today.
In Psalm 1.1, it also makes reference to these
two paths. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,
nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
You've seen the sixes on the path of the
sinners, the scornful, those who have the counsel of ungodly,
of the ungodly. That's the scepter of which organization?
The World Health Organization, exactly.
We've talked about that before. I'm just kind of reviewing this a little bit.
But there's another path. That's the one highlighted by the seven o'clock hour.
For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
From the same psalm. And this, of course, we have the seven
from the hour, the seven weeks until the solar eclipse, and then the seven weeks until the
crossing of the pendulum once again, which is just in some days from now.
So, in the Horologium, we have a representation of a time
of wrath. It's the wrath of Babylon against
God's people, and it's the wrath of God against Babylon.
Therefore, it's a time of war.
Babylon warring against God's people, and God, or Jesus,
coming to war against the wicked.
In Isaiah, we see a representation of
Jesus coming as that warrior. Who is this that cometh from Edom
with dyed garments from Bozrah?
This that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength.
I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.
Notice his emphasis. He wants to save, and he's mighty in righteousness.
He's capable of saving. Bozrah
is a name of a place, but in the Hebrew, it's a word, and it means the
"sheepfold", where the sheep are gathered in their pen.
And that is what we see in the sign of the Son of Man.
It's this sheepfold where we have the entrance there marked by the seven o'clock hour.
In this part, he mentions that
he's speaking, he's speaking, and I wanted to point out that this is the mouth
of the great fish in the sign of the Son of Man, the sign of Jonah.
That's the mouth. That's where he speaks, and he speaks with the word of time.
And he's traveling. We're going to be talking about all of these elements
today. So, we have these two paths, the 666 path of the world,
and the path of the Lord's salvation, this 777 path.
Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat?
I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me:
for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury;
and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.
For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.
So, he's comparing the day with the year, and
we know this day and year to be that 372
days on the calendar between this crossing and the next crossing
of the pendulum, very important times that form this year.
372 is seven days more than one year.
Now, the question is, it's a day of vengeance for what?
Okay, for the wicked? What specifically?
What about the wicked? What is he avenging?
The blood of those who died, the saints, the blood of the saints,
and the martyrs, and yes, he will pour out the
plagues, but he's avenging the blood of whom?
His people, and most importantly, of his son.
Right. Jesus gave his blood as one of the martyrs as well, and he had a
sinless life, and therefore, it's especially the blood of Jesus that God is avenging,
and Jesus himself is avenging.
But of course, all the blood of the saints and God's people is represented in his own blood
as we will also talk about a little bit more.
So, therefore, we have the sacrifice of Christ represented in the Horologium,
and we have the river of blood.
We have these two camps, those who crucified Jesus on the cross,
and on the other hand, there are those who benefited from that crucifixion,
those whom he died for, whom he was crucified for; the righteous and the wicked.
So, there's the relationship of the wicked to the blood of Jesus.
The righteous accept blood and are redeemed.
The wicked, they spilled the blood, and they didn't repent,
and therefore, they are punished because of their
rejection of the blood of Jesus.
It's a lot like what we talked about before, accepting the blood of
Christ, his way of the sanctuary, or choosing the way
of the world in our own life, in our own blood.
The blood of Jesus is our redemption, not any device of man.
In fact, it's Jesus' vaccine that we've been talking about with the High Sabbath List.
That's essentially what that is.
When you get an infection, then your body, in order to overcome that infection,
has to produce the antibodies, and what we saw is that the High Sabbath list,
which is represented in the river, that is
the genetic code that comes from Jesus and is given to us, injected into
our lives, if you will, by faith.
Therefore, in this part in the sign of the Son of Man, it points to that righteousness by faith,
the character that's written in our heart, the character of Jesus,
that new DNA from him written in our own hearts.
So, Jesus, when he comes, he comes to
avenge the blood that was spilled against those who rejected it,
and this brings us to Daniel. We've seen this passage many times
before, and at that time shall Michael stand up.
Michael, of course, is the angelic name for Jesus.
The great prince which standeth for the children of thy people,
and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was, since there was a nation,
even to that same time. And at that time thy people shall be delivered,
every one that shall be found written in the book.
So, Jesus comes to deliver his people, and at the same time,
it's a great time of trouble because of the war and the vengeance that he is taking
on the wicked. Now, I want to look briefly at the whole chapter
of Daniel 12 because it has an interesting and
important structure. It's like a mountain, a chiasm in the way that it
is expressed. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but if we start in the middle,
that's like at the summit of the mountain, it has this
key central point. All these things shall be finished in verse 7.
And then, if we come down the mountain a little bit and we look at the next
verses, a verse before, in verse 6, how long to the end of these wonders?
Daniel is asking. And the verse after the summit is what, it says,
what shall be the end of these things?
So, you see, there's this relationship, very similar language being used as we come
down the mountain, if you will, on either side.
So, the middle verse, and then coming a verse earlier, a verse later,
and we continue that a little bit earlier in verse 4, shut up the words and seal the book even to the time of the
end. A verse later, in verse 9, the words are closed up and sealed to the time of the end.
Very similar language. We keep expanding, going back to the beginning and toward the end,
talks about they that turn many to righteousness, and in verse 10,
many shall be purified and made white.
So, turning to righteousness, purified, made white.
Continuing, even in the same verses, they that be wise shall shine,
the wise shall understand, that understanding is the light of shining.
And also, they shall understand the time, in particular, that's the
context, it's talking about the 1290 days there.
Continuing on now, almost to the beginning, many shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and this is in parallel with blessed is he that
waiteth and cometh. Okay, I'm just picking out parts of the verses,
but you see that there's this blessing.
Many shall awake to life, and blessed is he that waiteth
and cometh, and it gives a time frame in the actual verse.
We will be talking about that more.
And then, back to the first and last verses, at that time thy people shall be delivered,
and that is compared with thou shalt stand in thy lot at the end of the days.
So, that's the deliverance, that resurrection and being able to stand in his lot,
in the inheritance, the heavenly inheritance.
So, that's just a brief outline of this chapter, and it shows us
that there's a relationship between the verses at the end and the verses at the beginning.
And those are the ones that we're going to be spending particular attention on as we go forward.
So, looking again at Daniel 12 verse 1, and at that time shall Michael stand up,
the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people.
And there shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.
So, this time when Michael stands up, we've talked about that before.
How is that represented? By the comet K2, when it comes, or when it came,
rather, and crossed the lines going to the feet of Orion,
that signified the legs, the standing up of Orion,
representing Michael as Jesus, the commander of the host.
And you'll notice also, it continues, there shall be a time of trouble.
And that time of trouble, when the comet reaches
the head, or if you think of it as a 12-hour clock, that would be what time,
what hour? Midnight, exactly. So, that would be like the midnight cry,
for example. And then he stands for the
children of thy people, and there's this great time of trouble,
and at that time thy people shall be delivered, everyone found written in the book.
So, Jesus comes to deliver his people, and that's what we can
expect according to this timeline.
It's a process of harvesting, the harvest process.
We'll talk also a little bit more about that.
Blessed is he that waiteth, this is now the end of Daniel 12.
Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the thousand, three hundred,
and five and thirty days. But go thy way till the end be, speaking to Daniel,
for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.
So, here again, he talks about "coming to", just like Jesus stands up,
it's implied that he comes to the deliverance of his people.
Here, Daniel, or it's stated in general, blessed is he that waiteth and
comes to something. What does this thousand, three hundred,
and five and thirty days represent?
That's what we want to find out.
But the way it's expressed is in a very tangible form, like he's actually arriving somewhere,
but it's given in terms of this thirteen hundred and thirty five days.
So, the question is where is this referring to?
And it's this structure in Daniel 12 where we compare the beginning with the
end of the chapter that gives us the clue as to what this is talking about
because Michael stands up from
Orion, right? We can even be more specific because
where was he sitting? From Revelation chapter 14, we've studied this before and we know where
Jesus, the Son of Man, is sitting because in chapter 14, verse 14,
the harvest passage begins and this is where it starts.
And I looked and behold a white cloud.
Where's the white cloud? That's the Orion Nebula.
That's the white cloud. And upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of Man.
So, Jesus is sitting on the white cloud.
That's where he's at. And he has on his head a golden crown in Auriga.
There's the crown and the golden star Capella.
It's a clearly yellowish golden color.
It gives that aspect of the gold in the crown.
And in his hand a sharp sickle.
These are things we've talked about before so I'm just going past them so that you can remember that.
But it's also interesting that on May 19th
when the Orion clock by the comet K2 points
to the head, that also signifies this time of the crown.
So, here we have Jesus sitting on the cloud.
That's the Orion Nebula, the white cloud.
And when we compare that with Daniel 12, Michael shall stand up.
From where? From the white cloud.
That's where he was sitting. And in the harvest time he stands up and does the harvest.
So, here's the first comparable verse in Daniel, or at least it
shows where he's standing up from.
And therefore where Daniel would be going to.
Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to.
In comparison with where Michael stood up from.
So, we have that relationship there.
The 1335 days must point to a
location. And this is actually reiterated in the next verse at the end,
the one that is directly chiastic with the first verse.
But go thou thy way till the end be.
For thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.
So, again, it's talking about a time or a place.
Especially a place. Stand in thy lot.
That's what he's going to do. And of course, it mentions at the end of the days.
But keep in mind that the end can also refer to a distance, a location,
the end of a road, as it were.
And so, this points to
the Orion Nebula. And it turns out that indeed, the Orion Nebula
is about 1344 light years away.
Very near the 1335 days that are mentioned
in the verse. Notice we have days versus
years. Light years. And here, it's just mentioned in the passage,
days. But a day is like a year, exactly.
And so, it's quite fitting, especially the light, God's people being
the light of the world, as Jesus described it.
There's always a certain amount of uncertainty in any measurement.
This is just an astronomical measurement.
If you Google the distance of the Orion Nebula, you find that result.
But there's some variation to be expected there, because we can't measure so
precisely. So, they report it as plus or minus 20 light years.
Well within the range of the 1335.
But we can do a little bit better.
Here we have the Milky Way. And here is Orion.
You see it? So, let's zoom into that.
Here's the Orion Nebula. And we'll see what is the brightness
of the nebula coming from.
Here it is. What are these stars
known as? This is the trapezium cluster named for its trapezium
shape. And the brightest star there
in this cluster is the one that is responsible for a large amount of
the glow of the Orion Nebula. And that particular star is 1337
light years away. That's very, very near.
And of course, well within the margin of uncertainty in the measurement.
Very close to that 1335 days in the prophecy.
So, this suggests that this is the end
of the travel. The end of those 1335 prophetic days,
light years. That's where it comes to.
This star. And that's significant because
of where this is. First of all, this is in the heart of
Orion and the Orion Nebula even.
And it's giving the light to the whole nebula.
It's also known that, or believed at least, that there is a black hole
in this area because of the effects on the other stars in that area.
There seems to be a black hole that is about 100 times more massive than the sun.
And we have long connected a black hole with the
Godhead. And so, that shows this picture of
Jesus with his people standing in a square on the sea of glass.
So, what we want to know is what this really
means. This "blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the 1335
days." So, blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to this trapezium
cluster in the heart, giving the light to the Orion Nebula.
If you've been with our movement for a long time, you know that the Orion Nebula has
always had this special place.
And so, it's very exciting to see that this is pointing directly
to the brightest star illuminating the whole cloud, the sea of glass,
where the 144,000 are standing there with Jesus in the square
as it has been prophesied as well.
So, that alone is a very significant finding.
But still, we want to know about this waiting time, because there's a waiting time and then coming
to that distance. And if we consider
what Jesus said about waiting, we have a little bit of an indication.
Jesus said, Let your loins be girded about and your lights burning,
and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord, when he will return
from the wedding. So, it's about Jesus returning.
That's connected with that waiting time.
That when he cometh and mocketh, they may open unto him immediately,
lest are those servants whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching.
Verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat,
and will come forth and serve them.
So, Jesus is giving this parable, and in the process, he explains
this waiting time in connection with his return.
And so, that points us, again, to Revelation chapter 19.
In Revelation 19, it talks about Jesus' return.
So, we should see this waiting time represented in this passage as well.
And I saw heaven opened, that's also a reference, by the way,
to the Orion Nebula from when they first were looking at it in
the 1800s. They described it as an open space because it looked like a hole
in the heavens. And so, I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse.
And he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns.
And he had a name written that no man knew but he himself.
And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God.
Now, we've seen this with the blood before, but whose blood is that
that his vesture is dipped in?
Is that in the winepress? Because this is when he's first coming.
I mean, that this is his arrival.
It's actually before treading the winepress.
He comes already with his garments stained with blood.
This vesture that's dipped in blood is
a reference, if you will, to what we talked about a few weeks ago,
this archaeological find, the Shroud of Turin.
This is the burial cloth of Jesus that was really dipped in blood,
if you will. It received his blood on the fabric.
It was Christ's vesture, and as we talked about before,
this contains a time element from the count
of the lashes, the blood stains on the cloth.
And in Revelation 19, it says, "...out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword,
that with it he should smite the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron.
And he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." So,
here is then where he treadeth the winepress.
That's after, a couple of verses after he came with the garments dipped in blood.
So, we have this time period of 372 days also represented
in that vesture that he's wearing when he comes to tread the winepress.
And it also hints at the vengeance for that blood.
That was rejected. So, we have this choice,
again, presented. Will we accept
Christ's beatings, his lashes, and the blood that he gave
in drinking that cup, that bitter cup, until the end?
Or will we drink the cup? That's the option.
Either Jesus drinks it, or we drink it.
Now, again, you remember,
we have the two paths, one for those who Jesus died for,
or who accepted his sacrifice, and who believe that his blood covers their sin.
And then there are those who crucified him, who
deny him the faith, if you will, to cleanse their own sin.
And this points to the supper of the birds, the slaughter,
that vengeance that he's taking.
That also comes later in chapter 19 of Revelation.
In the harvest passage in chapter 14, we talked about Jesus sitting on the white cloud,
and then he does the wheat harvest.
But after the wheat harvest comes what? He does the grape harvest.
And the grapes, in that case, represent the wicked.
They're the grapes of his wrath.
In verse 18, until the end of the harvest passage, it says,
And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire,
and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle.
And you'll recall from when we talked about the harvest in the context of the sign of the Son of
Man, this other comet, S4 (Lemmon),
is the one represented there. And this is representing this angel who came
from the altar, from Taurus, and comes to the sign of the Son of Man,
and crosses into the sign right at this very important time,
May 27th to 28th, which is exactly the time when the sign of the Son of Man
is complete. So, it's very relevant that he cries with a loud voice and
says, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth;
for her grapes are fully ripe.
And the angel thrust in his sickle to the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth,
and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.
So, we have talked about the horologium as the winepress.
The grapes are thrown into the large part of the winepress.
Then the juice flows down the channel to the reservoir at the end.
And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress,
even unto the horse bridles by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.
So, here we have described a picture where there's so much trampling of the
grapes that the reservoir isn't sufficient to contain it.
Therefore, it comes out of the winepress, and like a flood,
it's coming up, and even to the horse bridles, it's flooding.
And then it gives this space of a thousand six hundred furlongs.
So, we've talked about this before, and we said, okay, well,
the horse bridles must point to the Horsehead Nebula, which
is pretty close to 1600 light years away.
But in light of what we learned with the 1335,
we can look at this again and understand it a little bit better.
Because if we read this carefully, it says the blood came
out of the winepress. It didn't just show
up at the Horsehead Nebula, but it came out of the
winepress and went to the horse bridles.
So, this is a process. It's a flow of the blood that it's describing.
So, could it be that there is another mystery hidden in this process?
Is there a way to bring the blood from the winepress, that collection
reservoir, to the Horsehead Nebula, or to the horse
bridles? The question, as we ponder that, is first,
where does it come out of? What part of the winepress?
It's going to come out of the reservoir.
It flows down the channel, and then it spills out from the end.
And so, when we look at this, we need to get from
here to the Horsehead Nebula, which is right by
Alnitak. Alnitak is the rider of the horse.
In fact, he's the one holding the bridles.
So, better to go directly to he who's
holding the bridles, and then the question is, how does the blood flow from here
to there? And we have it already shown there in the course of
this river. So, what we see is a path
that the blood is flowing, just like the blood from Jesus flows
out to the sign, to his people
who receive the blood. In the opposite way, the blood
of the wicked, who are trampled in the winepress, spills out and overflows
and backs up all the way to Alnitak, flowing
across the river. So, now, how does that work in
reality? What can we do with that to explain this process?
If we look at the stars, they give us a path.
The stars actually show us the course of the river.
And the question that arises, just like the 1,335 days, it pointed to a
distance, 1,335 years, light years.
And so, also, with this 1,600 furlongs, it's already a distance,
but maybe we could analyze that a little bit deeper and find the
distance that it would actually follow in order to get to Alnitak,
going from star to star to star all along the river.
Now, that's an interesting problem because, well, for one, there are millions of stars.
And if you add up all the distances from every star, then it's infinitely long.
But, of course, not every star was known in ancient times.
And so, if we limit our study to the
stars that have been named since ancient times, then we
find a limited selection. And their names are Beemim, 1 and
2 Theemim, or Theemin. I won't read them all because they're not natural for
an English speaker. But here we have all the named stars along the river.
All the other stars, there's no name to those stars.
So, if we follow this path, we can actually, by
knowing the distances to each of those stars, we can calculate
the distance between the stars.
And by that distance, I don't mean as we see it in the sky, but actually the three-dimensional
distance between the two stars in space for each of those stars
as it makes that path. So, what we have is coming from this star at the
collection vessel of the winepress, we come to the closest place in the river,
and then follow the river until we come to the foot of Orion.
And then we go, because Orion is the one who is trampling the winepress,
right? So, we come to the foot and then to Alnitak
himself holding the horse bridles.
And here is the path of just those stars that have been named since ancient times.
And you see it pretty much follows the same course.
It's interesting, this name Kursi al-Jauzah.
Jauzah is just another name for Orion.
And Kursi is, it means the throne, the throne
of Orion. And that is an important point that I'll bring out at the end.
So, what we have are between each of these stars, we can
calculate the distance. And we've done that and verified it.
And when you add up all of the distances, these are three-dimensional distances.
So, even though it looks like a long distance here and you have 124 light years,
but you have a short distance here and it's 722, that's because there's a lot of depth
difference in the three dimensions.
So, in three-dimensional space, calculating the actual distances,
connecting those stars together, this is what you have.
And when you add all of those numbers up, rounding each one to the nearest light year,
you come up with exactly 1,601 light years.
Exactly what the Bible tells us in that end of the
harvest chapter, talking about the flow of the blood from the horologium to
the horse bridles. Jesus, Alnitak, holding the horse bridles at the horse head nebula.
And I mentioned that about the Kursi al-Jauzah because it represents
the wicked then coming to the throne of Jesus,
not in the way that the righteous do.
See, we have this contrast. We have the two paths.
Daniel and those with him who are raised in the resurrection,
they come to the Orion Nebula by the path of the 1,335
light years. Whereas the wicked, they follow this path of the 1,600
light years, but they both come to the throne.
They both come to Alnitak. The difference is, one
is at the heart, the other is at the foot.
Alive and dead, exactly. So we have here the path of the wicked
following 1,600 light years from the winepress, where they're
trampled, and then they follow the river until the throne of God.
They meet the Lord after the millennium, after the trampling.
And then they're raised and they meet the Lord after the millennium,
according to Revelation 20. That's described in the 1,600 light years.
Whereas the righteous, they are raised after that waiting time,
which is this one year on the Horologium, the one year that's
illustrated by the additional time from May 28th of this year
until June 4th when it crosses the pendulum again.
That is that waiting time until the resurrection when the righteous will
be brought up to the Orion Nebula, to the sea of glass, at
the trapezium cluster, it seems, and there they will be at the
throne of God as well. But in a much more favorable light.
So yeah, that's the 1,335 days for the righteous described in Daniel versus the
1,600 days, or rather, light years described in Revelation for the harvest
of the grapes, the wicked. Isaiah 45, he says, "I
have sworn," the Lord's saying, "I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in
righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear. Surely, shall one say, in the LORD have I righteousness and
strength: even to him shall men come; and all that are incensed against him
shall be ashamed. In the LORD shall all the seed of Israel be justified,
and shall glory." So here we see that all come to the throne of
the Lord, all will bow before him.
The question is whether we stand before him on the sea of glass,
or if we are under his foot,
as it were, as the wicked, those whom he comes and he tramples underfoot.
That is the question. That is the choice that we have to make.
When we see these things, we see the fulfillments of
God's word in the heaven. Here we see
shown in this verse of the Bible, this particular area of
the sky. That's not a coincidence.
This is not something that you can make up just by following any random set of stars.
This verse is pointing to this area of the sky and it fits not just,
oh, I found a match with 1,600 light years.
No, it fits with the winepress.
It fits with the trampling. It fits with coming and bowing before the throne of Alnitak.
Here it begins with that baptism scene of Jesus, where Jesus,
it describes him in the tomb. This part of the sign shows him buried in the
tomb, as it were. Also, that's what the baptism represents.
And that's our relation to that.
Do we accept that? Do we accept his cleansing for ourselves or
do we take it on ourself and he executes vengeance against us?
So, it points to this scene, this sign of the son of man.
And that brings us to that decision.
Do we just say, "oh, that's nice" and we go about our
lives like nothing happened or do we take a step back and think
about what that means? What it means that the Lord is pointing
to this heavenly scene. Should we just ignore that
or should we pay attention? Should we take heed to the lessons that are given?
This is not any casual message.
These are things that have never been revealed
from God's word before. But now, in these last days, he's opening it up.
He's revealing through the revelation.
That's why it's called the revelation. He's exposing the secrets of his heavenly treasures.
And that puts on us the burden to make that choice of following
the lead of his message, of the truths that he is showing us in the heavens and not taking it lightly,
not brushing it off as though this is some man's ideas because
this is what only the creator can do.
And writing these things 2,000 years ago with knowledge that couldn't even
be discovered until the advent of modern telescopes and measurement
techniques. Exactly, like it says in Daniel 12, the knowledge shall
increase. That makes it possible for these things to be unsealed and exposed.
And so, I invite you to take these things seriously
and to give your heart and your life
to the one who created all of this, who knows the end from the beginning and who works
with man and with that knowledge and puts those things in the words
from thousands of years in the past.
So, with that, let's make a decision and stand for the Lord,
for the one who loves us and took the penalty
on himself for making it possible that we can take the
1,335 route to stand on the sea of glass with him in our presence.
Let's stand for a word of prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the mysteries that you put
in your word. We especially thank you for the revelation that you give.
It is a gift from you. On our own, without your spirit, it would not be possible
to discern the things that you have hidden in your word.
But you have designed that at this time in history, just before your return,
these things would be exposed and revealed.
And it is amazing to us when we see the depth of meaning that is
in some simple passages, but you have
orchestrated all things in your infinite wisdom.
And we see that reflected in the combination of the
heavenly witness and the written witness of your holy word.
And we just praise you for all that you have done, for your work,
and we thank you for the love that you show us, undeserving as we are,
because we can never merit anything worthy of
salvation. But Jesus gave his life,
his body, and his blood, so that we could escape
these trials, as it is written, of Philadelphia.
And that we can endure by faith all that you call us to endure.
And for the wicked who have refused that, you have even shown
how they are represented in your heavenly sign.
And so, we just praise you for all of these things, and we ask that you will work in your
people and bring conviction to every heart that
is undecided, that is still faltering on one side of the fence or
the other. Let us make a clean decision for you
to stand whatever may come on this world.
We pray these things in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ,
who made it possible for us that he can present us faultless before
your throne with exceeding joy.
And that is our joy as well. Amen.
Amen. Thank you. And remember, we have our Lord's Supper by the time most are watching
this, it will just be days away. But remember that on the 24th of May,
after sunset, we will have our Lord's Supper service here, remembering these
things that he did for us. Thank you.