John 3:12 If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you [of] heavenly things?
3:13 And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, [even] the Son of man which is in heaven.


How can one explain spiritual things? Spiritual things are heavenly things that people don't fully understand but try to illustrate with earthly things in an attempt to understand them. Yet earthly things fall short of explaining heavenly things. It is true that to be perfectly acquainted with the concerns of a place, it is necessary for a person to be, or have been at that place..

Who has ever experienced these heavenly things so they can explain them to us earthlings, teaching and showing us the deep things of God. Who can now explain them in their full and true meaning?
Only the Son of man!
Only the One Who was in the beginning with God, and was God and was in the beginning with God! And became flesh to dwell with mankind. (John 1:1,14)

And it is His Spirit,
for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God...Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. (1Cor. 2:10,12) he will guide you into all truth: ..He shall glorify me (the Son of Man as well as the Son of God): for he shall receive of mine, and shall show [it] unto you. John 16:13-14)

The difference between the "mark" and the "seal".

Both are based on the premise that the one we give our allegiance to, we obey. Obedience is not optional on either side.

Romans 6:16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

The beast FORCES people to obey, whether they want to or not. It is not obedience from a transformed heart and mind. He seeks allegiance BY FORCE. If everyone can be corralled into obedience he feels in control.

God wants obedience from a transformed mind and heart that responds to His goodness, saving grace and love, that wants to give Him glory, and doesn't want to give or show any allegiance to the enemy.

Both lead to obedience.
but one is only a mark of compliance, an outward bowing to the enforced demands while the heart isn't really submitted.
the other is loving commitment of the heart and mind, sealed "to belong to HIM, totally, lovingly" and long to do His will in everything.

The seal is not ONLY the Sabbath, though the Sabbath is the sign, and very much part of the seal.
Yet a person who outwardly stops work on the Sabbath and attends worship services without his heart and mind surrendered to God, is not sealed and will in all probability switch when the pressure is applied.
To be sealed means to give our complete allegiance to our Redeemer and Savior, Jesus Christ, which leads to a life of complete obedience.

And it is only through the power of the Holy Spirit and the righteousness of Christ accepted in our lives that this transformation can take place.

Protestantism depicted in the seven churches.
These churches represent the different stages of the church throughout history.
But even though they have a significant time in history, we must not think the previous church disappears when the next church begins. We will find the different stages continuing though they may no longer be the prominent one for that time.
There is however, one exception, one of the churches dies.

Review:
Ephesus represents the apostolic church
Smyrna represents the persecuted church
Pergamos represents the church accepted by Imperial Rome (accepted/supported by government)
Thyatira represents the papal controlled church
Sardis represents the reformation or protestant church

And it is Sardis we need to look at as we discuss the death of Protestantism.

Jezebel, the scarlet woman of Thyatira, and Revelation 17, was given time by God to repent, but she would not (Rev. 2:21). To keep faith and truth alive the Lord had to raise up a new movement. The corrupt condition of the corporate body of Thyatira had existed for more than nine hundred years before the Reformation.

Sardis represents the Protestant Reformation. They pulled away and became separate and distinct from Jezebel and her corruptions. Although Jezebel continues on, the woman represents the papal corrupted religion which is no longer a light for the gospel, or testimony for God in the earth, yet she is still alive, and will come back to power in the time of the end (Rev. 17}

The Protestant Reformation was God working anew to bring back the gospel by His Spirit and once again offer salvation and righteousness by faith to the people.
. Sardis represents the time after the Reformation as well, showing what happens to Protestantism right up to our time.



Protestantism is dying. As a movement it is DEAD. But there are still a few within Protestantism who are faithful, whose names are in the book of life.

Thyatira is the total corruption of the original message and blessings given to the Ephesus church, while Sardis was given the responsibility to bring back life and light of the gospel, and the blessings of God. But Sardis is judged by God as spiritually dead, only individual faithful ones are judged as worthy and dressed in white. Both churches have a faithful remnant that God distinctly marks and acknowledges (Rev. 2:24, 3:4)

But Sardis itself is declared as dead, and Protestants have now also declared Protestantism to be dead.

Walter Veith discusses the trials we will face and how we are to stand for Truth as the return of Christ rapidly approaches.

https://youtu.be/6YoMjd0Wcss

Problems of a purely exegetical approach to interpreting prophecies.

Thoughts taken from Dr. Alberto Treiyer review
former member of the Daniel and Revelation Committee,

Is it wise to throw the interpretative foundation of our church in prophetic matters under pretention, thinking we will "move forward" by casting of the anchor points, especially when there is no exegetical, theological or historical reason to do that?

Yet, we have a few well known Adventists who are seeking to do just that. They believe that Uriah Smith took from Barnes, a protestant interpreter of Revelation the idea of prophetic time in the formula "the hour, day, month and year" in Rev. 9:15 They believe, that modern exegesis has discarded that possibility, and that somehow Adventism needs to do the same. However, before Barnes, the majority of the Reformers of the last part of the Middle Ages and during the first part of the 19th century, understood that text in a prophetic dimension of day per year.

Under the influence of French enlightenment and succeeding Biblical critical movement, with the help of the counter Reformation, the historical approach was pushed aside and was eliminated by most of the interpreters of Revelation. On what basis? On no real foundation, because the exegetical criticism employed by those interpreters lacks foundation.

Sadly it seems the Adventist professors leaning away from the historicist approach didn't first read the Master thesis of Jon Stefansson, nor the two exegetical studies on Rev. 9:15 written by Dr. Tarsee Lee, a professor of theology, and many other historical studies under taken in the University of Andrews, prepared in the historical dimension and under the prophetic principles that characterize us as a people established on the divine inspiration traced through prophetic, historicistic dimension.

Stefinsson shows that if the apostle would have intended Rev. 9:15 to refer to a point in time and not to a period of time, he would have written simply that the powers were prepared "for the hour". Enlarging the time which only supposedly meant the hour it was to begin, without any clues as to the year, month or day in which that hour occurred, would be totally pointless.

Lee wrote an article of five pages entitled "Revelation 9"15 and the limits of Greek Syntax, (Journal of Adventist Theological Society 1997) He proves there is no exegetical foundation to deny a prophetic period of time by this expression , Hour, day, month, and year.

What is, then the presumption of those who consider themselves "exegetes" in our church, and who are trying to overthrow an interpretation that supports the Spirit of Prophecy?

In the confrontation that we had in 3 ABN on the trumpets, I could see my colleague Jon Paulien seated at my left hand, repeating again and again that we have to go to the Bible and remain in the Bible. This sounded good and even orthodox. But, in what context did he say this?
At any time when historical dates were introduced to confirm the prophetic fulfillment of the trumpets. It was stated that this was not in the Bible. They even criticized a lady who wrote "history has assigned a beginning date" (for the 70 years), and he add "not Scripture."

Now wait a minute: Where do we obtain the years 508, 538, and
1798 ? Those dates are given by history, not by Scripture.

This is the background of those who insist in spiritualizing the content of the trumpets. As a matter of fact, how will they convince others that they should not also spiritualize the apocalyptic beasts of Daniel and Revelation, and the other prophecies of Daniel and Revelation?
Are they prophesizing real events and real kingdoms or is it just an allegory?

May this kind of purely exegetical approach be considered historicist? No way! This is an empty idealism, because it does not make the heart to burn with the history of its fulfillment (see Luke 24:32).

Paulien wrote a seminar on Revelation that was published in Australia, but which did not work because, according to evangelists over there, people need to see in history how those prophecies were fulfilled.
History gives the evidence that prophecy is sure, it gets fulfilled, if this were not so, the apostles would not have been able to say like Jesus, "today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21).


Problems of a purely exegetical approach.
Exegesis is good in its role of understanding meaning of words and symbols, it opens windows for more than one possibility that history has to fill. Yet at this point the other sciences need to be considered, namely, theology and history.
We need theology to give us the broader picture as to where things fit in the grand everlasting covenant of the gospel. A right theology offers biblical guidelines to find the purpose of the prophecy, and under what contextual history should its fulfillment be placed. For instance, Protestants rightly understood in former centuries that the trumpets came as judgments of God against Rome , because this was the last apocalyptic empire depicted by Daniel and Revelation.
They saw the trumpets as symbolic of real events, The symbolism found in the trumpets led them not to spiritualize their fulfillment, but to place it in the right time and understand the purpose as to why God sent, or allowed them to take place. While the first six trumpets were partial judgments (a third), only the last and seventh trumpet was expected to be definitive in connection with the coming of the Lord (Rev 11:18) when God's wrath would be outpoured in the seven plagues, 16:1)
.
Theology and history have to work together to determine what exegetical possibility is valuable. It is necessary to understand God's plan and purpose in the story of Redemption, and this is what systematic theology intends to do.
Historicism by itself can't stand alone, either, without understanding theology God can appear as vindictive, cruel, rather than working for the salvation of people.

.But if we do not resort to history, and base our interpretation purely on exegetical, chiastic, grammatical approach the interpretation goes nowhere in prophetic matters.
It leads to the interpretative chaos and uncertainty that we find in our church today in these
when it comes to prophecy.


So where is this all going?

We saw some of our scholars start with the decision to pull the trumpets out of the historicist method of interpretation to end the historicist interpretation for the trumpets..
But this leads to departing from historicism in the rest of the Bible. They do not realize, at the beginning, that in order to destroy the historicist interpretation of Rev 9, they resort to the same kind of arguments employed by others to destroy their historicist approach in the rest of the prophetic Biblical passages.

Once the foundational stones are ripped out from underneath a building, the whole building starts to totter.
This is why J?n Stef?nsson answers many criticisms against the historical dates of the trumpets realizing that the same methods used to destroy the historicist interpretation for the trumpets will also destroy the whole prophetic foundation in all of Daniel and Revelation.

Those who want to find historical and biblical proofs to deny the prophetic fulfillment, will find them. Those who want to find historical and biblical proofs to confirm the prophetic fulfillment, will also find them. Because the apocalyptic prophecies have a similar purpose of the parables, which many could understand, but others who hardened their hearts will not understand.(Matt 13:14-15).



Source
Counterfeit Prophecy

dedication, WOW!!!! Excellent study. I'll be using these posts. Listening to the professors at AUC helped me to see this, and Fleming's lecture about the death of Jesus and the Jews, giving the historical context of the Sadducee courts within the Sanhedrin, and it's connection to the 24 Elders even made it clearer.

Other suggestions I hear some may be held as well as the above, but most of what I hear seems to be speculation.

The 4 living beasts is God's church in exodus/exile. God actively communicates with with His church on earth through the testimony of the 12 tribes (the TANAK) and the testimony of the 12 apostles. As we consistently study the Bible, the Holy Spirit will point out things that we will need to know at the time we need to know it. And we will learn it from the pages of scripture.