Sermon Summary, Champaign Seventh-day Adventist Church, Sept. 12, 2009 

Search me, O God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Daniel's dream of four beasts is a vivid prophecy of who will appear to win and who will appear to lose from the time of Daniel himself until the very end when God will intervene by force. In one sense, the vision should not have been obscure or even surprising to Daniel. Several years earlier he had dreamed of four nations as parts of a statue that was finally demolished by God’s kingdom. There is little to debate when comparing the two visions with what actually happened. In fact, Babylon fell to Media-Persia, which fell to Greece, which fell to the Roman empire, which fragmented into many smaller nations.  

The second vision (in chapter 7)  reveals that after the breakup of the fourth kingdom the saints could expect a long period of intense persecution at the hands of a power that aspires to take God’s place. Then would come a judgment in heaven. The judgment would conclude with the Most High taking over all kingdoms for Himself and His people. The difference between the two visions is that the second vision was—and is—ominous for the saints on earth. That is why the good Jewish prophet was so troubled. 

For a group that serves the all-powerful God, the saints themselves have a record that appears to be powerless.  Persecution indeed played itself out as reliably as the rest of vision. Humble saints of all religions—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—found themselves persecuted by professing Christians from the fall of the Roman empire until late in the eighteenth century. The oppression stretched for the long period of 1,260 years, which the prophetic language of the vision represents as “time, times, and the dividing of time.” To all appearances, during much of this time something was “waging war against the saints and defeating them.” According to the vision, only the judgment in heaven will offer full justice to these people. And one of the most awe-inspiring teachings of Adventism is that chapters 7, 8, and 9 of the book of Daniel collectively point to the year 1844 as the beginning date of the judgment. Justice is underway.

For some of the saints, oppression continues—but from a different source. You may know that every year there is an International Day of Prayer for the persecuted church. This year the day falls on November 8. At least on that day we can pray for the courage of our brothers and sisters who do not appear to be very strong in comparison to the regimes of their homelands. We can also pray for the speedy completion of the judgment.

Some of us Christians do not see a judgment in heaven as our own rescue. After all, we don’t have a very concrete sense of needing to be rescued. Some Christians even see a judgment in heaven as a threat to the salvation that Christ achieved on the cross. Here is where it helps to begin with a Jewish understanding of judgment, the understanding that Daniel would have grasped. Several of the Psalms express delight that God will serve as judge. The assumption is that God will judge kindly and in favor of the writer. Our second scripture lesson this morning was taken from Psalm 139. According to this psalm, God already knows everything about us without the formality of a judgment, but this knowledge is no cause for anxiety. In praying this psalm, I assume that God knows me and that I can approach Him. Most significantly, there is no attempt to excuse wrongdoing. In fact, the psalmist urges “Search me,” and “See if there is any wicked way in me…” By the time he wrote Psalm 139, David had apparently learned that there was more weakness lurking in him than he had realized. Maybe that is why there is no hint of self-justification in this psalm.

We do not come by David’s trust in God easily, because our natural urge is to justify our behavior. This urge is is discussed very engagingly in a book recently published under the title “Mistakes Were Made (but not by me.)”  No matter how blatant the deceit, at least some people can convince themselves that they are doing the right thing. Compared to this, it should be a relief to pray “See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

For all their apparent defeat, whether at the hands of their persecutors or in the face of their own weaknesses, the saints are most ready for judgment when they realize that they that we are not as strong as we had thought. For that realization leads us to place our confidence in Someone else who will rule in our favor in the judgment.

Copyright 2009 by R. Chesnut. All rights reserved