Episode 2439 - Lesson 13 - Friday, June 27 - Further Thought

Read Ellen G. White, “The Unseen Watcher,” pp. 535–538, in Prophets and Kings.“Every nation that has come upon the stage of action has been permitted to occupy its place on the earth, that the fact might be determined whether it would fulfill the purposes of the Watcher and the Holy One. Prophecy has traced the rise and progress of the world’s great empires—Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. With each of these, as with the nations of less power, history has repeated itself. Each has had its period of test; each has failed, its glory faded, its power departed. While nations have rejected God's principles, and in this rejection have wrought their own ruin, yet a divine, overruling purpose has manifestly been at work throughout the ages.”—Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, p. 535.In Jeremiah 18, Jeremiah observes a potter doing what a potter does: molding and shaping whatever he is working on. It is this imagery, that of a potter molding his clay, that God uses to explain the principle of conditionality in biblical prophecy. And just to make sure we understand, the Lord speaks through Jeremiah, saying: “ ‘The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it’ ” (Jer. 18:7–10, NKJV).Discussion Questions:Think about Jesus’ statement that the judgment will be easier for Nineveh than for the people of God who had strayed from the truth. (See Matt. 12:39–42.) What lesson can God’s church derive from this warning?Notice Ellen G. White’s statement that with each succeeding empire, “history has repeated itself.”—Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, p. 535. What do you see as common threads among all the empires listed in prophecy? In what ways did they follow the same prophetic path? How is our current world following them, as well?Think through the idea that it’s not often the mind, the intellect, that keeps people from faith, but the heart. How might this knowledge impact how you witness to others?