You know, of course, that the Seventh-day Adventist Church was founded on the belief that the coming of Jesus was just around the corner. That is why we are called Adventists. I have here in my hand a little dish. This dish has an interesting story to tell.

One day my father was out selling books from door to door. He was a young man then and was studying for the ministry at the time. He went to a house, knocked on the door, and the people invited him in. He went through his little sales talk, hoping the people would buy some books. However, they decided not to buy. If you knew my dad, you would know that he wouldn't leave the people without giving them a Bible study or something. And so that day he began to talk to the people about the coming of Jesus.

The man of the house listened carefully and with growing excitement. Then he said to Dad, "Come here to the dining room. I want to show you something." There in the china closet was a large set of dishes. The man told Dad that his grandfather had bought that set of dishes in 1844 from a family that was selling out because they said Jesus was coming and they wouldn't be needing the dishes anymore.

My wife and I have sold all our belongings a few times when we were overseas and about to return to the States, but I don't know of anyone who has sold out these days because they believed Jesus was coming soon.

When my dad saw the dishes, he, of course, was very impressed and asked the man if he could have a little dish. And now I have it. Just think of what this dish means, friends. It is what we might call faith in action!

Of course, back in 1844 they had set a date for the coming of Jesus. It was going to be October 22. They had been disappointed after setting an earlier date, but then they had figured they had calculated wrong and so it was their fault. So, when October 22 came they were not less ready, but more.

Of course, we know what happened. It wasn't all bad, though, because out of that disappointment our church was born. When you come to think about it, there was no other way for our church to come into existence, given the special work it has to do in the world in these last days.

During the past dozen or so years, people have continued to set dates for the coming of Jesus. This has not been mal-intentioned. However, every time someone sets a date and it doesn't happen, it seems as though more people fall off the wagon, so to speak.

So many people are "into" trying to set dates these days that the church was obliged to make a statement not long ago saying that we officially do not believe in setting dates. This concerns me also. It is almost a lose-lose situation. If we set a date we lose, and if we say we don't believe in setting dates then the masses go back to sleep, and pretty soon we have a Catch 22 situation--we can't get there from here.

I don't believe we will ever know, at least not in this world, the problem God has had in trying to get the human race ready for the day of reckoning that is to come. The human race basically doesn't care about the true God. Of course, a human being might claim to be religious, but often he would rather create or manufacture his own gods rather than serve the true One.

From God's point of view, how does one go about getting a planet ready for the end of the world? This is a huge problem, and is a little like the problem the authorities out in California have regarding earthquakes. If scientists were able to predict with certainty the day an earthquake was going to happen, the panic in society could be in some ways as socially devastating as the quake itself.

And so it is with the coming of Jesus. The kind of preparation necessary for the coming of Jesus is infinitely more complicated than that of preparing for an earthquake. Getting ready for the coming of Jesus is not just a matter of getting under your bed or standing in a doorway. It is a matter of a preparation of the heart, that is, of our minds.

Yes, getting ready for the coming of Jesus is much more complicated than fleeing to the mountains. It is about making a total commitment to a God who, for the time being, we cannot see, and then allowing Him through His Holy Spirit to change us into completely new people. Speaking of not being able to see God, not long ago I saw a cute little thing about notes children had written to God. One note asked, "God, are You really invisible, or is that just a trick?"

Don't ask me how it happens or what the Holy Spirit looks like. Even Jesus said that we would not be able to understand it, but we would know it was happening to us. When the Holy Spirit is getting us ready for the coming of Jesus, we will naturally become doers of the Word. Make no mistake about it; a person who is being prepared for the coming of Jesus lives a godly life.

Notice that I said, " . . . a person who is being prepared for the coming of Jesus . . ." You see, preparing for the coming of Jesus is not something we do for ourselves, though we definitely have a part to play. The preparation necessary for a people who will be alive when Jesus comes is something that God does for them. If I may use an illustration: We cannot perform eye surgery on ourselves, but we must cooperate in every way with those who will do it for us.

As time goes by, I am beginning to catch a little glimpse of how complicated it is to be prepared for the coming of Jesus. It is not like getting ready for a hurricane. For a hurricane, one can evacuate and not even be there when the hurricane makes landfall. But when Jesus comes, we will all be, as they say, in the eye of the storm.

You will recall that Jesus Himself compared the events leading up to His coming to that of a hurricane; well, if not to a hurricane, at least to a big flood. Not the kind of flood they had in the Midwest a couple years ago, but more like the one they had in Johnstown, Pennsylvania years ago. Many of the people in Johnstown didn't know the flood was coming, and it caught them off guard and carried them away.

Jesus said, "Therefore, whosoever heareth these saying of Mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: "And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon the house, and it fell not for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell and great was the fall of it."

Back to the matter of 1844. I suppose you are aware that there are a lot of members in the church these days who are confused regarding the significance of the year 1844. By that I mean they don't believe in the Investigative Judgment. But our members are not the only ones who have trouble with the Investigative Judgment. When other people criticize our doctrines, many times it is the Investigative Judgment they target. I was in the Atlanta Airport when I met a well-known evangelical TV personality. As we talked, one of the first things he asked me was if the Adventist Church still believes in the Investigative Judgment.

I really don't know what the problem is or why the Investigative Judgment seems to bother some people. I don't believe we have much of an idea of what it is going to be like to go through the Tribulation and then stand there and see the sky full of holy angels and Jesus Himself. At that point, Jesus will not be disguised as a young man from Nazareth, but He will be there in power and in glory. The Scripture says that those who aren't prepared for that day will want to commit mass suicide. They will call for the rocks and mountains to fall on them to hide them from the presence of Him Who is sitting on the throne.

No, I don't believe the average person has a clue about what it is going to be like to live in a new society in heaven, where selfishness, pride, lust, bitterness and resentment, anger, and lack of self-control are out, and true love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control are the way things are.

You might be thinking, "Hey, that would be great. That is the way I would like it." But is it really? We wouldn't really like it if we suddenly found ourselves there in heaven the same way we have always been here on earth--proud, selfish, bitter, lustful, and the rest. We would feel very uncomfortable and out of place.

Some people think that when Jesus comes He will take those bad traits all away from us. But let's think together for a little while. Why should we imagine that Jesus would take away those things then and not now? Or the flip side of it is, if we are not willing for Him to take them away now, what makes us think we would be willing then?

You might say, "I will be willing then because I will be scared out of my wits." But remember, a person persuaded against his will is of the same opinion still.

You see, according to the Bible, before Jesus comes He will have said, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still."

An then He says, "Behold I come quickly; and My reward is with Me, to give every man according as his work shall be." It seems clear if we read the text like it is, that before Jesus comes the matter of what kind of person a person is will have been settled. When Jesus says, as it were "Freeze," He is just saying, as we say, "That's all she wrote." It's all over then. What a person is at that moment is what they will be forever.

There is nothing wrong with that, because if Jesus could wait until the moment of His coming to change people who refused to be changed before, it seems to me He would have to change the devil, too, and then we would have gone to all this trouble for nothing.

The matter of the people who die before Jesus comes is different. When a person who had a spirit of repentance and who with all his heart wanted to do the will of God even though he wasn't always sure what it was--when that person dies, Jesus declares their readiness while they sleep.

But for those who are alive when Jesus comes it is a different matter. It is a little like having surgery without anesthesia. They will have been awake for the whole cleansing process and will have been submitting to it day by day, even pleading with Jesus to get on with it. He has to do away with the selfishness, pride, bitterness, anger, lust, and lack of self-control, and then to engraft the Fruit of the Spirit into our hearts. Those who are alive when Jesus comes will be doers of the Word and not hearers only. They will be living a godly life in the midst of unprecedented wickedness.

But these things take time. The process of preparing a living generation to meet a holy God is not a three-week evangelistic campaign. The devil has degraded this race for nearly six thousand years. You have heard of physical therapy. It takes time. Sometimes a person has to endure treatments for months and months to recover from an accident that has disabled them. The victim of the accident may get their faculties back, but it is little by little, slowly but surely.

Sin has been a huge accident, and we are all the victims. So great is the spiritual damage caused by sin that it has affected every aspect of our being. Solving the sin problem is not about simply taking a Tylenol and calling the doctor in the morning. Our rehabilitation requires us to be in treatment twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, until Jesus says, "It is finished."

The year 1844, then, begins the last lap of the race, so to speak. It is the time during which the whole plan of salvation leading up to the Second Coming of Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, and the translation of the living is being dealt with and brought to a glorious fulfillment.

God has no problem with those who are sleeping in Jesus and who will be resurrected, but He definitely has a challenge with those who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord. God doesn't have a problem with dead people, but with live people. This is why we must understand that salvation since 1844 is not about being prepared to die, but about being prepared to meet Jesus face to face.

A number of years ago my wife and I were called to work in Chile in South America. We eventually spent five wonderful years there. Before we left we were sent to language school to study Spanish. We studied and read about the history of Latin America, its culture, and its people. We made all the preparation we could in the time we had.

Speaking of preparation, before a person can be a commercial pilot, they must take many, many flying lessons. They must spend a certain number of hours in the air, and they must pass various kinds of tests. To be a doctor requires years of preparation. Before a person can become a doctor they must spend years in study and more years in supervised practice. They must pass both internal exams and external exams before they are licensed to practice.

What makes us think, then, that less preparation is needed for the greatest event of all time, the time when we, who had formerly been in rebellion against God, who the Bible declares were God's enemies, will be completely rehabilitated and will be able to take up, so to speak, where we left off before sin. There is a big difference between preparing, for example, to be a nurse and preparing to meet Jesus alive, face to face. In one case we prepare ourselves. Preparing to be a nurse is something we do for ourselves. We are on our own, so to speak. But in the case of being prepared for the coming of Jesus, it is Jesus Himself, through the Holy Spirit, Who is the One who prepares us.

Since 1844 Jesus has been in the process of preparing those who will be the ones who will finally meet Him face to face without dying. Inasmuch as sin has done such tremendous damage to us, the preparation Jesus is doing is something that has taken generations to complete.

What is wrong with teaching that since 1844 Jesus has been preparing both the living and the dead for His Second Coming and the end of the world? Speaking of the end of the world, you are aware that before Jesus comes the devil will make a great effort to take over the planet. At the present time he already has most of the people on his side, but the last great push will be to take back those who have gone over to the side of the Lord. The devil will be satisfied with nothing less than 100%. Everybody who refuses will be condemned to die.

You remember the Scripture says that just before Jesus comes there will be illusions so strong that they almost deceive the very elect. This means, ladies and gentlemen, the good guys. Whatever happens is so powerful that even the majority of those who had thought they were Christians cash in their chips and begin to follow the Antichrist.

This is precisely the reason God raised up the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Come to think of it, there are three reasons. One reason is the church provides a social environment where those who are being prepared by Jesus to meet Him alive when He comes will feel safe and be nurtured by others. Another reason is that the Seventh-day Adventist Church, like the other evangelical churches, is to be preaching the gospel to the lost. Billy Graham is preaching a gospel that is saving--provided you die before Jesus comes. But the gospel he is preaching will definitely not prepare people to meet Jesus face to face without seeing death.

The last reason, perhaps even the most important reason, is that the Adventist church has been given the secret formula, so to speak, that will keep those who believe in Jesus from being deceived and losing their salvation when the Great Deception and the Time of Trouble come on the world.

The year 1844, then, is about time. History is always about time. The flood of Noah came after a predicted time of 120 years and then seven days after the people went into the ark.

Jesus came on time. The Bible says He came "in the fullness of time." He died on the exact day that had been predicted. God has worked in time and on time with this planet since the sin problem began here around 6,000 years ago. And so in the same way the work will finish in the context of time.

The last block of time prophecy in the history of this world began in 1844. This is called the Time of the End. It is a time of preparation, a time of warning. We don't know how long this time block last or when it will end. Perhaps if we knew the day and the hour, we would try to prepare ourselves by focusing on the physical details. But the Great Tribulation and Time of Trouble is not like a flood or a hurricane or an earthquake; it is worse and even more difficult.

For those who are not ready, the coming of Jesus will be the worst disaster since the flood. The majority who is alive when Jesus comes will be killed by the brightness of His coming, and the earth will be left uninhabited like the moon for 1,000 years. Only the devil and his angels will be around. Those 1,000 years of isolation will be so hard on the devil that after they are over he will attempt a suicide attack on the Holy City.

These days people of all faiths are trying to set dates for the coming of Jesus and the end of the world. Though we know we must resist this temptation, there is the possibility that we over-react and think that His coming is a long way off. Scripture says this would be a danger in the last days, that some would say, "Where is the promise of His coming? Things are as they always have been."

If it is a mistake to predict that He will come on a particular date, it is also a mistake to think that it is business as usual. The Scriptures haven't told us the day or the hour, but they have definitely told us the signs that would show that His coming was near, and you would have to be born yesterday to not see what is going on all around us these days.

But a bigger problem for me, than knowing the day and the hour of Jesus' return, is the problem of whether or not I will allow the Lord to work in my life and finish what He has begun, and then of using my influence to encourage others to let Him prepare them.

A bigger problem for me, than knowing the day and the hour of Christ's return, is the problem of sharing the news of the Judgment with those who love Jesus as much as I do, but who are members of other Christian churches--of warning them that there is going to be a huge deception perpetrated by the devil himself just before Jesus comes, and if they don't know how things are supposed to be when that happens, they run the risk of falling for it and losing their salvation.

A bigger problem for me than knowing the day or the hour of Christ's return is whether or not I am willing to communicate to the lost that in Jesus they can be saved if they will just accept Him and all that means, that if they will confess their sins He is faithful and just to forgive their sins and to cleanse them from all unrighteousness.

Don't you see, this is no time to get hung up on the 1844 thing. This is the time to get into what 1844 is all about. The hour of His judgment has come. He is right now preparing a people who will not fall when the devil stands up to deceive the whole world. Right now He is preparing a people who will say, "Lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him and He will save us," and this when the wicked all around are falling down and crying for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them and hide them from the face of Him who sits on the throne.

This is no time to debate how we are saved and whether or not we have to be obedient and live godly lives. Of course we do. To ask if a person who loves Jesus has to be obedient to His Word is like asking if a person who loves his wife if he has to be faithful to her.

Some of the discussions going on in some Adventist Sabbath School classes, and even some of the sermons being preached these days, are irrelevant at best and misleading at worst. Jesus Himself has called us to be doers of the Word and not hearers only, and He Himself has said that if we don't get with it we will be washed away. Another way of saying that is we will be lost.

We who are being saved, we who have committed our lives to Jesus Christ and who love Him with all our hearts, have been called to live godly lives in the midst of this evil and perverse generation. We have been called not only to preach the Word, but to practice what we preach.

The most relevant thing we could be doing in our Sabbath School classes and in our preaching is to discover what it means to be doers of the Word. The most relevant thing we could be doing in our Sabbath School classes and in our preaching is to discover what it means to live godly lives.

We spend enough time studying the abnormal and the dysfunctional. It is time we took a little effort studying what normal is, what holiness is, what godliness is, what victorious living is. It is time we stopped holding up as role models the losers and the ne'er-do-wells, and hear the testimonies of those who are experiencing the power of God in their lives, that is breaking the chains of sin, which is driving us crazy and messing up our lives.

It is time we heard a little from someone who can tell us what it is like to be a winner instead of a loser. Once when I was conducting a meeting, a man stood up and said that he used to be an alcoholic, but that God had healed him. When he sat down I asked the congregation, "Did you hear what he just said? He said that he used to be an alcoholic. That is not what the addiction experts are telling us. They say, "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic."

Friends, the difference between an alcoholic who doesn't drink and that person who has never drunk is absolutely zero. The people who call former drinkers alcoholics are drinkers or former drinkers themselves, albeit in moderation. We have all told lies at one time or another, yet we don't call ourselves liars. A person may have stolen something at one time or another, yet should he be forever called a thief?

We all have weaknesses and propensities to sin; but if Jesus is giving you the victory, then claim it. There is a mentality by some these days that will not let us forget our past. There is, it seems to me, a mentality by some that makes it difficult for us to get a new start.

The text that tells about victory and getting past our sins and on with our lives is the one that says, "Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:13,14.

It may not be very scientific or physiologically correct, but I think that when our lives are hid with God in Christ--when we are, as they used to say, under the blood--I don't believe it is necessary to go backwards, look backwards, or live in the past.

I happen to be one who believes that if Jesus could heal leprosy, He can heal an alcoholic. I don't mind if you want to say that you used to be an alcoholic, if you insist. But don't think, for my sake at least, that you need to say you are still an alcoholic.

God has called us to be doers of the Word. This is a call to godliness, and He is the one who makes it happen in our lives if we will not resist. Since 1844 God Himself is preparing a people who will meet Him face to face without passing through the grave.

I don't need to tell you that we live in a time of unprecedented evil, not so much because there is any particularly new evil, but if nothing else the instant communication of the 21st century has made it possible for the whole world to bear and feel the iniquity of the age. The news itself is practically pornographic these days. The human spirit is being attacked on so may fronts that we are practically beside ourselves trying, as they say, to keep on top of everything. Our children are being physically abducted at times, but mentality abducted all the time.

We are being tempted on every hand to break the Ten Commandments, which are the only protection we have in a society that is bent on destroying itself. Speaking of the Ten Commandments and on being doers of the Word, of all of the commandments the one that is perhaps most ignored and the least mentioned and neglected is number ten.

When I think about the tenth commandment and what it means, it dawns on me that some of the biggest trouble we are in these days is because we are breaking number ten, as they say, big time. You remember which one that is don't you? It is the one that says, "Thou shalt not covet."

Hear me out. I am thoroughly convinced that we are breaking the tenth commandment big time, and I can prove it by the amount of debt most of us are in. You may ask what debt has to do with covetousness. The answer is--everything. I don't know if you have ever thought of it before, but the whole purpose of advertising on the massive scale as it is done today, as far as the devil is concerned, is to create greed. Advertising stimulates greed. I looked up the word greed in the thesaurus, and a synonym for greed is covetousness. Back in the old days before credit cards, a person could be greedy, that is covetous, and just had to eat their heart out. But not any more. Not in the 21st century.

In the 21st century you don't have to sit helplessly and watch your neighbor get a new car or a new boat. The credit card and the home equity loan mean that it can be all yours, baby! Make it happen.

I don't know about you, but it seems like two or three times a month I get letters in the mail offering me another credit card. The letter tells me what a marvelous person I am and that I can have some guaranteed, ridiculously low rate of interest (read the small print and find out that it is only an introductory rate, after which the rate charged used to be illegal and classified as usury).

The credit card companies make it seem like they love us and only want us to be happy. What they don't tell us is that if we don't pay, or for some reason can't pay, they will not hesitate to ruin us financially for a long time to come.

Once in a Sabbath School class, the teacher was leading us in the study of the lesson, which included a thought about being slaves to sin. The teacher said, "Now, these days we don't know what slavery is all about."

I thought, "Oh, yes we do." I raised my hand and said, "Slavery is about debt."

Think about it, friends. It is true, isn't it? Slavery is simply 100 percent debt. That is, that 100 percent of a person's income will go to pay someone else. And so in the same way, the more of our income that goes to pay someone else, to that extent we are in a form of slavery. The Scripture says, "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender" (Proverbs 22:7).

It may come as a surprise to you, but approximately two-thirds of the parables Christ used in teaching dealt specifically with finances. The reason for that is very simple. He chose a topic with which everyone could identify. In Luke 12:15, He gave us a warning. He said, "Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has abundance does his life consist of his possessions."

There are many people who have little or no regard for material possessions. They accept poverty as a normal living condition, and their major concern is which doorway to sleep in. On the other side, there are the affluent. These people have the best our society has to offer at their disposal. Their homes are the community showplaces, their summer cottages are small hotels, and their automobiles cost more than most families' homes.

Listen now. The majority of warnings in Christ's messages were to the wealthy, not the poor. With the poor, the issues are usually black and white, honesty or dishonesty. With the affluent, it is much more subtle. In America, the majority of the people would be graded as wealthy by any biblical standard. Our anxieties and worries in this country are not so much related to the lack of things, but rather to the loss of things. Many, if not most, of us inwardly fear that we might lose the material goods we have acquired; therefore, we often compromise God's best for our lives to hang on to the very way of life that brings us so much worry and turmoil.

In our society it is not normal to step down once a certain standard of living has been reached. Even in the face of almost certain financial disaster, people will continue to maintain their style of living, going into debt more and more. I was surprised to learn that 70 or 80 percent of the time finances play a major role in the break-up of the family. The Scriptures are clear when they call upon us not to love the world, neither the things that are in the world; and that for the one who loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

When will we understand that the devil is working on every hand to destroy our families and cause us to lose eternal life? It may seem that, when we get the invitations to apply for and receive another credit card or when the bank offers us a home equity loan, these people have our true happiness at heart. But for many it is an invitation to disaster.

We have discussed and debated the other nine commandments. Now I believe it is long over-due that we get into the significance and importance and even the necessity of keeping the tenth commandment. We must understand that our greed and covetousness are destroying our personal happiness and even our marriages. If we are going to survive in these last days, we must pray that the Lord will give us self-control. We must pray that He will help us to apply godly discipline to our lifestyles. God knows that we have certain legitimate needs. He knows that we need food, clothing, and shelter. These are the basic necessities.

The reason people are hung up and sick with worry about how they are going to pay the rent is because, at one time or the other, they may have forgotten to put first things first and have become obsessed with obtaining frills and the things that don't really matter. You know what I mean--the luxuries. The predicament is that, too often, when people are trying to make payments on a $6,000 spa, they don't have the money to make the house payment.

By now you might be thinking, "Pastor O'Ffill, mind your own business. I can live my life the way that I want to."

Of course we can. But God is not mocked; what we sow, we will also reap. You have heard the old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In case you may be thinking that this is just an old-fashioned saying that doesn't have any meaning these days, let me explain that it is trying to say that it is easier to prevent something than to cure it.

If we will live godly lives and become doers of the Word, we will avoid the very things that are taking others down. It is time that we become wiser people. Some have perhaps been fighting the Ten Commandments and as a result have been suffering needlessly in the here and now.

Since 1844 God has been preparing a people who will be able to stand in the last day. As the Word says, "A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked." Those who are not living godly lives and who are not doers of the Word will not only be lost in the end, but they will be lost all along the way.