Lesson 13, June 23-29
Sabbath Afternoon
Read for This Week’s Study: Isaiah 13:6, 9; Matthew 24:30, 31; Daniel 2:34, 35; 2 Timothy 4:6-8; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10.
Memory Text: “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Matthew 24:27).
The poet T. S. Eliot began a poem with the line: “In my beginning is my end”. However succinct, his words carry a powerful truth. In origins exist endings. We see echoes of this reality in our name, Seventh-day Adventist, which carries two basic biblical teachings: “Seventh day”, for the Sabbath of the Ten commandments, a weekly memorial of the six-day Creation of life on earth; and “Adventist”, pointing to the second coming of Jesus, in which all the hopes and promises of Scripture, including the promise of eternal life, will find their fulfillment.
However distant in time the Creation of the world (our beginning) is from the second coming of Jesus (our end, at least the end of this sinful existence), these events are linked. The God who created us (John 1:1-3) is the same God who will return and, in an instant, “in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet” (1 Corinthians 15:52, NKJV), will bring about our ultimate redemption. In our beginning, indeed, we find our end.
This week, we will talk about the final of all final events, at least as far as our present world is concerned: the second coming of our Lord Jesus.
