The Day After… “Thanksgiving”
(Sunday message for House Church and individual use: preached 11/29 – 12/5/2020)
Today we will, today we must tell you about the Day After Thanksgiving. What you will learn from both ancient history and the Bible may come as a surprise. Especially if you know that the official celebration of “Thanksgiving Day”, and therefore also the celebration of the day after Thanksgiving, did not begin until just recently, during the nineteenth century, in the middle of the Civil War, when these two days were publicly installed as annual national holidays, here in the United States of America. Nevertheless, for hundreds, yes, even thousands of years before, both thanksgiving banquets and banqueting have been documented, highlighted and commented on, yes in history, yes in the Bible again, and again, and again.
I. The Day After Thanksgiving in the Antediluvian Period!
The Bible says,
“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:5-7)
But yes, there was, and as you will see, in history, in the midst of judgement, there has continued to exist a thanksgiving banquet (whether good or bad), a day after thanksgiving, and then an escape from judgement for those, and yes, for those only, who listened to what God said, responded to his warning, and actually obeyed his exact command – no matter how little it fit in with their previously clung to plans in the world.
What will you do with what you will now hear? What will you do… the day after?
A. The thanksgiving banquet.
“But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,” (Matthew 24:37-38)
B. The day after thanksgiving.
“And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” (Matthew 24:39)
C. Those who listened escaped.
“Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.” (1 Peter 3:20)
II. The Day After Thanksgiving in Babylon!
A. The thanksgiving banquet.
“Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein. Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank in them. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone. In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another.” (Matthew 24:37-38)
B. The day after thanksgiving.
“This is the interpretation of the thing: Mene; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. Tekel; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. Peres; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” (Daniel 5:26-28)
“In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.” (Daniel 5:30-31)
C. Again, those who had been listening escaped.
“Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.” (Daniel 5:29)
“It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom; and over these three presidents; of whom Daniel was first: that the princes might give accounts unto them, and the king should have no damage.” (Daniel 6:1-2)
III. The Day After Thanksgiving in Jerusalem!
A. The thanksgiving banquet.
“And he sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare us the passover, that we may eat.” (Luke 22:8)
B. The day after thanksgiving.
“And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” (Luke 21:20-24)
“And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” (Matthew 28:18-20)
C. Those who listened escaped.
“So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.” (Mark 16:19-20)
“And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.” (Acts 8:1)
D. Those who did not listen were included in God’s judgement.
1. They did not listen.
“And when he had saluted them, he declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry. And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law.” (Acts 21:19-20)
2. They were therefore included in God’s judgement.
We now come to a profound example of such a “day after” which is recorded not within the pages of the Bible. No, it is found in a history book, written not by a Christian but instead by one of the most famous historians of all time: Flavius Josephus.
We will now share a portion of his startling history of the destruction of Jerusalem, by Caesar and the Roman army, as it occured in 70 A.D. Many of you have heard of this startling report from the Works of Josephus. Yet, many of you have never actually read, or had someone read to you, from the actual pages. Well, in just a few moments, you will always be able to say that you have. This then is what Josephus left for us to read and hear: the horrible facts of the fulfilled predictions and warnings that our Lord gave to his followers in Jerusalem.
Oh, our darling brothers and sisters who disobeyed our Lord’s command; you should have listened. You, you to whom we are speaking today, may you listen. May what you hear now be used by God to, oh, please finally wake you up. Please… Listen now to Josephus’s record of what happened in that fateful 70th year in Jerusalem, after Christ.
“So the Romans being now become masters of the wars, they both placed their ensigns upon the towers, and made joyful acclamations for the victory they had gained, as having found the end of this war much lighter than its beginning; for when they had gotten upon the last [wall], without any bloodshed, they could hardly believe what they found to be true; but seeing nobody to oppose them, they stood in doubt what such an unusual solitude could mean. But when they went in numbers into the lanes of the city, with their swords drawn, they slew those whom they overtook, without mercy, and set fire to the houses wither the Jews were fled, and burnt every soul in them, and laid waste a great many of the rest; and when they were come to the houses to plunder them, they found in them entire families of dead men, and the upper rooms full of dead corpses, that is of such as died by the famine; they then stood in a horror at this sight, and went out without touching anything. But although they had this commiseration for such as were destroyed in that manner, yet had they not the same for those that were still alive, but they ran every one through whom they met with, and obstructed the very lanes with their dead bodies, and made the whole city run down with blood, to such a degree indeed that the fire of many of the houses was quenched with these men’s blood. And truly so it happened, that though the slayers left off at the evening, yet did the fire greatly prevail in the night, and as all was burning, came that eighth day of the month Gorpieus [Elul] upon Jerusalem; a city that had been liable to so many miseries during the siege, that, had it always enjoyed as much happiness from its first foundation, it would certainly have been the envy of the world. Nor did it on any other account so much deserve these sore misfortunes, as by producing such a generation of men as were the occasions of this its overthrow.
“Now, when Titus was come into this [upper] city, he admired not only some other places of strength in it, but particularly those strong towers which the tyrants, in their mad conduct, had relinquished; for when he saw their solid altitude, and the largeness of their several stones, and the exactness of their joints, as also how great was their breadth, and how extensive their length, he expressed himself after the manner following: “We have certainly had God for our assistant in this war, and it was no other than God who ejected the Jews out of these fortifications; for what could the hands of men, or any machines, do towards overthrowing these towers!” At which time he had many such discourses to his friends; he also let such go free as had been bound by the tyrants, and were left in the prisons. To conclude, when he entirely demolished the rest of the city, and overthrew its wars, he left these towers as a monument of his good fortune, which had proved his auxiliaries, and enabled him to take what could not otherwise have been taken by him.
“And now, since his soldiers were already quite tired with killing men, and yet there appeared to be a vast multitude still remaining alive, Caesar gave orders that they should kill none but those that were in arms, and opposed them, but should take the rest alive. But, together with those whom they had orders to slay, they slew the aged and the infirm; but for those that were in their flourishing age, and who might be useful to them, they drove them together into the temple, and shut them up within the walls of the court of the women; over which Caesar set one of his freed men, as also Fronto, one of his own friends; which last was to determine every one’s fate, according to his merits. So this Fronto slew all those that had been seditious and robbers, who were impeached one by another; but of the young men he chose out the tallest and most beautiful, and reserved them for the triumph; and as for the rest of the multitude that were above seventeen years old, he put them into bonds, and sent them to the Egyptian mines. Titus also sent a great number into the provinces, as a present to them, that they might be destroyed upon their theaters, by the sword and by the wild beasts; but those that were under seventeen years of age were sold for slaves. Now during the days wherein Fronto was distinguishing these men, there perished, for want of food, eleven thousand; some of whom did not taste any food, through the hatred their guards bore to them; and others would not take in any when it was given them. The multitude also was so very great, that they were in want even of corn for their sustenance.
“Now the number of those that were carried captive during this whole war was collected to be ninety-seven thousand, as was the number of those that perished during the whole siege eleven hundred thousand, the greater part of whom were indeed of the same nation [with the citizens of Jerusalem], but not belonging to the city itself; for they were come up from all the country to the feast of unleavened bread, and were on a sudden shut up by an army, which, at the very first, occasioned so great a traitness among them that there came a pestilential destruction upon them, and soon afterward such a famine, as destroyed them more suddenly.” (Josephus, Flavius. Translated by William Whiston, A.M. The Works of Flavius Josephus, Vol. 1: The Wars of the Jews, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 1984, pp. 467-469.)
IV. The Day After Thanksgiving in the Great Tribulation!
A. The thanksgiving banquet.
“And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great. And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God.” (Revelation 19:5-9)
B. The day after thanksgiving.
Revelation 19:11-21:
- Jesus is coming again – to “judge and make war!”
“And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.” (Revelation 19:11)
- Jesus is coming in power and great glory!
“His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.” (Revelation 19:12)
- Jesus is coming in vengeance and in truth!
“And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.” (Revelation 19:13)
- Jesus is coming with all the saints and mighty hosts of Heaven!
“And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.” (Revelation 19:14)
- Jesus is coming to rule and to reign!
“And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” (Revelation 19:15)
- Jesus is coming to be our King, our Lord, here on Earth!
“And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King Of Kings, And Lord Of Lords.” (Revelation 19:16)
Conclusion
Yes, the ecosystems of the world are falling apart, as the greatest earthquakes and tidal waves in the history of mankind increase, and as insect and animal intrusion continue climbing towards that coming day when the bestial locusts, prophesied, predicted to come finally arrive.
Yes, a worldwide virus has set in place the rapidly increasing fall of our global economic system.
Yes, famine – death by starvation – reaches out to finally touch us; anarchy in the streets approaches our homes; and military domination inflicted from without upon our weakened nation becomes inevitable.
- The reigns and rule of the nations are ready to bow down to anyone who can deliver them from these frightening inevitabilities.
- A new world order is poised to rise;
- And now, right now, the mark of the Beast is finally possible thanks to
- the success of cash-and-card-free Amazon grocery store technology, and
- the March 2020 announcement that Microsoft has “at last” engineered the ability to restrict buying and selling only to individuals whose brain wave monitored behavior is approved.
- More alarming is that this technology is administered through individually administered microtech in the form of a tattoo (a.k.a. a “mark”) that will be placed on the skin (for example, on a hand or forehead).
- Even more strangely and biblically and prophetically precise is the blatant public announcement that the special patent for this mark is 202060606.
Oh, yes, dear friends, the Great Tribulation is coming, and almost certainly will begin in your lifetime, or at the furthest out, in the lifetime of your children. And here is another cold plain truth:
- If it doesn’t happen soon, if what is happening now doesn’t quickly roll into that prophesied dark – and yet temporary – seven year long nightmare; then the greater pestilence to come, the economically-produced global starvation, the subsequently and systematically occurring deaths by war… then these horrors will not be quick but rather prolonged: slow, and painful, and maddening, and heartbreaking – in the extreme… unless your eyes are on Christ, and on Christ Jesus alone!
Hear what Jesus said after his resurrection, and before his ascension back into Heaven.
“And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” (Luke 24:38-39)
Yes, Jesus. He who had earlier said,
“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.” (John 14:1)
And so, please allow us to finish this message by finishing the verse from Revelations that we were so wonderfully following a moment ago.
Revelation 19:17-21:
“And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.
“And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.
“And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
“And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.” (Revelation 19:17-21)
Remember that you can overcome all this through Christ, not the world!
“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.” (Romans 12:11)
Remember, that you will win – forever – through Christ, not the world!
“Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” (Romans 8:37)
Remember, nothing and no one can separate you from his love.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Romans 8:35)
Now, look: look and live!
“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2)
Look to Christ, Look to Jesus, look to the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world!
“For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:17)
OUTLINE:
The Day After… “Thanksgiving”
(A Message to the Multitudes)
I. The Day After Thanksgiving in the Antediluvian Period!
II. The Day After Thanksgiving in Babylon!
III. The Day After Thanksgiving in Jerusalem!
IV. The Day After Thanksgiving in the Great Tribulation!
“For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:17)
WORSHIP:
Whom Shall I Fear [The God of Angel Armies] By Chris Tomlin with Lyrics
Opening:
Message:
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Hymn – Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
Cinematic Presentation: