4/08/07 – 14LAW “The Final Test of Obedience” – Part 1
Victory Ministries International presents:
Awesome Truths and Amazing Facts  
Treasures of awesome truths from God’s Word 
and facts that affect you!

Hello!  This is Richard Vaughn

Today’s subject – “The Final Test of Obedience” – Part 1

Before we begin today’s program, shall we reverently seek God’s presence. Heavenly Father, once again we ask for divine guidance through the agency of the Holy Spirit, as we open the word today on this important subject.  In Jesus name Amen.

I continue to keep my pledge to cry aloud and spare not, to lift up my voice like a trumpet and to show God’s people where they are transgressing God’s Law.

	If you have been a regular listener to Awesome Truths and Amazing Facts, then maybe you can help me with an important decision I am going to have to make. I have been on this station for a while and have never heard from a single listener. Either no one is listening, which would mean I need to stop spending the money that it costs to put this program on week after week, or else people are listening and nothing is registering. I have been teaching some of the strongest Bible truths week after week, and nobody wants to get on the ark.

	Jesus said in Matthew 24:37-39 “But as the days of Noe 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, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

	And here we are in 2007, again eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, living for all the excitement and pleasures that this world has to offer. Are we paying attention to the words of Jesus? In Matthew 24, when the disciples pressed Jesus to know what the signs of the end would be, 4 times in He warned about deceptions.
	Satan has pulled the wool over the eyes of the Christian church today. He has the people all believing in easy religion and every false doctrine connected with it. What do you mean Pastor Vaughn? What false doctrines are you alluding to?
	
I am glad you asked so I’ll give you my short list: 
1.	Satan has influenced the Papacy of Rome to change God’s Holy Sabbath day from Saturday to Sunday, a change for which there is no scriptural authority and a change she boasts about having done, therefore causing almost the whole Christian world to embrace Satan’s counterfeit Sabbath Sunday, a day having its roots in Paganism.
2.	Satan has most of the Christian world believing that there will be a secret rapture, where the saved will be raptured out of the earth before the tribulation period. And that somehow during a seven year period, those who were not raptured will have a second chance. This is a gigantic deception, yet most who swallow it cannot even turn in their Bibles to learn the real truth. They prefer fiction.
3.	The Christian world has also embraced the deception that the lost will really spend eternity burning and being tormented in flames with terrible agony and that they can’t die. This is not the plan of the true God of the Bible; however the Bible says that sin and sinners and Satan and his angels will be destroyed in the fire. And that fire will go out and it will be as if they never were, as sin will be no more.
4.	The Christian world believes that when you die, you go straight to heaven or straight to hell. Is that what you believe? Then you are incredibly deceived. That’s not what the Bible teaches. When a person dies they are dead and know nothing. They will not have a conscious thought again until the first or second resurrection.

I could go on with a list that can stretch into the next program. But it doesn’t matter. No one listens to this broadcast with their understanding. It’s as if people are happy in deception. They love unrighteousness and they love a lie.  

Paul was right when he said in 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 “And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

I am overwhelmed at the fact that you people who listen to this broadcast, will not take the appropriate action to turn from your disobedient living and seek God’s forgiveness for rejecting the truth that God in His mercy has sent you. This is not the words of Pastor Vaughn coming out of the Bible each week; they are the words of God the father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit. And they are trying to reach you heart, but there is not room for truth as deception lodges there.

It’s as if you would rather hear a lie from your pastor than an “It is written” form God. Pastor Vaughn, what do you mean I would rather hear a lie from my pastor than an “It is written” from God. Believe me I am telling you this with all the love in my heart I can possibly have for you. But what I say is true. I can prove it. Ask your pastor this, “Why do we go to church on Sunday instead of the seventh day Sabbath of the Bible?” Here are an assortment of some of the lying words you will hear from your Pastor. “It doesn’t matter which day we keep holy, as long as we keep one.” OR “We keep Sunday holy because we honor the resurrection of Jesus.” OR “Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath and Sunday is the Christian Sabbath” OR one of a number of other reasons, but never a reason with a Bible text to show God changed it. Because there is none! But if you read God’s “It is Written,” He says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” He started that commandment with the word remember because he knew how much Satan hated God’s law and His Sabbath; and that Satan was determined to get man to worship his Pagan Sabbath, making almost the whole Christian world forget. 
  
But God has this scripture for you who love deception, Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God.” 
  
He had the prophet Isaiah write in Isaiah 29:13 “Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:”

When Jesus comes, and He will come very soon, the majority of Christians will not be ready and will be lost. Why will they be lost? Why might you be lost no matter how saved you and your pastor may think you are? The loss of eternity will be because they and you will have failed God’s final test of obedience. The first test of obedience was a single fruit tree in a garden of many fruit trees. Would our first parents be obedient to their God and Creator, or would they choose to set God’s law aside and rebel against God’s authority?

They chose rebellion and we ended up with a 6,000 year nightmare. Now we are about to have God’s final test of obedience and Satan is determined, that you and every Christian he can get to join him in the final rebellion against God, will be lost.

What is the final test that will involve obedience to God or enslavement to Satan? The answer is simple and Biblical. Since Creation, on the seventh day of that first week, God made Holy the seventh day, He sanctified it by setting it apart from the other six days He calls working days, He blessed the seventh day and what God blesses stays blessed forever. The seventh day Sabbath was made before sin entered the world, made 2500 years before there was the first Jew. And that seventh day Sabbath will be kept throughout eternity according to Isaiah 66:23 “And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD.”

But there will be a group of people who will not join this worldwide rebellion as they will keep all of God’s Ten Commandments including the 4th commandment, to keep holy the 7th day Sabbath. How do I know? I know because in the last book of the Bible, Revelation 12:17 it says, “12:17 And the dragon (that’s Satan) was wroth with the woman, (that’s God’s church) and went to make war with the remnant (that’s the small number of obedient God’s people in the last days) of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”
This is not new information as I have preached this before on this station. It has had no effect upon you. Satan is delighted because keeping God’s Sabbath is not something you want to do. Defending Sunday is supporting Satan’s cause and rejects God’s clear word.

Jesus said in Matthew 16:24, 25, “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.”  

Following Jesus involves bearing a cross, not wearing a cross. 2 Timothy 3:12 says, “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”

Are you suffering persecution because of your faith; or has a watered down, easy religion employing cheap grace made you a friend of the world? James 4:4 “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” This is talking about spiritual adultery, unfaithfulness to God and His Sabbath. Sunday keepers are friends of the world and therefore according to scripture are enemies of God regardless of their profession.

I am sad as I write and record this broadcast. You do not want to be reached, you want to be entertained. But I am a preacher and not an entertainer. Do me a favor, call this radio station and let them know if I should take this program off this station or continue it.

Time is up for this week’s study, so be tuned in next week as we will continue this important study, “The Final Test of Obedience” – Part 2.

	If you want some more information or even Bible studies, contact me by writing to: Pastor Vaughn that’s V-A-U-G-H-N, at PO Box 727, South Hill, VA 23970. Once again that’s Pastor Vaughn that’s V-A-U-G-H-N, at PO Box 727, South Hill, VA 23970. 
 
	And remember, you are always welcome to worship with us each seventh day Lord’s Day (that’s Saturday mornings) at the Victory Seventh Day Adventist Church located at 117 W. Danville Street in the center of South Hill, VA. How about starting this next Sabbath day?

	Until next week, Jesus said in John 5:39, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me”. Even so, Come Lord Jesus.