John Thiel Mp3

Zephaniah 3:12-13 I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord. The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies. Neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth, for they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid.

I have a purpose this hour to let God unfold to us His remnant church. And I emphasise, let God unfold it to us because there are many claims made by different individuals and different people in the church that the Seventh-day Adventist organisation is God’s remnant church.

We want God to make it clear to us from His Holy Word. For those who have been here in our Sabbath school lessons in the past six months, there was a remnant that came out of each church period. We also learned that the seven churches were not seven literal churches, but they were one church running through seven periods of time—one church. Under inspiration, we get the picture clearly.

The names of the seven churches are symbolic of the church in different periods of the Christian era. The church—the number seven indicates completeness and is symbolic of the fact that the messages extend to the end of time, while the symbols used reveal the condition of the church at different periods in the history of the world. Acts of the Apostles page 585

The church, not the churches, the church—the body of Christ. Let’s just refresh our memories on that by coming over to Ephesians, chapter 4. The book of Ephesians, the letter of Ephesians, chapter 4, and we read there verses 15 and 16:

Ephesians 4:15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: 16 From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

Jesus is the head of the body and if you have a head on a body, you know that head is Jesus. The whole body is Jesus.

Ephesians 4:4 There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling. 5 One baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

One body, the head of which is Jesus. The oneness—this absolute—there is only one. Only one body, only one church. It’s the church. We are surrounded by so many Christian churches and groups and independent companies that to try and absorb what the Apostle is talking about is not easy.

To understand the Remnant Church correctly, we need a correct understanding of Christ’s body. Doesn’t that make sense? If the church is the body of Christ, then we need a correct understanding of Christ’s body, do we not? This will help us to understand. If you’re going to follow it diligently and very carefully, you will not end up in a wrong conclusion. To understand the body of Christ, the church, we must understand the physical reality of the body of Jesus.

Hebrews 10:5 Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: 6In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. 7 Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.

It’s very interesting that the Apostle, under inspiration, quoted that scripture. That scripture doesn’t say “a body hast Thou prepared for Me.” It says something a little bit different, but under inspiration, that’s what he identifies there as the meaning.

Psalm 40:6 Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. 7Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, 8I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.

These words are directly quoted with the extra “for Me” because that body that You have prepared for Me has ended me up in verse 11 and 12. That body that was made for the Word of God, Jesus—that body, what was it made of? What was the body made under the law?

It’s very important for us to understand what is meant here—made under the law. If you have broken a law, are you under the law? You’re not under the law if you’re perfectly obedient to the law. He was made in a human body, thank you, of the same line of begats. Why? Because when He was born of this woman, she had in her, like every other woman, the genetic makeup of all that has been passed on to her from generations before. The Roman Catholic Church does not believe that Jesus was made of a woman that had any hereditary sin influence upon her. It’s called the Immaculate Conception. This is not biblical. The Immaculate Conception is that Mary was sanctified and changed in her body so that she could not pass on to Jesus any sinful flesh. But that is not Biblical. We want to understand perfectly what the body of Jesus is.

Hebrews 2:14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same.”

The same flesh and blood, yes? That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. Tell me, can the flesh of a perfect person, the perfect flesh, can that die? No, it’s sinful flesh that has to die. He partook with us of the same flesh, the same body as we have.

Hebrews 2:15 And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Among the animals in a stable, human pride and self-sufficiency stand rebuked in His presence. But this was only the beginning of His wonderful condescension. To be born like that, that’s only just surface material. What is underneath that? It tells you. It would have been an almost infinite humiliation had been weakened by 4,000 years of sin. Like every child of Adam, He accepted the results. What did He accept when He was made a human being? He accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity. The law of heredity—the results of this. What was made? Made of a woman—of the law of heredity that was in His body.

Romans 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.

You can understand the body of Christ, both physical body and spiritual body—the church.  

1 Peter 2:24 Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

Where were our sins? Where were the sins? Who His own self bare our sins where? In His own body. On the tree that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness. By whose stripes you are healed. What was that? Where were the sins? In His own body. That’s why it says “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” so that He could condemn sin in His flesh. He spoke to them about the Lord’s Supper. What did He call His body?

1 Corinthians 11:24 This is My body, which was broken for you?

Jesus was broken. Are we not broken? We now of Jesus’ flesh, His broken body equals the body of the church—the body of the church. Christ’s body is the church. Try to comprehend what this is trying to come across to us from God’s Word—the suffering of Jesus, because of a broken body, is to be the experience of the body of Christ, the church.

1 Peter 4:1-2 Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.

Are you beginning to see something here about the body of Christ, the church? Are you beginning to see what God’s intention is? The church, the body of Christ, we are coming into what Jesus did with His flesh. Many people who are baptised do not seem to realise what they’re doing. That’s why Sister White says many people are baptised, but they are buried alive. Self did not die. To be baptised means to enter into the body of Christ—to suffer with sin that we must condemn.

Romans 6:3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 4Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 5For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: 6Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

When we do understand, we know we are carrying with us a body of sin— a flesh that keeps on tempting us, keeps on working. We must overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil. That’s the part. Some people can handle the world and Satan, but the flesh is the dimension that is very poorly appreciated. This principle of being baptised into the death of Jesus is often taken as, well, that’s once, and I don’t have to die ever after. What did Jesus say? We are to follow Jesus, speaking.

Luke 9:22 Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day. 23And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

If you will be His sinful flesh, He showed us the way so that we, if we are part of the body of Christ, if we are baptized into the body of Christ, then this is the path—taking up our cross daily. In the beginning, when we became baptized, if we understood what we were doing, we were entering into the body. Every member of the body of Christ is doing that if they are the body of Christ.

We see this particular reality in the history of the church. You know very well, the church from its very inception was a body of Christ that was suffering. We see it in the history of the martyrs: Apostle Paul himself, beheaded; Apostle Peter, put on a cross upside down.

The only one of the apostles that didn’t die was John the Revelator, but he was sent into exile on the island of Patmos. And thereafter, God’s people, the body of Christ, was constantly suffering, dying, because they wanted to obey the Word of God and not their flesh.

That is the remnant church. The remnant church in every period of time were the forerunners. They would be the ones that overcame, where the rest of the church fell into disarray. This is the remnant church all through the history of the apostolic Christian church.

In Revelation 12:17 you come to the very end—the very last remnant church.

Revelation 12:17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

In chapter 12 you see Jesus—the child that was begotten—the man child is always the same. It’s always the remnant all the way through until the very end—the remnant of her seed. It is the apostolic church confirming God’s people.

The body of Christ is a body that is suffering. That is the body of Christ—no different from the physical reality of Jesus’ body. We are all of the same body of Jesus when we become born again. We have a mind that is condemning the sin in the flesh. This remnant church is the church that came into existence in the time of Sister White. It was already in existence, but it was changing hands from one period of earth to the next period of the earth. Notice, very carefully, this entwinement with the same Jesus—the intimacy.

The church was identified with Jesus in His experience and it was the body of Christ. The searchers after truth felt that the identification of Christ with their nature and interest was complete. Truth was made to shine forth, beautiful in its simplicity, dignified with a power. Selected Messages Book 2, page 109.

You hear it expressed by many Seventh-day Adventists when they point to the Seventh-day Adventist Church of today: “This is God’s Remnant Church.” Think carefully. What is God’s Remnant Church? How did we just explore it? It is the body of Christ that is in tune in the intimacy of sinful flesh with the divine mind.

As it was in Jesus, it is a people who are not living according to the flesh; they have an entwined relationship with Jesus. Sr White is forecasting a problem among Seventh-day Adventists. We have just seen how the Bible combines the body—the physical body of Jesus—with every other physical person who accepts Him as his personal Savior, and that as Jesus did, they will condemn sin in the flesh. They will not dwell after the flesh, but after the Spirit. They will condemn sin in the flesh. That church, the body of Christ, is the remnant.

A great reformation was to take place among Seventh-day Adventists, and that this reformation would consist in giving up the doctrines which stand as the pillars of our faith, and engaging in a process of reorganization. Were this reformation to take place, what would result? The principles of truth that God in His wisdom has given to the remnant church, would be discarded. 1SM 204.2

The doctrine of the atonement of Jesus, in its reality that they absorbed, and that what she just said before—the identification with Christ to them was a reality.  hat identification of those pure doctrines in their experience—Sister White says that there would be such a thing that would happen in the organisation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church that a new kind of thing, you know, people don’t like the old thing. They want something new all the time. Always want something new. But in this message, there is one pure truth over the 50 years that is in situ to be the—so as we read this statement, notice what Sister White wrote—that this new organisation would discard some of those in-depth realities that the church that she called the Remnant Church had embraced.

The principles of truth that God, in His wisdom, had given the remnant church would be discarded. Our religion would be changed. The fundamental principles that have sustained the work for the last 50 years would be accounted as error. 1SM 204.2

The last 50 years—she wrote this in 1904. Fifty years, there was the remnant truth—the remnant church. That is the remnant church, just as it was all through history. At the very end, when the final conflict would take place:

I saw the nominal church and nominal Adventists, like Judas, would betray us to the Catholics to obtain their influence to come against the truth. The saints then will be an obscure people, little known to the Catholics. Spalding and Magan page 1.5

Can you see the Remnant Church? What are they? What did we read in our scripture reading? A poor and afflicted people that entered into the pure nature of the body of Christ.

Zephaniah 3:12 I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord.

How did Sister White describe it here? The saints then will be an obscure people, little known to the Catholics. Is the Seventh-day Adventist Church organization of today little known to the Catholics? Is the reform movement little known to the Catholics? Is the IMS little known to the Catholics? These are all organisations that are well known.  They are part of the body of Christ that has existed all the way through history, suffering with Christ.

The opposition which Christ receives is from those who profess to be their brethren.” The Remnant Church is who? Those who are part of the body of Christ who receive opposition from His own nation, His own people. Review and Herald, August 28, 1883, paragraph 13

But when the Remnant Church begins to persecute their own people, it’s no longer the Remnant Church. And you just have to go back to the First World War. You just have to go back to the Second World War and look at what the church did to its own members.  The Remnant Church, very clearly, is the church that is the body of Christ in all its reality. May God help us to understand and to reach out for that body, that suffering that Jesus is suffering so that we might overcome as He overcame.