The morning Manna will be provided at 6am. Thanks.

Studying In the Crucible with Christ in the SSnet.org series Lesson 4, may the Holy Spirit be the speaker to your heart. 

The Topic today is: "God of love is with people when they suffer in extreme heat"

The Opening Hymn will be 229 "Spirit of the Living God"

The Sabbath School Quarterly, downloadable from SSnet.org in the Teacher's Edition is on page 62 and for the laymen edition or Standard Edition, on page 43.

The SSnet.org site allows anyone, anywhere to read the lesson in their own language. Choose your own language to see God speaking also to your heart.

---The lesson today is about the question why God allow suffering to come over us? The question is to belittle God. The atheist evolutionist Richard Dawkins question. He wish to insist not on an

absentee God but a non-existent God. He is an atheist.

---But this earth is in a big picture of the Great Controversy with time-period allocated of sin going through various styles and fashions of generations. We are the first to be the Digital-generation.

---Sin in a digital advanced age is the suffering we are going through now. Very necessary.

---It is the last generation. God wants to show the universe, even if every techonology is very advanced, advanced technology cannot reduce sin nor solve the wages of sin is death problem.

---With a smartphone in the hand, people still die from covid 19. Even in that technology Satan has his tricks and continue his deceptions and lies.

---But Isaiah 43:1-7 is God expressing His love for people and His presence with them in this skew world.

---Isaiah started out the chapter by indicating how God Created the remnant, formed them, [they fell] and He redeemed them (v. 1).

---Blessings of protection are given in a long list (v. 2) and the reason for God’s involvement is His love “I love you” (v. 4b).

---About the provision in time of trouble, M. L. Andreasen said about verses 2-3 in his Sabbath School Quarterly of 1928 page 11: “When the trials of the last days shall come, these promises will become very precious indeed.”

---A global gathering of the remnant is predicted, not just of Israel from Assyria or Babylon but “everyone who is called by My name” (v.7a).

Says M. L. Andreasen about this calling: “’Called by My name.’ Of a certain company it is written that they will have the Father's name written in their foreheads. Rev. 14: 1. God's name is what He is. Ex. 3: 14. Hence, to be called by the name of God means to have His character.”

---This gathering is reserved for the time of the Latter Rain since it coincides with the time of the condition of the Laodicea remnant, blind and deaf and the gathering is also during that time “all the nations have gathered together in order that the peoples may be assembled” (v. 9). It is a future prediction (v. 9c-d).

---M. L. Andreasen considered verses 5-6 to be applicable in time of the Third Angels’ Message of Revelation 14:6-12 in 1928 page 12: “This scripture is now being fulfilled. The message is sounding in all parts of the earth, and God is calling men from every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.”

---The setting of the chapter is an Investigative Judgment since v. 9e-f indicates that.

---Also M. L. Andreasen considered also a Judgment scene as applicable here in 1928 page 12: “God is calling all nations together as to a judgment scene.”

---Delitzsch indicated in Vol. II of his Isaiah commentary in 1890 page 181 of the English edition that “to bring out” [hoṣia`] used in verse 8 does not mean to bring the exiles out out but judgment: “...signifies here, not to bring out of the exile, as in Ezek. xx. 34, 41, xxxiv. 13 (Hitzig et al.),—the names by which Israel is here called do not suggest bringing out in this sense,—but to bring to the place of judicial trial (Gesenius, Meyer, and Knobel).”

---We are all on the same page despite that Delitzsch et al are preterists and Andreasen and myself are historicists.

---J. Mortyer in his 1993 commentary on Isaiah said on page 333 about verses 8-13: “Isaiah uses again a favourite literary form, the courtroom drama.”

---He divided it in the following sections: the court assembled (8-9b); the issue announced (9c-f); the Lord’s witnesses (10a-d); the Lord’s claim (10e-11b); the issue settled (12); the verdict (13).

---God prepares a people faithful to Him accepting His invitation to all in all generations. Also you the reader and me as well. Let us approach God together!