Unconventional Impromptu Study

Some of the Bible studies God has been having me give is anything but conventional. Today was probably the epitome of what I’m talking about. This is a continuation of the studying with Eloise, so if you need to be updated on her read the blog post “One Can Make All the Difference.” But here’s the summary, the only thing Eloise has been wanting to study is the book of Daniel (praise the Lord for the Daniel class I took at SOULS West, because it’s helped so much). So far we’ve been going through the beginning stories (mainly chapters 1-6) and she’s been reading Prophets and Kings along with it. 

Every week it takes at least three hours to study with her because she has a lot of questions and she loves studying as well. Also every week is different and I honestly have no idea what she’s going to ask me. The biggest preparation I do for this study is pray, and I constantly pray while we’re studying together.

In Friday's study, Eloise wanted to go through Daniel 8. As I started taking her through Daniel 8 God was putting on my heart “you need to take her back to Daniel 7,” so I did. We started going through the beasts and what they represented and then we got to little horn. 

She confidently said, “oh that’s the antichrist.” 

So I responded, “do you know what the antichrist is?” 

If you could’ve listened to the thoughts in my mind it would’ve understood the battle going on in there. Part of me knew that I needed to explain what little horn was, and another part of me really didn’t want to go there just yet because I knew what her background was like. Eloise kept asking me, “wait just tell me what it is.” But I refused to give her a direct answer, instead I would respond, “I want to show you what the Bible says.” Eloise must’ve begged me to tell her who it was at least 10 times, but each time I turned back to the Bible.

I pulled out a piece of paper and we went through each description of little horn, verse by verse. After we went through all the descriptions, I held up the paper and started to read all of them off, and all of the sudden it clicked in her mind. Eloise’s jaw dropped because she figured it out. "It all makes sense," she said. 

I didn’t say a word, but simply nodded. God put on my heart to show her the documentary Revelation: The bride, the beat, and Babylon, so I did. We were only an hour and a half into our study by this time so we still had time. The entire time Eloise kept looking over to me and would say the following: “I didn’t know that…wow, that’s true…you know... always wondered about that, but I was told not to question it.” 

It was almost like I could see her wheels turning in her mind as she watched the DVD. The interesting about that DVD is it basically goes through all the things we believe as Adventists but they do it by showing how certain traditions has fallen away from the Bible. So basically Eloise was introduced to baptism by immersion, the myths of hell, the Sabbath…and many more…and she’s open to all of them all because she understands little horn. This probably isn’t a very conventional way of introducing your Bible study contact to a bunch of core Biblical truths, but God definitely used it to reach Eloise. 

I saw Eloise the next night at our church's Archeology seminar featuring Tony Moore. We've had quite a turn out each night, with over 125 people coming each night. Something that made me extremely happy was Eloise didn't come alone, she brought her husband Joe and her grand daughter as well. 

I met up with them after the seminar and Joe thanked me again for all the time that I had spent studying with Eloise. He then said, "I'll be here for the Revelation seminar as well too, that's something that really interests me."