You got a good reading back there? Good evening, everyone. Just tidy up a little bit of bookkeeping and that kind of thing here for you real quick. About the Palestinians and their request with the UN for statehood, they have taken that and put it under advisement, and they've assigned, I believe, 15 people within the UN that are going to work on this thing and within three months' time they have told them they have to define borders for Palestine. Now, there's a major problem with that. They can define anything they want, but if the Israelis don't agree with it, they have a problem. So it goes back to the original thing of what we said clear back when. that in order to do what they're asking to do, they have got to sit down at the table with Israel and work out these differences. They are not going to be able to define the borders that they want to claim because that land belongs to Israel. So Israel is willing to sit down and discuss it with them. In fact, Prime Minister Netanyahu said specifically, let's sit down and talk now, here, at the UN. And they declined. But so they have three months to come up with some definition of borders. And then by the end of six months, they have to come up with a fully defined government with one leader, not two. And it just, it's not going to go well. Let me just tell you that. And then if all of that was to even go by the way, and here's another thing that I can tell you with that. The United States is fully behind them. There are some within the European Union are behind Israel. Let me straighten it out. We are totally behind Israel. Some of the European Union is also siding with us and Israel. The unfortunate thing is even England is waffling right now, which is not good. And so there's a whole lot of nations in this country today that really what it boils down to is they say, you know, what's the big deal? Let's get on with it. And it can't work that way. And I guess I just have to reiterate to you, You have to be there and see it to understand more than just what you hear in the news media is going on. It's an incredible thing. It would be like someone just arbitrarily coming into Cartersville and saying, okay, we're going to declare this is our city. in Cartersville. And you see that's the other problem with the whole thing is that the Palestinians are also claiming Jerusalem which is a major problem. Jerusalem as Benjamin Netanyahu says is the capital of Israel period. And so, there you go. I don't know, that would be like Russia coming in and saying that Washington, D.C. is also the capital of Russia, to give you an analogy. And so, things are not, they're not progressing, and thank goodness for that. And God has his hands in all of these things. That's just an update. Essentially there is nothing going on right now out in front as far as the Palestinian state. So let's get on back into our study of angels. We were talking last week about the holy angels in particular, their personality, work, and destiny. And we were going over several of the things that the angels actually do, what their responsibilities are. And we got down to the point where we were talking about the work among unbelievers. And I made a statement there last week and I want to reiterate that again because I heard an interesting thing just last night. We were talking about the work of the angels among nations and I said angelic beings function in the capacity of world leaders, rulers, and or nations. And that as an example Michael, the chief prince and archangel is the chief prince over Israel. Now there comes some things along about Some of the nations that have these dictators and this kind of thing that's going on that is not paying attention to human rights of their peoples and this kind of thing, those are angels. They just aren't holy angels that are following that. I made reference as an example, there was an interview last night on CNN, and Pierce Morgan was interviewing Joel Olsteen. And one of the things he asked Joel was how could a loving and merciful God allow something such as the Holocaust and Hitler to happen? And I thought it was interesting what Joel said. He said, well, God doesn't cause these things to happen. You have to remember that God gave mankind choice between good and evil, just as he did the angels. It just kind of all fell into place. But so there was not a holy angel that was standing up for Adolf Hitler in Germany at the time. And so I would say, and this is not scriptural, but I'll say it, in my belief, Satan has got a lot of things going on with his angels as well. And there had to be a fallen evil angel that was leading and guiding Adolf Hitler and what he was doing. But the interesting part of all of that was, Cheryl and I were talking about that a little bit after that was over with, God takes bad things and makes good out of them. And you say, okay, Bob, there were six million Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust and that's interesting because there are six million Jews in Israel today. And so essentially that whole population of people was wiped out, six million people. But you know when we got to talking about that and everything else, God says in his word that he will bring his people back having been scattered throughout the nations of the world, that he would bring them back to the promised land that he gave them. And the truth is, I don't know that it would take six million, but the way the Jews were scattered, there was only a remnant of Jews left in Israel when World War II broke out. They were scattered all over the world. And had the Holocaust not happened, the question that would come in my mind is would they have returned to Israel without that? They were living essentially in every part of the world. And getting along, if you will, with this kind of thing. Would they have stayed there? We don't know. But it's kind of my thought, and this is Bob again, it's kind of my thought that God brought good out of the bad. Because there is a state of Israel today because of it. And it was primarily because of the Holocaust. And so the evil angels are working throughout. And we were talking then about work of angels among believers. And when we got down to the point of talking about angels have guardianship to carry out protective care for believers. And as we were talking before, We have proof, I think, that those angels are assigned to people before they believe. But God knows who is going to accept his son. That's the predestination thing that they talk about. And so I really believe that Those guardian angels are assigned to believers before they become believers. I truly believe that. God is protecting them along the way. I've got work for this one to do. He's not working for me yet, but he's going to. I can speak from personal feelings about that because some of the things I've done I should probably not be up here talking to you right now. But God has protected me throughout the things Now, I had something stated to me here last week that I can't either prove or deny, that there might be more than one guardian angel. And as many as three, I'm told. Yes? Because some of them don't write well. Isn't that what you told me? Okay. Okay. Did you follow that? One writes the good, one writes the bad, and the other one is busy with us. I don't know. I can't deny or I was not able to find it. I spent a good while looking for it, but that's neither here or there. God will do whatever is necessary to protect us. And as I said last week, that doesn't mean that we can't have things happen to us. Okay? But God has his way, just like we were talking about the Jews in the Holocaust. Good things I think can be attributed to God and the guardian angels. All bad definitely cannot. We get back into this thing about mankind and choice and this kind of thing and we make a lot of bad choices. But suffice it to say that we have guardian angels around us. And Tommy is here tonight, and it depends on whether we have time, and if we don't, we'll let him share some of his with us, either tonight or tomorrow. But right now I'd like to go on, or next week, I mean. So it's probably gonna be next week, Tommy, but he's got some wonderful things to tell you. And it's a kind of thing if we're studying angels that we need to hear because this isn't, as I can say in here, that God protected Lot, okay, and Sodom and Gomorrah and all that. He protected one after another. But let's get up to date. I'm talking about Tommy Bentley. He's got about three or four things that he can tell you about that I would tell you without a doubt in my mind that there was an angel there with him when that happened. Okay, so we'll go ahead. In Matthew 18, 10 it teaches us that all children have guardian angels. God watches after them. That doesn't mean that bad can't happen to children. We hear, go down to Scottish Rites Hospital and see how many children there are down there going through such suffering and this kind of thing. It's not that God put the suffering on them. We're sitting here talking about two twins that's related right here to Gail. Okay, God doesn't cause bad things to happen. There's a lot of other reasons for those things. Part of it has to do with genetics and all kinds of other things, okay? The only two people that were pure health-wise in everything else was Adam and Eve, until they got to the tree, right? They were perfectly healthy and God created him that way. But through all these generations and everything else that goes on, we have picked up, what's the first thing a doctor says to you when you go in and say, I've been having chest pains? What kind of history do you have in your family? Okay? And we talk about these things many times about family histories and that's through genetics. And so things happen, but you know, even like with the little children that are suffering, this child has got to be in the house for the winter. And I can tell you that's cold. We were only as far as Iowa, weren't we? And they're on up further than that. That these things happen. But God still blessed the birth of a child or two children in this case in the same way we're down there. And so all that God doesn't know bad. All right. That has to do again with us and genetics and all these other kind of things and choices. I don't want to leave that out. So all children have guardian angels. Hebrews 114 states that every believer has a guardian angel. Angels are often used to save or rescue believers from specific situations. And Tommy is going to relate some of those when we get a minute. Angels, examples, angels were used to rescue Lot, as I said, from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In fact, he sent two down to his house and asked them, come out of here, Lot. And he told them why, or they told him why. Angels were used to assist Jacob. Angels fed Elijah when he was on the run. God told him to go down by a brook. And it was angels that fed him while he was there. And if you really want to look at that closely, what kind of shape can angels take on, this and that? We've talked before about he can take on human form. He said he was being fed by ravens. Okay? The manna that was coming from the sky was being delivered by angels. when they were in the wilderness. And they called that angel's food, by the way. An angel fed Elijah and 1 Kings. An angel protected the three friends of Daniel in the fiery furnace. Angels guide believers into truth and actions. Angels instructed Joseph to believe Mary's story. that she was truly a virgin even though she was pregnant, but she was going to have the Son of God. That's in Matthew 1. An angel brought Philip to a situation where he could witness to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. An angel instructed Cornelius, excuse me, to send for Peter so that he might preach to him the gospel. And there's story after story. Angels assist in answering believers' prayers. And I did bring that, didn't I? Something I'll read to you here that Mary Sinyard gave to me. This is something that she carried around in her Bible. Women have a propensity to worry. And more so probably than men. That's the way God made you all. And there's absolutely nothing with this. And this was titled, A Worrying Angel. It says, flying down from up above. to melt your stress away comes a cheerful worry angel to put a smile back into your day. She's here to pray and listen as you share your woes and care to fly them right back to God because he always answers prayer. I thought she said she keeps this in her Bible. And when she gets down to worrying about things, she pulls it out and reads it. And it's a beautiful thing because it just kind of does point out that angels are used. Angels answered Daniel's prayers twice concerning his need for more revelation. You can find that in Daniel 9, 20 and 10, 12. A group of saints were praying for Peter's release from prison. And angels were used to rescue him. Read that in Acts 12. I went back and looked at that again. And it was pretty interesting because the angels come down and freed him from the prison. And the officials sent them back to the jail and the jail doors were still locked and they unlocked it and went inside and they weren't there. They were out preaching in the temple as God asked them to do. So they assist in answering prayers, and you know that Peter was putting prayers up from that prison at that time. Angels are employed to provide encouragement to believers. Part of this that I just read to you, but look in Acts 5.18. And also in Acts 27. Angels have the ministry of observing believers to see how they are acting or responding. I chuckled when I wrote that down. I copied that, by the way. And most of this I did. My goodness, I hope they aren't watching everything. Or if they do, I hope they don't talk. But they're writing down the bad, aren't they? That's how one is doing that. Here's some examples of that in Luke 12. The faith of a believer is confessed before the angels, it says in Luke 12, 8 and 9. Angels observe this suffering. of believers that's in first Corinthians four nine angels are present when believers make commitments to the Lord that's in first Timothy and that's talking about that's not talking about committing for salvation it's talking about committing to work for the Lord And if you get into 1 Timothy, I think that's where you'll find the instructions for the pastors and the instructions for the deacons and the instructions. And when you commit to that, the angels record that. That's the good one. Angels observe and look into God's work of salvation in 1 Peter 1, 10, and 12. It says they are awed by that. And we spoke about that before, because they don't know what salvation is. You see, they don't sin, the holy angels. And so they don't understand, what is this thing? And they rejoice when it happens, the scriptures say that. But they are also in awe and wonder when that happens. In Luke 16 it tells us angels are responsible to carry a believer's soul to their abode in heaven when he dies. We have that promise. See? There you go. And that's why so many people believe that a burial of a loved one should be rejoicing. That is happening because the angels come and took that person to heaven if they believe. Angels serve as guardians over local churches of believers. Now I added that of believers. That's in Revelation 2 and 3. If you read the letters to the churches you will see that. And then I have something here that I wanted to add on that is called Believer's Proper Attitude Toward Angels. There is specific things written in the scriptures that we must be very careful about when it comes to angels. One of them is in Daniel. Daniel 8, 16, and 17, and also 10, 1 through 9. Believers are allowed to wonder and be amazed at the angel's ability and work. So we can be amazed at what angels do. Whenever I give up the floor and let him tell you about some of these things, it is amazing. And we just have to, it's not happenstance. It's not luck. Okay? It is God intervening. This one is mine. And I have other work for him. I love that in itself. So we can also, in Hebrews 1, we can appreciate angels' ministries. However, here is one that you must listen to. 1 Corinthians 2.18. Believers are forbidden to worship angels. They're partners. Side by side with us. And we can thank God for them. Cheryl was trying to name her angel. I think God probably already had done that, right? But we are not to worship them. How many times have you seen in Revelation where they told John to get up and don't worship me? It was angels speaking to him. But you know, when I was growing up, the very first prayer I learned, and I said this prayer for a long time, I don't know if anybody knows it, before I went to sleep at night, when I was little, they taught me this prayer. Now that you're a believer, pray it to God. That's right. It was angels too. In 1 Corinthians 6 3 it tells us that believers will judge angels in the future and that verse references saints judging angels. Now here we go. We will not judge good angels. We will judge the evil angels. That's exactly right. The holy angels have not sinned and therefore there is no judgment to be done. But that's where this thing gets kind of turned around a little bit that the angels are at this time are a level above man. But man will get up to that point or maybe just a little beyond that when we judge the angels. And that's mentioned several times. in the scriptures and one of the things I would like to say is because we know the word tells us that God assigns guardian angels to us. I cannot tell you that I have found this scripturally, but you see the little picture all the time of a little angel sitting on your shoulder and the little devil on the other one. That's not Farfetched folks. Because you see those fallen ones with Satan are angels also. And this is only Bob speaking now, because I cannot give you a scripture that would tell me this, but I would make a pretty educated guess, I believe, that Satan assigns an angel to us as well, as God does. And the one thing we have to be careful about is that angel seems to be winning a whole lot of times, doesn't he? When we think about all the things that are going on in this world today. I was interested there last night when that interview was going on with Joel Osteen. He kept that smiling face that he has. And he kept that very positive attitude that he has. And the questions were just unreal. Because they were asking him about, of course, Hitler and the Holocaust, and where's the loving God in these things, you know. And he said, no, we're talking about man here. And I wanted to whisper in his ear, tell him, we're talking about Satan. Okay, don't put it on God. It's Satan. And then they got into asking him about whether or not he could vote for a Mormon and tried to get him to commit on something there. And he was very elusive on that. And then he wanted to talk to him about homosexuality. And he told him what his response was, what the scriptures say. God says that's an abomination. And so they wanted to stretch it on out. They wanted to, you know, okay, well, are you saying that in that huge mega church that you have down there in Texas that you don't have any homosexuals in your congregation? He said, no, I know I do. And he said, we love them. Okay, but God also gives them direction. And I just wondered to myself how much of that maybe they had cut out of that interview that they showed. And then they wanted to get on into talking about abortion. And he stood his ground on abortion. When a child is conceived, it's life. And he is pro-life. He said, I'll tell you right now, I'm pro-life. And so then they wanted to talk about capital punishment and execution. He said, isn't that life? Oh my, you see how they try to turn these things around. And I'm sitting there and it was interesting because I'm quite sure there were some things that they essentially either he said it and they edited it out or they asked him not to say it one or the other. But, it's like I told Sheryl, in the case of capital punishment, we don't have to be for or against it, and that is essentially what Joel Osteen said there on the thing. But, what does the Bible say? Okay, he says that we are to obey the laws that we're in. We didn't make the laws, we obeyed them. And so if the state decides to take a life that was through the courts and all this, can they make a mistake? Sure they can make a mistake because we're man. And this gentleman that was, I say gentleman, freely, that was executed here in Georgia just a week or so ago. Was he innocent? We don't know. But what I do know is God says follow the law where you're at and that's what we did. We don't have to like it one way or the other when it comes to that kind of thing. It doesn't say that I'm for or against it and nor did he. But God gives us pure and clean instruction in here that we are to obey the laws that we live under. And then we get around to whoever is the leader that is making the laws, right? Well, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you there. But at any rate, where I was going with all that is God gives us good instruction on any and all things in His Word. And that's where we should be working. And it's just like the homosexual people and this kind of thing. God gives direction and we should encourage that direction. But we still need to love one another. He doesn't say hate them because of their choices. We are to love. And sometimes that gets very difficult. But it's just like all the rest. So, I tell you, next week for sure, Tommy, you be ready. I want Tommy to share with you the guardian angels that he has had in his life. And I will say it in plural because there's some interesting stories there. We'll start there because the next step that we're going to take is on into the evil angels. And I don't know about you all, but I just keep pushing that back. I'd rather talk about the good ones than the bad. But it is part of us and part of life. And God didn't create him that way, but he gave him the choice. And they made bad choices. So we'll still learn some more about angels. But Tommy, if you will, next week when we start, I'd like to have you share a couple of those stories that we know that angels was intervening in his life for certain. So we'll start with that next week. They're very interesting. Let's have our prayer. Almighty God, Lord, we just thank you for this wonderful day that you have given us, Lord. Another day that you have allowed us to have the time, Lord, that we could spend just talking about your work and your gospel, about sharing with others the need for salvation that you have given to us freely and mercifully. We thank you for that. And Lord, we thank you for this study on angels that we're learning so very much. And we thank you for those guardian angels that you give us, Lord. And we just know that there are evil ones out there as well, but as Jesus said when he was being tempted, Satan, get behind me. And we have to say through Jesus, Satan, get behind me. We know that you will protect us, Lord, as we go through our way, but we have to continue to look at you for guidance and direction and wisdom in making our choices as we go along the way. Let us serve you that would honor you. Let us just know that those angels are there with us, Lord, and we know that you are as well. We thank you for that. Be with us as we go on our way, Lord. Bless each one that's here tonight. Abundant blessings on each of the households, Father, that take the time to serve you and worship you. We thank you, we praise you. In the mighty name of Jesus, amen.