Well, we know that the Spirit of God has wrought praise deep in our hearts, and we can even praise Him in the midst of judgments. And we're going to be reading Revelation 18, 9 through 19. The kings of the earth who fornicated and lived luxuriously with her will weep and mourn over her when they see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for fear of her torment, saying, alas, alas, oh, great city Babylon, oh, mighty city. Because your judgment came in one hour. And the merchants of the earth weep and sorrow over her because no one buys their goods anymore. Goods of gold and of silver, of precious stones and of pearl, of fine linen and of purple, of silk and of scarlet, every citron wood and object of irie, every object of most precious wood and of bronze and of iron and of marble. cinnamon, and incense, and perfume, and frankincense, wine, and olive oil, and fine flour, and wheat, cattle, and sheep, and horses, and carriages, and bodies, and souls of men. Yes, the fruit that your soul craved has gone from you, and all the sumptuous and splendid things have perished from you, and you will never find them again. The merchants of these things who became rich by her will stand afar off for fear of her torment, weeping and sorrowing and saying, alas, alas, oh great city that was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet and was adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls because in one hour such great wealth was laid waste. and every ship captain, and all who travel by ship, sailors, and as many as work the sea, stood afar off and cried out, seeing the smoke of her burning, saying, who is like the great city? They threw dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and sorrowing, and saying, alas, alas, oh great city, by which all who had ships in the sea became rich by her costly abundance, because in one hour she was laid waste. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word, and I pray that as we dig into it, that we would not only appreciate a sense of history, but we would appreciate that you are the Lord of history. And you, as the one who governs all of history, even now, love us, care for us, can protect us. And Father, we bless you that we are secure, that we can walk day by day with your hand in our hand. And I pray that you would give this people a sense of confidence as they look at this passage. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, Fernando Aguirre wrote a survival book that shows how he got through an incredibly difficult time in Argentina during the economic meltdown that happened way back in 2001. He said it was impossible to get anything out of the banks. The stores closed down fairly quickly, so you couldn't buy food at the grocery store. And people began looting and rioting as they ran out of food and became hungry. Everything came to a standstill except for the looters. It was a pretty scary time, and it's a fascinating firsthand account of what can happen during an economic meltdown to government stability to merchants and to the transportation system. Well, this chapter describes those three things during a far more serious economic meltdown in 1870. And the main lessons learned are encapsulated in three lamentations. Verses 9-10 give the lamentation of the kings of the land. Then verses 11-17a give the lamentation of the merchants, and specifically the merchants that we looked at before, who had gotten all of their wealth through this statist mixture of government, force, and the economy that they were engaged in. And then verses 17b-19 gives the lamentation of the merchant marines of the transportation network. Now, all three of those groups benefited enormously from that linkage of the state and the economy that the Sadducees had developed. And yet, in a very short period of time, all three were devastated by God's judgment. A lot of them continued to live, but they lost a lot. Now, the first lament, take a look at the text there, is said to be of the kings of the earth. And verse nine gives us a little bit of information about them that helps to rule out the competing theories of who they are. Verse nine says, the kings of the earth who fornicated and lived luxuriously with her will weep and mourn over her when they see the smoke of her burning. Now simple logic tells us that the kings of the earth cannot be the Sadducees. And the reason we know that is because we've already seen the Sadducees were a part of what constitutes the harlot. They were the main part, and yet these kings are fornicating with the harlot, so obviously they're different from the harlot. They have to be different from those Sadducees. So even though the Sadducees, some of them were rulers, I think that simple logic there rules them out. as being intended by these kings, but neither can these kings be the 10 kings in chapter 17, verse 16. Some people think, okay, well, it's mentioned 10 kings earlier, but the reason we know absolutely it cannot be those 10 kings is for three reasons. First of all, verse 9 says that these kings mourn over the destruction of the harlot. Whereas if you take a look at chapter 17, verse 16, those kings rejoice over her destruction. They hate the harlot. Those are quite different attitudes toward the harlot. And so even futurist commentaries, generally speaking, recognize just because of that fact alone, that this has to be a different set of kings than the 10 kings. that are mentioned in chapter 17. Now another difference is that the 10 kings were said to be kings of the oikumeneis. That's the Greek word for the entire Roman Empire, whereas these kings are said to be kings of the geis, which is the Greek word for the land of Israel. So if you just substitute for Pickering's translation here, land instead of earth throughout the whole thing, I think it'll give you a good feel. And then third, these kings lost a lot of revenue when the harlot was destroyed. Now, you could argue, you know, because there was an economic collapse that impacted the entire empire, that that could be true of the 10 kings as well. I mean, Tacitus and some of the other historians say it was so bad, there were millions of people who died throughout the empire. So that's true in a sense. But this passage is mostly focused on those who can actually see Jerusalem burning from a distance, and each of the three groups are somehow connected to the land. Well, that narrows the identity of these kings down to two possible groups, and maybe it's the two of them together. Some apply this phrase to the priests who had seized power from the Roman government in AD 66 and who became generals who were fighting against Rome. And the Greek word for kings could apply to them because they did indeed rule. They divided up the country into different districts. And for example, one of those people who was a king was Josephus. I've given a drawing of him in your outlines there. He ruled over Galilee until he was captured by the Romans. And in his history of the wars, Josephus records the way that he wept over the city burning and over the temple burning. It just broke him up. And so if this is a reference to the Jewish usurper kings, we have evidence that would fit rather perfectly. The last theory is that this is referring to the Roman allied rulers of the land who had benefited so enormously from the political prostitution with the Sadducees. And we saw before, even in the last year, each of these guys had benefited tens to the tens of millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks from the Sadducees. So this would include Herod Agrippa II, Now Herod was a pretty smart guy. So he fought on the side of Titus, but he saw his palace go up in flames. He's fighting against everything he owns. They're burning everything that he owns. So he lost a lot in this war. And he certainly lost the ability to gain any more bribes and kickbacks from the Sadducees. So he would have had every reason to be grieved. Another reason he would be grieved is his, that temple was his pride and joy. His dad, you know, his ancestors had begun the work on this, but he had poured his life into that temple. Uh, the whole war tore him up. And Josephus records one time when he wept publicly as well. But the reverence to kings might also include Queen Berenice, who even though she had an affair with Titus and so she gained in that way, she saw her palace destroyed. She saw a lot of her wealth being evaporated in this war. We have evidence from Josephus. She too was very grieved and this economic loss would have hurt her immensely. In fact, much of her wealth may have been lost. Now this might even have included two procurators that I didn't put pictures of in your outline. They had a lot of possessions in Israel even after their procuratorship ended. The first one, Gessius Florus, was the procurator of Judea from AD 64 to 66. And many people attribute the beginning of the war to his tyrannical actions. And we know that he gained tens of millions of dollars from the Sadducees. And so now that golden faucet has been cut off. In any case, even though he lost his procuratorship in AD 66, he still had a lot invested in Israel. The second procurator was Marcus Antonius Julianus, who replaced Florus from AD 66 to 70, and he lost his procuratorship at the end of this war in AD 70 as well. All of these people had a lot invested in Israel. And verse nine says that these kings actually witnessed Jerusalem burning from a distance. There's not a theoretical, they actually witnessed it. It says the kings of the earth, who fornicated and lived luxuriously with her will weep and mourn over her when they see the smoke of her burning." So these kings could not have been any further away than Joppa, which is probably where the merchant ships were located. They may have been a little bit earlier, but these kings probably were even closer to Jerusalem when they saw her burning. But the point is that those who misuse the system are now mourning because Jerusalem The city that had made them enormously wealthy was now history. And as we'll see shortly, the central bank where a lot of these guys had their money stashed was looted, completely looted. Whatever investments that they had put into this international bank was now gone. So even the power brokers of this world have limits to their power. Even the wealthy kings can be slapped down by the Lord. All of them had the wind taken out of their sails. Now verse 10 says, standing afar off, Herod Agrippa II had to distance himself from Jerusalem in order to stay in the graces of Rome. He was a torn man because he loved Jerusalem, he wanted to keep it, but he also wanted to keep the Romans and he knew, okay, the writing's on the wall, I'm gonna stick with the Romans on this one. And Josephus shows he very literally stood a far off, but metaphorically that was true too. He did continue to rule Judea under Rome until the 90s, but he lost a lot and he definitely lost the respect of the Jews. They hated him for what he had done. They felt like he was a traitor. Josephus, who was the ruler over Galilee, literally watched Jerusalem burning from afar. And he points out in more than one place in his writings how he wept and was so grieved and brokenhearted over the burning of Jerusalem and of the temple. And the Jews also hated him. Titus, as a reward, gave him a fabulous property in Israel for an estate. He didn't even dare to go back to Israel. He thought he'd be killed if he did. So instead of that, he chose to live in Vespasian's former estate in Rome. Now, verse 10 gives us the reason for them standing afar off, that they were made afraid by what had just happened to Jerusalem in the temple. Standing afar off for fear of her torment. Perhaps for the first time they had begun to realize how vulnerable they were. Verse 10 even mentions that they recognized that this was God's hand of judgment, so that may have been a part of their fear as well. It continues saying, saying, alas, alas, O great city Babylon, O mighty city, because your judgment came in one hour. Now we already saw that the secret societies, and there were two main ones in Jerusalem, they were very self-conscious in identifying Jerusalem and the temple with Babylon and had included a lot of Babylonian imagery into the temple, and I'll later be showing how that temple had been made into an impregnable, supposedly impregnable, the most impregnable bank in the world. But by using the word judgment, they also must have seen God's hand in this. And from Josephus, we know that both Queen Berenice and Agrippa II recognized that God himself was judging Israel. Josephus definitely does. Let me quote him exactly. He said, this was the effect of God's anger against us for our manifold sins. He called the Jews to repentance and then he said, if only you would appease the anger of God who was the author of your destruction. So Josephus in his history he paints a picture of an indestructible city, an indestructible temple being destroyed in short order by the Romans and he says this could only have happened if God himself had intervened. This is not something anybody would have expected. Now of course we've seen that the two prophets God had sent had been warning for most of the three and a half years that God was going to exactly bring this. And Josephus mentions another prophet who for four years had been shouting out, whoa, whoa, whoa, to the city and had given his prophecies that this city was about to be destroyed. So when it actually came, they could hardly deny that it came from God. So what had seemed like, you know, the fable of the metaphorical goose that lays the golden eggs, that goose is gone. They're no longer able to get any wealth from her. And I'll draw out some applications from this when we get to the end of the sermon, but let's go on to the lament of the land merchants. Verse 11 says that they mourn because they have lost the lucrative trade of the temple and the capital. And the merchants of the earth weep and sorrow over her because no one buys their goods anymore. Now, we saw in a previous sermon that these precise merchants had gained a lot of their wealth because of being in bed with the Sadducees, so to speak. They'd used the power of the state to enrich themselves. And the temple was one of the biggest government projects that allowed favored merchants to charge exorbitant prices. But even apart from that, We saw over the last couple hundred years that the Sadducees had a system going that made Jerusalem have an enormous number of extremely wealthy people. Tacitus speaks of boundless riches and if there's boundless riches in a city there's plenty of opportunity to be buying and selling. Joachim Jeremias says that the province, quote, was the equal of Egypt, as far as commerce and industry was concerned, among the provinces of the Roman Empire, and most of that commerce flowed through Jerusalem. So to be equal to Egypt is an astounding amount of commerce that flowed through Jerusalem. But with millions of people coming into Jerusalem every single year for the seven festivals, as well as some of the daily sacrificial system that they were involved with, There was money to be made in every part of the city. It was like one gigantic mall where anything in the world could literally be bought or sold in Jerusalem. And the merchants lost that. But what must have been most galling and grieving to them was that billions of dollars worth of goods were needlessly burned in the temple. Josephus said, They also burnt down the treasury chambers in which was an immense quantity of money and an immense number of garments and other precious goods there reposited. And to speak all in a few words, there it was that the entire riches of the Jews were heaped up together while the rich people had there built themselves chambers to contain such wealth. So what Josephus is saying is that the Sadducees had actually turned the temple into a central bank where all of the citizens and for certain all of the rich people had been depositing their money. And we'll be seeing what the significance of this is in a little bit. They lost a ton of money. There was plenty for these merchants to be weeping over. And by the way, the reason why the temple was a central bank depository at this stage in history, it was just a very tempting thing for the Sadducees, is that it was, described as being the most impregnable fortress on the planet at that time. The temple itself was a multi-storied building, one side of which people say was as high as 45-story buildings in Chicago. Okay, it's incredibly high. You look at the dimensions. This one building occupied 35 acres. One building occupied 35 acres, surrounded by a wall, outside of that was another wall, and then there were walls around Jerusalem. So we have a fortress within a fortress, so to speak, and so the Sadducees were gonna be seeing what their strategy was. They thought, you know, this is a great deal. We're gonna get in with the Tyrrhenians, who previously had the central bank of the world, and we're going to allow them to use this as the repository for money. Now, it's a miracle when you just look at the structure of this bank. It is a miracle that the Romans were able to conquer it and conquer it so quickly. If there had not been fighting of three different groups within, I don't think there is probably any way that they would have been able to win that war. Anyway, verses 12 through 13 gives a long list of goods that they sold. goods of gold and of silver, of precious stones and of pearl, of fine linen and of purple, of silk and of scarlet, every citron wood and object of ivory, every object of the most precious wood and of bronze and of iron and of marble, cinnamon and incense and perfume and frankincense, wine and olive oil and fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep and horses and carriages and bodies and souls of men. Now Carrington and his commentary says the long list of merchandise in chapter 18 verses 11 through 13 is surely a catalog of materials for building the temple and stores for maintaining it. Jesse Mills goes further and he says, before the war of 8070, Palestine was the only nation exporting all the items mentioned in the passage. So if you're looking for a city, through which all of these items are being imported and being exported, he says there isn't any other city in the empire other than Jerusalem that completely 100% fits. McKenzie said, For the most part, this merchandise falls into two general categories. Verse 12 lists the commodities used in the furnishings of the temple and the most sacred attire of the high priest. Verse 13 lists commodities used in the temple sacrifices and offerings. Now actually, it's a lot more. It's just the general commerce, but they are saying that this is at least tied with the temple. Ford in his commentary shows how even the slaves and the chariots, and it's a very rare word for chariots, are again tightly connected to Jerusalem. Josephus mentions the anger that some Jews had over the unbiblical slave trade that had started in recent years. It clearly violated biblical law, but there is certainly no problem in seeing everything we've described here as pertaining to Jerusalem. But why make such a long list of commodities? Well, Carrington, Ford, and McKenzie say it's for two reasons. The first reason we just mentioned is you can tie these things very clearly in the eyes of the first century Jews to the temple and to Jerusalem. And McKenzie, he spends several pages documenting point by point from the Mishnah and other Jewish documents why that was the case. And I'm not going to get into those technicalities. But secondly, and more importantly, it tied this passage thematically with Ezekiel. Now, I have tended in these sermon series not to bring up all of the Ezekiel connections to this passage because a lot of them are technical. It's just for my benefit as a background material for interpretation. But this one is so important, I'm going to spend a little bit of time on it. Revelation, part of its structure, is patterned after the book of Ezekiel, and almost all commentators recognize that. And many commentators point out that the lament against the city of Tyre in Ezekiel 27 through 28 is the thematic background to this passage. And it mentions how critically important that banking center was to Satan's kingdom. Now I've mentioned in the past, Satan's throne, generally speaking, is not where The military is, it's not where the capital of a country is. You would expect that to be the case. You would think Satan would park himself right in Rome or right in the capital, but we've seen actually in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, he goes after much deeper influence centers like education, finance, things like that. For example, in chapter two, We saw that in 8066, Satan's throne was parked right there in Pergamos. And we looked at the reasons why incredibly influential city. So Satan comes where anything is really important that is happening in terms of his kingdom, and we've already seen that Satan came to Israel to help the beast from the sea and to help the beast from the land to try to consolidate things that were happening. Something is significant about Jerusalem that Satan feels he needs to have. Now, it backfires on him, but this city of Jerusalem had enormous strategic importance for Satan. But in any case, I pointed out previously from Ezekiel 28 that Tyre used to be Satan's throne, and it used to be the international banking center of the world. At least 100 years earlier, the Sadducees had bullied their way into this lucrative business, and they struck a deal with Tyre to make a banking monopoly. So when you're comparing the background passage, Ezekiel 27 through 28, with this passage, many people have concluded that Tyre, the lament over Tyre, is a symbolic background to this lament over the city. Tyre is yet another symbol for the city. So earlier we've seen the city of Jerusalem has been compared to Sodom, Egypt, and Babylon. Now it is being explicitly compared to Tyre. I think most commentators totally agree with that. I think that part is certain. The question is why? And my conclusion is that Jerusalem is being described as tied by the purse strings to the merchants and mariners of Tyre. And some recent commentators have come to the same conclusion. Mackenzie's commentary points out that this gives one more idolatrous connection that would have powerfully struck first century Jews. One of the complaints about the temple, if you read a lot about first century literature, one of the complaints about the temple was that it was so tightly tied to Tyre and Tyrian money that it had become compromised. Godly Jews hated the fact that Caiaphas and the other Sadducees had switched the pure temple money that had zero images on it into Tyrian money that had idolatry stamped right onto it. John had already accused the temple of being full of idolatry. We've looked at numerous idols, but this Tyrian money would have put millions of silver idols right into the temple. Joachim Jeremias points out that, quote, in the temple only Tyrian currency was allowed, unquote. Now that was a revolutionary change that was started by the Sadducean mafia. And when you understand the reason why, so much of the background of this book begins to fall into place. Von Walde draws this amazing conclusion from Jerusalem being connected so tightly with Tyre. He says, money changers were necessary to convert common Roman currency into silver Tyrian coinage, the only coinage acceptable for temple offering. According to the Mishnah, which by the way is part of the Talmud, according to the Mishnah, The temple offering was to be done in Tyrian coinage which was silver. The Tyrian shekel was not an iconic, in other words it was not free of images, it was not an iconic and therefore was not a neutral or holy coin. On the obverse it contained an image and in fact the image of a pagan god, Melkart Herakles. On the reverse was a Tyrian eagle and the inscription, Tyre, the holy and inviolable. This would make the Tyrian half-shekel inherently offensive, at least to more devout Jews, and especially as a temple offering. According to this argument, rather than change the law requiring silver coins for the offering, the authorities allowed the use of the Tyrian silver shekel, bowing to political and economic considerations. So he's saying the reason they did this was because they were bowing to political and economic considerations. What were those? Well there was a deal that the Tyrian merchants and the Sadducees had brokered. Remember I said earlier Tyre was the international banking center but now With the temple at the center of it, they've come into a deal. There was a monopoly. And actually, if you study history, Tyre had the monopoly before. The Sadducees had wiggled their way into this lucrative monopoly. And they offered the temple as a central bank. Well, McKenzie concludes by drawing this image together with the previous chapter. He says this, shockingly, The idolatrous currency of Tyre was the currency of the temple. The leaders of the temple seemed more concerned with the purity of their silver than the purity of God's command against graven images of pagan deities." Let me just stop reading for a second there and explain what he means by that. There were many national currencies that were competing with each other, and you could trade with in Israel, you could trade with anywhere in the world. Now Rome had attempted to make a international monopoly, forcing everybody to just use the Roman coinage, but because they had inflated the money so much, diluting the content of the silver and things like that, people didn't wanna use the Roman currency, and so, The Tyrian money was accepted by all as the standard currency because they did not inflate. It was recognizable, and anywhere in the empire you could use that. And so there were competing dollars back then, just like there are competing dollars today. But the Tyrian money, because it was so stable, because it had never been inflated, was the de facto standard. So let me read what McKenzie said again. The leaders of the temple seemed more concerned with the purity of their silver than the purity of God's command against graven images of pagan deities. With the nationalist fervor that accompanied the outbreak of the Jewish War in 1866, the image of Melkart on these coins was replaced with an image of a ritual chalice and a string of pearls. On the reverse, instead of Tyre the Holy, it now read Jerusalem the Holy. Compare this with Revelation's image of the harlot being adorned with pearls, having a chalice in her hand, and the name Babylon the Great on her forehead. So he's saying that the Babylon the Great image was not only connected with the other Babylonian connections, but it was directly connected with that Tyrian coin. So Babylon's merged with the image of Tyre. He goes on. There is no question that there were idols in its treasury, millions of little silver ones. Sanders notes that the widespread use of the Tyrian coinage in Palestine shows that the temple's requirement reversed the doctrine that bad money drives out good, and also overcame the general dislike of coins with images of people or deities. This gives a good idea of the temple's clout. It is also a good example of the inhabitants of the land being made drunk with the wine of her fornication. Dan Bahat, quoting the Tosefta, notes that, quote, Tyrian money was so invested in life in Judah that whenever the Torah says money, then it is Tyrian money. And what is Tyrian money? Tyrian money is Jerusalemite money. So let me sum up the significance of using, John using Ezekiel's lament against Tyre as the symbol of this lament against Jerusalem. Jerusalem was tied at the hip with Tyre. which makes sense of the third lament, that of the merchant marines. But what an incredible symbol. The temple's holiness was now being defined in pagan terms. Millions of silver coins in the temple had imprinted on them, tire, the holy, and inviolable. Money had become an idol for the kings and merchants, and even the temple that those kings and merchants had prostituted themselves with had a holiness that was Tyrian in origin, not biblical. And so it highlights why the temple system was a harlot. So hopefully, chapter by chapter, as we've been building some of this imagery, you're getting a little bit of a feel, a fuller picture of the corruption that had been happening. Well, with the collapse of the banking system, the merchants lost everything. Verse 14 says, Yes, the fruit that your soul craved has gone from you, and all the sumptuous and splendid things have perished from you, and you will never find them again. They had invested so heavily in this status plan with the Sadducees that when the Sadducees went down, the merchants went down. When the temple was destroyed, that impregnable fortress, So too were the merchants, and Edersheim documents the enormous amount of merchandise that had previously flowed through Jerusalem. So this means that in order for the merchants to survive, they too have to distance themselves from Jerusalem. Verse 15 says, the merchants of these things who became rich by her will stand afar off. There is no way they're going to risk their necks for Jerusalem. All economic ties are now off. They stand afar off. They feel kind of helpless, actually, as they're watching all of their savings just being evaporated. And they, too, are made nervous by her judgment. Will stand afar off, what? For fear of her torment. What if they had been inside Jerusalem when the Romans came? What if the Romans discovered that they have been in cahoots with the Sadducees, you know, to rip off the world? There is a number of what ifs that could have made them nervous. But of course, the Romans found so much wealth in the temple and in buried caches that they discovered through torture. that they didn't need to go after the merchants. But the merchants still mourned the overnight collapse of a powerful economic empire that the Sadducees had built. It says, weeping and sorrowing and saying, alas, alas, oh great city that was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet and was adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls because in one hour such great wealth was laid waste. So what we've seen so far is Jerusalem's leadership was compromised with their dealings with the Roman appointed kings, with statist merchants, and then thirdly, with a Tyrian merchant marine. He refers to this merchant marine as every ship captain and all who travel by ship, sailors, and as many as work the sea. There was a vast network of merchant marines. It's obviously included some Jewish shipping, Ships from some other countries, but by far the vast majority would have been Tyrian in origin. From their main harbor, they would have been able to see the smoke going up. Now verse 17 says, they too had to distance themselves from Jerusalem and play up their trade, their ongoing trade with Rome. Verse 17 continues with the words, they stood afar off. But even though they've exchanged sides, they're still staggered at the loss they sustained in Jerusalem's fall. Verse 18 says, and cried out, seeing the smoke of her burning, saying, who is like the great city? Well, we come to the first controversy and the only controversy. There's people in the past who have said, there is no way the Tyrian merchants would have thought of Jerusalem as being the greatest city in this regard. They would have thought of Rome as being that. But if the temple formed the hub of a world international banking system under the watchful eyes of Annas and Caiaphas and their mafia, It is not surprising that a massive trade was sparked by their international company. The temple was the most secure fortress in the world into which the bankers could make their deposits. The internationally recognized scholar Joachim Jeremiah said that the economic production that flowed through her was, quote, equal of Egypt as far as commerce and industry was concerned among the provinces of the Roman Empire. So for Jerusalem to have as much commerce going through her as went through Egypt is staggering. Ford said that Carrington refers to Titus striking a medal with the words Victoria Navalis and saying it referred to Jerusalem as a second Carthage. Now that too is a staggering comparison. In any case, the Tyre-Jerusalem Banking Business Partnership was a massive venture that negatively impacted the entire empire when Rome fell. So basically, you just realize, if the banking system goes down, it's not just the bankers that suffer, everybody suffers right with them. And we've seen country after country in the last 100 years where this has been the case. A lot of suffering, Argentina being one of them. But the dangers surrounding this economic collapse led Rome to impose martial law and micromanaging the economy for the next three and a half years. Verse 19 says, the merchant marines also mourned the loss of the goose that laid their golden eggs. Verse 19 says, Now the Qumran community applied Habakkuk 2 verse 8 to the priests of Jerusalem and accused them of plundering all the nations with their wicked business and financial dealings, and then went on to say, quote, but in the last days their riches and booty will be delivered into the hands of the army of the Ketan. Well, that's exactly what happened. In Qumran writings the Kittim was a reference to Rome. Now even though they weren't believers, they hated, they despised the way that the Sadducees had prostituted the temple into a central bank. The plundering international bankers themselves got plundered. Okay, that's what it's saying. It was a lex talionis judgment from God. What they had done to others, was now done to them. Now, if I ever get to writing my commentary on Revelation, I'll go into much more depth, because I think this is such an interesting topic. I think it's a very important topic. And the implications for how we can prepare for future economic collapse, I think, are pretty strong. But this morning, I'm just gonna give you hints. I'm gonna give you five applications of this passage. First application that we should take home from this passage is how much Jesus hates statism and that we should hate statism as much as Jesus does. The merchants, the kings were judged for their statism. The merchants were judged for participating in this status system and the shipping itself suffered. And I think it would be wrong for us to hate the loss of our comforts should judgment arise, to hate that more than we hate the statism itself. See, our passions should line up with God's passions, and His passion is not about our comfort. His passion is about Jesus Christ and His kingship. He has ushered us into Christ's family, and we've pledged allegiance to Christ, and our whole life should be promoting Christ. And if it means that we must see judgment falling in order for Christ to be advanced, we should be okay with that. We should hate statism as much as Jesus did, and this chapter shows he hated it a lot. Second, we should hate fascism and business cartels just as much as Jesus did. Now in a sense I'm saying exactly the same thing as the first point, but what I'm doing here is I'm honing in on one part of statism. I've written four blogs that give details on what the Bible says about American fascism and business cartels. You can find that on kaisercommentary.com. But that is exactly what had been developed by these kings, merchants, and international agreements. Okay, God was taking down fascism, cartels, and a very interventionist banking system. Now let me define what I mean by a cartel. A cartel is simply a group of people or organizations within an industry that seeks to control production, marketing, distribution, price, competition, through force and intimidation. And usually the force and intimidation they want to use is the government, right? Could be state government, could be a federal government. intervene, they use civil government to intervene into the market in a way that will create barriers to new competition. And we've seen this so many times in modern nations. This government intervention can be by way of price controls, wage controls, tariffs, import quotas. compulsory trade union laws, rationing, regulation, licensing, threat of lawsuit, overseeing agencies. And we got a bazillion of them in Washington, D.C. These are all examples of that. Now, I hope to do a lot more research and writing in the future on how the Sadducees were at the center of exactly those kinds of evils. But America is at the center of them now, too. And there's other nations. Anyway, in my four blogs, blog post I show how Jesus considered both the banking cartel and the animal sacrifice cartel started by Caiaphas as making them a den of thieves. Matthew 21 13. Now certainly this chapter excoriated the merchants of the land who had become rich by being in bed with the kings of the land. Their international companies lost a lucrative trade deal when the city could no longer intrude into the free market on their behalf. So this chapter actually is a a defense of a radical free market system and it is a critique of what goes on today by the name of fascism. If you studied this chapter just from an economic perspective, just went through it again, which we're not going to do, but if we just went through it again just from an economic perspective, You would know why I consider our nation to be in such deep trouble. The economics of our nation is not a minor issue. It is unlawful, it is evil. We should hate fascism, we should hate business cartels just as much as Jesus did. He promised his judgments against such economic evil. Third application is we can be encouraged that the military industrial banking cartels are not almighty. We can be encouraged that just as the first century military industrial banking system collapsed overnight, God can take out modern conspiracies against Christ's kingship too. The next application is to avoid two equally false extremes in terms of our reaction to this. The outline says we should prepare for disaster, Proverbs 22 verse three, 27 verse 12, chapter 21 verse 20, while not burying our investments in the ground out of fear, Matthew 25, 14 through 30. Now it's very easy to go to one of those two extremes. We have seen people who, they just go off the grid, and hide. They're no longer an ambassador for Christ. They're just trying to preserve their wealth. And I think in some senses it's selfish. It's not Christ-centered to be going off and hiding in that way. But the other extreme is to say, well, there's nothing we can do about it anyway, so we're just going to ignore it. Say it's not going to happen. One extreme completely abandons the banking system, the investment system, and life in general out of fear. The other extreme ignores the writing on the wall, but both extremes I think are reactionary. Twice in Proverbs, God says, a prudent man foresees disaster and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished. Now that's Proverbs 22, verse three, Proverbs 27, verse 12. Well, let me give you another one. Proverbs 21, verse 20 says that the wise man has at least some treasure that is stored somewhere other than the bank, and he has at least some groceries that are stored somewhere other than the grocery store, okay? Same verse says that the foolish man spends everything he makes every week in other things. He wouldn't have the six months of emergency savings because they would have evaporated right along with the system. So there is a balance. Hiding yourself does not mean burying your talent in the ground, as has been pointed out by others here. Jesus was quite clear on that. In fact, Jesus said, it is okay to use the banking system, evil as it is. And people say, well, how can that be? How can you use the banking system if it's evil? But it was evil when Christ was still on the earth. And yet he said, you need to invest your money. You need to invest your money in the banks. He did not force his followers out of the system. Jesus wants us to invest our resources and grow them even during difficult times. But let me give a balance to that. There's a reason why in Acts chapter two, the disciples there that were wealthy sold their properties that were going to be taken by the Romans anyway. They had insider information. They had insider trading, so to speak. They knew that this was going to go down, so why not sell while it was high? But though it doesn't mean burying your stewardship, it does mean taking some precautions for what could happen. We shouldn't be fatalistic and say, hey, nobody can protect against total collapse. There are at least baby steps of faith that anyone can take. Ignoring such a thing, hoping it won't happen, I think is disobedience to those scriptures. I think there's always something that we can do to at least moderately prepare for disaster while still investing our money for growth. I think both need to happen. Now, the last application is an encouraging one. God can preserve his people even through economic collapse. We saw in the first half of the book that all of the inhabitants of the entire region of Pella were decimated. They were all killed with race riots in AD 66. And though it was something to mourn over, man's inhumanity to man, God used that massacre to provide a place for the 144,000 to survive. Secondly, we saw that God sent his warrior angels to keep demons out of that region, because there are territorial spirits, but he said no. None of the demons could go there. So Satan didn't even know where the 144,000 were living. Third, we saw that the houses and the wealth of those who had perished was given to the 144,000 by King Herod Agrippa II. Herod was a strange mix of good and bad characteristics, and for some reason, He protected Christians during the first half of the war. So the 144,000 inherited the houses, the food, the money, and the other stores that were left behind after the race riots completely decimated the region around Pella. The wealth of the wicked, very literally, was stored up for the righteous. They might have grieved at the stuff they were leaving behind. Remember Christ's warning? If you're out in the field, don't even go back to your house to get your stuff, just run. If you're on top of the house, jump down off the top of the house. Don't go down and get your stuff. They might have said, ah, but we're leaving all of our money behind. You know, God protected and he provided for them anyway. In other ages, God has preserved his people in other remarkable ways, but we need not face the future with fear. We can face it with confidence in our God's providential control, faith in his promises, and hope in what God can do through us. May we learn to have biblically balanced lives during difficult times. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. and that it does indeed instruct us for everything. We don't want to just focus on the issues that are comfortable and that relate to what we're doing right now, but we want to understand what your word has to say about every aspect of life. Bless us, Father, with wise decisions as we seek to navigate potentially difficult times ahead. We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.