All right, I think we're going to get going. We want to get going right on time, and it is 7 o'clock. We're going to be looking at Revelation chapter 8 and chapter 9 tonight, the seven angels with their seven trumpets. One of the issues that's going to be decided by the next election is whether the United States stays in or gets out of what's called the Paris Accord, which has to do with preventing global warming. Remember that the Obama administration signed us on with it, with the law, about 176 countries. And the idea was to reduce the amount of global warming. And then when Trump came into office, he took us out of the Paris Accord. And when Biden came back into office, he brought us back into it. Now, I checked on the United Nations website to see what their goals were and here's what they said. The first goal is to hold the increase of global average temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and then try to bring them down to 1.5 degrees from pre-industrial levels. And then the hope is that they would significantly reduce the risk and impact of climate change. Number two, to increase the ability to adapt to adverse impact of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emission development in a manner that does not threaten foods production. Number three, to make finance flow consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gases emissions and climate resistant development. And like I said, a lot of countries have signed on to this. And of course, the idea is that if we don't do something about this, just tremendous things will happen. I had one book where they listed like 50, 60 things that they said were going to happen, including frogs would disappear, and there would be more prostitution in the Philippines. They said the reason there'd be more prostitution in Philippines is because there's a lot of Filipino women who collect seashells on the seashore. And if we have an increase of global temperatures, those sea creatures will all die, and their only option is to be prostitutes otherwise. I don't know, maybe there's something else I can do. To put in the words of that song that I mentioned last week, if we don't do something immediately, it's the end of the world as we know it, and none of us will feel fine. But I have to tell you, maybe it's just a skeptic in me, But the response to what's called climate change, I think, is somewhat akin to the story of Chicken Little, a.k.a. Henny Penny. You may recall Chicken Little was sitting underneath a tree when a squirrel walked by or went over the top of her and dropped an acorn and landed on her head. and it bounced off her head into a hole. And so when she looked around, she couldn't see any cause for that, so she concluded the sky was falling. So she decided she had to run and go tell the king about this sky-falling event. And as she was going along the way, she met a couple of her friends, Goosey Poosey and Ducky Lucky, and she also convinced them that the sky was falling. And before she got to the king, she also came across Foxy Loxy, and she began to warn him about the impending doom. And so he wanted to hear more about this, so he invited Chicken Little and Goosey Poosey and Ducky Lucky into his den to expound on the dangers of global skyfalling. Well, Foxy Loxy listened all afternoon to their crisis management symposium. And after that, he and his young pups enjoyed a dinner of fried chicken, roast goose, and duck with orange sauce. Now, it seems to me before we make drastic changes, and this is all going to connect in with this, in our economy, we ought to have some clear answers to the following questions. First of all, is there indeed global warming taking place? Did you notice they changed it from global warming to climate change? Who can deny the climate changes? You know, the answer whether it is warming up or not depends on the data you look at and where you start. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration admits that there was no increase in global temperatures from the year 2000 to 2010, but they think that pause was caused by El Ala Niña. Number two, if there is global warming, is it man-made? Some have suggested that the Earth has cyclical warming and cooling over centuries. Did you know at one time they farmed in Greenland? That's an impossible to believe now. Could it be that it was the result of solar flares? Perhaps the sky isn't falling, maybe an acorn's fallen on our head. Number three, how certain are we that the effects will be negative? I mean, some seem kind of far-fetched in the worst case scenarios. Number four, is it possible there actually be positive results of global warming? More CO2 in the air means faster growth for plant life, which would reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. If all of Siberia and Canada could be farmed, we could increase production of grain tenfold easily. Besides that, I like the idea of having an orange tree in my backyard in Wisconsin. Number five, and this is an important one. Who stands to benefit from the climate change hysteria, if you consider it hysteria? Two main groups, it seems to me. The researchers at the institutes who've seen their increase in funding by over 1,000% since they began. and also government officials will be given new and greater powers to regulate industry and extract taxes for their own political motives. Number six, why are those who are skeptical silenced and demonized? I mean, if you're on the right side, you don't have to demonize your opponents, you just set forth the facts. You know that California tried to, I don't know if they passed it or not, but they had a law that they were trying to pass which would make it illegal for any company to deny climate change and the increase of temperatures. Not only that, but they could go back and sue the companies for something they said before the law was in place. That's called a post hoc law. It's actually forbidden by the Constitution, but they said they were going to do it anyways. The PBS News Hour is usually pretty good. They've had, since 1996, 590 segments on global warming. Of those, only 9 of those had anyone offer any counter-perspective to the idea of global warming. And none of the five were scientists, despite the fact there are plenty of scientists who don't believe it. So now, having raised my doubts, though, I want to state that I believe that the promoters of the present crisis are still absolutely right in their underlying assumption, which is that what man does can have a dramatic negative impact on the Earth's environment. But what they're wrong about is thinking that the problem is CO2. Rather, according to the Bible, the problem is sin. From scripture, we learn that the earth itself was cursed because of man's sin on earth. Isaiah 24 20 speaking of the accumulated weight of sin on the earth in the last days when God will bring judgment says this, the earth reels to and fro like a drunkard. It totters like a shack for its transgression is heavy upon it. It shall fall and never rise again. So in Revelation chapter 8, we see the beginning of the trumpet judgments of God, where the first four judgments, when they're poured out, are actually against nature as a result of man's sin. And it produces dramatic and terrifying effects. So today, if you're a believer, I want you to be stunned by the enormity of what's being predicted here, but comforted by the fact that you're not going to be on earth to experience it. On the other hand, if you're not a believer, I want you to be afraid. Be very afraid. Knowing that you'll face this or something worse when Jesus returns. So it's a serious issue. Well, what are we going to do today then? We're going to talk about these things. So those are our seminar goals to give you a broad outline of the events related to the return of Jesus. Number two, to encourage you to give serious thought to the claims made by and about Jesus. And third, to prepare you for that day. I want to give you some quick facts about angels because this passage talks about seven angels with seven trumpets. Here's the first one. They were created by God before the world began. How do we know that? Because it says in Job chapter 38, it's supposed to be 4-7, I think. I don't think it's 72 verses in there. But in that passage, it talks about how the angels, when God created, rejoiced. Well, you have to be there in order to rejoice, and so they were created first. Secondly, they're spirits, but they can appear in physical form. There's times when they're called men, right? Because they appear to be men. And one place it'll say it's an angel, and one of the other gospels it says two men. Well, that's why. Number three, it says though they were created with greater capacities than man, they serve and ultimately will be ruled over by man. Look at what it says in 1 Corinthians 6. I'm sorry, that was that passage. This one's in Hebrews. It says, For he, meaning God, did not subject to angels the world to come concerning which we are speaking. But one has testified somewhere saying this, What is man that you would remember him, or the son of man that you are concerned about him? You have made him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor, and have appointed him over the works of your hand. You have put all things into subjection under his feet. For in subjecting all things to him, meaning mankind, he left nothing to him that is not subjected to him. But now we do not see all things subject to him, but we do see him who is made for a little while lower than the angels, namely Jesus, because of the suffering and death, crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone." Here's another thing about angels. They're always presented as males. See the picture there? Isn't that cute? What does it say next to it? No, no, no. And even if they're presented as men, they're always like girly men. You ever notice that? You never get beefy, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger guys. It always looks like Davy Jones from The Monkey or something like that. The next thing, though, you have to say is in the book of Revelation, they're depicted both as the witnesses of, or witnesses to, and agents of God's judgment. And we see this here when they get ready to blow the horns. Here's what it says, starting in chapter 8. It says, When the Lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about a half hour, and I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. Another angel came and stood at the altar holding the golden censer, and much incense was given to him so that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar. which was before the Lord. So you've got this time of silence. It reminds me of the law cases that have come up about prayer in school. It was 1963 that they determined that public prayer in school was unconstitutional, which I always think is weird. And I'm not a big supporter of having schools have state written prayers, because I don't think they're going to... Most of us wouldn't agree with what they're going to say, right? So I don't have a big problem with that. But it tells you something about where the culture's at. The lady who was responsible for getting out, does anyone remember who that was? She had three names to her, Madeline, Marie O'Hara. I talked to her on the radio one time. I called into KSVP, she was on there, and I asked her this question. I said, Ms. O'Hara, I don't believe in Santa Claus, but I don't spend my whole life trying to convince people not to believe in Santa Claus. She had kind of a gravelly voice. Strangely enough, it's kind of sad, because in her diary, because she disappeared one time, and they didn't find her. They've never found her body. And her son had her diary, and somewhere in the diary she wrote this, is there not someone somewhere who would love me? You know, behind a lot of the anger, there's often a lot of hurt. It's ironic because her son actually became a Christian, and now he's an evangelist. So the lady who got it out, you know, God has a sense of humor with that kind of stuff, right? Well, you know, and then later on, they'd try to find ways to, you know, at least get something in there. I mean, years ago, Chris and I were involved with a threat of a lawsuit here, weren't we? They were, you know, we were doing the Bible clubs in the school here. Chris was doing most of them, right? And the kids, for lunch, they'd come and they'd ask him questions about the Bible and he'd tell them. And, you know, they were happy about it. Kids liked coming to it. They would do it for over their lunch period. And even one of the ladies who was the guidance counselor at the time, at first she was really suspicious of it. But when she found out the kids would open up to Chris, she was, ah, go down there, go down there. Well, then someone from Madison threatened to sue, and pretty soon we had a big to-do, and they were all upset about it. And they said, well, no, you can teach it. but only once a quarter. Okay, well, whatever. So that's where it went. So they've tried other things like moments of silence, right, for silent prayer. Well, that was shot down by the Supreme Court too. And then they had just a moment of silence. You couldn't say anybody was praying. Did you hear about the lady in England who was standing outside of an abortion clinic? She wasn't making any noise. She didn't have a sign or anything. Cops came by and said, what are you doing? She said, I'm praying. They arrested her. She wasn't even talking out loud. Talk about thought control, that's the ultimate, isn't it? Well, here we do have a moment of silence, and it is for the purpose of prayer. And you know, because believers don't always have their prayers answered quickly, a lot of times we think, you know, it's not making any difference. And so we're tempted not to pray. Yet the Bible says, pray without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5.17. And knowing the effective prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much, James said. And Jesus, knowing that this would be a weakness for us, told us a parable. Do you remember that? He said there was a certain city where there was a judge who didn't fear God, or man. And there was this widow in the city, and she kept coming to him and saying, give me legal protection from my opponent. For a while, he was unwilling, but afterwards, he said to himself, man, even though I don't fear God and I don't respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection. Otherwise, by her continually coming here, she'll wear me out. The Lord said this, hear what this unrighteous judge said. Now, will not God bring about justice for his elect when they cry out to him day and night? And will he delay over them long? I tell you, he will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? Now, a lot of times if you hear someone preach about it, it's about the need to be persistent in prayer. And that's a fair application of that. But if you look at the context of that, the chapter before, Jesus is talking about the day of his return. And here also he says, he won't delay, right? When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? So what he's talking about specifically is the last generation that's being persecuted. And when they're crying out to the Lord, he's not going to delay long. He will bring justice and he's going to return and he's going to punish their tormentors. And the Bible has all that kind of language. And so that's why you have here, it says there's a moment of silence. And it says, then the prayers of the saints was added to incense, and it comes up. And of course, as the prayers go up, what happens? The fire comes down. It says, and the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints went up before God out of the angel's hand. The angel took a censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it to the earth. And there was following peals of thunder, sounds and flashes of lightning and earthquake, and seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound them. And so the first trumpet comes, the first is sounded, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and they were thrown to the earth, and a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all of the green grass was burned up. You know, I watched some videos on hailstorms to prepare for this. There was one in Oklahoma where they had, you know, it started with golf ball size, but it was almost softball size by the time it was done. You just, the roar of the things as they're hitting and destroying everything. You know, hail and wind shattering windows and all that. But how about fire? Now, does he mean lightning? Could mean, or could he mean actual fire? What's the famous fire for us around here? Hinkley Fire, right? I got some facts on that one. The Great Hinkley Fire happened not too far from here, back in 1894. It burned an area of at least 200,000 acres, including the town of Hinkley. Have you guys all been up to the Hinkley Museum for the fire? You should do that if you haven't been up there. I brought my grandsons up there one time. They have all kinds of pictures. There were places where the railroad, the ties melted right on the thing. By the way, there was one guy, I don't know if I put his name down. Yeah, James Root, what a wonderful guy. He backed up his train five miles to Skunk Lake to rescue dozens and dozens of people. One of the guys who died in the fire was the guy who shot John Wilkes Booth, the one who shot President Lincoln. John said that the fire was mixed with blood. A number of commentators mentioned that something happens in the Middle East called, by the way, this is the ultimate environmentalist's worst nightmare. But it mentions that in the Middle East, sometimes they get what's called blood rain. The rain comes down and looks like it's mixed with sand, or perhaps it's actual blood. It says in Isaiah 26, 21, it says, So just like God back in the book of Exodus, He turned the Nile into blood. Why? What was the connection with the Nile turning to blood? I mean, was it just a random thing? That's where they drowned the babies, remember? When the Hebrew babies were born, they said, throw them into the Nile. They became crocodile food. And there's a sense in which God, when he brings judgment, always does so in a way that's appropriate to the sins that provoke it. That makes sense. So, by the way, blood. Since 1973, there's been 1.9 billion babies that have been aborted in the world. Remember what it said about Cain when God came to him? He said, Cain, where's your brother? How do I know? I'm not his keeper. He says, your brother's blood cries out from the ground to me. Does he not hear the cries of the blood of 1.8 billion? Unless you think God doesn't have an opinion on it, or unless you think that God doesn't remember it, or unless you think that God doesn't care about it, See, the problem is we tend to judge ourselves based on our own standards, not on God's standards. If we judge ourselves based on God's standards, then we find out that all of us are sinners. The earth mourns too and withers, and the world fades and withers. The exalted of the people of the earth fade away. The earth is also polluted. by its inhabitants for their transgressed laws, violated statues, broke the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth and those who live on it are held guilty. Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned and there are few left." Who is that guy on the bottom there? Do you remember that one? Some of you old enough to remember that? You should be older than I am and I remember it. That was the Indian guy. You remember he would ride in through like a park and there's garbage all over the place? And it represents the Indians and how before we came here, everything was clean and the water was nice and all that kind of stuff. And as he's sitting there, all of a sudden this tear comes down his cheek, right? Because he feels really bad about what we've done to it and all that kind of stuff. I have to say, though, this is one of the few government campaigns that I think was really effective. I don't know if you, some of you are younger, may not realize this. When I was a kid, people would just throw their garbage out the window into the ditch. You just did that. And there would be whole piles of stuff there. I don't mean a little bit like it is now. I mean, you just go throw it in the ditch. And you remember, or for those of you who are a little bit younger, do you remember Woodsy Owl? Give a hoot, don't pollute. It actually was fairly effective because pollution, you know, as far as garbage on the roads and stuff, isn't nearly as bad as what it used to be. So anyways, So the idea of pollution is that, as the second angel sounded, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood, and a third of the creatures who were in the sea and had life died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. On the left there is a kill of fish just came up on the shore. On the right, a couple of Big whales that have died. Can you imagine the stench if a third of all the stuff in the ocean just came washing up? Man, I remember one time I was with my kids, we were riding along, and there was, oh, kids, look, there's a dead bear along the side of the road. This is in the summer. I said, oh, let's stop and look at it. So we get out, we start walking, whoa, we get right back. Or what was the one that they had, there was a whale that washed up shore, and remember, they blew it up? They basically dynamited it. It's whale parts flying all over the place. Or, you know, the worst nightmare for the environmentalists when they let go of those, what was it? It was a seal or something, I remember it was. And it's going out and what happened? Two orca whales come up. I don't know if it was a dolphin or whatever it was, but it jumped. Was that what it was? It was an orca, yeah, and it grabs it in midair. It takes it down. Nature's red and blood and claw. There you go. Third of the ships and a third of the waters. Now, how much are we dependent on shipping? We got a dock strike that's starting right now or did they avert it? I don't remember. Did they? Until January 15th. Until January 15th. Oh yeah, that's convenient. In your house and in your closet was maybe China, so we're depending on shipping. I know it. The thing is, I think we've probably actually reached the high point for global trade. There's much more nationalism, there's much more idea of bringing it back home. I did this one time with my kids. We just went through our house and picked up products to see how many different countries we have products from. We have something like 45 different countries. I made that comment a couple of weeks ago. Just pick up a can of mixed nuts and read mayhack Canadian nuts from it. It lists like 15 countries that they could be coming from. So, I mean, global trade makes you richer, but global dis-and-trade doesn't. It says, the third angel sounded, and a great star fell from the heavens, burning like a torch. And it fell on a third of the rivers and the springs of water. The name of the star is called Wormwood, and a third of the waters became Wormwood, and many died from the waters because they were bitter. Who's the guy on the bottom there? Mr. Yuck. Kids, do you know what that means? When we were little, they didn't have Mr. Yuck. What did they have on the side instead? Skull and crossbones. I think they put that on some hard liquor too, didn't they? But Mr. Yuck, on the top there, that is an actual wormwood plant. And wormwood is not real poisonous as much as it is really bitter. And it's interesting because you remember when the nuclear reactor melted down in Ukraine, in Chernobyl, right? And it overheated and it leaked out. Nobody lives in Chernobyl to this day. Do you know what Chernobyl means? Wormwood. I didn't name it for that reason. It says, a fourth angel sounded and a third of the sun and a third of the moon and a third of the stars were struck so that a third of them would darken and the day would not shine for a third of it and the night in the same way. There's a passage in Zephaniah that says this, near and great is the day of the Lord, near and coming very quickly. Listen, the day of the Lord, it's a warrior cry out bitterly. A day of wrath is that day, a day of trouble and distress, a day of destruction and desolation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpets battle and battle cry against the fortified cities, the high towers. I will bring distress on men, so that they will be like the blind, because if they have sinned against the Lord, their blood will be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung. Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to deliver them on that day of the Lord's wrath, and all the earth will be devoured in the fire of his jealousy. For he will make a complete end, indeed a terrifying end, of all the inhabitants of the earth." Jesus spoke about that terrible time at the end. He said, There's going to be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, and on earth dismay among the nations, and perplexity at the roaring of the seas and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken, then you will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud and power with great glory. But when you see these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. You know, there was another time when there was great darkness over the land too. That was when Jesus was crucified. It says at noon, it became dark and it lasted until three o'clock. You know, once again, I think that's appropriate too, because if Jesus is the light of the world, then it would make sense as he's going out, the light of the earth would go out as well. There's records from the other side of the world of a day that was dark for a whole day and whatnot. It's likely to be that time. So then I looked and I heard an eagle flying in mid-heaven saying with a loud voice, woe, woe to those who dwell in the earth because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet which are about to sound. So you have this jaw-dropping, heart-leaping terror, men fainting from fear because of the expectation that things are coming upon the world. And yet, what's interesting is, and even blood-curdling, is that he says there's worse to come. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Because of the final ones to come. Back in the 70s, when I was a kid, it was common to see Hell's Angel bikers riding around, especially their Vietnam vets, on their motorcycles. They used to call them choppers back then. Bandana on their head. By the way, the same guys are doing it, it's just now they're all 75 years old. Sometimes on the back of those jackets, you'd read this. When I die, I'm going straight to heaven because I've spent my time in hell. Now, what they mean by that is the things that they'd gone through in Vietnam were so bad that certainly they've already paid their price for hell. But the Bible doesn't talk that way. You've heard that phrase, that war is hell? Must seem like those who live through it. Destruction of homes, loss of family members. Look at all the people who in Ukraine, you know, most of the people in Ukraine, when Putin first started threatening, I saw interviews with Ukrainians, they said, nah, he's not going to do anything. They said, he's just sword rattling. Well, how long has the war been going on now? Two full years already? And how many people have been displaced? Something like four million. The last number I saw was estimated that 500,000 Ukrainians have died. Now, I have no opinion that I want to give you on whether the Ukrainians should have defended themselves. I'm not surprised they did. But they could have settled this probably a lot sooner, and when it's all said and done, you're going to have both sides losing, and you're going to have a lot of people dead. There's a lot of widows now. How do you handle that? You move to Poland, you're living with someone for a while, and you can't go back. Matter of fact, this is personal. My sister-in-law and brother who were here just last week. Her name is Dina. Her brother's name is Jeff. He's married to a woman from the Ukraine. Parents moved over here about 10 years ago. But they're moving back to Ukraine because of their age. They didn't have enough credits for Social Security to be on Medicare. And so they have no choice because they can't afford to pay it out of pocket and not at their age. So they're going back and they're going back to the area that the Russians are occupying. They don't really have much for options. As Tina said, what they should do is go to Mexico and come in as an illegal, as opposed to a legal. What I'm saying is, the worst situation has messed up everything in their life. And wars are disruptive. And the wars that are going to come, because when we were looking at those first seals, most of those things I suggested actually are just the natural outworkings of a political leader, and then war, and then famine, and all those types of things that come out of it. But here, the actual judgment is coming directly upon nature, and as a result of man's sins. But the angel comes by and tells them, whoa, whoa, whoa. Alright, let's go on. It says, The fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth, and the key of the bottomless pit was given to it. He opened the bottomless pit, and smoke went up out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit. By the way, that's a picture from National Geographic. It was taken when Saddam Hussein destroyed the oil rigs in Kuwait. The other thing that reminds me is, remember when Abraham was bargaining with God on Sodom and Gomorrah? He's like, well, if you find 50 righteous men, will you spare them? He said, yeah, for 50, I'd spare the whole bunch of them. And he said, well, okay, how about 40. How about 35? By the way, this is what you do in the Middle East. There's not prices on anything when you go to Israel. You just pick up an object. That signals to the shop owner that you're interested in it. He'll come over. This is happening. He'll come over and go, I see you're looking at that. It's very fine. It's very good. Yes, yes. I said, how much is it? Oh, you know, normally we charge 40 shekels. But for you, 32. Now, if you're dumb, and it's American, you go, OK, that sounds good. And that's why they like Americans. What you're supposed to say is, 32? I wouldn't give you 15 for it. 15? I have a family to feed. I would go broke. That's below my cost. How about 20? 20? How about 18? OK, 18. Now, the one time I was walking back through the city of Jerusalem, and if you walk along the walls, it's tunnels, right? And they were closing up shop. And I walked in, and I saw this drum, right? It was like bongo drums or whatever. I just kind of looked at it like this, and he's like, oh! And so I said, no, I'm not. He swore at me when I left. Because once you pick it up or once you look at it, you're supposed to enter into it and come to some kind of agreement. So there you go. So this is the abyss, right? Out of the smoke comes locusts upon the earth, and power is given to them as scorpions of the earth have power. They were told not to hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree. By the way, locusts eat green things, so this is different. Instead of hurting the trees and the weeds and the flowers and all that stuff, they're going to hurt people. It says they're supposed to hurt only those who do not have the seal of God on their forehead. Remember we saw last week that the 144,000 had the seal? So these are the people who do not have the seal of God. And they were not permitted to kill anyone, but to torment them for five months. And the torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a man. And in those days, men will seek death, but will not be able to find it. They will long for death, and death will flee from them. Now it's interesting, my daughter lived in Birmingham, Alabama. And she said, well, make sure when you get up in the morning, you put your shoes on. Check to make sure there's no scorpions in them first. Because they get scorpions there. Now, they're not likely to kill you, but they tell me they hurt quite a bit. They saw a number of scorpions in there. It says, the appearance of the locusts were like horses prepared for battle, and on their heads was the appearance of a crown like gold. Their faces were like the faces of men, they had hair like the hair of women, their teeth were like the teeth of lions, they had breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots and many horses rushing to battle. Now, first of all, how are we supposed to understand this? I would argue that these are actually some kind of manifestation of demons. Because the abyss, according to the Bible, is the place where people... Let me back up. Did you know there's actually nobody in hell right now? You think, oh, hold it, where are you getting that from? Read what it says in the book of Revelation when it says, and then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. Hades is the place of the dead. You remember when it says the rich man died and he went to Hades? He was in torment and he could see Abraham there, right? And so the abyss is the place where the spirits are kept before the final judgment. Hell, what we usually call hell, the lake of fire, is at the end when people are resurrected and they're thrown into that. So all people are going to be resurrected, whether you're Christian or non-Christian. Everyone's going to be resurrected, some to a resurrection of life, Jesus said, and some to a resurrection of judgment. And so I take it to mean that what's coming out of there is actually demons manifested in this way. And by the way, this is the same place we're told that Satan is thrown for a thousand years so they can no longer deceive people. I've also heard that about the helicopters. Yeah, oh yeah, by the way, especially from the 60s. And I got a couple things that'll make you laugh here. We'll tell you something about... Helicopters that have hair. Yeah, yeah, we're going to get to that in a second. It says they have tails like scorpions and the sting is in their tail and the power to hurt for five months. They have a king over them. the angel of the abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he has the name Apollyon. The first woe is past. Behold, two woes are still coming after these things." Now, by the way, notice they have an angel over them of the abyss. That would be a demon. And I'm guessing that the angels that are in the abyss, remember in the book of Genesis, where it says, now at that time when men started to multiply in the earth, the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, and took them for wives, and they had children by them. And it says these were the men of old, the heroes of old. They produced giants, the Nephilim. So the Bible seems to indicate that angels bred with human women. Now you say, well, come on, they don't have bodies. Well, first of all, we don't know what they're capable of and what they're not. But Jude, when he talks about this, talks about the people in Sodom and Gomorrah going after strange flesh, just like the angels did. in the days of Noah. So he's connecting with that. So there were some of these angels that committed, you know, inter-species breeding. And by the way, I would guess this is where they got the origin of some of the Greek stories of, like, gods, half-gods, you know, Hercules. And in almost all those stories, what you have is the god is the male and the female is the human. Perhaps that's where they got some of these stories from. They actually go back to this, you know, the idea of titans overturning the gods and some of that. And by the way, the word that's used for that, for Peter, is Tartarus, which comes out of Greek mythology, which is the place that the titans were imprisoned by the gods afterwards. I'm not suggesting those stories are true. What I'm suggesting is they have a trace back to biblical stories. I'll give you another example of that. Pandora's box. Originally it was Pandora's jar, but you know the basic idea, right? She's given a jar or box by one of the gods, she's told not to open it no matter what, and her curiosity gets her, so she opens it up, and when she does, all the evils of the world fly out. But there was one thing yet in the bottom of the box after everything flew out. What was it? It was hope. Isn't that story the story of Eve? Because think about it, Eve's sins pulls her husband into it, and as a result of it, all the sins in the world fly out, so to speak, but there was something that was left. Because at the same time that God pronounced judgment on him, he also said that the seed of the woman would someday destroy the serpent and bring back paradise, which is a reference to Christ. See, they add hair like women. Who's the guy on the left? Oh, one of the homeless men who ever walked the face of this earth. Where did he get married? Do you remember? Does anyone remember where he got married? On the Johnny Carson's car. Yeah, to Miss Vicky. And why was he famous? He was famous for having absolutely no talent, right? I mean, he was a gong show contestant before there was a gong show. They brought him out there and he'd start singing. And are these the demon locusts? I actually heard that the power to sting was in their tails. That's their cords coming off their guitars into their amplifiers. Well, that makes as much sense as helicopter gunships. And they had long hair, too. Not quite as long as Tiny Tim's. They had teeth like a lion. I always thought that Mick Jagger looked like a rubber chicken. You know what I mean? You ever see when he's struck? Saturday Night Live did a spoof on this one time, where there's a bunch of people, and they're sitting at a table at a bar, and it's a karaoke night. There's a guy up there, and he's doing impressions of Mick Jagger. And all of them are like, oh, man, he looks just like Mick Jagger. But Mick Jagger was on the program that night, and he's one of the guys in the audience. He's like, oh, I don't know. I don't think it looks like Mick at all. Oh, no, man, he does a great Mick. Like, you could do any better. There you go. How old is he? He's like 122 or something like that. You know, they said never trust anyone over 30. Well, that was 60 years ago that they were all that. What's the one on the right? What's that from? Groundhog Day. What's the basic storyline of Groundhog Day? The guy wakes up every morning hearing Sonny and Cher singing, I Got You Babe, right? And it doesn't matter what happens, every day he's going to start over the next day at the same time. So he's caught in this loop. And at one point he gets tired of this and he tries to figure out ways to kill himself. You know, he flies, he electrocutes himself, he does all these things. But no matter what happens, the next day he's awake. Now think of what I just said. Men will seek to kill themselves. And they won't be able to. He's got to plunge a knife in his heart six times and he's not going to die. Why aren't they allowed to die? What would you guess, what? Judgment, yeah. These people, because we're told later that they don't give up their worship of demons. By the way, man, a number of years ago, in the Twin Cities, you had a conference of women, and they were getting together, and it was kind of a New Age-y type thing, but it was sponsored by mainline churches, and people were getting together, calling on their spirit guides to enter them. I challenge you to go to a Barnes and Noble and go down the teen section and see how many of the books have to do with witchcraft and vampires and all that stuff. That's the fascination. I had the guy who was the best man at my wedding. His name was Tim Larson. He was from Korea. When I first met him, he was involved in heroin. I witnessed to him and he made a profession of faith. And he was coming to my Bible studies for a while, and he was doing pretty well. But then when I would call him and say, hey, Tim, let's get together, he's like, oh, no, man, I got so much stuff going on. And then I heard from somebody who was smoking pot again. Next thing you know, he was into snorting cocaine. That was in the 80s. And I didn't see him much after that. I saw him a couple of years later, found out that he had gotten involved with people who were doing drugs with. He went there one time. They had a party. And right when they had the party, all of a sudden, everyone started taking their clothes off, and they had a big orgy. He thought that was weird and wonderful. He came back the next time they did the same thing, but then they all took out these candles. They started lighting them. They put their hoods over their heads. And so he was involved in all kinds of satanic stuff. Not on purpose, but he got led into it. And I remember seeing him a number of years later. He's looking around all over the place. He's suffering from paranoia. I hadn't seen him for many years. And he told me that he would hear the voices all the time, and there was nothing he could do to get rid of it. I have to tell you, this area here, in my opinion, is one of the toughest areas as far as that type of stuff. When I would teach Bible studies years ago, and I would ask people in Bible studies, I said, have you ever had an experience that you thought, someone tell me what the time is while I'm watching this. 7.42. Okay, we're right on time. I'd ask them, have you ever had an experience that you thought was somewhat demonic or whatever? And in the city's most, nah, not really, one person. I ask people in Bible studies here, well, you mean in the last week or so? It's weird because when you talk about the candles and the hoods and all that stuff, I've had two different people that I've known here. Shelly was one, your former sister-in-law, and Tommy Quimby, who owns DR Tech. Not connected, but riding down by the river where they found people who had things on their head and they were doing the candles and the whole stuff. There was a guy who used to come to our Bible study years ago. His name was Josiah Richter. He worked at the dairy. He came to our Bible study. And I heard that he was involved in the occult and stuff. So I warned the people in the Bible study. I said, when he comes here, there's probably going to be some weird things that happen. But he needs to get saved. Grew up and went to Grace Baptist Church and all that kind of stuff. And so I asked him about this. How did he get involved in this? He said, well, when I was 13 years old, he said, I prayed one time. I said, God, if you're real, reveal yourself. And nothing happened. I prayed to Satan. I said, Satan, if you're real, reveal yourself. And all of a sudden, somebody appeared. I said, well, what does he look like? He looks like a biker. with leather and all this kind of stuff. And I had known somebody else who had been involved in Satanism, so I knew the stuff he was telling me. He wasn't just feeding me a line, because it was very similar, right? I asked him, I said, why is it this area seems to be... He said, because there's a lot of graveyards that are back in the woods where nobody sees them, and we do our ceremonies there. Now, when he came here to the Bible study, we had weird things happen, just like I said. Make it what you want. I know what I experienced. I was driving home one time, late night, and as I was driving home, I watched four faces go by me, just the faces above my car. I thought that was bizarre. Now, I could be imagining it, but I had Rob, who was the guy who invited him to the Bible study. He came into prayer the next day at church. And I said, what's wrong? You look kind of haggard. He said, I just had really bad dreams last night. I said, you want me to tell you what your dream was about? Sure. I said, it involved you and some guy homosexually raping you, right? How did you know that? I said, because I had the same dream last night. I had another friend, not too long after this, who did not know Rob. There was no connection there. Him and I had bought a boat for some people in the Philippines so they could go from island to island to do missionary work. I went to meet him one time, and he didn't look very good in the morning. I said, what's wrong? He goes, I just had weird dreams last night. I said, you want me to tell you what your dream was about? He said, sure. I said, it involved you cutting up somebody with a knife, right? He said, Doug, I dreamt I was cutting up my ex-girlfriend, Connie Wolski, with a knife. How did you know that? I said, because I had the same dream last night. Now, I want you to think about that. There's no possible way that that could be coincidental. Right? And unless you think I'm lying, you know, you could say, well, you're probably exaggerating that, right? But I want to tell you one more thing about that related to this, because this is all related to the demonic stuff in the end, right? When I was in high school, I told this, I think, to someone last week, but when I was in high school, we had some people come to our school who were going to do, like, ESP mind-reading things. It was a man and his wife, and they were both probably in their mid-70s to close to 80. And she was dressed in tights and a tutu. Not a pretty sight. And she was over on the other side of the room. And what they were going to do was, he was going to pick up items from the student body and hold them up. She was blindfolded, facing the other direction. And he would say, what do I have in my hand? And she was supposed to call out what it was. And so holds this up. What is it? It's a comb. Hold this up. It's a dollar. It's a what? And I think that would be easy. How could you fake that? How could you fake that? I think it would be easy to fake it. In an audience like that, wouldn't you tend to have the same type of items, a pencil, or this or that? Just pick them up and order. But a friend of mine, Craig Ebel, he goes, oh, I got a business card. I said, well, hold it up. What do you got? It's a business card. Well, in high school kids, not as many are going to have business cards. That wasn't the clincher. The clincher was this. They said, it was somebody who was sitting in front of me, because we're in bleachers, so this is the bleacher right in front of me. They said, hold it up. What is it? It's a $5 bill. He said, read the serial number off of it. And I was from here to here away, and she read the serial number off of it. Okay, the last thing they did for a trick was they brought a kid forward. His name was Greg something or another. I went to school with him. My brother later worked with him at Perkins or at NSP. But anyways, he brought him forward and he said, we're going to call a 1, 2, 3, and the first card that comes to your mind, just call it out. So 1, 2, 3, two of spades. I talked, and they opened up the deck of cards. All the cards are facing one way except for the two of spades. All of them have a blue back except one has a red back, the two of spades. I talked to Greg, Greg Fisher. I talked to him afterwards. I said, so what happened? Because I wanted to know if they had set that up too. He said, well, when they said one, he said, all the cards are flashing through my mind real fast. He said, when they said two, it was only spades. When I said three, it was like two of spades just shouted it out. OK, now I want you to think about that. Those two stories together tell you a couple things. One, that it's possible for demons to enter your dream state, right? And two, it's possible for demons to put things into people's minds. Now, you know what's really interesting about it? When they got all done, you know, they're all, people are clapping, they were really fascinated and stuff, but when they got all done, towards the end, they said, this has nothing to do with the occult, this isn't, oh really? Like they're going to admit that it was? Now my point is this, as the Bible indicates, as we get closer to then, there's going to be more and more people involved in demonic activities. In places like India, where they have a lot of that going on, you get all these weird births and stuff. There's one, Google it, there's a girl with two faces. Two faces. You ever seen the guy with the bark on his hands? The tree man? That one's creepy too. A lot of these things have to do with the fact that people are involved in demonic stuff. And what I'm suggesting is there seems to be a fair amount of that kind of stuff that goes around here. Peter Marshall was the was the chaplain of the U.S. Senate for a number of years. He came and spoke here, I believe, in the mid-70s or so. He said this was the most difficult place he had ever preached in his entire life. He said he just felt a heaviness. The guy that I mentioned, Carl, the one who had the dream about cutting up the lady, stayed at Pastor Allen's house when he came up a couple times to do Bible studies. He said, I came across the river, and he said, the moment I came across the river, I just had this splitting headache that lasted for two and a half days. The moment I got across the river, it went away. We as a church pray and fast once a month, all the guys. We do that because it started years and years ago when we were dealing with all kinds of weird demonic stuff. We're having a meeting one time at church, and my son calls me, he's like, Dad, he's like 12 at the time. He said, Dad, can you come home? I said, yeah, I'll be home as soon as the meeting's over. No, Dad, you need to come home now. I said, why? He said, because we're having, there's some lady outside the house who keeps calling to us, an old woman, and there's nobody out there. We started getting, my kids started getting weird skin conditions. I brought them into Dr. Vitale. My son had these like dots all over his body from about here to about here. Dr. Vitale brings in Dr. Novak. They're looking at him, they're like, we have never seen anything like this. We're walking out and I said to Jason, my son, I said, Jason, why do you have that? He said, oh, it's all the demonic stuff. I said, we're not going to go to the dermatologist. Let's just pray and wait for it to go away. And we prayed and it went away. We had another time. See, I'll give you ghost stories. It's close to October, right? We're almost done with it anyways. But anyway, I had another time along this line where I was sleeping, and as I was sleeping, I heard this pounding on the door, really, really loud. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, in my mind or in my dream or whatever of this just follow swearing. It sounded very similar to when you have a heavy metal band going, you know what I'm talking about? And it's like, right? Okay. I thought maybe just a bad dream. My wife heard the pounding. My daughter heard the pounding. They didn't hear the voice. My wife gets up because the dog scratched and crazy like this on the back door. She opened the door, the dog shot out of the entryway outside. The dog had slept in the entryway for three years. I couldn't get the dog to come back in for about the next five months. It just would not. It didn't matter how cold it out, if I drag it, and I thought, you baby, and I'm sure the dog, if we could talk, say, you didn't see what I saw. Now, here's what's interesting about that. At that same time, it was about 3 o'clock in the morning, I was telling this later on. I didn't tell when this happened, but I was telling that to Paul Hueskamp. He used to be a teacher here, died a couple of years ago. And he said, Doug, when did that take place? I said, well, it was on Wednesday. He said, well, what time? I said, 3 o'clock. He said, Doug, I was bolted awake at 3 o'clock on Wednesday night, and I had this overwhelming sense that I needed to pray for you. Those things aren't chance. They're not chance. Well, what happens when these demons are released on the earth, who've been kept there for the last 6,000 years? Massive increase in demonic activity. And I'll tell you, you talk to people the age of some of these kids here, I asked them in the confirmation class, I said, do you know anyone who's involved in witchcraft of any kind, or seances, or tarot cards? Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, all of them do. They don't know what they're getting into. Here's some megatruths that come out of this. We'll probably finish a little bit early. Here's the first one. Sin is evidently a big deal. The problem is we don't think it's a big deal. Because here's what you do. You look at yourself and then you compare yourself to someone who's worse than you. and say, well, I'm not so bad. Like as if God grades on a curve. I mean, I had teachers when I was at college, right? There was one teacher, you could get about a 45 out of 100, and that would be a B+. Because he was such a hard grader that, you know, but he went on a curve. But that's not the way God curves. How many sins do you have to commit to make yourself guilty enough to go to hell? One. I use my illustrations sometimes, because most people, if they're non-Christian, if you ask them, why do you think you're going to heaven? Well, I think I'm a pretty good person. Say, I've done some good things, a few bad things. But to go to court, and you shot a guard, and you say to the judge, it's true, I robbed the bank, I shot the guard, but I helped with Boy Scouts at one time. That doesn't cancel it out. Or the other illustration I give, which is a crude one, but stick with me. My wife cooks for all the people at the Bible study when they come on Wednesday nights. She cooks good treats for them, all that kind of stuff. But let's assume that she made some brownies one night. And she uses the finest flour. She uses cocoa. She uses olive oil because she won't use the seed oil. Fresh eggs and all this stuff. She mixes it all together, frosting and everything. And she cuts the pieces and serves them to all the people in the Bible study. But right as she does, I say, by the way, she also has a secret ingredient in this. There's dog crap in it. She took it from the backyard. She mixes it in. It gives a consistency that it doesn't have otherwise. Would you eat it? I've actually had people, well, yeah, it depends on how sweet it is. Ruin my illustration, okay, just ruin my illustration. No, you wouldn't eat it because the little bit, even if I told you it was three ounces of it, you would not eat it because the other good stuff in it can't cancel out the bad, right? And in the same way, or to give you a different analogy, let's say you've got a woman, she's married to a wonderful man, finally he dies. And she's heartbroken because he had been just the greatest husband. Kind, thoughtful, good provider. But as she's going through some of the stuff, she finds all these love letters from his secretary. He'd be running an affair. Would anything he did as a husband outweigh that? Or what if a guy got married to a woman and said, honey, I love you. I will be faithful to yours, except for two weeks a year where I go out with my old flame. Would that be considered 90% faithful? Do you see what the problem is? The problem is we're all sinners. And it's kind of like baseball. How many times do you have to strike out before you're no longer batting 1,000? Once. What if you get up to bat another 800 times? Can you get back to 1,000? No. So the basic idea, this is what the scripture teaches. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And I'll just ask people this sometimes. I'll say, how many times do you think an average person sins a day? I said, well, I don't know. Some will say 10. And I get out a calculator. 10 times, OK, 365, that's 3,650. You live to be 83 years old. It comes out to be 338,000 sins. I said, who's going to let you go if you go before a judge and you have 338,000 counts against you, all of them provable? See, the problem is there's not one person in 1,000 who would say they're perfect. But there's not one person in 10,000 who realizes how serious it is that we're not perfect. And so what the Bible actually teaches is this, is when Jesus died on a cross, for those who trusted him, God punished him instead of us. And then he took Jesus' righteousness, that means his record of good deeds that he did, all keeping the commandments, never doing anything wrong, he takes that righteousness and credits it to our account when we believe. So we get His righteousness, He gets our sin, and God can view us as if we had lived Jesus' life. That's the gospel. I can tell anyone, no matter how filthy or dirty their life has been, if you would trust Christ, He would forgive everything you've done. Now, I've used this illustration before, I want to give it again. Two people, Mother Teresa and Jeffrey Dahmer. Most of you know who Jeffrey Dahmer was. He was guilty of murdering people, cannibalizing them, raping them. I was doing a Bible study a number of years ago. I don't know if you were there for it, Jesse, but there was a guy who was in my Bible study, and I used this as an example. He goes, I was Jeffrey Dahmer's neighbor. I've been over to his apartment a number of times. It freaked me out. Okay, Jeffrey Dahmer. went to prison, and while he was there, a couple of months, I think it was, before he died, someone had given him a Bible, he read it, and according to his own testament, which is what it says on Wikipedia, he became a Christian. Okay, now compare that to Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa, who would be held up by most people, is a wonderful, great person. Mother Teresa, I know someone who visited her home, there were Hindu idols all over in her house. She said her job was to help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, and that God would accept everyone, whatever religion they have. You want to hear something shocking to no end? If both of those things I told you are true, Mother Teresa is in hell. in the abyss waiting for judgment, and Jeffrey Dahmer is in heaven. So it can't be based on your performance, right? Because obviously Mother Teresa was a better person than Jeffrey Dahmer. But now let me ask this question. If I were to make that statement to an average person, which would they be more offended with? The idea that Mother Teresa was in hell, or that Jeffrey Dahmer was in heaven? How many think Mother Teresa in hell would be the one they'd be more offended by? How many think they'd be more offended with the idea that Jeffrey Dahmer was in heaven? I think you guys are right. I think they'd be offended by both, but here's what I'm saying. They're actually more offended with the idea that God would show grace than they are that God would show judgment. Because they hate the grace of God. Look at the people who do whatever they can to earn salvation when God offers it as a free gift. But when you come over to my wife's house, I mean, when she makes all these nice things for you, Julie, if you were to try to pull out $5 and say, well, here's for the tacos you gave me here, would she take that as a compliment? No, it'd be an insult. Because you can't improve on what God's done. So if you're a non-Christian, what I'm telling you is this, if you trust in Jesus, if you turn from your sins, trust, you can have eternal life for free. And you get all the joy that comes with it. You know who Russell Brand is? Some of you are older, probably don't. Russell Brand is a popular YouTuber. He looks like a hippie from Leftovers and whatnot. He was married to Katy Perry, and just a way out, left-wing, nutty person. And just a couple months ago, he got saved. He's freaking everybody out. He's talking about the grace of God, and how he's such a sinner, and how he needs God's grace. God saves who he wants to save. And as Jesus said, the spirit blows from here to there. You don't know where it's coming from. You don't know where it's going. So it is with those who are born of the spirit. You don't know who the next person is going to save. I teach the confirmation girls. None of them profess to be Christians. Some of them look like they're paying attention. Some of them like, not at all. I have no idea what God's doing in their heart. Just keep teaching, keep preaching, keep praying, and wait for him to do it. Let's do a couple more things here, we'll finish up. So sin's a big deal. God's patient and long-suffering, but he'll never overlook sin. He has to punish sin, otherwise he wouldn't be righteous. Every day that an unbeliever lives, he's storing up wrath for judgment. That's scary. What's true of individuals is also true of nations and the world as a whole. You can store up wrath. God's day of reckoning will arrive, and sinners will face the judgment. And because God is just, he must and will punish all sins. Your only hope is to turn from your sins and trust in Christ. So every sin will be punished. Either punished on Jesus, for those who trust in him, or you have to take the punishment for yourself. And the Bible talks about hell, and it talks about it in graphic and scary terms. I don't think Jesus was prone to exaggerate, and Jesus is the one who spoke about hell more than anybody else. Questions, do you have any questions? Yes, go ahead. One of the confirmation girls right there. Yes. No. There's a verse in the Bible that I don't think directly relates to this, but it applies. Solomon said this, when a tree falls, whether to the north or the south, there lies. And when a person dies, that's it. Your eternal destiny is set at the moment you die. And that's why I warn people, because I've done funerals for people who are 6 years old, 14 years old, and 103 years old. And I mentioned to some of you a few weeks ago that my dad became a Christian 23 hours before he died. And there was a dramatic change in him. And it was scary because I spent the night with my dad, right? And he had claimed to be a Christian, but I told him, I said, you don't know the Lord. That's what your problem is. And he became really embittered towards people, foul stuff coming out of his mouth. My dad never talked like that before, right? And so, but I would be spending the night there, sleeping in one of the rooms next to him. And he'd be calling out, he had his mask on, he's like, Doug, help me, I'm dying. I mean, he was terrified. I said, Dad, I can't help you. Only Jesus can help you. You have to call out to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. And the last I saw him, I prayed with him, told him the story of the thief on the cross. And I said, Dad, you got to trust in Jesus. They moved my dad from St. Cloud State back to his nursing home room. He died in transit. My brother was in the medic van with him. He said, dad, look, there's NSP where he used to work. He said, yep, he died. So as far as I knew, that was it. But then my sister was telling me and my wife was telling me what I didn't see because I had gone home to go sleep. There was a dramatic change in him. It only lasted for a short time before he died. But there was a dramatic change. So keep praying for people. But once that person dies, that's it. We don't pray for the dead. The Bible gives no indication that you can change your place or they get a second chance or anything like that. It says, it's subject upon all men once to die, and after this comes the judgment. And that's why I'm warning you guys in the confirmation, some of you guys are younger, because it gets harder to believe the older you get. Because you just get so set in saying no and no. So there's one story, and I'll finish with this. So it was D.L. Moody, I believe it was. Harry Ironside tells about when he was a kid. And D.L. Moody was preaching in these great big places, and there was a place where there's several thousand people. And he asked the question, he said, I want everybody to stand. He said, now, what I want you to do is I want you to sit down if you became a Christian before age 15. And like two-thirds of the people sat down. And then he just kept going up five and five and five. By the time he got to 65, of the some 10,000 people that were sitting there, that were there, all of them had sat down, there was something like 30 people left. Almost nobody gets saved that late. There's a reason the Bible says, today, if you hear my voice, don't harden your heart. Today is the day of salvation. And the thing is, if you're not a Christian, at least this much, now it's been explained to you how you can have eternal life. So you can't say, well, I never knew, because you say, no, I told you. But you're not here by chance. You're here for a reason. And it might have been because you're no more interested than what the end times is. But as I pointed out, one of the things I want you to do is to consider the claims of Christ. He said, everyone's going to stand before Him and give an account. It's a big, big deal. So come back. And if I lose all of you, you're like, oh, I guess there you go. We do have, by the way, just a couple of housekeeping things. We are going to still have this on Halloween night. If it makes you feel better, you can dress up as something before you come. But I had asked last week how many people would be here, because I figured some people would be gone, but there was enough who said they would be here that I thought, no, we'll still have it. Because we've got four weeks after this, it goes to the 14th, and I hope you come back. Next week, we are going to be talking about the Antichrist, which most people are pretty interested in that as well. So let's go over the word prayer. Oh Father God, I do pray for grace and mercy for the ones who have come tonight, and for the ones who are going to listen over the internet. I pray for much mercy for all. You know, it's so hard because we offer the greatest product anyone could have, eternal life, but people don't want it because they love their sins. Lord, I pray that you'd work in hearts. I pray that you'd open them up so that they find eternal life. Only your Spirit can do that, but we can ask, and you can do it. So I pray that you would. So bless us. Thank you for the time that we could be here tonight. Thank you for the school allowing us to do this at night. And Lord, I pray a blessing upon them too. In Jesus' name, amen. That was 8.03. Don't tell my brother because he always says, be done right at 8 o'clock. One of the things that everyone, like people, know about stuff is like a lot of the stuff with those magic bricks and that, what happens, a lot of people don't know that the stuff that actually is done in Costco and that. Some of that's demonic. That's demonic. is anything that isn't demonic and that stuff is set up for that and the reason that I know all about that I'll show you is one of the things that I know but years ago on that my real mom liked seeing magic tricks and that and I did too on that I thought that they were real until I actually started doing them. I started buying videos and stuff and then finding out what they're doing. I'll show you one right here. That's in my hand. See and that's why that's why some that's why some will say they're not they're not magicians. They're illusionists Because they want to make sure that people don't realize I realize that And that's the point of the line and stuff that is set up in there.