All right, what are we doing this week? I told you last week we were going to talk about the Antichrist. Then I got home and I looked at my schedule and what I had planned out for the week and I thought, oh, that's the next week. So that's on Halloween. So you have to come back for that one. What do we want to talk about this time? We want to talk about the end times and the return of Christ in Revelation 11, one to four, which talks about the two witnesses. And so Let me read the passage. I'm going to read a bit of it, and we'll read more as we're going along. We're going to see if we can get through the two chapters, 11 and 12, but certainly through 11. Here's what it says. Then there was given to me a measuring rod, like a staff. And someone said, get up and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and those who worship in it. Leave out the court, which is on the outside of the temple, and do not measure it. For it has been given over to the nations, and they will tread it under foot, the holy city, for 42 months. And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1260 days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. If anyone wants to harm them, fire flows from their mouth and devours their enemies. And if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in that way. These have the power to shut up the sky so that rain will not fall during the days of their prophesying. And they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every play as often as they want. Once again, the seminar goal is to give you a broad outline of the events related to the return of Christ, to encourage you to give serious thought to the claims made about Jesus. I had someone here last week that I am guessing probably has never actually heard the gospel before. They told someone they were going to come for one week, and they came, and it just so happened that was the week I presented the gospel, which is a good thing. And so, maybe they'll think about the claims as well. Another one is to prepare you for this coming day. Oh, here's more trivia question. Who is the first prophet that's mentioned in the Bible? I'd give you some Halloween candy, but I don't celebrate Halloween, and I don't have any candy. Who's the first prophet mentioned in the Bible? What? No one would be a good guess. The first one actually called a prophet or prophesying. A lot of people would say Moses. Very good, it's Enoch. We know that from the book of Jude where it says that Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied about the coming of the Lord and it's talking about the coming of Christ. The next person that's mentioned as a prophet is Abraham. We're told that when Abimelech took his wife thinking that it was his sister because he had lied about it. Remember God came to him and said, you better give that man his wife back. And Abimelech was like, I didn't know it was his wife. I didn't know. In my innocence, it's true. And the Lord said, I know you didn't know. But I'm telling you now, if you don't give that man his wife back, you're going to be dead by the morning. And it says, but he'll pray for you because he's a prophet. So he's actually referred to as a prophet as well. David is referred to as a prophet. There's a number of people who are referred to as prophets in the Old Testament. It was about these that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, By the way, the word ungodly, it's interesting that they translate it that way because it doesn't mean not like God. Ungodly means to be impious. It means to treat God in a way that does not match the respect that he deserves. So it would be impiety, some translations give it. The role of a prophet. We're going to talk about this before, because I'm arguing that these two witnesses here function as the last two prophets that are sent to the nation of Israel right before Jesus' return. So the first thing I have to say is prophets were men and some women who received revelation from God through dreams, visions, and even direct conversation. In Hebrews 1.1-2 it says, God, after he spoke to our fathers through the prophets in many ways and many portions in his last days, has spoken to us through his son. I notice it's many ways. and many portions. Can you name a woman prophet in the Bible? Prophetess, if you want to call it. Can you? She was a judge. I'll give you a couple of them. How about Miriam? Remember after Pharaoh's army was drowned in the sea, it said she prophesied? Or how about another one? How about Huldah? She was the one who was a prophetess when Josiah found the Book of the Law in the temple. And he brought it to Huldah, the prophetess. And Huldah said, you know what? All these things are going to happen. These curses in Deuteronomy, just like God said. But because you humbled yourself, because you tore your clothes, God's not going to do this in your generation. He's going to wait until you're gone. Now, by the way, I give a lot of credit to Josiah as opposed to Hezekiah. Remember when Hezekiah was told this won't happen in your generation? He said, whoo, good thing. But that's not what Josiah did. He doubled his efforts to try to get idolatry out of Israel. Now, the problem was it was a top-down revival, not a bottom-up. And so as soon as he was gone, the people went right back to where they're at. If we can get Supreme Court justices who overturn Roe v. Wade, it's going to go back the other direction at some point, unless we have a basic change in our culture and our understanding of human value. Now, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't work from the top-down. But what we're saying is, if you want lasting change, it has to be from the bottom-up. And that doesn't happen very often. That takes a lot of work. So, oh, and then there's another one. How about Anna in the temple? Remember? We're not sure whether she was a widow for 84 years or she was 84 years old. If she was a widow for 84 years, she was an old, old woman. But it says that she was a prophetess. And then you also have female, oh, Philip's daughters. He had daughters who were all prophets, right? And then there's female false prophets. Oh, I'd give 100 points for anyone to get this one. How about? Noah Diah. She was part of a conspiracy to make Nehemiah afraid to follow God. Nehemiah 6, 14. The other unnamed false prophetess referred to in the book of Revelation is a woman that they called Jezebel, because this Jezebel-like woman was teaching the church in Thyatira to follow idols and leading them into sexual immorality. That doesn't happen in churches anymore, does it? I saw one where, I don't know if it was a mainline Lutheran church or whatever, but the woman was a practicing witch. And she was the pastor of the church. And she saw no problem with it. I saw another one where the lady was into Buddhism. She was convinced that's one of the ways you connect to God and all this kind of nonsense. So, I mean, it's not just bad guys who become false prophets. Bad women become false prophets as well. Second thing I wanted to put down here, though, is that the prophets acted as prosecuting attorneys for God. They called Israel to repent. and to turn back to God when they were in violation of the covenant that the nation had made with God at Sinai. Jeremiah 35, 15 says this, Also, I have sent you all my servants, the prophets, sending them again and again, saying, Turn now, every one of you, from his evil ways, and amend your deeds, and do not go after other gods to worship them. Then you will dwell in the land which I have given to you and your forefathers, but you have not inclined your ear or listened to me. By the way, false prophets were a problem in the Old Testament, but Peter says we're going to face those types of things in the New Testament as well. He says this, but false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow after their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be maligned. By the way, that happens all the time now, too, doesn't it? Some pastor falls, or somebody gets involved in some kind of financial scandal. They say, oh, those Christians are all hypocrites. See, they're all like that. Jesus said there would be terrors among the wheat. That doesn't excuse the church for not dealing with these issues when they come up. But as I always ask people, I say, so are you telling me that because there's hypocrites in the church, Jesus didn't rise from the dead, and he's not who he claims to be? And you remember I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I'll ask people sometimes when I'm doing evangelism, I'll say, so if you were the devil, and I said, you know, maybe that's not hard for you to imagine, but if you were the devil, and you were trying to deceive people so they wouldn't believe the gospel, would you do most of your work inside the church or outside the church? Inevitably, the person will say inside. I said, well, why? Well, because if you can descript, and a lot of times they won't even finish the sentence. Ah, I said like what's happening to you right now, right? Oh, okay. He says, many of them will follow their sensuality because of them the way of truth will be maligned and in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their judgment from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep. But here's the question. How do you know whether a person's a true prophet or a false prophet? How do you know? I know some people who claim to be modern prophets and they said they did a study on it and found out their predictions came out to be true about 30% of the time. Now if you were in the Old Testament and you were a 30%er, what happened to you? You're stoned to death. You got them all right or you don't get them at all. By the way, whole cultures can buy into this. After the First World War, Germany had a republic. It was the first time they had a republican, I think, ever. It was called the Weimar Republic. It was a time of great debauchery, sexual things and everything. You could watch live sex acts in downtown Berlin. It was worse than what our country is today. But one of the things that happened even before that was you had all these people, they were like hippies, going around the countryside in Bavaria and stuff, all stopping at churches, claiming to be getting words to give to the people from God. And the churches welcomed them all in. Never testing what they were saying, just taking them on what they had. So what you saw in Germany was, first of all, the higher critics, the German higher critics, savaged the Bible, so most people's confidence in the Bible had gone down. As a result of that, you saw all these crazy people come in with their wild ideas, and then you saw the sexual revolution that took place, and then out of the sexual revolution, it ultimately led into the Nazi movement. A lot of the early Nazis in SA were homosexuals themselves. And by the way, that's what you see in the book of Romans, too. Remember, they give themselves over to idolatry. As a result of that, God gives them over to sexual sins, a sexual revolution. As a result of that, they destroy society. In other words, this pattern happens again and again. You read the Old Testament. How often do you see that God connects sexual immorality, idolatry, and violence together? And what are we seeing in our culture? We had a sexual revolution that started really in the 20s, it slowed down during the Depression, picked up again towards the end of the 50s, hit its stride in the 60s, and today you've got people discussing whether men can be women and women can be men. That's so absurd on the surface of it that it's hard to believe that we have to actually deal with this as a culture. And like I said before, you've got one of the parties, the major parties, that believes it's a winning issue to campaign on abortion and transing kids. That's stunning. Stuff like this has gone on for years. As a matter of fact, the person who coined the phrase transgender was a German guy named Simon Hirsch, Seymour Hirsch. He was a German guy during the time of the Weimar Republic. He's the one who really kind of pushed for the whole sexual revolution there. Or how about when you've got people who come to you and say, well, I've been to heaven. I was in heaven. I talked to an angel. There was one guy I listened to. He said that he went to heaven on a heavenly tour, and then when he came back, Jesus appeared at the foot of his bed playing the saxophone. You believe that? I'm a little suspicious. It's possible, but how do you know? There was a few years ago, there was a boy, Alex Malarkey. The name's going to be appropriate. Alex Malarkey. He ended up in some accident. He ended up, I think, paralyzed in some way. He wrote a book about it. He was just a young kid called The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven. Did you hear about that book? Famous thing, wasn't too many years ago, he wrote a retraction as he became an adult. He said this, I did not die. I did not go to heaven. I said that I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made those claims that I did, I never had read the Bible. People had profited from lies and continued to do so. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the source of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible. It could be inerrant, but it can't be infallible. Only God. You know, what does it say in Isaiah 19-20? It says this, when they say to you, consult mediums and spiritists who whisper and mutter. In other words, when you're scared and you're going to psychics, oh, I've got to find out my psychics are going to tell me all this and that. He said, should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and the testimony, if they don't speak according to this word, it's because they have no dawn, they have no light. In other words, the way you're supposed to know whether me up here teaching, your pastor in your church, or the Bible study leader that you have, or someone you're listening on the radio, the way you're supposed to know whether they're telling the truth is to have your Bible open to follow along and say, is this what he's actually teaching here? I've seen people who are well-known pastors, but they just skip from verse to verse to verse. That's why I'm committed to teaching through whole books of the Bible, verse by verse by verse. It forces me to deal with things I don't want to deal with. And that's pretty significant. All right. Next thing we have to say is prophets were both foretellers and foretellers. They not only revealed the future, but also denounced the present actions of the leaders and the people. That goes along with being kind of a prosecuting attorney. We think of prophets primarily of predicting the future, but that's not what their main role was. Their main role was to call people back to faithfulness to God. The next thing we have to say on there is prophets were almost always hated and rejected by Israel's leadership and the people as a whole. The parable of the rented vineyard. Remember how that one goes? Jesus was talking to religious leaders, and he told them a parable. It goes like this. He began to speak to them in a parable, saying, a man planted a vineyard and put a wall around it and dug a vat under the wine press and built a tower. Now, he's quoting from Isaiah, so this would have been a passage they're familiar with. And he rented it out to vine growers and went on a journey. At the harvest time, he sent his slave to the vine growers in order to receive some of the produce from the field. They took him, they beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. Again, he sent them another slave, and they wounded him in the head and treated him shamefully. He sent another, and they killed one, and so with many others, beating one and killing others. He had one more to send, his beloved son. He sent him at last, saying, Surely they'll respect my son. But those vine growers said to one another, This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and get his inheritance. It'll be ours. They took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. And it's interesting because in the parable, the slaves that were sent represent the prophets of the old that were sent to Israel. And so they treated them shamefully. They beat one and they smashed another around. And he says, finally, I'm going to send my son because they're going to respect my son. Of course, in the parable, the son represents Jesus. And then he asks him a question. He's going to pull it. I was just fishing just a few days ago. And when you're fishing, when they pull the bobber down, what are you supposed to do? Come on, you fisherman. What? You've got to set the hook, right? Here's Jesus, he's going to set the hook. Because they asked him this question, what will the owners of the vineyard do to him? And the answer they said, he'll come and destroy the vine growers and he'll give the vineyard to others. And then Jesus sets the hook. He says, have you not read this scripture, the stone which the builders rejected, meaning you builders reject, which is me. became the chief cornerstone. This came about from the Lord and it's marvelous in our eyes. And they were seeking to seize him. And yet they feared the people for they understood that he spoke the parable against them. And so they left and went away." And one of the parallel passages says, they went out to plot to kill him. Now think about it. He tells a story about some people who have a rented vineyard and how they beat the servants. And then when the owner comes, they kill him. And so Jesus is saying, that's what you're going to do to me. And they're like, oh, I can't believe he would say that. We ought to have to kill him for now. OK, well, there you go. And Jesus, in Matthew 23, 33 to 35, he says this, you serpents and you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? He's talking to the religious leaders. By the way, that must have shocked the people of his day, because they looked up to these people. He said, Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall all the guilt of the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, who you murdered between the temple and the altar. Forty years after Jesus pronounced these words, the city of Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans, and they slaughtered close to a million people. That's why Jesus said, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that stones the prophets that are sent to her. How often I've wanted to gather you like a hen gathers her chicks, but you're unwilling. Behold, your house has left you desolate. A couple more wars that they had, about another 30 years after Jerusalem fell, and then one more after that, and pretty soon the whole of Palestine, of what we called Israel at the time, was denuded. The Jews didn't come back basically until 1948, in the lifetime of some of us here. Next thing, for every true prophet, there were many false prophets. True prophets told the people what they needed to hear. False prophets told the people what they wanted to hear. Which do you think there's more of in churches across America today, true or false prophets? There's a lot of churches that are big that draw in a lot of people, but how do they really do it? I mean, sometimes it's by preaching the Word of God. I don't want to make a blanket statement about big churches. But if you want to build a big church, what should you do? I mean, if you're not concerned about what's true and false and whatnot, but you want to build a good-sized church, what do you do? See, and I didn't offer you any candy tonight. I told you I didn't do that. Tell them what's the type of things people come to church, or what do they want to hear? You're a good person, entertainment, a lot of fun. How to raise your kids, how to have better marriages. By the way, we have worse problems with our marriages and kids today than we ever have after all the seminars and stuff we do on it. When I do marriage counseling, I spend a lot of time talking about the holiness of God. You know why? Because if you see God as holy and yourself as a sinner, it's amazing how much more grace you'll show to your own spouse. One of the books I use when I do marriage counseling is called Married to a Sinner. I give it to both the husband and the wife. And each one's thinking, oh man, I need this because I'm definitely married to a sinner. They don't get the humor in that. And by the way, when he was up on Carmel, how many prophets did Elijah face? What was the ratio? One true prophet, how many? What's that? No, it wasn't quite that many. But gee, that's a good guess. Most people would say there were 400, but actually there were 400 prophets of Baal and 450 prophets of Asherah, so there are now 850. The odds probably aren't much better today, but God keeps his people. That isn't what I wanted to do. Here's what it says in Jeremiah 5, 30 to 31. God was complaining, an appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely, the priests rule on their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end? In other words, when it all comes down. There are all kinds of prophets telling people in Jeremiah, saying, oh, the Lord's going to bring back all the exiles and the temple utensils in just two years. And Jeremiah claps his hands and says, yeah, let it be so. He says, now let me tell you what's really going to happen. There's going to be 70 years of captivity. They're not coming back. Well, you believe the ones who tell you what you want to hear. But the problem is, is reality doesn't adjust to your whims and wishes. There's this thing, and it's particularly among women. I don't know why, young women. You ever heard the idea of manifesting? manifesting your destiny. You ever heard that? See, most of us are older, so we wouldn't. This is something that's big with a lot of younger women and whatnot. Whatever you want, you just imagine it and feel it completely, and the whole universe will wrap around to produce what you want. There's only one person who can speak things into existence, and that's God. So you have these delusional people thinking that, you know, if I just want it enough, it can turn out that way. Well, that's not the way it works. I want to give you this though, this I think is helpful. In the Old Testament, when you come to the book of Exodus and also Deuteronomy, it gives the treaty, the covenant agreement between God and the people. That actually follows the ancient Near East patterns for covenants, what's known as a vassal-susurrein treaty in the ancient Near East. So a vassal and susurrein would be kind of like Nero was in Rome, he would have been the susurrein, and Herod was in Judea, the vassal. So it's a lower king underneath a higher king, one that they have to swear allegiance to. So in these covenants, though, what you have is the same basic outline. First of all, there's the identity of the suzerain. So in the book of Exodus, the Lord says, I'm the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt. He identifies himself. Second, the history of the relationship between the two parties. That's why you'll find God talking about how I rescued you, I brought you through the wilderness, I took care of you. He's recording and repeating all the good things that he's done for them. Third thing that comes out of that is the obligations placed upon the vassal. In the book of Deuteronomy, you have all these things that God says, you have to do this, you have to do this because you're my people. I've chosen you. You need to do these things. The next thing they would do is they would deposit a copy of the treaty and place it in the temple of a God. Where was the treaty for the nation of Israel located? Where's the book of the covenant? The tabernacle and the 10 commandments inside of? inside of the Ark of the Covenant. So the idea is this is supposed to bear witness that we've made an agreement on this and this is what you're going to be held accountable to. There's also the divine witness to the treaty. God, sometimes when he criticizes them, he calls on heaven and earth. to bear witness to the fact that he's been faithful when they haven't. Then there's a series of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. If you do this, your bread bowl will be blessed, your children will be blessed, this will be blessed. When I teach this in a Bible study, what I do, because remember the refrain they're supposed to give after each one is, let it be so, let it be so, amen, amen. And so what I do is I read out the blessings, and I have the people in the Bible study when I'm done reading it say, let it be so. Amen, amen. And then I read out the curses. Cursed is everyone who does this. And then I get a long pause. I said, now what are you supposed to say? Amen, let it be so. Well, all of a sudden it makes it more real because the people were actually calling on a curse on themselves if they didn't fulfill the commandments in the covenant. And that's why Moses later on says that everybody who's under the Old Testament law is under a curse because the Bible says, and Moses said, cursed is everyone who does not abide by everything written in the book of the law so as to do it. So I was just watching this morning. It was an interview with Larry King, and there were four religious leaders, plus John MacArthur, who was an evangelical pastor. It was a rabbi, it was an imam, it was a New Age lady, Marianne Williamson, the one who ran for president, and then the other one was a Catholic priest. And so they're all talking, and they're asking, is there life after death? And all of them, except for the one atheist, I guess she was the fifth one on there, she said, no, there's life after death. They all agreed with that. And then Larry King asked them all, as you understand it, how does a person get to heaven or paradise or whatever? And every one of them, the Jew, the Muslim, Catholic priest, and the New Age person said, well, you just have to be a good person. And the rabbi said this, well, you know, I don't know what the percentage is. Maybe it's 51%. But I think if you're a decent person, you're going to heaven. And I was reminded again that there really are only two religions in the world. The religion of Cain, I'll work for it and earn it by the sweat of my brow and look at the things I brought forth from this cursed earth. Or you do it the way Abel did, which is coming by a blood sacrifice, understanding that something has to die in our place, otherwise we have to die ourselves. And so it doesn't matter what the religion is, what the background, it always comes down to it's either you're trusting in God or you're trusting in yourself. So the last thing that they do in these things is if the vassal is out of concord or accord with the treaty, then the suzerain, the high king, was supposed to send two final emissaries to them to warn them that they have to repent and come back in, otherwise he would declare war on them. So here is our question. Who were the last two prophets that God sent to Israel before the Romans destroyed Jerusalem? The two last prophets. It doesn't specifically say in the Bible, but I think we can make a reasonable deduction. Well, according to Jesus, who was the last prophet of the Old Testament era? John the Baptist, right? And then who would be after John the Baptist? It would actually be Jesus. What did they do to John the Baptist? What did they do to Jesus? What happened 40 years later? God, you remember when he tells the story about the king who had a big banquet for his son? He's like, oh, we're going to party, we're getting famous Dave to come in, we're going to barbecue, the whole thing's going to be just great. And it's that all of his guests began to make excuses. First of all, they didn't answer, and then he sent them home. He said, no, come, it's all prepared. But then they began to make excuses. One said, you know, I just got married. What, you can't bring your wife? Another one said, I just bought oxen. They're not going to be there tomorrow? I just bought a field and I have to check it out. I mean, they partied at night, so what are you doing with the oxen in the field at night? And it says the king was enraged. And then it says he sent out his armies to burn their city. And then he invited all kinds of people who are nobodies to come in and enjoy the banquet. The people in the first part whose city were destroyed are the Jews who rejected Jesus. They paid with their city being destroyed. The ones who are invited afterwards are those few Jews who believe, plus a bunch of Gentiles like us who are nobodies. And so it's a big deal when you reject God's messengers. And so the last two that were sent to Israel before God destroyed them through the Romans was Jesus and John the Baptist, and they treated them horribly. But that's what I'm suggesting. Here's where the tie-in is that there's two more witnesses coming to Israel before the end, right after they reject these two. you end up with God declaring war on Israel again, because the Bible indicates there's going to be a time of Jacob's trouble, a time of tribulation for the Jews in particular, after which God intends to save them. There's a passage in Jeremiah where he says this, I will destroy all the nations around you. I will not destroy you completely like them, but I will by no means leave you unpunished. Jews have rejected Jesus as their Messiah for 2,000 years. Remember what Jesus said? You know, because I come in my father's name, you won't accept me. But if somebody comes in their own name, you'll accept him. Or do you remember what it says in Zechariah? It says, because they rejected the good shepherd, God's going to send them the foolish shepherd who will tear apart the sheep and butcher them. It's talking about the Antichrist. And that's what it talks about in Daniel chapter 9, that they will enter into an agreement with this prince to come, which I think the commentators are right to suggest that it's the Antichrist. And halfway through this, he's going to break their covenant with him and he's going to turn on them. So they were told though, this part actually starts by saying, then it was given to me, a measuring rod and a staff. And someone said, go and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship in it. Which movie of the Harrison Ford movies has to do with the Ark? I'm giving it away, right? What's it called? See, the problem is a lot of you people are my age, so you don't know what any of these things are. Ask me about Perry Mason, I can tell you about that. Indiana Jones and the... Raiders of the Lost Ark, right? And then there's another one called the Temple of Doom. When I preached on this series with these three or four verses, I actually titled my sermon, The Temple of Doom. I said, I'm not going to explain to you now why I titled that, but by the time I'm done, you're going to know why I titled it. And we're going to get into that in just a second. By the way, rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem? Hmm. There's a group right now that's been around for the last 25, 30 years. It's called the Temple Institute. The Temple Institute has reconstructed a lot of the articles that they plan on using in the temple when they rebuild it. So you've got some of those cool trumpets there and the menorah. You've got some other articles that they plan on using at that time. The high priest's vestment. That's not him really there. That's a stuffed thing. They actually have Levites again. Did you know that in 2005 they reinstituted the Jewish Sanhedrin? It was the first time it's been there for 1800 years. There was a guy that I watched, his name is Adnan Oktar. He was a Turkish man and he was one of the most popular men in the Arab world up until just a few years ago. He used to have these programs where he would talk about politics and religion and stuff like that, but that's not why he was popular. He was popular because he had all these women on there who were kind of scantily dressed who all looked like they were Barbies. I mean, they all had that kind of same look and whatnot. Well, he eventually got arrested for some kind of sexual trafficking. I think they gave him 3,000 years in prison or something like that. But here's what's significant about it. On one of the programs I watched with him one time, he was talking about Israel and the relationship to the Muslims. And he had on their rabbis from the Sanhedrin, the modern Sanhedrin. And he was suggesting to him that maybe what we should do is have the Jews make some kind of a agreement with the Muslims where they kind of come under our suzerain authority, in which case we would allow you to rebuild the temple. Okay, that's creepy. And these rabbis are like, that sounds like a good idea. It sounds like a good idea. I'm thinking, what are you talking about? You crazy? Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, This is the statue of the law the Lord has commanded. Speak to the sons of Israel to bring an unblemished red heifer in which there is no defect, in which the yoke has never been mounted, and you shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and he shall It shall be brought outside the camp and be slaughtered in its presence. And Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle some of it towards the front of the tent of meeting seven times." Now, this doesn't mean a whole lot to us, but the Jewish, Orthodox Jews believe that you have to have a special red heifer in order for you to do this. And they've been breeding cows to get a perfect red heifer that they can use for this. By the way, the one on the right there is what they imagine it will look like. The one on the left is modeled after the temple, the model temple that's in Jerusalem. You've seen that, haven't you, Claire, and Chris, and Leslie, right? It's pretty amazing. Some guy built it all. A lot of the pictures that you'll see are actually just blown-up pictures of that. What stands in the way or who stands in the way of rebuilding the temple? The Jews would do it right now, the Orthodox Jews, if they could. That's why they dug a tunnel under this building one time with the hope of blowing it up. What's the name of that building? The Dome of the Rock. Also, I think it's called the Mosque of Omar. I believe it is, right? It sits on top of what they believe is the Temple Mount. Chris, you went up there when you were there, right? Did you go up there too, Claire? Because when I was there, it was closed down. They had had some riots and stuff like that and they wouldn't let us up there. If you're a Jew, you can't go up there. Muslims can go up there. It looks like a big football field on top. There's nothing on there but a flat piece of ground and then this mosque. So there's a couple other pictures of it. So here's the objection, though, to what I just told you. I mean, isn't the temple spoken of here just another way of speaking of the church? I mean, Peter refers to believers as living stones being built up as a spiritual house for holy priesthood. And Paul uses the image of a temple for believers individually and for the churches as a whole. 1 Corinthians 3, 16-17. The temple is the church and the Antichrist is the pope. I mean, if you're a Protestant living in Ireland, you would be absolutely convinced that the Antichrist is the pope. So you understand what they're saying and saying, no, we're not supposed to look for some future rebuilt temple. What we should look for is somebody who's a false teacher, a false Christ who takes place in the church and the best candidate for that is the Pope. But here's why I don't think that's right. Paul said this, Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it, that day, will not come unless first the apostasy comes. What does apostasy mean? We talked about this, I think, the first week. What does apostasy mean? What's that? falling away. It's a repudiation of your former religious position. Are we seeing that today? Yeah, I mean you're seeing people embracing stuff that has nothing to do with Christianity and even openly rejecting it. It says, and then the man of lawlessness is revealed. That's the one we call the Antichrist. The son of destruction who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called God or object of worship so that he takes a seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. Now Luther would have said that last phrase there means that he's talking about the Pope because he takes a seat in the church and claims to be God, but the Pope doesn't actually claim to be God. He claims to be the vicar of Christ, meaning the representative of Christ. And I'm not Catholic, and I don't believe Catholicism is a true faith. So I'm not criticizing Luther and his idea on this. But here's what's interesting. When Paul's writing this to the Thessalonians, what temple would they have thought of? Would they have thought of the church? No, because at the time that Paul wrote this, this was one of his first letters. The temple in Jerusalem was still standing. So if he said this lawless one is going to take his seat in the temple, they would think the temple in Jerusalem. Now, the problem is there is no temple in Jerusalem. And what's my answer to that? Yet. And until 1948, there was no country called Israel. But there is now. So what I'm arguing is... I'm going to get this right here. It's only got four buttons. You'd think I could get all of them right. Jesus put it this way. He said, therefore, when you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, the holy place represents the holy of holies in the temple. Let the reader understand. In other words, go back to Daniel to understand what I'm talking about. Then those who are in Jerusalem must flee to the mountains. So he's talking about the destruction of Jerusalem. So who are these two witnesses or prophets? Now, some say, well, Moses and Elijah. What in the text might indicate maybe it is Moses and Elijah? What do you see in the text that I had read about their ministry? What? Elijah and Enoch never died. Yeah, that's why they think Elijah and Enoch, because they never died. And they have to face death, and their prophets will be killed. Well, the Bible says the subject, Penelman, wants to die, and after this comes the judgment. However, Because those are the only two people that didn't die. Even Jesus died. It's only Enoch and Elijah. However, the last generation that's alive when Jesus returns, remember what Paul says, we will not all sleep, but we all will be changed. In other words, there is the last generation, probably won't be very many people, but when Jesus returns, they won't actually go through the process of dying. They'll be instantaneously changed. Maybe you'll be one of them. Can you imagine you look in the mirror and all of a sudden you open your eyes again and you're like, hey, do I look good? I look really good. I think one of the reasons they suggest Moses and Elijah is because the miracles they do sound like the things that Moses did. They called down fire from heaven. That's what Elijah did. They are able to bring plagues as often as they want. That's what Moses did. Yep, turn water into blood. And by the way, you'll find when you go through the book of Revelation, there's a lot of allusions back to the judgments that came upon Egypt. The same type of thing, including where he pours out onto the sun and it turns dark. And the darkness is so great, it says in the book of Revelation, that men gnaw their tongues because of the pain of the darkness. Remember in the book of Exodus, it says it was a darkness you could feel. I don't know what that means, but it sounds creepy to me. So I don't know who they are. The other possibility is they're just two prophets that come in the spirit of them. I personally think it's probably is... By the way, the other reason they would say Elijah and Moses is because who appeared with Jesus on Mount of Transfiguration? Elijah and Moses. I think it's probably, just as a guess, Enoch and Elijah. This passage from Malachi says, Now it's interesting because, you know, was John the Baptist the fulfillment of this prophecy? Well, Jesus said, you know, because you remember when they're coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration, they're like, Lord, we always heard that Elijah was supposed to come first. And Jesus said, well, Elijah is coming and he already has come. Now I want you to hear carefully what he said. Elijah is coming and has already come. I think what he means by this is there really is Elijah coming at the end. But if they would have accepted John's ministry, He would have fulfilled the role and they wouldn't have been smite with a curse. And so I think it's likely that this is a reference to Elijah. And you know, Jewish people, when they have the Seder dinner, you set an extra place. Why? Claire, you've done this before. Why are you supposed to have an extra place at the dinner table? And then you have one of the kids get up and look at the door and say, is Elijah out there? No, it's UPS guy. And the idea is that we're waiting for Elijah to come. And of course, what Jesus is saying, you know what? And there's a sense in which he already came. But I think Elijah is actually coming back in the future. So that'd make one of them. And what are they able to do? They're able to bring droughts on the land, send fire down from heaven, all that kind of stuff. And it's nasty people with all these things. Now let me ask you a question. Is the rebuilding of the temple a good thing or a bad thing? Yeah. What do you think? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? I've read commentators who say this is actually a positive thing, even though they're not believers, because it'll get them thinking in terms of sacrifice, and then they'll be more receptive to the idea of Jesus dying for their sins. Do you buy that? Nope. I don't either. The whole book of Hebrews explains why it is the Jews cannot go back to their sacrifices, because the real sacrifices come. Right. And so when I was preaching through that, I titled it, Israel and the Temple of Doom, because their rebuilding of the temple and reinstituting the sacrifice is a slap to Jesus. You want proof of that? Listen to the words of Isaiah. This is, I think, Isaiah 66. Listen to what it says. Thus saith the Lord. You have to listen very carefully. Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. Where then is a house that you could build for me? Now that echoes what God said to David, remember, when he was going to build a house for him? But what's weird is at this time when Isaiah is writing this, the temple is still in existence. So why is God saying, where would you find it? How could you build a temple for me, a house for me, if there was already a house? Unless, of course, he's talking about something that comes in the future. Now listen to what he says, though. He says, And where is a place that I may rest? For my hand made all these things, thus all these things came into being, declares the Lord. But to this one I will look, to the one who is humble and contrite of heart and who trembles at my word. That's what God's looking for. People who are humble, contrite of heart, tremble at his word, take his word seriously. But listen to where he goes on. But the one who kills an ox is like one who slays a man. But Hildegard's the one who instituted these sacrifices. But he says, a person who does it here, it's like they killed a man. He who offers a grain offering is like one who's offering swine's blood. He who burns incense is like one who blesses an idol. And they have chosen their own way. Their souls delight in abomination. So I will choose their punishment, and I will bring upon them what they dread, because I called and no one answered. I spoke, but they did not listen. Especially if this comes after the ministry of these two witnesses, right? and they did evil in my sight, and chose that which I did not delight. Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at his word. Your brothers, meaning your fellow Jews, who hate you, have excluded you from my namesake." Messianic Jews in Israel are treated very poorly. There was one where somebody sent them a Christmas present. It was a bomb. Ten-year-old kid opens the door and explodes on them. They're supposed to have freedom of religion in Israel, but you can find YouTube videos where it's Orthodox Jews surrounding Christians saying, get him out of here, send your Jesus to Japan, we don't want to hear about him, we don't need him. The rejection's still there. He says this, he says, but they will be put to shame, a voice of uproar in the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of the Lord who's rendering recompense to his enemies. It means his enemies who are worshiping in the temple. which would make sense if rebuilding the temple is actually a bad thing. because it's a rejection of Jesus. But then it says, "...a voice of uproar in the city, a voice from the temple, the voice of the Lord rendering recompense to his enemies. Before she travailed, she brought forth. Before her pain came, she gave birth to a boy. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such a thing? Can a land be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth all at once? As soon as Zion travailed, she also brought forth her sons." What it's talking about is when God actually redeems him after he's done disciplining him and chastising him for rejecting his son. So the ministry of these two prophets, I've got to read this first. It says, and I will grant authority to my two witnesses, they prophesied. And then it says, if anyone wants to harm them, fire comes out of their mouth and devours their enemies so that anyone who wants to harm them must be killed in this way. These will have the power to shut up the sky so that no rain will fall during their days of prophesying. That's like Elijah, right? and they will have power over the waters to turn them into blood, that's like Moses, and to strike the earth with every plague as often as they desire." So the people are like, yeah, you know what? You're right. We're such sinners. We need to repent. We're learning our lesson here. This is painful, but it's a good lesson for us, right? No. It says, when they finish their testimony, the beast who comes out of the abyss, that would be the Antichrist, will make war with them and overcome them and kill them. And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is mystically called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified." In other words, their bodies will lie in Jerusalem. And those from the people and tribes and tongues and nations will look on their dead bodies for three and a half days and will not permit their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb. And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and celebrate, and they will send gifts to one another because the two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth. You know, by the way, I've heard one commentator, he said one time he was in a Christian bookstore and he saw a Christmas card that said, and they quoted this verse, and they sent gifts to each other and rejoiced. That's not the point of that verse. Now they're celebrating because these are the guys who inflicted pain on him. And now these guys are dead. Now here's what's interesting. Commentators, if you go back even 40 years ago, 50, 60 years ago, they would say, well, when it says that all the people of the world will look on their dead bodies, that's just a figurative way of saying a lot of people will see it. Would it be possible for basically everyone in the world to see it now? You aren't kidding. I mean, you have things that are broadcast around the entire world, and everyone's got their phone, and it's all changed. The longer we go on, the more this technology takes place and advances, the more you can take the Bible pretty straightforward as literal fulfillment. For instance, the idea that somebody's going to control the entire money supply at some point. We're going to deal with that with the Antichrist. They're moving towards a digital currency this year. And what they have with the digital currency, here's a possibility. What happens if the market really crashes and they say, oh, our money becomes worthless? Here's what we can do. You've got this much money in your 401k, you can exchange that for digital currency, cryptocurrency, controlled by the government. And you're thinking, well, it's better than nothing. I get something out of it. But now, they get to decide what you're spending and what you're not spending, right? What about the truckers in Canada? They froze their accounts. Wasn't there a movie made with Sandra Bullock a number of years ago, where they basically make her identity disappear? That wouldn't be too tough to do now, would it? And so they would say things like this. You'd go to put your card, your digital currency card, into a vending machine, and a little note flashes, you've already had too many chips this week. Do you really think that our governments wouldn't go to the trouble of trying to track down and take, you know, you won't be able to eat meat. I mean, come on, you got Klaus Schwab telling us we all have to eat bugs because that somehow is going to save the planet. These people want nothing more than control because it's all satanic. That's what it is. And what we know from the Bible is, at some point, this is going to be realized. Now, I hope it's not in our day. And we should do what we can to oppose these type of things when they come up. But you know, there's a passage in the book of Revelation when it says this. Those destined to captivity will go to captivity. Those for the sword, to the sword. Herein lies the perseverance of the saints. In other words, God has already determined these things. You're going to go where he determines for you to go. And what matters is that you hold on to your faith above all else. We're not going to overcome these things by assassinating the Antichrist. Because it talks about the beast and how he comes out of the abyss, right? He has a fatal wound that's healed. I think it's likely that the Antichrist is going to be assassinated and come back from the dead. And then people are like, oh, you guys talk about Jesus rising from the dead. Well, look at him. He really did it. Wow, we'll be talking about that next week on Halloween. And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice and they will celebrate and they'll send gifts to one another because the two prophets who tormented the whole earth, those who dwell on the earth. But after three days, the breath of life from God came into them and they stood up on their feet and great fear fell upon those who were watching them. Oh, freaky. Can you imagine you're going to a double funeral That happens every now and then. Those are sad. You go to a double funeral, and you're there, everyone's crying, everyone's whatever, and all of a sudden, they sit up. They get up, everyone's rejoicing, like all of a sudden, ooh, I think we're celebrating a little too early on this one. And it says, then the Lord pulls them up, where does it say it? And I heard a lot of voices, verse 12, from heaven saying, come up here. Then they went up into the heavens with a cloud, and their enemies watched them. In that same hour, there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell, 7,000 people of the city fell, and 7,000 people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest of those who were terrified and gave glory to God. This is the second woe has passed. Behold, the third woe is coming quickly. And then you have the seventh trumpet, which proclaims the return of Christ. So the kingdom of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever. And the twenty-four elders who sit on the thrones fall down before God on their faces and worship God, saying, We give you thanks, O Lord God Almighty, who were who are and who were, you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. And the nations were enraged, and your wrath came, and the time came to judge the dead, and the time to reward your bondservants, and the prophets, and the saints, and those who fear your name, the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth. The temple of God, which is in heaven, was opened, and the ark of his covenant appeared in the temple, and there were sounds, or flashes of lightning, and sounds of peals of thunder, and the earthquake, and a great hailstorm." So by the way, I think if I remember, I'm going to make you a nice timeline that I did at home on when these things happen. If you bug me, I'll make sure I give it to you before we're done. All right, so let's see where we're at next here. Oh, yeah, we've got to go on to the woman and the dragon. That's the next chapter. That's what we just read. It starts chapter 12. It says this. And a great sign appeared in the heavens. A woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and her on her head was a crown of 12 stars. And she was with child and she cried out being in labor and pain to give birth." Now, if you're a Catholic, who would you say that woman is? Mary. And by the way, there's a good argument for it. I mean, Mary's the one who brings forth the Messiah. I think it actually represents the nation of Israel. What would give you an indication it's talking about the nation of Israel as opposed to Mary particularly? She got 12 stars. And remember it goes back to the dream that Joseph had. He said, oh, I saw yours, she's bowing down to mine. And then he saw another one. He said, I saw the sun and the moon and the 12 stars. And they were all bowing. And they're like, what are you talking about? By the way, they did bow down to him, just like God said he would in the dream. Then I saw another sign appear in the heavens. And behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems. And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth, he might devour the child." I put one in there that wasn't really scary because I didn't want to scare you guys. Because I know some of you got freaked out when they ran by last time I thought of it. I don't want you to have a heart attack or anything like that. By the way, I think the red dragon is a reference to Satan. The seven heads and the ten horns represents the nations, the empires that he's worked through over the time. And later on in the book of Revelation, remember the angel says this to John, he said that seven heads are seven kingdoms. Five have fallen, one is, and one is yet to come. Well the five that have fallen would probably be Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece. Five have fallen, one is, Rome, and one is yet to come, which is the kingdom of the Antichrist. And I believe the ten heads represent the last confederacy of these ten nations that the Antichrist will take control of. Because remember when they saw the statue, it had ten toes. And we're told in Daniel that in the days of those kings, the ten toes, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will not pass away. So I think that's what it's talking about. But notice what's being said here is if the child, which is promised through Israel, the dragon has been seeking to eat up this child, that would explain the hatred for the Jews. Have you ever thought, why do people hate the Jews considering the majority of Jews belong to Satan? Because they're unbelievers like everybody else. Do you know that one half of all the UN resolutions that have been passed have had to do with Israel? How many friends does Israel have in the world today? None. They've got evangelical Christians in America. That's it. There was one guy, Rabbi Avi Lipkin. I've listened to him a couple of times. He does a seminar. It's called Christian Revival for Israel's Survival. He said, I'm not a Christian. I'm not a Messianic Jew. He said, but I'm convinced that if Christianity does not revive in America so that America remains an ally of Israel, we're not going to survive as a nation. Now, he's wrong in this because in the final analysis, it's God that preserves them until the end. But he's right in this, that as Christianity gives way in America and there's a rise of secularism in the progressive left, there tends to be a whole lot more anti-Semitism. I was just watching last night a panel discussion that had six Jewish people on there and they're whether they're going to vote for Trump or Harris. And there were three of them who said they're probably going to vote for Trump. None of them liked Trump and none of them wanted to vote for Trump, but they said, I'm scared because the people on the left are anti-Semitic. And even the ones who are on the left said, no, there's just a thin slice of people who are anti-Semitic on the left. And the other one said, no, it's not a thin slice. It's a big slice. Who's protesting all the Jews on the campuses? It's the leftists. Now, it's interesting because if you go back to the 60s, the leftists tended to support Israel. Do you know why? Because they saw them as kind of like David compared to Goliath. And also, a lot of Israelis who moved there, or Jews who moved from Europe, were socialists. That's why you had kibbutzim. And so they're like, oh, they're socialists like us. But now over time, they've become more antagonistic towards the Jews. And they shout things like, from the, what is it, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. I saw one where, I mentioned that guy last week who goes around and does the interviews in Israel, and he'll ask Palestinians, he said, well, what should happen to the Jews once you take power? They said, we don't care, they just go somewhere else. He said, well, what if they don't leave? We'll take care of them. You know, the Muslims have a saying, it goes like this, after Saturday comes Sunday. Do you know what they mean by that? After we're done wiping out the Jews, we're going to wipe out the Christians. When we talk about the Antichrist next week, I'm going to show you how Islam fits in very closely with the predictions in the Hadith and the Quran about the things that happen in the end and how they're really mirror images of what the Bible actually says will take place. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, which obviously is Jesus, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. And her child was caught up to God and to his throne. Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God so that she would be nourished for 1,260 days." That's time, times, and half in times. That's 1,260 days. And in other words, it's the second half of the period of the Great Tribulation. I think it's likely that those two witnesses, the prophets, they actually have their ministry in the first half of the seven years. It's in the middle of that that the Antichrist kills them because he's the one who wages war against them. I believe that's also when he takes his seat in the temple in Jerusalem and demands to be worshipped as God. It's from then, the next three and a half years, where there's this persecution against believers and also Jewish people as well. And we're going to see that in just a second and see if I got it on the next. Oh, that's the stop antisemitism. I got to read the text here, see what it says. All right, it says this. All right. You have to stick with me here. Hold on a second. And chapter 12, right? It says the male child, and it says then there was This is verse 7 of chapter 12. And there was war in the heavens, Michael and his angels waging war against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels waged war. And they were not strong enough, meaning the dragon and his angels, and there was no longer a place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old, who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him. Then I heard the Lord I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, Now salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ have come. For the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night." Here's something most people... If you were to ask just an average person on the street, if you believe in Satan, where do you think Satan lives? Where would they say? Hell. Yeah, but the language of the Bible says that he patrols the earth, right? Isn't that what it says in Job? And he comes before God with the other angels? And God says, so, my servant Joe, did you see that? Yeah. I imagine he laughed like that. And you know, Satan gets all upset. He says, oh, the only reason he worships you is because you pay him so well. He says, well, take whatever he wants, but you can't touch his body. So he takes everything he has, including his kids. All 10 of them. Comes back, God says, have you considered my servant Job? I let you do that to him, and he still doesn't curse me. He says, yeah, skin for skin, anyone will do anything for their own body. He says, well, you can do what you want to him, but you can't take his life. Now notice, Satan's doing these things to him, but God puts limits on what he can do. You get this idea sometimes that, you know, there's God, there's Satan, and they're equal, and they're arm-wrestling. That's not the biblical view. The biblical view is there's things that we do on earth that we are responsible for the decisions we make. There's angels and demons that influence those things, you know, in world history and stuff. Above all of that, God is sovereign, so it always turns out ultimately the way he intends. And you want to believe that, because otherwise it's a scary, scary world. But here's the thing, what we don't want to do is ignore that middle part, because there is real spiritual battles that take place. And that's where we're supposed to be involved in prayer. You know, so anti-Semitism is rising again. You know, the Nazi symbol with the Star of David. There was war in the heavens. That's the one I read. All right. Here's the part that's interesting. It says, for this reason, because all in heaven is supposed to rejoice because now he's cast down to the earth. He has no place in heaven anymore. But it says, rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them. But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time. Well, then why doesn't he repent? There is no repentance. He can't. It's not in his nature to repent. He hates God intensely. We talked about this in our Bible study. We just happened to be in Daniel when we were talking about the spiritual warfare and all that kind of stuff. He can't repent. What time have we got? 8 o'clock. Well, good thing. I'm almost done. All right, so anyways, the whole point of this is the devil comes down, he sweeps a third of the stars, which mean the demons that come with him. They are unleashed on the earth, specifically attacking the Jews and Christians. Because it does talk about how, last part there, verse 17. So the dragon was enraged with the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her children who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. So not only Jewish people are being persecuted, obviously, if they're holding to the testimony of Jesus, they have to be Christians. Jews don't hold to the testimony of Jesus because they're not Christians yet. And so what the Bible's talking about is there's going to be persecution of believers, Christians, and also Jewish people, whether they're believers or not. What God is going to do is He's going to use this to purge His people of Israel, and He's going to save them in the end. Paul says that, look, if their rejection of the gospel has brought blessings to the world, we're all Christians because the gospel was rejected by the Jews. So we were grafted in, those of us who are believers, right? He said, if their rejection of this brought riches to the world, what will their acceptance of it be but life from the dead? In other words, the blessings that's going to come to the world when Jews are finally converted and become what God intended them to be, a light unto the nations. The Bible indicates that the world has converted the nations through the people of Israel, and I'll show you that when we get into it in a couple of weeks. So because the last thing we're going to talk about, not tonight, but in the last few weeks here, we're going to talk about the Antichrist, we're going to talk about the return of Christ, and we're going to talk about the millennium and the final judgment and eternity. So that's kind of where we're going to come up with this. All right, so let's pray and we'll finish pretty much on time. Our Lord, we do thank you that we can study these things. You know, there's The Old Testament prophets didn't understand everything about what was predicted in the New. Looking back, now we understand it. And I'm sure that'll be the case when these things are all fulfilled. We want to understand with the best of ability. But what you want from us most is not to get every jot and tittle right. What you want from us most is to be ready for this return. And so we need to keep sin out of our lives, we need to be looking to you, we need to be serving you, and we need to be looking forward to the return of Jesus, because that's when we get our reward as well. So in the meantime, Lord, give us opportunities to witness. We know we're living in a dark and dying culture, but help us to be light in the midst of a perverse and wicked generation. We ask now in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, thanks for coming tonight. We start at 9.30 and then we have Sunday school afterwards at 11 o'clock and then a fellowship time in between. Eva! Alright. Well, hopefully they were able to get a hold of Alan. They had been calling and couldn't get an answer.