So we're in 2 Thessalonians. 2 Thessalonians chapter two. We're looking at the first 11 verses as a whole as where we started out in 2 Thessalonians chapter two where we read the whole chapter. We went through and we saw that Paul I broke it down into a few elements, and he'd written this because people were worried. The Thessalonians were worried. They thought that they were in the midst of the day of the Lord, which is an event that's coming in the future. It was future for them, it's future for us at this point in time. Paul said, nah, you're not in the day of the Lord. Some things have to happen first, and so then he began to list things out in order. God's order is never out of order, so he's telling us the order. He says there'll be an apostasy first, the falling away. It's also called the rebellion. The divorce from truth and we looked at that in detail last week if you'd like to go back and I give you many of the options that people think and then what I thought and how I think things are pressing towards that way. Then almost at the same time in my chronology and how it works as the falling away is happening, the next event would happen, which we'll start here at verse three. So 2 Thessalonians 2, verse three. Let no man deceive you by any means, for that day, the day of the Lord, shall not come except there come a falling away first. And that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition. who opposeth and exalted himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Remember ye not that when I was with you, I told you these things? And now you know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work. Only he who now letteth will let until he be taken out of the way. And then shall the wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and then destroy with the brightness of his coming. Even him whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them a strong delusion that they should believe a lie. that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. And so, that's a lot, but I wanted to give you all of that to put the context there. You kind of needed those surrounding verses so we had the right feel for the text. So, around the apostasy, that we have the Antichrist being revealed, but before that, We have something else that happens and now I'm calling him the Antichrist and this text He is called the man of sin is how he labels him. He's called the son of perdition He is called that wicked and we'll look at that next week in the book of Revelation John calls him the beast But he says there's something that is holding back in verse 6 and now you know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time, for the mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he who now letteth will let until he be taken out of the way. And so there's a debate about this text, as in anything that is in the future, because we know, but we don't know what we know. It's kind of there, and we are to discern from it. We also, in verse 5, it talks about how, remember when I was with you, I told you these things. So Paul had gone in depth and into details, and so we're getting this kind of a catch-up letter. And so what he is saying To them specifically, it kind of leaves us a little ambiguous sometimes, and it frustrates us a little bit. It's like, oh, I wish he would tell us all the more clearly, but it's clear that something is holding back evil. That's what he's talking about. There's something that is restraining it, and that's usually what we would call this, the restrainer. Once it, or he, is removed, or taken out of the way, as the Bible says, then evil goes unchecked, and the beast goes full throttle, pedal to the metal, rampant going at it, is what it says. So what is withholding it? What is this he, this what? Some say it's the government, to which I had to do a spit take the first time I heard that. The government restraining evil? The government is a big source of evil. What do you mean? That's not it. The politics, the politicians, the policy, the lobbyists, the enforcing what they want to do and making you comply and saying those things. No, they're not a restraint of evil. A lot of times they're the proponent of wicked things. So no, it's not the government. I don't care how we stretch it. Some think, which kind of blew my mind as well, they think it's the devil. Like the devil? Yeah, they say the devil's holding back evil. He's like restraining himself until he can then release himself personified in this one person, the wicked one, the son of perdition. To that I say, Jesus answered that for us in Matthew 12. He says, every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation. Satan doesn't cast out Satan, or Beelzebub isn't cast out by devils. No, Satan's not restraining evil, Satan's in the business of evil, right? He encourages it, he entices it, he invents it, he invites it. That's him, that's his job, sin and wickedness. Now he might trick you into thinking you're doing good, He might entice you into thinking this is the right thing. Has God not said? You know, he's in the Garden of Eden. We see how subtle he is. He's right there luring us deeper and deeper. But I think I can adamantly say, no, it's not the devil restraining evil, because I have the words of Jesus Christ. Others say it's the Holy Spirit. But that answer comes with problems a little bit, unless you believe in the pre-tribulational rapture view of the church, which I happen to do. Verse six. It says, and now you know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. So the what, there's a what that's withholding. This is what throws us up with the Holy Spirit. Verse seven says, for the mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he who now letteth will let until he be taken out of the way. So it's a what and it's a he. So that's what's kinda confusing about just saying it's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a he. He's masculine in all the text. And so, The one that is restraining evil is a what and a he. So how can we reconcile that? Well, the Holy Spirit is a person. He's referred to as the masculine he, that is for sure. And I, being a pre-tribulation devotee, dispensationalist, I see the what as the church, and I think this is how we reconcile it. It's the Holy Spirit working in and through the church and dwelling Christians. When we repent of our sins, and see ourselves as sinners. That's what we took the time to do yesterday, to take people through the law, to get them to agree that they are a liar, a thief, a blasphemer, to agree with God that there are none righteous, no, not one. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We've got to agree with God first to see our predicament. And once we do that, then we can repent of our sin and trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ. The cross becomes not just, hey, Jesus, but, oh, Jesus has died on my behalf. My Savior, the one who rescues me, the Redeemer, who's come and purchased me off the slavery block and set me free, him. Invite me into his family. And so once we repent and trust in the work of Jesus and what he's done on the cross, that atoning sacrifice on our behalf, paying our debts, something happens. We are born again, we are changed, we are a new creature. A transaction occurs and the Spirit indwells the believer. He takes up residence within one who has repented and trusted Christ as Savior. Romans 8, 9 says, in fact, the Spirit dwells in you. You and I live in a blessed time. In the Old Testament, the Spirit came upon people. It would be upon David for a minute. It'd be upon Samson and he would push down something or destroy something, but then the Spirit would leave. And David would even write a song, oh Lord, take not thy Holy Spirit from me. He's not losing his salvation, it was how the Spirit interacted. It would come upon them and they would have this period of time where they were able to do miraculous things. You and I have that within us all the time. I don't think we understand the untapped resource that we have available to us. the courage that he will give you, the bravery that can come from that. 1 Corinthians 3.16 says, know ye not that you are the temple of God and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you? Church isn't this building, church is us, it's you and me as individuals. We gather here in a building we call church, this is where we have church, but we are the church. It's not a building, it's people. In Ephesians 1.22 it says, Jesus, is the head over all things of the church, which is the body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. And so Christ is the head of the body, the church, and you and I are the hands and the feet. As Casting Crowns had a song that was pretty popular, it talks about, are we not the body? Aren't his hands reaching? Aren't his feet going? Aren't we not telling? We're the way in which he interacts. Could he do it miraculously? He could. But God chooses to use people. He chooses to use us. to spread the gospel, to restrain evil, to stand up for that which is good, to fight for what is worthy of fighting for, to defend the truth, to uphold the standard of the gospel. He puts that into you and I. It was kinda nice yesterday. There was a Stones Crossing church that we talked to several people from, and I complimented them. I said, your pastor's doing a good job because they were the most biblically accurate people that I had talked to that seemed like they knew what they were talking about. And one of them even said that, and it's like, can you believe that God would pick us for this time? I'm like, are you listening to my messages? Yeah, that God would use us for such a time as this. A spirit-filled church. We are the hands and feet on earth. We are to do his will. We are to preach the gospel. We are to help the hurting. We're to help the hungry, the sad, to defend the weak and the innocent. We are to abhor evil, Romans tells us. We are called to resist the devil. James chapter four, verse seven. Resist the devil and he will flee. We're to make him unwelcome and unwanted. Not just in our life, in our town, in our county, in our state, in our country. Should be our job. No, not here. Go on, devil. Get out of here. We don't want you here. That is the church's job. But. where we stand in 2025, most of the church has been lured into thinking that is not the church's job. We absorb things in our faith through the world and not through the word. We are told to be tolerant of sin is the loving and kind and Jesus way to be. We are told to be supportive. in someone's sin and their blatant rebellion against God. We're told it's offensive if we tell them that there's one way and a narrow way and they are wrong, not loving, when it is the most loving thing that we can do to tell them, you are trapped in your sin. It was refreshing to hear people say, the way you presented the gospel here this day was not offensive. Did I call out sin? Yes. Did we make them guilty before God? Yes, I tried my best to do so. Did I tell them about Christ dying on the cross? Yes. And they said, that is not offensive in the way in which you did it. It made sense in a logical fashion. That's how we're gonna do it. We're trying to reach them, not repel them, so we're engaging in that. So we don't wanna be offensive. No, but we have to judge sin. The world tells us, oh, judge not, lest you be judged. They say they're quoting a Bible verse, and they are, but that is, I am not to judge another Christian's motive for what they do, why they do it. That is between them and God. I can debate with them, I can talk with them, I can try to say, hey, I don't know, what are you doing? Maybe it's something I'd be doing. I'm not to judge another Christian's motive. I am to judge sin. I'm to judge what is right and wrong. I'm to judge what is good and bad. I am called to do that. If I quit doing that, I'm no longer salt and light. And I am called to be salt and light, a preservative, a resistance against corrupt and against rot that Jesus tells us that's what we are called to do. Salt stings. Light hurts your eyes if you're in the darkness, but we are to be that way. We are to be a bright and shining light. We are to be salt that gets in the wound and stings and shows them, no, no, no, we don't want this here, get this out. That's what we're called to do. Praise God, no matter what stage we are in, and you can chase this through the Bible, no matter how wicked the world's getting, no matter how depraved things are, God always has a remnant. God always has a remnant. I want to be a part of that remnant. I might not be in the majority, I might be in the minority, but I wanna be on God's side, because to me, that's the majority. We wanna oppose evil, we wanna be against it, and I'm glad that I have a fellowship where we have like-minded people that are on that same mindset. So in thinking about this, in the seven letters that Jesus Christ writes, seven epistles that he writes to the seven churches in the book of Revelation, There are not only seven physical churches, but there are also seven churches throughout timeline in history, as we've seen. Because we live in 2025, we can look back and we're like, wow, these all line up with different epics of the church. And the last one is Laodicea, the lukewarm church. The church that where they were located, they didn't have good water, and they piped it in from one area where it was hot. And by the time it got to them, it was lukewarm. But they had another area where they piped down cool water, but by the time it came through the aqueducts and got to them, it was lukewarm. So all their water was lukewarm. It was neither hot nor cold. And so everybody knew what he was talking about. He says, I will spew you out of my mouth. So they had an ice salve to help there. They thought they had the medical treatment. And Jesus says, but I'm here to tell you, you're really blind. They were rich in need of nothing, and they had fancy clothing and all those things. And Jesus says, you are blind, poor, miserable, and naked. You're lukewarm. Jesus Christ finds himself to the Laodicean church, knocking at the door, asked to be let back in. You think you can do it all by yourself without me? Can I come into my own church? Will you invite me in? I think that's the compromised church. I think that's the church that's bought the world and not listened to the word. A church that has a form of godliness but denies the power thereof, one of the things that tells us we're in the last days. The church used to do its job. And I'm talking in broad brush, I am talking broad brush here. Because praise God, we tried to be that remnant, right? We wanna be that change agent. We might say we're just a few, we're the small, but we're gonna stand up for him. But as a whole, the church used to do its job in the 1950s. I'm gonna compare back to then. The golden age of America, I would think. Happy days, right? Good, it was innocent, but things were there. Evil was seen as evil in the 50s. There was no gray. It was good and right, or it was wrong. Wickedness was taboo, as it should be. Immorality was as a shame. You would shame the family, and the family would be shamed, and that was your moral compass. You didn't want to shame the family. You didn't want to bring shame in your school, your church, or all those things, and so it kept you, hopefully, not everybody, we always have sinners, but as a whole, as a culture, the idea was to be pure. Divorce was rare. And for there to be a divorce, you had to have a reason. You had to go before a judge and show someone was at fault. Something had happened, someone had cheated, something had gone wrong in this way or that way, where it was no longer good for you to be married anymore, and a court had to decide for that to happen. It wasn't until the 1980s that we had no-fault divorce in Indiana, where it could just be you say, I don't love him anymore. It didn't used to be. In the 50s, that didn't happen. In the 1950s, homosexuality was a crime. Transgender cross-dressing was a crime across the United States of America. Premarital sex was a shame. Single parenthood was taboo. In polite societies, you didn't even say the word pregnant. She's with child. Living together? No way. No way. A hotel wouldn't let you book a room. A landlord wouldn't rent a house to you. You're not married? No marriage certificate? No way. Banks wouldn't give you a loan. Not as a couple that way without a marriage license. Media was guarded. Lucy and Desi had two separate beds, right? How did we get Little Ricky? I don't know. But they had two separate beds and a lamp table in between, right? Same way with Dick Van Dyke and all those shows. They were that way. If they were both sitting on the same bed, they had to have their feet on the floor. They had rules like that. We don't have those rules anymore, do we? There's no bad words. Proper speech. No cussing. Families were decent and moral, and they supported that in the TV shows. Whole families doing decent, moral things, where if you got in trouble, the best thing was to be honest with your parents. Oh, beaver, or whatever else was going on, come forward, be honest. They had morality, they had some moral to the story of how you should do right, and father knew best. Not father's a moron, and it's like mom has, I have two mommies, totally different. They were fun or serious. Drugs were illegal. It was something a doctor might give you when you actually needed one, but if you were doing it in that town, they were gonna run you out. Abortion. Wasn't in the vocabulary. It was murder, no argument, no ifs, ands, or buts. It's sad in the community if they heard that happen. For everyone involved. And Satanism, what was that? They didn't know. If it was there, it was hidden, it was secret. There was not even a satanic Bible until 1969. The church was thriving. It was central to community. The tallest building in town was usually the church. It had the steeple, you could see it from anywhere in town. It showed where our morals were focused on, what we were centered around, what was important to us. It was the hub of community. It's where you went to find out things. It's where socializing went on and they had the parties and everybody in town would come and it would be that way. So evil was fought in the pulpit back then and put into action by the people, by the congregants as they went out. And the things that they did, how they voted, what they looked for, what they represented, how they stood up. They wouldn't allow crude speech. They wouldn't allow those things. They would stand against it. The 1950s is a far cry from 2025, isn't it? Divorce touches every family. And if it's touched yours, you know how sad it is. How heartbreaking it can be. Marriage. Marriage is no longer sacred. It's no longer a man and a woman. It's almost anything goes, literally, in our culture today. Men with men, women with women, polygamy. All kinds of deviances are being thrust, because they're never happy with what, oh, we just got this, now they're gonna take it and push it to the point where there's just nothing. Homosexuality is celebrated, it's given a month, right? Celebrate, embrace, exalted, encouraged, promoted. And it's no longer for you just to tolerate it, you must celebrate it, you must promote it, you must encourage it as well, or you are some bigot. Transgender is embraced, celebrated, placed in front of kids in kindergarten. Bathrooms were opened up for whoever. You feel like a girl? Go on the girls. Feel like a boy? Go on the boys. Safety was gone. Innocence was gone. They began to sexualize our kids early and earlier, more and more. fight for the right for a school to change the sex of a child and not let the parents know that it was even going on. A kid can have an abortion, never let the parents know the school can help them take care of it. Premarital sex is expected and they're even given equipment to be able to do it safely and encouraged in that way. Living together, there's no shame, there's no stigma, it's just normal. Media. The more raunchy the better, right? The more it sells. Cuss words. I remember a time when you didn't hear them in public. Now you can't go out without hearing them in public. I think that's probably the only good thing about the U-scan is you can get through the line quickly, because if not, if you're going to stand there, you're going to hear stuff that you don't want to hear. If you have little ones, you find out how hard it is to be in the public place and try to guard their ears. And I can remember Elaine going through and turning all the magazines backwards before our kids' eye level could go through the school that way. There was a time, in our edition, we have an edition pool. And there's a clubhouse and the clubhouse has a bar in it. And I remember one day there was a lot of teenagers down there with bad language. It was during the day, I wasn't home. But Elaine went up to that bar and said, there's kids down here with filthy mouths. And that bar empty went out and ran those kids out of there and told them how ashamed they should be for speaking that way in public. I watched a video the other day with a mom filming this older man in the grocery store. And she says, did you call my daughter rude? And he goes, she gave me the finger. And she goes, she's seven. She gave it to you because you were in her way, because you're a slow old man walking in the store. He goes, it's rude. You can't call my daughter rude. Different world. Different world. Matter of fact, I used to celebrate having a good vocabulary. Now you just need the universal adjective and say it over and over and over and louder and louder and louder. And that's how you win an argument. Drugs were illegal. Probably get CBD at three gas stations in Trafalgar. In all its forms, you can vape it, you can chew it like a gummy bear. Go across the border into Michigan, you smell it before you hit the border. It'll probably be here. Abortion. Abortion is fought for and seen as a human right. Well, that's kind of counterintuitive there, right? You're killing a human and that's a human right? The Democratic Party last year at their convention performed abortions almost as a ritual in front of the debates and the delegations that were going on. People that got pregnant to come and travel there just to have an abortion for the event. Sickening. Satanists fight for the right to protect abortion because they say it is their ritual. It's part of our worship. You can't get rid of that. I've got the articles to show it. Satanism's mainstream. It's not in the corner. It's not hidden. It's performed in the VMAs or whatever the music awards are. They put them in the middle of the show. Taylor Swift has a big part of her concert where she performs a coven ritual thing in the middle of it. Here's the shocking thing. Believe it or not, In 2025, with the things that I've just listed, evil is being restrained. We are pushing back. We are saying, no, we don't like this. We oppose it. We boycotted targets to the point where they changed their policy and they took the satanic clothing. They had satanic clothing that they had in the front prominent part of the store and LGBT and all these other things, and they removed it. Now they're being boycotted by the ones that say it should be there, but we had a voice. We made a difference. as it should be. We got them out. It was the Christians that did it. Purity, people get sick of it, what the school are doing, so homeschool is booming. Wait until marriage. Guarding and protecting our kids as long as we can. A message right now that's going forth. Telling young people in colleges, wait until you're married, get married, have babies. You know, have a family. It's not something that's seen as, oh, we don't want that, we don't want it around here, it's just gonna drain your money, it's gonna drain your wallet, it's gonna take it all away. It's seen as something that's celebrated. Get married, have a husband, have a wife, have babies. Make America great again in that way, you know, by being American and how we do it. We have, in our entertainment, we have whole avenues now. We have options that we can go to. We have Pure Flix or Angel TV where you can watch or you can buy the, I forget the name, the Guardian thing that'll take out the bad words and cut down a movie to a half an hour, you know, just to get out all the bad spots where you have something you can watch. But, you know, we have Christian music that people were exposed to during the Charlie Kirk funeral that is now exploding that people are like, it's good. It has a point. It has a message. It's something worth listening to. It's growing. It's surging. It's not sick. It's not evil. It's not bad word, bad word, bad things, bad things. It's positive things pointing towards God. Abortion, Roe versus Wade, was overturned. It was put back to the states. They made it illegal. Twelve states have total bans on abortion. Praise God for twelve states. Indiana's not a total ban. We're a mostly ban. It's a general ban. 20 states, most of the states fall in that middle area. 20 states still have it protected and they'll fly you from anywhere to come to their state so you can perform an abortion there. We have a lot of work to do still in that area. A lot of blood on our hands. Satanism's just open warfare. So we need to be louder. We don't need to be the silent majority anymore. We need to be vocal. Because they are the few. They're just loud. They bullied their way into getting the microphone. We are more. We are the many. I think most of America is decent and wants to be like a 1950s We do have some generations where they've been fed a lot of lies of what was and what is, and history's all convoluted. But they have families, and families need to speak up. Let's no longer, I'm sick of, oh, they're 18, they could do, I'm still a parent. I still parent. I can't ground Levi. But we have discussions. We still talk. I still try to have an influence. Sometimes they influence me. That's how it grows, it changes as it goes, as we do things. And it's like they have their insights and we have debates. That's one of my, Elena and I's favorite time is to be with our children and talk and debate and talk. So don't give up, you're not done. If your kids are growing, you still have an influence. I don't care how married they are. You still have an influence. Every issue, every topic, this will apply the Bible to it. What does God say? How's God say it? I'm preparing something to help us in that to kind of go back and then just take it through as a church. So we're trying to make up for lost ground and I think that we are in a spot because our God is good and our God is kind and our God can wrestle the headlines away and take control to the point that we're in the throes of a revival in a lot of areas. Unfortunately with a lot of young college age people. People seeking the truth, wanting to know what is right and wrong. One lady I talked to yesterday, she goes, no, I don't know if I believe in life or death, I don't know if I believe any of that, but she stood and listened to every word, told me thank you, took our materials, said she would consider it, that's all I'm asking. Jesus is speaking, he's being spoken of, and people aren't ashamed of it. College athletes, pro athletes are talking about that, the ones that aren't throwing it through illegal gambling or something like that. But there's a lot of them that are speaking up and giving God the credit for who he is and what he's doing, using their platform. Things are spreading. So we need to stay vocal. We are to push back. Don't let them say we're not. We are. We do judge right and wrong. We do judge good from bad. We do say, no, not here. That's our job. Shame on us if we ever let it go. We need to do it. We need to fight. We need to vote. Yes, we need to use our voice in our society, in our schools, with our children especially. The school hasn't waited too long. Take and seize the time. They're actually with us more. Let them see the faith in your feet and your action. Not like, oh, mom and dad's one way on Sunday, but they're different on Monday. That's what drives them away. You be consistent. That's one of the things we have fought hard for and one of the things I love about Cornerstone is that I do see a consistency. We have a good group of men that lead. Women on fire. children that are comfortable to talk to older and younger and feel welcome here. They don't feel like someone that's to be, be quiet and go away and involve the community in that as it's supposed to be. You are loved. You are welcomed here underneath the rally around the banner of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who loves the little children, who loves the older, who loves everybody in between, that we are to do it and we are to speak of them. Look at Ephesians chapter 5. Ephesians 5, verse 11. Ephesians 5, 11. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, Christians. And we're in the world, we're not of it. We're not to sequester ourself away, but we're to call it out. We have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather we prove them. We call it out, we expose them. That's wicked. We don't do that, the Bible says no. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light. And whatsoever doth not make manifest, or whosoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore, he saith, awake thou that sleepest. And arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. The days are evil. We only have so many days left. Who knows how many days left? So we're to redeem that time. We're to be using it for him. There's nothing to be wasted. We're to be speaking up. We're to be vocal. We're to be on fire for him. Is everybody gonna agree with us? Everybody gonna be, no. Get used to opposition. It's okay for somebody to disagree with you. You stand for what is right. We want God. We want to be on God's side. So we stand up. And sometimes I think we're so wanting to be compliant or to fit in. No, we need to stand with Him. And if you stand with Him, He says, He goes, the world hated me. They're going to hate you. So let's represent Him. I don't want to be hated. But it's going to happen sometimes. So we're fighting. We're going to fight until it's over. Romans 12, 9 says, abhor evil. That means root it out, push it back, drive it away. Tell us no longer here. Find out where it is and expose it. That's evil. No, we don't want that here. Get it out of here. We don't want it around. The Spirit is in us and His job, He hates evil, and so He should be stirring that up within you already saying, I don't like that. Don't go there. Don't do that. Don't allow it. We warn others about going there. Don't go there. There's something evil. That's something evil. Don't watch that. There's something evil. We warn them. So he's in there trying to restrain it, and he's trying to use you as our hands and feet. Restrain that evil. Be a conduit for the Holy Spirit to say, no, let's do that way. Let's withhold it. Let's keep it back. Now we're at the last days where evil is ramping up, and so we have a huge weight that is there. We can't do it. He can do it, and so that's why we surrender ourselves to Him to be His vessel, to restrain and to withhold and abhor and push back against evil and say, I will be your voice, I will be your hands, I will be your feet. And so then when we are taken out of the way, as this passage in 2 Thessalonians talks about, that is the rapture of the church. Evil lurches forward and all of a sudden the beast is on the mark and he is going pedal to the metal. But we have been holding back so strong that once it takes over, it goes. Hell runs wild. The beast rises to world power and takes over. But we are hindering him now. We are in spiritual warfare every day of our life. We go up against Satan and his minions. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities, against rulers and high places, as Ephesians tells us. But when we go up, the rapture, Satan goes out. All of a sudden it goes, well, there's no more restraint. Evil is gone. Can you imagine what Target would be selling if we weren't here? Can you imagine what marriage would be if Christians didn't fight up for it? Can you imagine what drug use is gonna be if Christians weren't saying, I don't want that here? Can you imagine what prostitution, what illegal human trafficking, what all that would be if someone wasn't telling you that was wrong? If we didn't have somebody fighting for that, you wouldn't understand how kids would be exploited and taken advantage of if someone wasn't fighting for what they were being taught. Do you understand the difference we are making? And so we need to be making it more so when we are gone, The devil's gonna run wild. The Spirit is withholding. He's using the church until we are out of the way. Now the Holy Spirit's still gonna deal with souls. The Holy Spirit is omnipresent. He's all everywhere. We're the representative that's taken out of the way because you can read through the book of Revelation. It is a great soul harvest. Souls get saved. The Holy Spirit still does his work. The Spirit might work differently again. We might go back to the old economy where it's on them for a moment maybe or just on the 144,000. I'm not sure. It's different than it is with us as the church, as the bride of Christ. It's different for them, but our job's to try to win them now. Let's not let them get in the spoils of the tribulation. Let's take as many with us as we can. Let's tell them that the ark is big and there's plenty of room. Jesus Christ, get on board. You don't have to go through this. Come to Jesus Christ. Matter of fact, he put it on a harvest Sunday. He said it this way. The field is wide unto harvest, but the laborers are few. The rapture of the church is the harvest, the main harvest of believers. Christ took a handful the first time at the resurrection, in Matthew 27, I think it is, that he took a handful of believers with him, that wave fruit, that first fruit. Then there's the main harvest that comes, that's us, that's the rapture of the church. The dead in Christ shall arrive first, then we which are alive and remain shall be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, and so shall we ever be with the Lord, and we fly up to be with him. all hell breaks loose on earth, and there's an end gathering, like in the book of Ruth, where God cleans up the corners of the last little bit of the harvest, that seven-year tribulation, before he comes down and establishes his kingdom, with you and I working in the capacity of his government. That's still mind-boggling to think about, but we will, and so the harvest is ready. The laborers are few. Let's not let that be the case here. Let's speak up, let's be bold, let's take the challenge to go forth as we are of the great commission from our Lord, our master, our commander, to preach the gospel to every creature. I take that to mean practice on your dog, and when you go out, you can preach to a person, and you're better with it, right? But to go out and preach the gospel. And if you don't know him as Savior, today's the day for salvation. Now is the time. Let's not wait until the church is gone, and now you're plunged to where you're just trying to find out what you're gonna do to live, Because man, the hour is late. The hour is late. But I appreciate that I get to fight alongside you. So rise up, army. Let's go forth. Lord, I pray you'd be with us as we sing a song of invitation, Lord, where the topic of the song is about making decisions. Lord, I pray that this would be the day that we decide that we're no longer nominal. that we're no longer complacent, that status quo does not flow for us anymore, that we're gonna be bolder, that we're gonna be better, that we're gonna be vocal, and we're gonna try our best to abhor evil, but not to be offensive while we do it. Help us to reach the lost. Help us to show them their need for a Savior. Help us to show them the love of Christ that's the genuine and the right love, the one who says, sin is sin. and it must be dealt with. And we can show him how much God hated sin by pointing him to the cross and see how much wrath was poured out upon his son. But that salvation is free and available. Jesus Christ took our wrath upon himself so that we could be born again. So that he can remove our guilt and our shame He would pay the price for it. And then He credits us with His righteousness. He clothes us with His holiness. He makes us acceptable for heaven where we could never be acceptable. Oh, how much we should praise your son, Jesus. How much we should lift up his name. How worthy it is to praise the name of Jesus Christ. How thankful a safe sinner should be. Holy, holy is the lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Forgive us for not celebrating. Forgive us for not worshiping. Forgive us for not being your hands and feet. Lord, help us to be your hands and feet. Help us to go forth. Help us to die to ourselves truly. As the scripture said, we should die to ourselves and live unto you. Is it uncomfortable? It is. But Lord, use us. May that be the decisions we make today. And Lord, if there's one here who doesn't know you, that they would take that first step where they would commit to trust you. And Lord, if there's sin in our life, I pray that we would call that out, we would see it, and we'd repent of it, we'd make it right. With our power to do it, we should be able to make it right. I don't think we take it for granted that, oh, it's okay in our society. In the Bible it says, if your right hand offends you, cut it off. That's how serious God sees it, and I'm not saying we should cut our hands and feet off, but we should see our sin as that and cut it off. Lord, help us to do so. Be with us. Help us to search our hearts. Lord, you search our hearts. Put your finger on it, and may we surrender it to you. Be with us now as we make decisions for you, Lord, in your son Jesus' name we pray. Amen.