And chapter number 7. We're doing a study through Daniel. Calling this series, Visions and Valor. Visions and Valor. And tonight, we'll title this particular message, The Grand Plan. Daniel sees a vision of prophecy from God in this chapter of 7 and he shows a grand plan that leaps across the centuries and it ties together a lot of keys to understanding God's purpose for us. When I say us, I'm talking about civilizations, individuals in these civilizations over the centuries as well as for us who are alive right now. God's purpose for the world as well as consolation for us is that when we begin to fret about the chaos that's going on around us, I mean we just talked about a horrible hurricane that is more ferocious than anything that's happened probably since Katrina and claiming over 100 lives, close to 200 lives I think and the political scene, the fact that our country seems to be leaning Marxist and the morality of our nation, the crime that's going on. It's a pretty bleak picture and we can get depressed about that and we see everything in turmoil and chaos and we If we're not careful, we begin to wonder, why is all this happening? If God is in control, why is this happening and where do I fit in and what's going to happen to me? And so we find not only keys to interpreting God's plan, His great plan for the ages, but we find some consolation in it for ourselves when we face such times as this. Let's begin in chapter 7, reading in verse number 15. And it continues on about the beasts that Daniel sees in his vision, and we preached on that last week. He says, I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit. In the midst of my body and the visions of my head troubled me. I came near unto one of them that stood by and asked him of the truth of all this. So he told me and made me know the interpretation of the things. These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth. But the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever. Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron, and his nails of brass, which devoured, breaking pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet. And of the ten horns which were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell, even of the horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake Great things, very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows. I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints and prevailed against them until the Ancient of Days came and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High. And the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom. Thus he said, the fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon the earth, which shall be diverse from all the kingdoms and shall devour the whole earth and shall tread it down and break it in pieces. And the 10 horns out of this kingdom are 10 kings that shall arise and another shall rise after them and he shall be diverse from the first. And he shall subdue three kings and he shall speak great words against the most high. and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws, and they shall be given into his hand until a time, and times, and the dividing of time. Now that time, times, and dividing of times may be a little confusing, but as you study out and read Revelation with this, you'll find out that the time is equal to a year, times would be plural, two years, and a dividing of time would be a half a year. This would be 42 months. three-and-a-half years the tribulation will exist of the first part which seems like it's calling for peace yet there will be troublesome times during that first three-and-a-half years but the last three-and-a-half years of the tribulation time will be so horrible that the mind cannot hardly comprehend it. And so that's the times, time, times and dividing of time. But the judgment shall sit and they shall take away his dominion, his meaning the beast that's being described, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. And the kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the kingdom unto the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High. whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him. Hitherto is the end of the matter. As for me, Daniel, my cogitation's much trouble to me, and my countenance changed in me. but I kept the matter in my heart. Father, I pray that you'd bless us. May the Holy Spirit take the truths of your Word and cause us to understand to own the Word of God as a gift from you that directs our knowledge and your will in our lives. Lord, help us to understand these prophecies that they might be a help to us as we minister to other people and as we look towards the future. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So keep in mind, now the first six chapters of Daniel was chronological. It was covering the life of Daniel and it was very practical and showing about the miracles like him getting cast into the lion's den and all of that. And that all happens in chronological order. But in chapter 7, the end of the chronological part comes here. Now in chapter 7 we go back and the time that he sees this vision, Daniel sees this vision is actually while Belshazzar is still on the throne in chapter 5 that we've already covered. So this vision goes back in time, although it covers the future, the time that Daniel saw it was when Belshazzar was still the king. And so chapter 7 visions occurred during that time before the Medo-Persian Empire captured the Babylonian Empire that Daniel finds himself in later. Notice three great things tonight about God's great plan. First of all, let's talk about the disturbing vision, Daniel's disturbing vision. We saw that in Verses 15 and 16, he says in verse 15, he says, I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body. This becomes emotional, spiritual, and physical. I mean, this is weighing on Daniel heavily. He's feeling the pain from what he just saw. Now he knows it's from God, but at first he doesn't understand what it means. He just knows that it's horrible, what's gonna happen. And it's causing him great mental stress. You ever have any mental stress? Imagine what it'd be like if you could see the whole world history in one flash, one vision like this, and Daniel did. And he says, I, Daniel, he brings it down to a personal level. You know what, as Daniel gets the word of God through this dream, this vision, as he gets it, he feels the weight of it and He personalizes it. Can I just say to you, listen, as we hear the Word of God, God reveals to us, not through dreams right now, but through His Word. The revelation is finished. God gave us His Word through such things as this. We have the whole thing now, but as we read it and as we study the Word of God, as we hear it preached, taught, I would submit to you that, like Daniel, we ought to internalize it. And we ought not to say, boy, that's good preaching, that'll help old brother so-and-so. No, we ought to say, like the song says, oh Lord, it's me standing in the need of prayer. It's me standing in the need of thy instructions. It's me that needs the Spirit. It's me that needs the Word of God. And Daniel internalized that. He's fought a bunch of fights already, but now, boy, he feels overwhelmed with what he's seeing. And sometimes you and I get overwhelmed just by the current events we see. We'll come to that in just a little bit. He says in verse 16, After he says, I was grieved in my spirit, he says, I came near unto one of them that stood by and asked him the truth of all this. So he told me and made me know the interpretation of the things. He's saying, Lord, I don't quite grasp what you're saying. I know you're speaking, but I need an interpreter. And so he asks one that's standing by, evidently an angel, that's standing by during this dream, this vision. And so Daniel says, I need some help. And sometimes you and I need help as understanding the Word of God, don't we? When we read back in Ezra and Nehemiah, they preached the Word of God, and it is said that they read the Scripture, they preached the Scripture, and caused people to understand the Scripture. And that's the great thing about coming to church or coming to a Bible study. That's the great thing about slowing down in your Bible reading sometimes and just gaze at a few verses or a passage and say, Lord, now you've got the Spirit of God living in you. You're a Christian. You're saved. You're a Christian with the Spirit living in you. And He is the great interpreter. And so when you come to something you don't quite grasp, We need to be like Daniel and go and say I need more understanding. I need some help here. None of us know it all and we need help. I think Daniel was hungry. Daniel was hungry for the Word of God. He said, Lord, I want to know. I see this, but I want to know more about it. I need to understand it. I need to be able to deal with this on a personal level. And so I see in the later years of my life and my ministry, I remember a time when prophecy was going big and people loved prophetic teaching and reading and preaching and teaching of the prophetical events. But I see some of that waning now. But wait, there was something that happened before that, and that's because people lost a general interest in the Word of God to start with. And you know why that happened? Something happened before that. People got interested in their secular excursions and information and activities. And so as we get interested in the secular, we tend to lay the spiritual to the side. And as we lay the spiritual to the side, then our general interest in the Word of God It kind of loses its fire to us. But can I just tell you that sometimes people say, well, I don't get anything much out of the preaching. You're not a very good preacher. I don't claim to be a good preacher, but I do claim to have a great message from the Word of God. And so, as long as the Word of God is there, I don't care how dynamic or how boring a preacher may be, if he's preaching the Word of God, there's a great message in there. and we have to look for it and absorb it and say, Lord, help me understand more. If we lose our zeal for hearing and absorbing the Word of God, it's not necessarily the preacher's fault or the Word of God's fault. It's not the Holy Spirit's fault. I make coffee every morning. Y'all didn't know that, did you? I make coffee every morning. I roast my own beans and grind my own beans, and I'm just a real coffee snob. And so I make my wife a mug of coffee and take it to her. I let her stay in bed. I get up because there's total silence when I get up earlier than she does. Sorry, Mrs. I make coffee and I sit still and just enjoy the quiet, and then I'll take her a mug of coffee in there. And you know what she told me a while back? She tasted of it and she said, this is not as good as it usually is. Did you change coffees? I said, no, it's the same coffee I made for you yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Same water, same coffee bean, same grind size, same brewing method. I said, young lady, it's not the fault of the coffee, it's your taster that's messed up. You know what? Our taste does get messed up sometimes. If you had COVID, maybe you lost your taste for certain foods or you have a bad cold sometimes and you just can't taste food and it just loses its savor and flavor. The same thing happens with the Word of God. The Word of God hasn't lost its fire. The Word of God hasn't lost its purpose in our life. It might be our taster for the Word of God that's changed. And if our taster has changed, it might be a good reason for us to go back and do a little soul searching in the presence of the Lord and just ask the Lord, Lord, what is it? I used to love the Word of God but I don't seem to love it as much or desire it as much. I don't crave it as much. I'm not as hungry for it. I'm not as thirsty for it as I used to be. And we would be well advised to check it out and see if maybe we've lost our taste. Matthew 5, 6 says, Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. Hunger and thirst after righteousness and we find it right here as the Spirit of God applies the Word of God to our heart. Daniel was hungry for the Word of God. I like that about Daniel. I get inspiration for that. And, excuse me. Hundreds of churches will probably close their doors this year as they have in years past. The speed of them closing seems to be getting a little more rapid. The reason they're closing is because of disinterest. Is that God's fault? Is it the Bible's fault? I would go so far as to say it's usually not even the preacher's fault or the teacher's fault. I think it's because we lose interest because we're involved in so many other secular endeavors. Well, Daniel hungered for the Word of God. Let's go to the second thing we learn out of this is we look at it closely and we see the rise of the four beasts and the little horn. The rise of the four beasts and the little horn. In verse number 17 it says, These great beasts Which are four? Are four kings. Now, he says there are four kings, right? You just read that. There are four kings. But a king has a kingdom. And so while it's talking about four kings, it's also talking about the kingdom that belongs to that king. So it's talking about four kings who rule over world empires. Now, every conceivable empire that's ever existed is not listed here This is the prophetic design of God that was given to Daniel for a specific purpose and the three that he mentions, well, he mentions four, but the fourth one ends up being unlike the other three and it arises again, revived. So he says, for our four kings, which shall arise out of the earth, but the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom. And so he's summarizing here, he's saying these four beasts are rising up, these are four big world empires and they're going to cause chaos and bloody murder and destruction of homes and families and the welfare of humanity. It's going to be horrible. But he's saying keep in mind the saints are going to inherit the kingdom. So he asked for help understanding this and when he gets the description of these four kingdoms, you remember in Daniel chapter 2 we saw the great statue of Nebuchadnezzar, the golden head which was Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom, the kingdom of Babylon and it's taken over by the Medo-Persian Empire and then the Empire of Greece overcomes and eventually comes into power and then finally Rome Well, this is the same description of those empires, or I should say, it describes the same empires that was in Nebuchadnezzar's statue. So while Nebuchadnezzar from a human standpoint sees these empires, he saw them as the great head of gold and the next one of silver and then of brass and then finally one of of iron, and so while Nebuchadnezzar from a human standpoint sees all these empires, these world empires as shiny, gleaming, metal objects, God sees them from a whole different standpoint. God sees them as four ferocious, ungodly beasts. Same empires, but from a different perspective. And as we look at the next chart, We'll see how they are described. Uh-oh. Go one more. Yeah, that's it. The first empire, this was Nebuchadnezzar's empire, is described as being like a lion with eagle's wings. Now the wings get plucked up later. And he's lifted up from the earth and given a man's heart, remember? He repented, man. He saw God's hammer fall on him a time or two, and he was turned out like a beast into the meadow as a crazy man. And when he finally gets his senses back, he said, boy, the God of heaven is the real God. He said, that's the one we need to worship. And so that was the lion, the first beast was like a lion, that's Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian Empire. Then we go to number two, and this is the Medo-Persian Empire. Two countries combined forces, the Medes and the Persians. Primarily the Persian Empire is the greatest power of that two kingdom combination. And that's why the bear is raised up on one side, showing the superior strength of the Persian Empire above the Medes, although they are in cahoots with each other. And he's got three ribs in his mouth because they defeated three of the great empires that were in power at that time, Egypt and… I can't remember the other two, but it was told to arise and devour much flesh. So then they're in power for a while as a world empire. Then number three, Alexander the Great comes along with his Grecian empire and he's described like a leopard with four foul wings and had four heads and given dominion. Now the leopard describes this Grecian empire the leopard is a very swift animal and Alexander the Great as he's sweeping across the land he's capturing kingdom city after city and kingdom after kingdom but he's not just stamping out the humanity as he goes he's capturing them but not annihilating them and so that brings us up to beast number four It's called an exceedingly dreadful, terrible beast with iron teeth, brass nails, had ten horns and a little horn which plucked three horns. Now this is the Roman Empire which came in. There was not a sudden capture of the Roman Empire by the, I mean there wasn't a sudden capture of the Grecian Empire by the Roman Empire. It just kind of, the Roman Empire began to dwindle, fade and the Grecian Empire overlapped and took over. It was not a sudden change, but it was a change. And so, this is exceedingly dreadful. It's not a beast like the leopard or bear or the lion, anything that we're familiar with. It's just called a terrible beast. So it seems to be a combination of all those other beasts doing all the things that they did, but this one is exceedingly terrible. meaning the Roman Empire, when they captured a land, a little kingdom or a city-state, they weren't content just to put the people under their protective umbrella of their government. They killed thousands of them, slaughtered them. Rome was brutal in doing this and what happens As we continue studying through this prophecy, we'll see that this fourth empire, when the Roman Empire played out, it seemed not to go out of existence, but it's going to be revived again in the latter times. So even though a couple of centuries after Christ, it dwindled down and just kind of faded, it will be revived again, and that will be in the tribulation time, The Antichrist will be the little horn that rises up, and he's going to do away with three other kings out of those ten, and he's going to take charge of the whole world. See, I thought God was in charge. Everything comes under God's authority. But even the Bible says that the devil is the prince and power of the air. And the devil has his time, but that time will come to an end. And God will lower the boom on the Antichrist as well. So let's go to number three in our view of the grand plan of all that's going to happen throughout the time of humanity. Look at verse 22. This is the judgment and ultimate victory of God's kingdom. Daniel 7, 22. It says all these things are going to happen. They're going to be terrible things that are going to come to pass until, verse 22, Until the Ancient of Days came and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High. Now it doesn't mean that he's pronouncing a horrible judgment on the saints, it means that he's giving judgment to them like the judge in a courtroom would judge the plaintiff to be the winner in a court case. The Ancient of Days is none other than God himself. Now there's some who would say, well I believe that's Jesus because it kind of resembles his likeness maybe in Revelation or some other places. Now Jesus is going to be involved in this judgment but I believe the one sitting on the throne in this verse is the Ancient of Days. The Ancient of Days is his hair being white, not just meaning he's old and feeble, but being white in purity. Our God is pure and He is ancient. The ancients have the wisdom. So those who have gray hair or no hair at all, we're the ancients and we've lived long enough to see some things and we've learned some things and we've seen history repeat itself so many times that we say, I see that pattern, I know what's going to happen next. Well God's been around forever and ever and ever and he's seen it all and nothing has happened without his watchful eye and now the judgment comes and this is not the only judgment there are those who teach a general judgment where God will march out everybody all of humanity at one time and everybody and God will say okay this one's saved and that one's lost and he'll sort the the saved from the lost and a general judgment. So you have to wait a general judgment to see if you're saved or lost. That's humbug. That's not the way it really goes in the Bible. There are several judgments. When we, the Christians, go up in the rapture, we'll go to the judgment seat of Christ, not to be judged to see whether we get to heaven or not, but to be judged according to our works to see if we earn rewards or not. there'll be a judgment, there's a bunch of judgments, there'll be a judgment at the end of the thousand year reign of Christ, and there'll be a judgment of nations, and a sheep from the goats, and there'll be a judgment of the white throne after the millennial reign, and several other judgments in here too, but I'm just saying there's some major judgments that happen that's not part of this judgment. Judgment by God is final. There won't be any, your honor, I would like to protest. No, the protest won't do any good. God's decisions will be final. The saints will inherit the kingdom. And all of these world empires that rose up and tried to show their exceeding power will finally fold in this judgment under God and they'll be eliminated. So I'd say to the Christian, when you see things going on around you, don't be too fearful because we do win. When things don't go our way and we have hurts and heartaches, maybe health failures, maybe financial failures, maybe family failures, we see those things and we think, man, when will this end? Well, I can tell you for sure it will end. When Jesus sits on the throne, we'll go through a thousand-year reign and this will be an Eden-like environment and experience. But then after the thousand-year reign, God ushers in a permanent, eternal state where we, the believers, and when he talks about the saints in Daniel here, he's not talking about specifically you and me who are saved right now, although we are New Testament saints. He's talking about the saints of the tribulation generally what he's talking about here because those who are saved during the tribulation time will be the ones who are left behind that didn't go up in the rapture and so they'll be saints and they'll suffer during the tribulation time. You know, with the Mideast, Middle East being the center, it's been the center of the globe ever since God created anything. Everything from God's perspective centers from Jerusalem outward and when he sets on a throne during the millennial reign it'll be a throne in Jerusalem a physical literal throne and so Israel is the center of the earth didn't God say that Israel was the apple of his eye and there will be a time when when all of these things will become very apparent to us but right now we're seeing things happen been watching news last few days man Iran sent nearly 200 ballistic missiles to attack Israel. Thank goodness they had the Iron Dome and shot most of them down. I don't think there was any major damage out of that. But this shows that the most tense region in the world right now is the Middle East. the center of what God has been keeping his eye on ever since creation. I don't know where the Garden of Eden was specifically, but I suspect it was probably in that same area around the Fertile Crescent. And as we see the things that's happening to Israel, Israel is hated around the world. The United States still pretends to love Israel. But I don't think our administration, I think our administration would rather not be involved with them right now. Especially with, it seems as though a regional war is imminent. But we better love Israel. With all this happening, seeing the tragedies that happened on October 7th last year, where they brutally attacked, murdered, slaughtered, raped, dismembered human beings, the Jews. Hamas did that and we think, man that's horrible. That's happened in some of these other kingdoms that we just read about too. The great beasts, there's always been beasts who wanted to do things differently than what God does it. But as we look at all of this going on in the Middle East right now and everything's intensifying, it's almost tempting, although we can't tell, we don't know when Jesus is coming back at this point. But it's almost tempting to say, man, with everything going on over there, it seems like something's going to happen pretty fast. Could the Lord return right away? He could. We don't know. But did you ever stop to think that with everything that's going on right now, I wonder if the Antichrist is already alive, the little horn of that fourth beast, I wonder if the Antichrist is already alive right now, he just hasn't come to power yet because he won't actually be recognizable until, not we, but they who are in the tribulation, they will know when the Antichrist comes on the scene. But for you and me who will go up in the rapture, we may not know who he is until we get to heaven. But he could be alive right now. Yeah, it's probably Donald Trump. No, could be Kamala. No, could be the Pope. People have thought every world dictator that's come on the scene, every pope, every American president has been suggested to be the Antichrist and it could turn out to be one of those. But the truth is we don't know. But he could be alive right now. I don't know if even he knows who he is until the devil anoints him with the unholy anointing from hell. but whenever he comes on the scene I think you and I are going to be gone. I was reading this morning and the reason I guess this is interesting to me is because I was thinking about this passage of scripture and all the people around us who have come to either not believe in God or they don't believe in Him biblically. You see, there are a lot of people who believe in God, but they don't believe in the God of the Bible. There are a lot of people who believe in Jesus, but they don't believe in the Jesus of the Bible. And I think we live in a time where a lot of people, where a lot of people really don't have any kind of a grasp in their mind about who God is or if they even need Him. because philosophies have crept into our world. I was reading about this this morning, the different major philosophies, you know, like existentialism. I was reading about that one and several of the others, and I was comparing what one believed to the other. Existentialism just believes that, hey, we were born with no purpose. God didn't, there is no God, He didn't design anything, He didn't create anything, He didn't put within you, He didn't put within you a conscience or some desire for morality, He didn't put anything in you at all. Of course we as Christians believe we're designed in the image of God, that's what the Bible says. And so, there's so many people that don't believe that we were created in the image of God. And existentialism says we just live in a universe of chaos. In other words, when you're born, you're not born with any purpose. There is no purpose. You're not born with any inherent goodness or any desire to help your fellow man. You don't have any of that in you because they don't believe in the image of God. And they just say, you don't have any purpose And since you live in a totally meaningless world and universe, you just have to create, if you want a purpose, you've got to create your own. There is no Bible to tell you how to live. There is no God who would lead you to do certain things or to have a purpose for living. And so, they just say, basically, there's no meaningful reason for you to exist. I think that's why abortion happens so easily because so many people feel like they've been influenced by these philosophies and they feel like there's no purpose anyway so we would exterminate a baby just like we would a spider you'd step on in the hallway. And it's because they don't believe there's any inherent purpose in your life or any of the image of God. So how many people want to be an existentialist now? I mean, it's kind of hopeless. There's no purpose. You'll live and if you can create your own purpose for living, well, that'll be good, but then you're going to die and go out of existence and there's nothing after that. So really encouraging, right? And all these others, you know, Confucianism and Platoism and things that all have a little bit of variation, but one thing I found Similar in all of these is the one thing that they agree, seem to agree on is we have ability to reason. Now where that ability came from, they don't know. They think it just evolved as man evolved. But you have reason, reasoning ability. And that's about the only thing they really agree on. Well, I believe you've got reasoning ability too, but it comes from God. Some worldviews say the universe had no beginning. Don't think I'm just wondering because I'm talking about these four beasts, these four world empires and the purpose, the grand plan of God goes beyond what humans can reason out. That's why we're calling this the grand plan. And some say the universe had no beginning. It's just always existed. And you can ask, Always? You mean forever? It never was a time when it didn't exist? Never a time that it came into existence? Never a time when it was created? Nope, just always been there. Well, that's an easy way to explain it but that's not very good reasoning in my opinion. And there's some who say, well, this universe did come into existence but it came into existence through a big bang and there was this tiny little hot point tiny little hot point, size of a head of a pen, and it exploded. And from that came all the stars and planets and everything you see in the universe. All matter and energy came out of that little hot point. And I'm saying, where did the hot point come from? Where did the hot point come from? Well, they don't have an answer for that either. And then there's some who suggest, This universe is not alone. We don't just have a universe, meaning one. We have a multiverse. In other words, the universe that you and I can observe is not the only one that's out there. There's more universes. And so I asked AI to see how intelligent AI is. When the proponents of multiverses say that there is a universe and another universe and another universe, is that not self-defeating? Because all of those universes together makes a universe. I said, well, the proponents of it would not agree that that all the multiverses make up a universe. They have redefined the words. So universe doesn't mean universe as in one anymore. When you believe in a multiverse, all these different universes exist, each one in its own little bubble and they're just floating around somewhere, evidently not in a universe, but they're all part of a bigger system. There's a parallel universe over here. Maybe you've got a twin over there. Boy, I feel sorry for the guy that looks like me. I'm saying there's all kinds of crazy philosophies out there. Man racks his brain from the time of Aristotle and Plato and Confucius and all these other thinkers. They thought so much that their brains all fell out, I think. And they come up with all these ways to reason why there is no God, there is no plan, it's whatever you reason in your mind that matters. And so if you have a morality that you've invented in your mind, that's your reality, that's your truth. But the next guy sitting across from you has his own truth too, so there is no single truth. Everybody's got their own individual truths. even deists. Deists claim that, yeah, there's a God who created everything, we'll go along with that, but He's not involved in anything. He just created the world, the universe, and people. He created everything, and then He stepped back and said, bye, I'm not getting involved in history. I'm not involved in prophecy. I'm not sending you a word of instruction called the Bible. I'm not doing anything. You're on your own. Even deists fall into the same trap. They reason things out. I say all of this just barely, if even barely scratching the surface of philosophy to say that people reason so much that they have ruled out God. There are so many different philosophies to choose from. Pick the one you like. You don't have to believe in God. And yet, my dear friend, There is a God in heaven and Daniel chapter 7 says that even though these world empires come on the scene and one defeats another and everything ebbs and flows, and that even happens not just with kingdoms, a kingdom taking over another kingdom, it happens in your life too. Ebb and flow. There's times when you may be going through one phase of life and then you go through another phase of life. You go through one phase of life where you're interested in the Lord and maybe another phase of life, a phase of life where you're not interested in the Lord. And so we better pay attention to the ebb and flow. Mankind has created philosophy to show that there is no real purpose. And yet God shows us in Daniel chapter 7 and says, I've got a big purpose. It's going through this kingdom, this kingdom, this kingdom, this kingdom, that king, even the Antichrist who will rule the whole world, the little horn. One day God will defeat him at the end of the tribulation and that beast will be cast into outer darkness. One day he won't exist in your consciousness anymore because we'll live with the Lord in heaven. I see a progression of empires and as all the world is churning and spurning and spinning and vomiting, we will have a definite end to all these kingdoms. And then the big kingdom, remember in Daniel chapter 2, the stone hit the image on the feet and the image comes hoppling over, that stone is Christ. and one day he'll destroy all the kingdoms of the world and set up his kingdom and dear friend what's encouraging about that is that no matter how things go for us during this lifetime no matter how sad or tragic situations might be there will be an end to it and we'll live in his kingdom and the eternal kingdom forever and ever so be encouraged that the end is not yet And for the believer, the end does not come because we're eternal. Father, I pray that you'd bless us with the knowledge of your word. Lord, encourage us with your omnipotence and omniscience, with your revelation from the word of God. I pray that you'd help us to face the tragedies and heartaches and turmoil and tribulations that come our way, knowing that in the end, we will be with you. and will be forevermore. Our heads are bowed and eyes are closed. I'd like to give you just a moment