Welcome to our 119th lesson in the book of Revelations. I've entitled it, The Spirit of Prophecy. And we're looking at Revelation 19, 10 today. Let us go read that. Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, you must not do that. I am a fellow slave with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Now we tend to slide right past that, not pay much attention to it, because the very next verse Heavens are opening, Jesus is coming, hallelujah. This is what we've been waiting for, what everyone's been waiting for. He's coming, and he's visible, and everyone can see him. And see, I'm validated now. Notice what I did there? I changed it from being about Jesus to being about me. Because that's how we think. It's all about me. And when we say it's not about me, it's really about me. We can't help ourselves. We fall into it. We fall right back into it constantly. And we're going to see that John does exactly the same thing. He's not being malicious. He's not being deceitful. Like us, most of us, he's just being confused. Only unlike most of us, when we're chasing for it, he didn't get angry. He didn't stomp his feet. He didn't make counter accusations. He took the admonishment and changed. Not saying he's not going to do it again. He's in the flesh. And while we're in the flesh, we will do this. But how many times does someone come up to us and say, I'm not understanding why you're doing this when the Bible says thus. And rather than look at ourselves first, we seek to self-justify like in Romans 2. It's just what we do in the flesh. Now notice the graphic here on the title slide. Talking about the spirit, spirit of prophecy. And I put a reference to Job 4 verses 12 through nine. And that's when Eliphaz begins the friend's discourse to condemn Job. Job, you had to be a sinner because like, wow, Look at everything that happened to you. Somebody's trying to get your attention. Of course, any of us that have spent any time in the book know that Job responded by saying, get out of here. I did nothing wrong. And that right there tells you right off the bat that Job was doing everything wrong. But notice what Eliphaz says. So the spirit came to me, and my ear received the whisper of it, and thoughts from the vision of the night. When deep sleep falls on men, dread came upon me in trembling, made my bones shake, and a spirit glided past my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. I could not discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes, whatever that form was, and there was silence. Then I heard the voice, can a mortal man be in the right before God? This here tells us that Eliphaz is not saved. So what we have is we have a discussion between Job and three men who considered themselves righteous and were not. We go to Hebrews chapter one, verse one. In times past, God spoke in many different ways and means, but now, meaning the time he was written, the first century AD, but now he speaks to us Well, that's the lesson, isn't it? So let's look at the law of identity. Let's go back to our verse in Revelation, and let's look at the word prophecy. The word testimony, just in case you're wondering, is maturia. It means to witness, which is pretty much the same meaning it has today when we use the word testimony. So it's almost an unchanged translation into our little language. The meaning has not been altered. The meaning remains the same. It means to act as a witness. In fact, the English word martyr means someone who who self-sacrifices for the good of whatever, is literally a transliteration of the word maktouria, one who gives witness. Only we've changed the meaning to make it mean something extreme, whereas in the Greek, it just means a witness. If I see an accident and I give my account to the police, I am a witness. I am a martyria. I didn't have to die on the sword or whatever to prove the authenticity or the veracity of my belief. It will be measured in a court of law to establish the facts, which is what a court does. That's what the jury does. The jury establishes the facts. But let's look at prophecy. Propheteia. Propheteia. It's actually two different Greek words put together. Pro, which means in front of, or before, and phatea, which means speak. Phonia means sound, which we get the word phonograph or phonetics. And so it's nothing more complicated than one who speaks for God or one through whom God speaks. Now in mythology, and by mythology, we're literally referring to false religions. We tend to gussy them up and hide them behind this word that says, we know that none of this is real, but they did kind of believe it, but they eventually got beyond it by studying or developing the field of philosophy, which stripped away the religion and began to teach us how to think. The search for wisdom, literally what they're saying is the search for knowing without religion, except that's an impossibility, as I've discussed time after time after time. You can't have knowing without religion. because religion is that basket from which we get our values of right and wrong. We are moral creatures. We were designed that way. We're made that way. We think that way. We cannot not think that way, except when we truly descend to the level of the animal, like in sociopathy. or psychopathy, or in self-actualization. That becomes our goal. We sink to the level of the animal. The animal is not moral. It is incapable of knowing good and choosing evil. It just does. It can live by a set of rules. either self-taught or imposed upon it by conditions, by situations, or by owners. Remember, your pets are slaves. You buy and sell them without their consent. They're not your children. You may love them, but they're still slaves. Ponder that. Ponder the full ramification of that. But they are not moral. That is their position in life, to serve. That is the angel's position in life. That is our position in life. And we are either slaves to sin or slaves to Christ. Because we are looking into to avail beyond which we cannot see. We cannot see into the spiritual realm. We can't even discern it. We can't even test its veracity. It is beyond the realm of science. It is not detectable. It is not measurable. And if we can't detect it, we certainly don't know if it's repeatable. But since we have to use terms that have some conventional meaning to them so that we can continue, we'll use the word mythology. And in mythology, especially Greek mythology, but actually the mythology that predated it, the prophet was one who interprets the will of the god or gods, like Hermes, from which we get the word hermeneutics, or the hermetica, or the hermetic, understanding the will. When Hegel wrote his Hermetics, he was saying, I have knowledge. I'm not looking for knowledge. I got it. And I'm going to tell you the knowledge I have. He was giving you Hermetics the knowledge his absolutes Now Our idea of prophecy and prophets goes all the way back to the Old Testament primarily you rarely rarely do you have What we would call a prophet in the New Testament you do have a Agabus in the Book of Acts. In the Book of Acts, you have Paul and Barnabas who are mistaken for gods, mythological gods. Zeus and Hermes, I believe, off the top of my head. And Paul had to run out there and tell him, no, no, no, no. You got it wrong. That's not what we're doing here. And he said, okay. And then they stoned him. And many believe that Paul died and was resurrected. So in mythology, you have the one who interprets the will of the gods. But as we're going to see in a moment, It's like Eliphaz. Now you might have this, I see through a glass darkly verse swimming around in the far reaches of your mind. And well, that's what God does. No, that's not what God does. And that's not what God did. There's a difference between a biblical prophet The prophet of every other religion because they're all works based religions if they're not of God Well Hebrew prophet is the word Nabi And its roots go all the way back to this Empire of Sumer and his predecessor Acadia and In other words, it goes back to the dawn of written history. Sumer being the first empire and actually being the first one that kept a written history. I'm not going to say writing began with it, Because I take the viewpoint that man is de-evolving as time goes on. Going downwards, not moving up the scale. We're getting dumber as the time goes on. And we're getting dumber faster. We used to measure it in millennia. Then we'd measure it in centuries. Now we're proudly measuring it in decades. and generations that are getting shorter, shorter, like decades. And we're proudly naming them. And then we're laughing at it, making jokes about how he's succeeding generation. You're getting dumber. And we don't tie the two together because we can do this and laugh about it because we put it in a compartment. A separate compartment. And then in another separate compartment, or so we think, we have our thoughts about God. And in another separate compartment, we have our view of history. Evolutionary history, in which we must be on an upward plane, because that's what evolution teaches us, and we accept that. but they're all tied together. They're just different facets of the same stone and they're not separate and distinct and compartmentalized because under the facet, everything is joined together by an internal structure. It is only an illusion that we use. Abraham came from Sumar, Ur of the Chaldees, in Genesis 11, 27 through Genesis 12, verse 9, to become the father of the Hebrews, physically. But he became the father of all who believe, according to Paul, in Romans 3 and in Galatians. And the biblical description of the prophet's role is given in Exodus 7, verses 1 and 2. So let us go there and glance at it. Exodus 7. One, and the Lord said to Moses, see, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet, your Nabi. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of the land. So that is the relationship. God speaks to the prophet who tells the people. That is what he did from Exodus onward. Actually, that's what he did from Babel onward. He did speak to people directly. He spoke to Abraham directly, but he also spoke to Abraham in visions. And it's several times in the Old Testament, we see him in a theophany, in a presentation of Christ before he physically was born on the earth. He appeared to Moses. He appeared to Gideon. And so, the prophets were given this clear revelation, or as clear as they could understand it. Now remember, God said he would raise up a new prophet after the manner of Moses. Deuteronomy 18 verses 15 through 19. And also remember that when the priests and Pharisees in Sanhedrin came to John the Baptist, they asked him, are you Elijah? Are you that prophet? This is the prophet they were referring to. They were asking him, are you the Messiah? Because they knew full well the meaning of that prophet or the prophet that was going to be raised up. Are you the Messiah? And John said, get out of here. No, I'm not any of those. They're asking him, Elijah, are you physically the resurrected Elijah? He says, no, I'm not. It came in the spirit of Elijah. And Christ admitted that. You want to believe this, Christ said, he is he came in the spirit of Elijah. He is the Elijah who was to come. So Christ. is the prophet he's the priest he is the king he holds all three titles just like the very ancient kingdom rulers like in bebel or the very ancient empires of which the main one we have in the bible is egypt He is the one who would reveal God to man by direct gnosis via logos, or words, or the word. John 1, 1-18, Hebrews 4, 1-4. So let us go to Hebrews and read that. Long ago, at many times, in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God in the exact imprint of his nature, meaning God's nature, and he opposed the universe by the word of his power. After making purifications for sin, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. Something that ticked Satan off to no end, I believe. Thus, Satan became the spirit of confusion. But whose will was he revealing? And so, where did the Hebrews get their word for prophecy? Now, the word for prophet is Nabi, and the word for prophecy is Nabu, or Nabua. And like in the Greek, it means revealing God by speaking or writing. Well, if we go back Let me really go back and we have not so much in the scripture There's a couple of references there, but by and large we have to go back through archaeology We see that the Babylonians had a god of writing Now it's only right that they did so because writing was so complex and these little marks, cuneiform, these little stylus marks, squiggles, triangles, pressed into clay in a certain pattern with no spaces. If you look at even the ancient Hebrew and Greek, writing materials were so scarce and precious that there's no space between words. Everything's a run-on. There was no punctuation. The art of reading, and it was an art, was to know where the spaces were. And to add in the vocal inflection that we today codify through punctuation marks, like pauses. like commands, like questions, like sentences. And so they had a group of people that they trained, it took years to train them, and they became the scribes. And Nebu or Nebo was the god of the writing, the patron god of the scribes, had his own temple, had his own city. And every year they would haul him out, literally, drag this idol out down the river and bring him to Marduk, who was his father, because he, Nabu, is the one who revealed the will of Marduk to the people through the writing. Does that sound kind of familiar that we just said that was Christ's role? In fact, he was so important that several of the Babylonian kings chose to incorporate his name into their throne names. So when you came to the throne, when you were changed from prince to king, you would receive a throne name. You didn't grow up with that moniker. You were given it or you chose it when you ascended to the throne, like Nebu, Chednezer. Now you know where the Nebu comes from. It means that he's identifying himself with the God of writing, the God of history, the revelation or the revealer of the will of Marduk. And of course, who now takes on primary importance? The God behind the scenes? Or the God who's revealing the God behind the scenes? And of course, it's the God who's revealing the God behind the scenes. That's why they would take on the name of Naboo or Naboe. I say this because cultures do not literally grow in a vacuum, not according to the Bible. You can make up anything you want to as you go along, but in the Bible, all societies are interconnected by going all the way back to Genesis chapter 10, the table of nations, back to Babel. And even before Babel, back to the Ark. And then before the Ark, back to original man and woman, Adam and Eve. And so they're just building since Babel as they spread out and subdivided and further subdivided. They tailored their culture to be different from everybody else's. You can't be like me or you got to be in mind and I get to be king of the culture. But if you're going to have your own, you got to be elsewhere and you're going to legitimize your culture by your religion. So people will come to your culture, say we're better because our God is a bit better. That's why we win the battles. We still do that today. We don't call it religion, but it is. In World War II, the good guys won. The democratic governments won over the dictatorial evil people. See, we make that good and evil, so we turned it into a religious war so that we could con everyone to go die in it, on both sides. There's no innocence in that war. But if you look at it correctly, it's just various forms of socialism battling it out for supremacy. Because by this time in our history, America had become a form of national socialism. That's what the progressive era did to us. You can thank Abraham Lincoln for that. And before him, Hamilton and John Jay and those guys. That's what the Constitution did to us. That's what Lincoln did by creating a strong central government over state governments. And this is what it grew into. And then corporatism grew up through the industrial age and became co-opted based upon the model that had already been shown in England. But I digress from our position here. We don't want to go down that rabbit trail in this particular lesson. So getting back to this, Nabu, the god of writing, revealed the will of Marduk, his father. And the scribes and the priests, because remember, they were priests that were separate and distinct from the scribes, revealed the will of kings, government, and gods, faith. And so we see this marriage of government and religion at the very beginning. and was always limited to a few into the medieval age. Now, the Hebrews confounded this because Joseph developed the alphabet. And the Hebrews brought reading and writing to every level of society, not that every level of society Learned it but they could because they were commanded to read the bible And you only read the bible if number one it is written And number two If you can read it And that's what they were supposed to be doing that's why you had not just the temple In hodosham Or before that in bethel But you had priestly cities scattered throughout Israel. Why? Because these were the readers and the writers, and they were to teach the people around them to read and write. And during their worship, they would open the scrolls and read it. And if we remember, If you came into the synagogue and you were a stranger, you were asked to stand up and read as a mark of respect. And as a visiting pastor, be a little different. Let's have a different message today. Brother Will from down the road, he's visiting us today. Let's let him speak. Be a little different. Freshen up the pots, so to speak. He would stand up and read the scriptures. Christ did this when he went into the synagogue in Nazareth. They asked him to read. He stood up and he read out of Isaiah. It was not unusual to be able to read and write at the lowest level of society. Everybody could read the Bible for themselves if they chose to learn to read. And so we come down to still the perennial question. Elijah asked the people in 1 Kings 18, 20 through 21, whom do you believe? And implied in that is, whom do you choose? Now Elijah asked him, whom do you choose? But implied in that is, whom do you believe? You don't choose who you don't believe in. unless you have another goal in mind. There are only two positions in life. There are only two positions in the scripture because the law of excluded middle. In the Bible, you're saved or you're lost. There is no third position. You're either God or you're God of this world. Second Corinthians four, three and four. There's no third position. You can say Hermes, you can say Marduk, you can say Nebo, Nebu, you can say whatever you want to. Zoroaster, Zarathustra, communism, democracy, you can say whatever you want to. You can say whatever word you want against the wall. But as Paul correctly wrote, it's all the worship of demons. There is no third position. Today, we have conned ourselves that there's a third position. There's the position of no God, which by definition is a God in and of itself because it still determines right and wrong. But it's greatly confused now. Some of the things have gotten more complicated with what people tell you that modern life has gotten so very complicated. What they're really telling you is everything's confused. It's not complicated. You break it down to God, not God, God, or God of this world. That's it. It's not complicated. But since we're in the flesh, it's easy to cross the line. And here is John, a prophet, because he's getting the word directly from God in the vision. He's writing it down. He's transmitting it to us. As we saw, Exodus 7, that's the role of the prophet. John's a prophet. He's writing it down for us. He's getting it directly. from heaven. Some aspects are spoken by angels. Some aspects are spoken by Jesus. Some aspects are spoken by everybody. But he has access through Jesus to this knowledge who is giving him this vision. He can write it down because this brings the entire Canon of scripture to a close Genesis opened it up revelation Closes it there's nothing more to be revealed This is the entire will of God it's so complicated oops It's not that complicated It means that if you're going to understand what they were saying 2,000 years ago, you got to go back in history, archeology, read their writings and see what they meant 2,000 years ago when they spoke, when they wrote. Now, up until the 19th century, people weren't able to do that. But we can do that today. You go back and read some of the writings of the early church fathers of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th century, and you'll see they got some strange stuff in their writings. One of them's talking about the Gryphon. I heard there was a bird in Africa that dies, bursts into flames, and it's rebirthed. And he's speaking like this is fact. And we know it's not fact. So you got to weed out what they thought reality was to understand how they understood the scriptures and pick the gems of truth. out of their understanding. How did they know the Bible? How did they understand the Bible? How did they implement the Bible? And that's why we go back and read them. But we understand that they're not inspired. We understand how they interpreted the scriptures to see how we interpret the scriptures today. Because Paul's writing predates that time period How did they understand Paul? And how do we understand him today and how far off the mark we are? Because we take the stance that the closer in history you are to the source, probably the better your understanding. We see here that John worshiped wrongly. He got carried away with this angel revealing, Jesus, the bride, the lamb, the marriage supper, come! And he goes, oh yes! And he falls down and worships. Metaphorically, he's in a vision, of course. And the angel slaps him upside the head and says, stop it! I don't know what you're doing. Stop worshipping me. I might get excited and like it. He's tempting the angel. The angel said, don't you go there. I'm not falling for this one. I saw what happened to the last guy who fell for this. It's not going well for him. I'm not going there. I'm staying here. Stop it. And it's not going to go well for you either. Sin so easily confuses us, besets us, pulls us away from Christ. Of course, I could point to the 20th century Pentecostalism spirit worship. Never right. pulled people away from Jesus. Oh, they paid lip service to Jesus, but they wanted those gifts. They wanted that power, and they still want it today. The health, wealth, and prosperity cults that have grown up out of that. The angel sternly commanded him, worship God. He says, we're equal-ish, because you're not in your new body yet, so you're not above me. You're still kind of below me, so stop doing that. Worship God. And he states the fundamental purpose of Jesus. And he does this just before Jesus comes. He wants us to understand what is the most important aspect of Jesus Christ. Now, I've heard tell That Jesus' favorite title was the Son of Man because it was used more often in the Gospels than the Son of God. I don't think Jesus stood up and said, hey, I like that title better than that title. I don't think you can point to any scripture where he says that. But what this does do, it summarizes the role of intercessor between God and man, 1 Timothy 2.5. This is his most important title given to us just before his return. He is the testimony. He is the witness. Because he has been the only one to come from heaven to tell us exactly what the father told them, and to do what the father told him to do to prove the veracity of his words. I'm reminded of the caution the pilot asked him in John 18 till 38. What is truth? Jesus could have just easily answered, oh, that'd be me. I'm truth. I don't think Pilate would have understood that answer. So he just let the question lie. I searched for truth. I searched for the truth a lot. And I always ended up in the mud pile until Christ pulled me out and said, I am truth. See, prophecy is confused in modern minds. We often perceive it simply as foretelling the future, fortune telling. Now foretelling the future was infrequently given as a sign to validate the message. And Christ admits this. And Paul admits this. And the signed gifts, they're given just to validate the message. But once it was written down, the signed gifts went away. They didn't come back in the 19th, 20th century saying, hey, the end is near, you gotta believe again. But the world's prophecies are often cryptic. Designed to deceive and of course that brings us back to whom Ella Foss That's how we know he's not saved He said I got this spirit in the night It was damn I could barely make it out it was it was some kind of form and and it spoke but I could barely discern it and he said I You're worthless. Nobody cares about you. And if you don't walk straight now, we're going to throw you into hell. And you're going to stay there because nobody likes you. Now that's not God's message. That's not Satan. That's not Christ's message either. It's Satan's message. You're worthless. Nobody cares about you. Nobody cares how close you come to the truth. Nobody cares anything. You want anybody to care about you, you fall into lockstep blind and you do exactly what you're told and you'll get what everybody else gets. And you will. And you're not going to like it. Because that's what he called it is. Everyone gets the same. Everyone gets a seat and shield. Except even there, people aren't equal. There are different degrees of suffering. Prophecy's true purpose is revealing revelation jesus is truth embodied he's truth revealed according to the level of understanding it is layered now there was a prophet in the old testament first kings 22 13 through 28 and The king of Israel and the king of Judah, because they divided by this time, and the king of Israel wanted to go to battle against Assyria, and he wanted the king of Judah to join him and to prove that he had God's will on his side, even though we know king Ahab never had God's will on his side. He had a bunch of prophets. I kept saying, yeah, go up, go up, you're gonna win, God's on your side. One of the fashion horns out of iron and pushed and pushed, said, see, you're gonna win. And the King of Judah says, yeah, that's interesting, yeah, yeah, I see all this. You got a prophet of God out here? Well, I got one, but he never says anything good about me. Well, bring him out. And they go and drag this guy out of prison, because that's one of the reasons you know you're speaking truth when those who speak lies hate you. And they drag him, and they tell him, now, here's what you got to say. He said, OK. You pull the guy out of prison because he wouldn't lie, and then you're going to tell him to lie like You really expect him to do that? And he's dragged before the two kings, and he says, OK, you're going to win. Can I go now? And he says, how many times have I told you just don't lie to me? Like, always. That's why he's in prison. And so the prophet gives this story, this parable. There's God sitting on his throne and says, how can we deceive King Ahab so he'll go up and die? This angel says, well, I'll just go be a lion spirit. God says that'll work. Now, is that an angel who's around God, around God's throne, saying, let us go and lie to him? Because God, according to James chapter one, is not the author of evil, cannot be tempted by evil, and neither tempts anyone with evil. So we either have a contradiction in the scripture, which the world believes that we have lots of, which means that we can't believe a word of it, because what's a contradiction, what's true and what's not true? I don't know. Once it's proved a lie in one part, it's a lie in every part. It's an all or nothing. There's no third position. It's either truth or it's lie. And it only takes one, one tiny lie to make the entire scripture worthless. So what is it? Well, remember in Job chapter one and chapter two, that Satan and by implication Satan with his retinue of demons comes into heaven from time to time to join in the discussions. Now that doesn't happen anymore because Revelation chapter 12 Satan and the demons kicked out of heaven when Christ came back from dying on the star roast and presented himself and instantly The entire character of heaven changed. Remember Ezekiel saw flame and fire around the throne. Daniel saw flame and fire around the throne. What do you think Satan and the demons saw every time they entered heaven? Flame and fire. Why? Because it was a warning to them. It's coming. And so this is one of those times that the demons are around the throne and the demon says, It's an easy solution. I just go do what I always do. I just go lie to the guy. And God gives him up. God lets him go. Romans 1, 18 through 28. Ahab wants to believe lies. If he didn't want to believe lies, he wouldn't have thrown the prophet in prison for telling him the truth. This is why the works-based religions, when they give prophecies, they're encrypted. They're designed to deceive. They are lies. The Delphi Oracle. It's cryptic. Christ is not cryptic. The Bible is not cryptic. It's cryptic only because of our ignorance. It's cryptic only because We don't understand the new nature that we're given at the moment of salvation. It is foreign to us. We must grow and develop in it. Just like when we were born physically, we had to grow and develop and learn to understand our minds. So this is what I mean when truth is revealed according to our level of understanding and it's layered. And as we read scripture and as we study it, and as we're taught it by those who are knowledgeable in it, not just people who tell us what we want to hear. We learn, and we grow, and we build on it. And then we go back and read those passages again, and we have a better understanding, or a different understanding that's more correct, and we build and we grow. On the fullness of time, at the moment prepared, which is the purpose of the law that was supposed to bring mankind to that point, and it did, Christ came. Galatians 4, 4 through 7. Jesus is the image of the Father, dimly perceived by earlier peoples. Peter 1 10 through 12 if Christ had come Off the mountain arm-in-arm with Moses Is he I brought God down? What would they have understood nothing? They would understood absolutely nothing As it is They almost understood nothing. And for most of the history, they have understood very little. But so have we all. But this day, in this Bible, He's clearly revealed by normal, hermeneutical, exegetical study of his word, empowered by the spirit of God. 1 Corinthians 2.14. Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. He is the truth. So what kind of person are you? Every purpose has a goal. What is Christ's goal? Jesus, the way, the truth, the life, to the Father via salvation. John 14, six and seven. Christ told his apostles, He might as well just sit up and say, John, you're going to be writing this down in like 50 years or so from now. Spirit of prophecy, i.e. spirit of truth. I am the way, the truth, the life. There's no other way. In other words, Jesus is not the gatekeeper keeping you from the way. Instead, he calls to you. John 3, 16, but he calls to you telling you there's a bridge out down the road. Don't go that way. You won't go this way. Satan, Babel, Babylon, the flesh are the gatekeepers hiding the way. hiding the truth. That's what they do to keep you lost. Which gate calls to you? Matthew 7, 7 and 8, 2 Peter 3, 11. The wide gate feels natural. It feels right to the lost. And we all begin here. Matthew 7, 13. Want to know what kind of character you have, you had as being lost? Romans 3, 10 through 18. There is none who seek after God. There is none who does right. No, not one. They have all gone out of the way. every single one of us. And we don't come back on our own. The wide gate feels natural until it doesn't until God touches you. Christ touches you and says, you, I'm calling you. The call has gone out. The lost primarily cannot hear it. When Christ touches you and you begin to hear that call, you are not happy. You're not comfortable. Things no longer mesh. They no longer fit. They're no longer, well, that's a lie. Well, that makes no sense. I'm not happy inside. Now, I'm not talking about how the lost are unhappy inside and self-medicating with drugs and alcohol and lies and power and everything else under the sun that they can get their hands on. But I'm talking about Because that is just guilt and fear weighing in on them. I'm talking about that which is driving you. And you want to search for truth. You want to know an answer. You've got to have an answer. And then the answer comes to you and Christ removes the scales from your eyes. That gate is the narrow gate. You can't find it. Because you're not looking for it. It is foolishness to you. You're not going to go down that way. Well, look at it. It's tiny. It's ill-kept. It's hard. And I'm going to tell you, when you get saved and you go down that pathway, you're going to be getting saved and going down that pathway if Christ calls you. And there's no turning back. It gets very hard. It gets very narrow. It gets so narrow that it starts scraping the flesh off of you, off your mind, off your understanding. You are compelled to learn the truth. Just as a two-year-old, you were compelled, or used to be, to obey. And you outgrew the terrible twos. Today, they don't outgrow the terrible twos. So we have the terrible 20s and 30s and 40s. People don't get their own way, go out and kill people. By and large, it didn't used to be that way. You didn't tolerate that behavior. No, that is a lost person in you seeking to be in control and we're not going to tolerate it. You're going to act a certain way so we can all be safe at night. It's impossible to stay on that narrow pathway without Christ, without the Spirit. The angel emphasizes Jesus is the Spirit, the essence of prophecy, of truth, prior to his coming. When he comes, he brings truth, because he is truth. What do you want? Literally, what do you want? Do you want the lie? Do you want Babel? Because I'm telling you, many that call themselves Christians today want the lie. They'll go sit down in a so-called church and learn a so-called gospel that has no It frustrates me because I've seen a change in my lifetime and people are just crowding into these churches like entertainment centers, singing to themselves about themselves and learning a gospel that's not the gospel, not the truth. Or do you want the truth, the heavenly herushalom? In which case, you're going to be like that Old Testament prophet in 1 Kings 22 that speaks the truth. And nobody likes you, because you speak in the truth. Nobody wants you around, because you speak in the truth. You're no fun. I want you to lie to me. I want you to be like me. That's what Ahab was actually telling that prophet. Now, in front of Jehoshaphat, he was saying, don't lie to me. I've always told you to speak the truth. Well, actually not, because he spoke the truth. He went to prison. When you speak the truth as a Christian, you are on the narrow path, and they don't like it, because that's not the path they're on. and they want to hurt you. Oh, we want love for you. No, you don't. If you wanted love, you'd be on the narrow path. You'd be having a relationship with the one who died for you, who demonstrated true love for you. Not the one who tells you how good you are, how great you are, how wonderful you are, and every time you burp, or every time you do anything, it's wonderful, and we're gonna take pictures, and we're just gonna get you all excited about how great you are. No. That's the lie. No good comes from that. No good. So here we are. Because when Christ comes back, it's not a day of rejoicing. There is rejoicing for the saved who are going to be with Him and for those who are going to be waiting for Him here. But for the world at large, it's not going to be a happy day. I'm going to be joining arm in arm saying, oh, happy day. They're going to confront absolute reality. And I would spare them that. But they do not want to hear the truth. What kind of person are you? You can lie to yourself and say, I am a person of the truth. But are you? You know. And more importantly, Jesus knows. And so does Satan. Thank you.