So when the dragon perceived that he had been thrown into the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male and to the woman were given two wings of the great Eagle so that she might fly into the wilderness, enter her place so that she might be nourished there for a time and times and half a time from the presence of the serpent. So the serpent expelled water from his mouth after the woman, like a river, so as to cause her to be overwhelmed by the flood. But the ground helped the woman. Indeed, the ground opened its mouth and drank up the river that the dragon expelled from his mouth. So the dragon was furious about the woman and off he went to make war with the rest of her offspring. Those who keep the commandments, the commands of God and hold the testimony of Jesus. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. And as we continue to worship and our responses to it. We pray that you would give the power of your Holy Spirit to sanctify us, give us wisdom, and enable us to faithfully follow your word. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. As many of you know, my parents were missionaries in Ethiopia for 30 years. And during those 30 years, they saw a lot of persecution that Satan raised up against the church. But one of the things that they noticed is that rather than dampening the church, it actually made the church just grow like wildfire. Some might say it grew because of the persecution, whether that was true or not, I don't know. But in one of my dad's books, he said this. Since the Lord's work was growing so fast, the devil had to try to stop it. At first, he tried to stop it with persecution. When people know that going to church could cost them beatings, broken bones, imprisonments, and even their life, no hypocrite will join the church. The church became clean. When sin is not hindering, there is spiritual power. And so the persecution actually backfired in Ethiopia and produced an incredibly powerful church in that land. And last week we saw that the same thing was happening in the first century church. Satan's rage against the mother church in Israel brought intense persecution from the Jewish leaders in 62 AD and following, and then from the Romans themselves in 64 and following. But just focusing on the land of Israel and the persecution there, we saw last week that enormous numbers of Christians were killed. In fact, when we looked at Zechariah 13, it gives a very specific statistic. It says that two thirds of the entire church in Israel was killed, was wiped out. Only one third survived. And we saw in the book of Revelation, it gives the exact number of people that was the remnant that survived. It was 144,000. So it was a pretty big remnant of believers. But these believers, you read the description of those 144,000 in the book of Revelation, they were totally sold out to the Lord. The persecution purified the church, made for an incredibly strong church. So persecution is not always a bad thing. I never pray for it. I don't think it's biblical to pray for persecution, but neither do I fear it. Now today we're going to be seeing how God protected the remnant church of Israel for a very special mission. Now they would once again become the nucleus of a powerful church that would turn the world upside down once again. And we're up to verse 15. says, so the serpent expelled water from his mouth after the woman like a river so as to cause her to be overwhelmed by the flood. Though there have been a couple of people who have tried to demonstrate that the fleeing Christians faced a literal flash flood that was swallowed up by the desert, and that does happen from time to time in the wilderness around Israel, I don't think we need to prove that this happened on a literal level. We've seen, generally speaking, revelation. We've taken far more literally than most people do. There was, even though there was certainly opportunities for something like that to happen after they left on Pentecost of 8066, whether it was traveling way up north east to Pella or way down south east to Petra, either way, there was opportunity. But the reason I don't see this as literal waters is that everything else in this verse seems to be metaphorical. Everyone acknowledges that the serpent is a symbol of Satan. And everyone acknowledges that it isn't literal waters coming literally out of Satan's literal mouth. He's a spiritual being. Yet something about his mouth, what he says in anger, precipitates trouble that is likened to a river. I want you to notice that John uses the word like to indicate this is a metaphor that he is talking about. He says, so the serpent expelled water from his mouth after the woman, like a river, so as to cause her to be overwhelmed by the flood. Now to say like a river implies it's not a literal river. Okay. Now God may have done a miracle in a wadi flash flood when they crossed the Jordan, but the grammar seems to indicate otherwise. But those Satan is spiritual and his mouth is spiritual and the waters are spiritual. they represented a real danger to the church. Somehow the unseen intersects with the seen in a way that could jeopardize the life of the church. And I've listed a whole bunch of scriptures in your outline that indicate that pagan armies are frequently referred to as an overwhelming flood of water like a river. I believe these waters symbolize human armies or human enemies. Let me give you some Old Testament background. David said, the floods of ungodliness made me afraid. That's 2 Samuel 22 5. And in context, he's clearly talking about the enemies that had come against him. Psalm 93, the whole Psalm likens the invading armies to the waves lifting themselves up and almost overwhelming him. Psalm 124, verse four says, without God's help, the waters would have overwhelmed us, the stream would have gone over our soul. Isaiah 59, 19 says, when the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. And you can see some of the other scriptures, I won't belabor, The point is very, very common language in the Old Testament to liken the demonically motivated armies of men to floods of water that are just overwhelming Israel like a flood. And confirmation of this interpretation is that the same word for water that's used here is used elsewhere in the book of Revelation to refer to the Roman armies. For example, Revelation 17.5 says, the waters which you saw where the harlot sits are peoples, multitudes, nations, and languages. So if water is spewing out of the dragon's mouth and the dragon by his mouth is sending forth the peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues to overwhelm and destroy the church. And really this is not a controversial point, I just want To make it clear in case there's confusion pre mills all mills post mills. They're all agreed. This is not literal water Okay, this is referring to unbelieving armies and since the flood comes out of satan's mouth It implies that satan stands behind those human armies He has power to manipulate such people and of course, there's plenty of scriptures that say exactly that jesus said in John 8 verse 44 to unbelievers. You are of your father, the devil, and the desires of your father, you will do. It's very easy for Satan to manipulate his children. He can sway them back and forth. So this is very, very powerful imagery of Satan's attempt to pull out all of the stops of human opposition to the church by bringing human enemies to destroy the church. And I want you to notice the timing. We dealt with a previous verses last Sunday, but this happens after the woman has found refuge away from the presence of Satan. Satan doesn't have any access to the wilderness regions that the church, that the woman symbolizes, that the church fled to in May of 66. So if the woman is in a place where the demons are not allowed to go, and I think the last phrase of verse 14 makes it very clear, If they're rescued from the presence of Satan, Satan's presence is not there. Okay. So if that's the case, then Satan's only option to be able to destroy the church, he can't go there. It's to try to stir up humans to do so. Now he'd be operating blindly on this because he doesn't know which cities that they have gone to. He didn't have his intelligence. No demons have access to that area. Remember we saw that you can keep demons out of your home, you can keep demons out of a church, you can keep demons out of a region. And so Satan would be operating to some degree somewhat blindly and this in turn may explain why the next three months in history sees intense riots happening between Jews and Gentiles in the cities all through that wilderness area in the hopes that stirring up these riots will impact the church, wherever the church may be. So while he's waiting for the Roman armies to come, which is his main plan, Satan is stirring the hearts of Jews and various Gentile groups to start rioting, and it was devastating. He was very successful. 20,000 Jews, were killed by the Greco-Syrian population of Caesarea, and the region was completely, 100% emptied of Jews. Now, that was not war. That was just the result of citizen riots, much like happened in the L.A. riots, but a whole lot worse. The next two weeks resulted in more riots between Jews and non-Jews in many cities of Palestine, actually throughout the empire. Then the Jews retaliated by killing massive numbers of Gentiles. And at some point, Pella got attacked by the Jews, and that city was 100% emptied. It was decimated. Now the church did not get hurt because they were somewhere else in the wilderness during the first three months, but early church history tells us that the church moved to that now emptied out city and they stayed there for the remainder of the three and a half year war actually that will start in just a few months from then. So very literally, God has prepared a place for them where they're going to have a refuge, and Satan's probably not even the wiser. Remember, he cannot come there. His presence is outside of that wilderness area, so he's probably not even aware. He thinks, okay, that city, I'm not gonna attack Pella anymore. There is no survivors there. God uses that, uses Satan's own attempts to destroy as a vehicle for protecting the church. So the riots were probably the beginning of the flood of water that comes out of his mouth, but just to make sure, Satan stirred up Florus, the procurator, then Agrippa, then Cestius by bringing their armies into the region. Satan needs the Roman armies to keep control in Israel so that he can use both Israel and Rome to wipe out the church. It really is a brilliant plan on Satan's part. But the next point shows that Satan was blindsided and frustrated in his plan. Verse 16 gives a big, frustrating but. But the ground helped the woman. Indeed the ground opened its mouth and drank up the river that the dragon expelled from his mouth." Unfortunately Pickering's translation translates the word gay as ground here and it obscures some of the irony that's involved here. The Greek word gay throughout the whole book of Revelation refers to land. It should be translated as land, the land of Israel. And the original readers would have immediately caught the irony of this because both the land and the waters were the mortal enemies of the church throughout this book. In other words, both Israel and Rome were the mortal enemies of the church, but somehow Israel ends up helping the church. How does that happen? How is it that the very nation that had spurred on Rome to persecute the church and destroy the church is now attacked by Rome? Or as Revelation 17 words it, how is it that the very harlot who rode the beast and directed and controlled the beast and guided this beast in its destruction of the church now gets consumed by the beast, or to use the image of waters which Revelation 17 also talks about, how is it that the harlot who sits on many waters ends up being destroyed by those waters? That's the question. And this really perfectly reflects the historical situation. The leaders of Israel were literally and spiritually in bed with Rome. Nero's favorite wife was a Jewess who used her wiles and her influence to constantly promote the policies of the Jewish leaders back in Israel, whatever they wanted. Queen Berenice bedded anyone she needed to influence, including her brother. And she seemed to have an uncanny power over the policies of those that she bedded. She later became Titus' mistress. and had a huge influence over Titus. The Roman procurator, Antonius Felix, was married to the Jewess Drusilla. By the way, these were all in the same family. It's very interesting what was going on there. But it was Nero's Jewish wife who was most likely the physical symbol of Harlot Israel's influence over Nero. She was the one who got Nero's court absolutely filled with Jewish advisors. But just forget about the literal ways in which Nero's wife literally rode the beast. Israel had plenty of other ways in which it controlled the empire. As James Stewart Russell says, the influence exercised by the Jewish race in all parts of the Roman Empire previous to the destruction of Jerusalem was immense. And I think Ken Gentry, if you want to research this more, he has done by far the most fabulous research on showing how Satan really wed these two together. Very unlikely friends, but he wedded Israel and Rome together in order to persecute and exterminate the church. So very literally, the harlot rode the beast, the land was married to the waters for the purpose of opposing the church. I have a coin. that shows Herod Chalcis and Herod Agrippa crowning the previous emperor, Claudius. And that's an amazing thing, that two Jewish kings would have that kind of influence over the entire empire, that they're actually crowning the emperor. So the influence was already there, but what begins to happen in AD 62 is much more than that. Now, when I preached on Revelation 6, 9 through 11, I gave six things that came together, and I won't repeat those, came together to make Israel and Rome enter into a seven-year treaty, what they called a covenant, that would give Israel the right to execute anybody for the sins of blasphemy, apostasy, and other capital crimes. Before that, they couldn't do it. They had to go to Rome. But now, for this seven year period, they had that right and they also had the right to exterminate the Christian church. That was what this treaty gave to them. And when the Christians fled on Pentecost of AD 66, the pact between Rome and Israel was still solidly in place. Even Satan would never have expected Rome to destroy Israel. and to protect the church. Satan was blindsided. To have Rome turn on Israel would have seemed inconceivable to anyone at the time, and yet that is exactly what happened. In any case, according to the text of verse 15, Satan's purpose in using Roman forces throughout AD 62 was to just get a little bit of control on the land. It wasn't to destroy Israel. You can read that in the histories. The purpose for them coming in was to destroy the bride. The serpents spending out all of this stuff in order, he's sending out these armies in order to destroy of the bride of Christ. He wants to make sure that the job is finished. So after stirring up riots, Satan probably wanted to make sure that if the riots don't do the job, that the Roman armies will. So Satan no doubt sent Festus and then Herod, and then Cestius' legion simply to subdue the anti-Roman locals who were causing trouble, have them move against the church. And one of the things that you'll find in the scripture is that Satan is very thorough in his opposition. He leaves no stone unturned. So he's going to try to make sure. You would think that with the kind of riots that went on, he would just say, they're probably wiped out. But no, he makes sure he's sending more. But the events of 66 not only absorbed 100% of Rome's attention, those events turned the heart of Herod Agrippa II completely around so that the history books say, that this king of the Jews actually protected Christians in his region. It was an astonishing turn of events. King Herod Agrippa was risking his neck by protecting the very people that his boss, Nero, had condemned to die. And even while he's fighting side by side with Cestius and Vespasian and Titus, He's secretly protecting these Christians who are the enemy of the state. It's just an amazing thing. To me, this is a fantastic illustration of how God turns the heart of a king, whichever way he will, just like rivers of water. Now here's how it happened in a nutshell, and the actual story would take me about two hours to tell you, but I'm just going to give you a very, very short synopsis of it. Josephus returned to Israel after monkeying around in Nero's cabinet. He had some of the Jewish advisors in Nero's cabinet that he got to convince Nero to give special favors and policies for Israel, and he was pleased as punch. He comes back, and when he comes back, everything is getting out of control. Florus had so angered the citizens that a rebel movement had begun. And we looked at that a bit last week. So the pro-Roman leaders sent a complaint about Florus to Cestius. Cestius sends his delegate, Neapolitanus, to investigate. And Agrippa has just returned and he's blindsided as well. He returns, and he is very frustrated because the Jews are so angry with Festus that they are bound and determined to get him replaced. They want to get him kicked out of office, and they want to appeal to Nero. Well, Agrippa knows that that's not very politically expedient to do, so he's trying to talk them out of that. And from his perspective, you can understand his logic. From a Roman perspective, it was not prudent. But they were so angry by this time they would have none of it. Remember we saw last week that Festus had just robbed them of 17 talents of gold and basically had asserted his right to take any money in the future that he wanted to because it's all for Caesar anyway. Some of the moderates were so angered at Agrippa's lack of sensitivity concerning what Festus had done that they actually stoned him. They threw stones at King Agrippa. That didn't make him too happy. Then things really get out of hand. The pro-war extremists snuck into the Roman garrison at Masada, killed the Roman soldiers, taking over an incredibly strategic fortress that belonged to Herod. You can see that's ticking him off as well. Ben Eliezer, son of Ananias ben Nebodias, stopped the daily sacrifice that they had been making for centuries to Caesar, stopped it in the temple, and that was basically a declaration of independence and defiance of Caesar. Eliezer then took control of the temple. The moderates went to Florus to try to get him to intervene because they don't want things to get out of control. They need Rome in order for them to maintain control. So they go to Festus and say, you've got to do something here. These rebels are creating havoc. Festus, by this time, was so upset and angry with these leaders, he said, no, I'm not doing nothing. He wanted things to get worse so that it would trouble these Jewish leaders. He had probably no idea of how much worse it would get. Well, then they appealed to Agrippa. Well, Agrippa, trying to solve the problem, sends his armies in plus 3,000 horsemen. and all hell breaks loose. There is seven days of fierce fighting that's going on in the streets of Israel. And then the Saqqari sneak into the temple on the eighth day, making it even more radicalized. And their efforts actually succeed in chasing Herod Agrippa's forces out of Jerusalem, which is a humiliating defeat. They then set the high priest's house on fire, attacked the Tower of Antonio, and even after promising safe passage to the Roman soldiers who were in that tower, when they surrendered, against their word, they massacred these Roman soldiers. This was then followed by atrocities throughout the Middle East by both Gentiles and Jews. There was also fighting between the Jewish factions with many innocents within the city dying in the crossfire. So basically what I'm saying is Satan's plans to just get control again and use both Israel and Rome to destroy the church are totally messed up. He's completely blindsided by what has happened here. The book of Revelation is clear. Satan wanted Israel and Rome united in their fight of Israel. And we'll see that in chapters 13 and chapter 17, very, very clear. Here's the point. If the Christians had not fled exactly when I believe that they fled in May, that's what we were discussing last week, I don't see how they could have fled at any time after that, especially not as a large group of 144,000. It just seems like it would have been impossible. The treaty that Israel had with Rome was completely broken by now. and Rome was forced into declaring all-out war against Israel. So by diverting 100% of Rome's fury away from the church, And now against Israel, the land of Israel was definitely swallowing the waters that were intended for the church. And there's a second way in which this was literally true. The king of the land of Israel is Herod Agrippa. Though he was forced to support Rome's war, though he did fight side by side with Titus and Vespasian against Israel, he was so bothered by his own ill treatment that Israel's enemy and his former enemy became his friend. So history tells us the king of Israel allowed the Christians who fled to his territory to stay there and then to fill up the territory of Pella and some of the other cities. He then protected them for the duration of the three stages of the Roman War under Cestius Vespasian and Titus, and that took place between the times, time, times, and half a time. Remember we saw that Cestius was the time, singular, times was Vespasian and Titus' two-year war, and half a time was the six-year war by Titus at the end. So very literally, the waters of Rome that were intended to exterminate the Christians were swallowed up by another mouth, the mouth of the land of Israel, Herod Agrippa. Now verse 17 says, so the dragon was furious about the woman and off he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, those who keep the commands of God and hold the testimony of Jesus. Now we've already seen that the woman was the mother church in Israel. Book of Acts describes her offspring are her converts, that is the Gentile Christians throughout the empire. And so verse 17 is saying that Satan was once again frustrated in his plans. Even with pagans, There's only so much that he can do. Without God's permission, he could not touch one hair of those Christians' heads. And I love the complaint that Satan makes to God about Job in Job 1 verse 10. Satan complained, have you not made a hedge around him, around his household, around all that he has on every side? You've blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land. Satan could not touch Job because God had put a protective hedge around him. Now, Satan could influence other people to persecute him, but even there he could only go so far. That's clear in Job 1 through 2. He's a roaring lion, yes, but he's a lion on a chain. And never attribute unlimited power or jurisdiction to Satan. And actually, we're gonna be seeing that later in the book, that Satan and his henchmen, that horrible beast, get bound in the pit in AD 70. But if Satan himself, here's the point, if he himself is so limited, how much more so the demons that are left behind? And there are a lot of demons that are still left behind. To me, that's an encouraging thing. Satan's frustration should be our encouragement first John 5 18 promises that if a believer guards himself the wicked one cannot touch him Now the second interesting thing about Satan here is that he can't be in more than one place at a time He is not omnipresent earlier. We saw that the Christians are spared from the presence of Satan but in verse 17 It says, so the dragon was furious about the woman, and off he went to make war with the rest of her offspring. And the words, off he went, are a translation of the Greek word, apelthen, which means to go away. So he traveled away from the land of Palestine to start warring against the Gentile believers. And of course, this was the start of a lot of on and off persecutions over the next two centuries and beyond. So in this chapter, which, by the way, is the introduction. Every section of Revelation has an introduction. Well, this chapter is the introduction to 12 through 15. It indicates that this chapter is going to indicate that it's going to go way beyond AD 70, and it does. It shows that there is going to be ongoing persecution from Rome in the centuries to come. So let me quickly end with three more lessons. First, notice in verse 15 that demons want to destroy the church. Satan's goal back then was to drown the mother church. And the reason that's important to realize is we have this tendency to forget about Satan, to forget about demons, because we can't see them. They're unseen. So if the expression out of sight, out of mind is true of us, we are in real trouble because we're not noticing the myriad ways in which demons try to destroy us and divert us. You know, if outward persecution doesn't work, He'll use division. If division doesn't work, He'll try to tempt us to sin. If that doesn't work, He'll try to deceive us. But you can be sure that demons are the mortal enemies of your soul and you need to take them seriously. Second, note that God's providence can protect you even in overwhelming circumstances. I cannot imagine any more overwhelming circumstances. It's an absolute miracle that those 144,000 Jews, every one of them, was spared during the next three years. It was a catastrophic time, yet God spared them. My dad has told many stories of how God has done exactly the same thing in Ethiopia. My favorite one, and I've probably told this to you before, is of the evangelist from a neighboring tribe of where we were staying actually, the Walaita tribe. And this man was an incredible evangelist, incredibly bold, and they would lock him in prison. They would beat him. They would torture him. They would try everything they could to get him to stop preaching, and he was just unstoppable. So what they did the last time that they caught him is they were gonna make an example of him by executing him, so they called the whole countryside together, and all of the people were gathered to witness this execution, and they tied this guy up, they laid him down on the ground, and they said, if you believe in the God that this person is following, you will face the same fate. And they had this truck, it was an ancient truck, but it was a truck that they ran to Run over him and right before it got to him is almost like it hit a tree it stopped and They backed up did the same thing two more times and after the third failed attempt They were overwhelmed with fear and they untied him and let him go Well, guess what all of these tens of thousands of people that have been gathered to witness this execution They're thinking Wow This God's pretty cool. If he can protect him like that, we want to know about him. And so here's the unbelievers, their execution or attempted execution. God used that to grow the church. And in any case, Rather than fearing your enemies, learn to have faith in the greatness of God's providence. God can use circumstances to turn even an enemy like King Agrippa into a friend. The third thing I want you to notice is two defining characteristics of a true Christian. Look at the last clause of verse 17. It says, he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, those who keep the commands of God and hold the testimony of Jesus. So the true offspring of mother church are said to have two characteristics. And if you lack these characteristics, basically you're defining yourself as not the offspring of Zion. You're not a true Christian. First, they are those who carefully keep the commandments of God. Now the word for keep is terunton and it refers to obeying, guarding, carefully keeping, carefully holding on to something. So for them, obeying God's law is not a haphazard thing. They don't say, oh well, if I sin I'll just confess my sin and I'll ask for forgiveness. And they just treat sin indifferently as a trivial thing. No, they guard God's commandments as a treasure. They consciously seek to keep those commands. So what I'm saying here, another way of wording this, is antinomianism is not Christianity. antinomianism, to be against God's laws, not Christianity. When so-called Christians say that they are not under law and therefore don't have to keep God's commandments, they're misinterpreting that statement of being not under law. We're not under law as condemnation, yes. But if it means I don't have to keep God's commandments, Then it's heresy. They are saying that they are not the offspring of Zion. 1 John 2, 3-4 says this, By this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. The one who says I have come to know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. I don't know how you could get any clearer than that. Antinomianism is not Christianity. It is true that we're not under the law's condemnation, but 1 John 2 says, he who says he abides in him ought himself also to walk just as he walked, or as the NIV paraphrases it, whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. Must walk as Jesus did. Now we can't do it perfectly, it's direction not perfection, but we need to, by God's grace, seek to imitate Christ. Jesus fully kept the law and we need to imitate him. Christ did not save us to enable us to sin with a free conscience. That's not the issue. Matthew 121 says the whole purpose of Christ coming into the world, he said that the incarnation was, quote, to save his people from their sins. And since sin is, all sin is lawlessness, according to 1 John, he came to save us from lawlessness, okay? Christians who are lawless are fake Christians. That's the bottom line, according to this passage, according to 1 John. And secondly, the offspring of mother church are described as being those who hold onto the testimony of Jesus. In other words, they never let go of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They're never ashamed of the gospel. So it's not law-keeping without the gospel, that'll damn you. Can't be any law-keeping without the gospel. And it's not gospel without law-keeping because the gospel's whole purpose is to enable us to keep God's law. So it's the two that go hand in hand. It is a law keeping by grace once saved by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Without the law, there's no need for grace. And it is grace alone that enables us to keep God's law. The two imply each other. And so what this is saying is that true believers steadfastly hold to both law and gospel. Now, when you get persecuted, there is going to be a temptation to let go of one or the other, maybe both. There is going to be a temptation to be ashamed of Christ, ashamed of the gospel. Now it's true, we sometimes stumble, just like Peter did. Peter denied Christ, didn't he? He feared and he denied Christ. But he repented. And a true Christian cannot ultimately deny Christ or gospel. He will persevere in grace. And if we are united to Christ, he guarantees that nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, not even death. Now you may fear persecution. When I was a kid, I used to really fear, you know, would I stand up if I got this and that and the other torture and all these things going through my mind? Don't worry. God will give you the grace at the time to face it. He's not going to give you the grace now for what you don't need. He will give you the grace to persevere through that. And what you need to do right now, if you're worried is just say, Lord, you take away my worries. I'm going to cast my cares on you, knowing that you love me and that when you have begun, you will finish, you will complete. And just, I'm going to believe the simple truth that Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me so little ones to him be long. They are weak, but he is strong. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the strength of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's only in his grip that we can stand strong in the face of persecution. It's only in his grip that we can keep your law or even love your law. And I pray that you would help us to never be ashamed of the gospel, to trust that you are able to swallow up whatever waters of persecution we would not be able to bear or whichever waters of persecution would not be best for the church and for the advancement of your kingdom. So I pray that you would give to us a faith such as these early Christians had, where they overcame the devil by the word of their testimony and the blood of the Lamb. And I pray this in Jesus' name.