Turn with me, 2 Kings, let's go to, well, let's go to chapter 23, and just be reminded, we've got to get through this, and I think God has given me a space of time to get through it, and I've taken a little too much liberty, and so I'm gonna try to move as quick as possible tonight. Yeah. You wanted to laugh, now would be the time to snicker. I turned around. So let's go, I guess let's start with the Assyrians and pick up, Michael, where we were. And in chapter 23, if you remember, we have dealt with this great king, Josiah, Hezekiah. But Josiah did write in the sight of God, And let's just read verse 25, get started. with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses, neither after him arose there any like him." What a wonderful statement God made about this man and he did a great thing. I don't know why what happens here shortly, we've got the Assyrian Empire up here, okay that's fine, just leave it there because there's not much left. This is the rule of the Assyrian Empire now and so Josiah is about to die. And in the next chapter or two, we'll see now the Babylonian kingdom, Babylon is now going to overtake the Assyrian empire and begin, I think they begin, they conquer Nineveh. and begin again to work their way down uh... and let's just let's go to that brother michael do you see uh... the babylonians uh... babylon in there i think there's definitely one uh... it's very similar to that all right so not much different but somewhat more land is conquered by the babylonians but all right so they've conquered Nineveh and they're going to come around come down and uh... What's going to happen here is Egypt, while Babylon is at war with the Assyrians, Egypt is going to come up in defense of the Assyrians against the Babylonians, primarily for self-preservation. but they're gonna work theirselves through here to get there. Well, Josiah and me and brother Jones talked about it and neither one of us really know why he does this to be such a great man, why he was not more informed other than I think it was just his time. There's a time appointed for all of us to die. And I can't think of anything wrong that he did necessarily. I mean, it was a dumb move militarily, strategically, but nothing really incredibly sinful or anything the man did, but he should have just stayed out of it. He jumped right on and battled the Babylonians, but because they were not coming for Jerusalem. But anyway, that's what happened. And so if you'll just flip the chapter with me, we'll, we can kind of pick up a little bit. Well, let me, let me start. Let me read you, okay, going down to verse 29, if you're still in 2 Kings 23. In his days, Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt, went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates, and king Josiah went against him, and he slew him at Megiddo. when he had seen him. And his servants carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo and brought him to Jerusalem and buried him in his own sepulcher. And the people of the land took Jehoaz the son of Josiah and anointed him and made him king in his father's stead. So this man was 20 and three years old and began to reign and reign in Jerusalem. Now, If you look, look at verse 34 just so you can get the names in case you're just trying to keep up with the history here. But Pharaoh makes Eliakim the son of Josiah and he makes him a king and turned his name to Jehoiakim, okay? So you're not gonna hear Eliakim anymore, you're gonna hear the name Jehoiakim, but that's, his name was changed, okay? So now, As we work on down through here and we see that the... Josiah has been taken out of the way, and an Egyptian has installed, and this was common to do, they install somebody they feel like that they can control in the land and leave them in Jerusalem, and probably a mistake, because with those people, they are a stubborn people. Stubborn probably in a good way, I mean that. And so they always keep rising up and eventually by the time you get to Rome, they don't leave anybody there to rule anymore. They just wipe them all out and scatter them to try to get them out of their land. The Jewish people know God gave them that land and they are gonna stay there all that they can. So as we get into chapter 24, if you look in chapter number 24, in his days, now Jehoiakim was 25 years when he began to reign. He reigned 11 years in Jerusalem, and he did that which was evil. All right, chapter 24, verse one, in his days, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon came up and Jehoiakim became his servant three years. Then he turned and rebelled against him. So Jehoiakim is the father of Jeconiah. Does anybody remember I know I did it in the Bible Institute, but I think I've done it here. Anybody ever remember me talking about the curse of Jeconiah? Does anybody remember Jeconiah's curse? Okay, you're gonna see that. Let's read that just cause we're gonna quickly get into Jehoiachin or Jeconiah. Look at Jeremiah chapter 22 and just read with me if you will. We won't have time to go into this. This is where I get off, these little side shoots. But this is a good study when you get home, if you want to study this, chapter 22 of the book of Jeremiah. Talking about Koniah, that's the same person as Jeconiah. It means the ring bearer of God. And despite his unbroken idol, is he a vessel wherein there's no pleasure? Wherefore they cast out he and his seed are cast into a land which they know not. Oh earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord, verse 30. Thus sayeth the Lord, write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days. For no man of his seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of David and ruling anymore in Judah. So, turn back to 2 Kings. This man, Jeconiah, is the last of the lineage of David. And that rules as king until their rightful king comes to rule. We know who that is. And so that's the last of the Kings. But all right, so in chapter 24, in the first part of these verses, we're introduced to Joachim. This is his father. He is defeated by the Babylonians, and he serves them three years, the Bible says, in these first verses here. Verse number six, Jehoiakim dies, slept with his father. His son, Jehoiakim, his son reigns in his stead. That's Jeconiah. And the king of Egypt came, and the king of Egypt came not again anymore out of this land, for the king of Babylon had taken over from the river of Egypt under the river Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt. And the interim time, remember we're tracing the history of this land, the interim time, we've gone from the Assyrians, and now the Egyptians have come up and captured some of this because of Josiah. So they're technically in charge of all that when the Babylonians come on the scene. Well, when the Babylonians come on the scene and come down, Egypt retreats, and the Babylonians are gonna take over Israel, I'm gonna call it Israel. And some people, you'll hear this referred to as the Levant, or you'll hear it referred to as Palestine. I'm gonna call it Israel, because God promised all that to these people, so that's who's rightfully, that's who owns the land, and I think we'll just take his word for it. So the Egyptians withdraw, the Babylonian Empire comes down, and they're gonna take over and rule over all of Israel, instead of Egypt. Egypt just had a short period, a short window there that they're ruling over in that land. Have you already seen how many times we're going back and forth and people don't want to tell me how gracious God is? I mean how many kings we have skipped over that did evil in the sight of the Lord and God is still showing mercy to these people and still going to love them and made a covenant with them and he's going to be faithful to his promise that he made to these people. And we better thank God, because we're blessed with faithful Abraham. And so thank God for God's faithfulness. Because man, if he was required to keep it, he would have lost it a long time ago. Now, I'm talking about the actual covenant. If it was on Abraham to keep it, if it was on Abraham to keep the faithfulness of God, Abraham would have lost it. Right? That's the first covenant and the second. If it was up to man, he'd lose it. But it's not up to you. You are kept by the power of God. And this promise made to these people is kept by the power of God. And there's a Jew with his foot in the land of Israel walking that sand today because God's faithful. There is no other country under the sun, no other nation that has ever been completely stripped and completely wiped out like Israel has, and then been brought back together with the flag up over their capital city, ruling again in their own land. God brought them back together, right? God's faithful and God promised. God's faithful and He promised you. He promised you eternal life and it's impossible for God to lie. And as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God. So beloved, now are we the sons of God. And there is now therefore no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. Hallelujah for the faithfulness of God. So here comes the Babylonians. And Jehoiakim has gone off the scene. His son, Jeconiah, is now ruling. There in chapter 24, you go down to verse number 10, Jeconiah did evil. That's why Jeremiah pronounced the curse from God that he did, because he is evil. And God said, you could write him childless. There won't be any more ruling of the house of David. And except for God's miraculous birth of his darling son, who was of the tribe of Judah. And he's gonna reign by the political rights and the spiritual rights, sitting again on the throne of David. So, boy, I should have gone into that. By adoption. That's how. How are you, how do you get there by adoption? Right? Well, all right, see, we'll get into all this side stuff. But it's a blessing to see all this stuff work out. Are you telling me a man could have wrote that? Come on now. All right, so here we go. We've got to move on. The Babylonians are in the land in chapter 24, starting in about verse number 10. You could go down through here and read, at the time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up against Jerusalem. The city was besieged. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came against the city, and his servants besieged it. Jehoiachin, the king of Judah, went out to the king of Babylon. He and his mother, his servants, and his princes, officers, the king of Babylon, took him in the eighth year of his reign. And he carried out thence all the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon, king of Israel, had made in the temple of the Lord, as the Lord had said. And just completely begins to completely destroy all of Israel. and not just politically, but even religiously, all that they believed and all that they hold to, they're being captured and gonna be carried away into Babylonian captivity. Now, let's look at chapter 25. I want to go into this as quick as I can. Jehoiakim is having been defeated. He's carried out into Babylon. And then we'll get Zedekiah ruling in his place. In chapter 25, the city was broken up. Let's see. They slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes and put out the eyes of Zedekiah and bound him with fetters of brass and carried him to Babylon. So, at this point, Zedekiah tried to rebel. Again, remember I said, when they keep leaving people there that they think they can control and try to, by proxy, kind of run Israel, they'll never be able to do that. The reason they did that is because it works in other areas. Everywhere they go, they're conquering cities. Like when Babylon came to Nineveh and they conquered Nineveh, they leave a governor or a king there as proxy to rule for them. And it works everywhere else. But it doesn't work when they get down here to Israel. And it doesn't work because God is involved in this land. God owns it and he cares about who's there and who's defiling his land. You remember the last Gentiles that tried to take over that land? God let them get eaten by lions. Right? Nowhere else did you see people being attacked by lions, but you did in Israel. So don't tell me that land don't matter. It matters. And I'm not saying it matters to me and you about whether or not we go to heaven, but it matters to God. And it matters, in my opinion, that we still support the people whom God promised to give it to. Right? So, but neither here nor there. So now the Babylonians have captured all of Israel and they're carrying them away into captivity. And this is where we get, let's see, where could we look at verse number, chapter 25, verse number 21. The King of Babylon smote them and slew them at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was carried away out of their land. And as for the people that remained in the land of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon had left, even over them, he made Gedaliah, the son of Ahicham, the son of Shaphan, ruler. And so again, here he puts someone in as ruler, And all the captains of the armies and their men heard that the king of Babylon had made Gedalia governor. There came to Gedalia, to Mishpah, even Ishmael, the son of Nathanael, and Jehonon, the son of Koriah, and Sariah, the son of Tenhumath, the Netophathite. and Jazaniah, the son of Macithi, the son of Macithi, and they had their men. And what's gonna happen here is we get caught up in all that, but Jeconiah, excuse me, Ishmael is gonna kill Zedekiah, kills this, the remaining governor that's in the land there. And what's gonna happen now, well, I wish I could go to chapter 43 of Jeremiah, but The only people that are left here, let me find, the only people that are left here, they leave the poor in the land, trying to find where that, where it talks about that. but it doesn't really matter. But what's gonna happen is now when he takes over from Jehoiachin and then Zedekiah rules in his place, Zedekiah rebels and is conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, taken to Babylon. The poor is left in the land with this man named Gedalia. He doesn't, Ishmael doesn't like this fella and there's a lot of problems there. Anyway, this is the last, when he does that, all the remaining Jews, because they just basically left the people that they didn't feel like matter, Like all the poor people, anybody, you know, somebody blind or somebody lame on their feet, or instead of trying to take them out, I mean, they can't really do nothing, so they just kind of left them. There's a lot of stragglers that left over that didn't get taken into Babylon. And so what Jeremiah tells us is, in Jeremiah, is that a lot of those people, and a lot of people believe even Jeremiah, fled to Egypt when that happened. So now that's, you know, neither here nor there. So now all of Israel's been cleansed, just like God said they would. And there's so many verses we could go to. God said he was gonna remove every single one of them off the land, and he did that. He removed all of them out to Babylon, and the remaining few that do kind of linger around have to flee into Egypt because of Ishmael. Not the same Ishmael, but he sure acted similar, I guess. But so now the Babylonian empire's ruling, and not only are they ruling over the land, there's not a Jew left there. So that's what we have now when we come turn to 2 Chronicles chapter number 36. We'll move through this as fast as humanly possible. It'd be better if I stay with my notes here. So, 2 Chronicles chapter number 36. Well, you know that's gonna just take time that we don't have. So, all right, so all of Babylon, does anybody know who comes next? Who comes to take over the land here? Don't you think this is interesting? Why is everybody so interested in this land? What's there? Nothing's really there. Isn't that just, to me, it's evidence of God, because God said they were going to. God uses these people in judgment against his own people. Why else would they be there? There's nothing there, right? I mean, there's plenty of other ports to use on the Mediterranean. I mean, you don't have to have this. But anyway, so we could go into some. So after the Babylonian Empire, who comes and destroys the Babylonians? Go to, let's see what we've got, Brother Michael. I'm trying to find you a good, a good picture. Oh my, give me just a second, guys. Well, doesn't look like I have it, Brother Michael. That'll be all right, because it's not anything that's gonna keep us from understanding our Bible. So who frees those in captivity and sends them back into the land of Israel to begin to rebuild? Does anybody know the name of that king? Cyrus. What was Cyrus? King of Persia. So now the Persian empire, It's just one group after another killing each other, isn't it? Man is full of violence. Born of a few days and full of trouble. Just constantly. I mean, what do they have? I mean, I don't understand that. You got a nice home over here. You're raising a family. What is the aspiration of people to want to kill each other? That's what's in the heart of man. They're violent. It's no different than what we have today. Did you find one, Brother Michael? Hey, lookie here, the Persian Empire. So over here's Israel, okay? Again, this don't change anything. I just think it kind of helps to see the, get it in your mind. Here's Egypt. So now the Persian empire comes and they defeat the Babylonian empire. And we all know much of that story. If you went to 2 Chronicles chapter number 36, you could see the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, the word of the Lord spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it also in writing saying, thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth, hath the Lord God of heaven given me, and hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up. And so we could go into that, but most of us know the story there. So he makes this proclamation that God has told him to build a house. I don't know about all that. God already had a house built there, but they're gonna go back and rebuild it, right? And so we've been through Nehemiah. We've been through all the separate books that are written concerning the return of people and Ezra and all those, that time period concerning the kingdom of Persia. You remember Esther? Esther's during this time. Esther's married to a king. Anybody remember who she's married to? Huh? So did he know she was a Jew? No. But somebody convinced her to convince him to spare all the Jewish people. You remember, that's the same time period, the Persian empire. We got the book of Esther. And so, Now, the Jewish people are now returning to their land, which is rightfully theirs, and they are going to begin to rebuild in the land, and God is going to bless them in the rebuilding. There's a lot of prophets that are given so many things during this time. Shortly after this, so we've got the Persian Empire, 2 Chronicles chapter number 36. There's, I can, well, I wrote them down. Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Esther, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are all written during this time period. And so the Jews are back in their land. And now if you will recall what we have now, do you have Alexander the Great? Let's see if we've got that in Brother Michael. The Greeks, yeah, I see it. Okay, so after the Persian Empire has taken over and has let the Jews back into their land, you've got Alexander the Great, he's gonna come in. Now, from this time period, all the way until we get into our New Testament, there's 400 years of silence. You remember that? 400 years of silence. That's why you don't have this time period in your King James Bible. There's silence now. And this is what's happened during that period of silence is Alexander the Great has rode down and has come in and has now conquered Israel, has conquered Judah, being known as Judea. And so they've come down. And now the Greek, during the Seleucid period, period is now conquering all of Israel, okay? So now the Greeks are in control of the land. And so there's a lot of battles in this time period. Let me just give you some things that you can remember. It'll stir your memory up a little bit. During the Seleucid Empire, which don't let that throw you off, that's after Alexander dies, okay? So that's still the Greeks, okay? But you have the Maccabees during that time period rise up. Y'all remember the Maccabees? Anybody heard about them? Okay, so they rise up against the Greeks and defeat them, actually, and take possession of a lot of their land back. And they rule, well, the Hasmoneans, anyway, that are descendants of the Maccabees, they rule for about 80 to 100 years of that 400-year time period. is the Hasmoneans, which is of that same family, the Maccabees, the same family ruling in the land. And the Jews are there in that land during that whole 400 years that you and I know. There's just a lot of battles between the Jews and the Greeks, just constant fighting. And they eventually are ruling there for some time period. That's an interesting history about those brothers that were there, but you study that later on. Doesn't really help us any. All right, so the next thing we've got now coming in is Roman general Pompey. Pompey was the first Roman general that rides into Jerusalem to conquer the land of Israel. Now we've got another set of rulers that are coming in that is going to take over. And this will be the time period of our precious savior, gonna be born here in this time period. And this will be the, the condition of the political world that Jesus is born into. And so when Pompey rides in, and by the way, he is appointed under, when Rome was a Republic, under the Senate and before Caesar, his dad, well, so now we've got, we're moving quick. Michael, let's see if you've got the Roman Empire. Well, we've got just a few minutes left. Let's see. What do we got? You got, yeah, you got Rome. Okay, here's the Roman Empire. All right. Down here is what we're interested in. Here's the Mediterranean. And right here, this is where, this is Israel. And here's Egypt. You all know where we're at now. Jordan, all that. So the Romans are now in control of the land. The Jews are still there when Pompey comes in. And does anybody know who's installed as a king? Herod, Herod the Great. The Romans installed, they tried the same tactic everybody else has tried, and they installed their own leader, who was actually a very weak one. You and me would consider a liberal, but he was half Jewish, a lot of people believe. He was practicing Judaism, but a lot of people say his mother was a Jew, an actual Jew. But anyway, he was practicing Judaism, so he was like a, He was kind of like a, I guess you'd call him like a Bill Clinton Christian. Is that all right? You know, he's kind of like, he kind of helped gain support to be one, you know what I'm saying? He's a Baptist so he could get votes, I guess, kind of guy. And he was wicked, really. And if you know your Bible, you know that. But Herod the Great now, he's in charge of all that land. And the Jewish people are, again, Now you know why they were so badly waiting on Jesus to come on a white horse and deliver them. They were not looking for somebody to ride in on a donkey on the coals of full test. That's not who they were looking for. They wanted King Jesus to ride in and rid them of all the people. They've spent their life being conquered. And I mean, they've just been in wars and battles and fights all of their life. And so when Jesus is born, when they're looking for a Messiah, that's who they're looking for. And does that help build a little bit of that why? I mean, you see what we've been through just in the short time period we've been in, and they're under oppression and foreign rule for the majority of time ever since... Well, I mean, really, beginning, I guess, with the Assyrians, I mean, for hundreds and hundreds of years, they've been under foreign rule, not being allowed to really practice what they believe for the most part. They can't really, they're not free. And so when they're looking for, they're not looking for somebody to free their soul, they're looking for somebody to free their bodies. And if you and me aren't careful, we get in the same case. We'll be looking around at the political environment that we're in. God deliver us from this. We look at our environment around us and forget the purpose of Jesus' second coming. It's not to put down all your enemies, it's to put down all his. You're already free. You're already liberated. And that's why the early Christians could be in prison and sing. They could go to a Roman cross and be hung upside down and burned alive. And they could sing songs of Zion in a strange land because they were already free. They weren't looking for a king to come free them. They were already free. I'm not looking under Jesus and not looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearance of our great God and savior to deliver me from the United States government. I'm looking for Him to just snatch us out of this world of sin. You know what Paul said? He didn't say, who can get me out from under these wicked rulers? He said, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? That's what he wanted out of. Don't get looking for your king for the wrong reason. You and I need delivered from this body of death. We need to drop this robe of flesh and rise to cease the everlasting prize. And that's a new body fashioned like his, a glorious body. A body that'll never sin. A body that'll never get sick, never be in pain, never be in sorrow. That's why it's a blessed hope. Amen. Any man that has this hope in himself, purify himself even as he is pure. Oh, even so come Lord Jesus. No wonder. No wonder, that's why Peter say that. Even so come Lord. John, I don't even remember. All right, so I don't know about you. I know this stuff can be a little boring, but it kind of sets the stage for me now, practically at least. I see why that they were so, they so stumbled at it. I mean, I don't think God made them do that. Now we know that there's a curse. Now there's scales on their eyes. There's blinders on nationally, but that wasn't before he came. He came into his own. His own just received him not. Why? Why? Because they got more concerned about this life than the one hereafter. And they completely missed Jesus because they were more concerned about power than they were the spiritual condition of their soul. So, Pompey wrote in, he's conquered Jerusalem, they've installed Herod the Great. We should spend some time there with Jesus, but we won't because we'll never get through this. There's several uprisings. Again, you've got the Jews revolting in the time of Titus in 70 AD, and he destroys the temple. And during the second revolt of the Jews, this man named Severus puts it under 135 AD. And this is the time after Christ and after all that has been done, They, now, you remember what God said to them? You remember what Christ said to them? Go ye into all the world and do what? Preach the gospel. And what did they end up doing in the beginning? They huddled up around their little comfortable little selves, didn't they? And God scattered them. Persecution came. Well, the persecution came, but it didn't stop. It came to the point where they completely demolish. The last Jews are pushed all the way against the coast of the Mediterranean. They have nowhere to go. And by the way, that's what the Palestinians wanna do today. That's why you hear from coast to coast, from sea to sea, and all that junk that they scream. And then we got idiots over here in our country waving them flags. You might as well hold up a Nazi symbol. Because that's what they want to do. They want to kill every Jew and push them off into the sea. That's what Hitler wanted to do. So they're driven all the way to the coast under Rome, and Rome finally stamps them out. Any remaining Jews that are left, they scatter them, I mean, to the ends of the earth to get rid of them. because they just couldn't control the land. Them people, God put in that land. And so anyway, so during that time period, the Romans renamed Judea to Syria-Palestina. And Jerusalem's actually even renamed to Aelia-Capitolina under Hadrian. So this is during the time period in Acts 8, Acts 19, Acts 18, when God scatters all of them, and now even the Jews are being persecuted and scattered over the face of the map. They're completely demolished by the Romans, even to the point they renamed their whole land. So now it's called Syria-Palestina. That's where we get the Palestine, the land of Palestine, you know. And the Romans renamed that to that, because they want to wipe them Jews out. They want to wipe out their members. They wanted to wipe out their ties to that land. They just had it in them to stamp them all out because they couldn't control them. You couldn't control the people. Because even though they rejected God and stumbled at the stumbling block, they knew there was only one God, and it wasn't Caesar. And you mark my words, when we don't bow the knee to liberalism, the God of liberalism, because it's a God, it's a religion, humanism. When we don't bow the knee, they want to stamp us out too. Do you think they just want to get you off YouTube? Do you think that they're just happy just keeping you out of the school? No, no, they'd like to kill all of us. Listen, them people ain't got, they don't have a conscience, most of them. And so, anyway, so they're scattered completely off the land, and now we've got the Romans are out in control of the land, and, oh, give me just, I was hoping to get more of this done. I wanted to get to a, Let me just give you this little bit and let's just stop, okay? So the first caliphate under the first Islamic state ruled by a caliph is... is, well, let me, so after the conversion of Constantine, they moved the capital to Byzantium, but that's Constantinople. Anybody remember what that is? Ever heard that? So then it's known as the Byzantine Empire after the conversion there of Constantine. And so now mostly Christians are ruling in Judea. Well, I use that word lightly, but I'm sure there are genuine Christians that are in the land. Constantine is certainly not the father of my religion. Right? I believe the Catholics have a lot of ties to them, but I don't. But anyway, now, so under Roman rule, Constantine is converted or makes a profession of that, let me say. And so we have the Byzantine Empire when they moved the capital to Constantinople. And in the land now are Romans that are supposedly Christian in the land of Israel ruling in that land. The next group's gonna come in. I mean, this gets exhausting, doesn't it? They spend one fight after another with these people. There's a problem. Them people, they don't own that land. God didn't give it to them. God didn't give that land to Constantine. He didn't give it to the Christian. Really, right? Now, we'll be there. one day. But anyway, that's who's there. Now you've got Saladin and the Arab Muslims that are coming in. I'll just give you this and we'll stop there before we get to the Turkish. So the first Islamic state ruled, they're under Sharia law after the Prophet Muhammad has died, is this Rashidun Islamic state. And they take over Palestine from the Byzantines during the Arab-Muslim conquest of Levant. There were eight major crusades. After the fourth crusade, Constantinople was sacked. And so when the Christians did hold Jerusalem for a short period of time, Saladin, the Muslim, won it back into Muslim control. So we gotta stop. I hate to, but we gotta stop. And as we are leaving this, there in this land is a, all out Islamic Muslim leader ruling over that land. But remember, God said that land belonged to the Jew, didn't he? He gave it to them. Well, it belongs to him and he gave it to Israel. And so we'll stop. And I hate to disappoint you, but there's probably about 100 more battles before we get to today over that little land. Isn't that something? You know how much blood's been shed over that land? You know how many people have died? You know how many little innocent children have died over that land? And so what we're going to have next is the Ottoman Turks. The Turkish Empire is going to come and they will actually conquer and take the land completely away from the Byzantine Empire. Muslims ruled it for a short period of time they didn't really they were not established enough to really conquer there long and so you're going to have the Ottoman Turks are going to come. It's interesting because there's a group of Turks from Spain and other places I can give you that move to the coast of the Mediterranean and they're in Israel and They call them Levantines, if you want to look them up. But they're actually transplants out of the Ottoman Empire. And a lot of the Palestinian people's DNA are of that DNA from Spain and places like that. And so I wish we could have gone into, but biblically, I'm not gonna take God's time to do it and try to look into who those Palestinians are. But I know this much. I know there was a Jew there long, long, long before most of the current states that we know in the Muslim world even existed. So not only that, God gave it to them. So unless you don't read your Bible, you'd have to agree that that's God's land and he gave it to the Jewish people and he did not give it to the Palestinian people. They don't belong there. It's not their land. And so anyway, we'll stop and we won't have a... We're gonna go right into our business meeting. I'm gonna pray, and you just pray we can get through this a little bit faster. I don't wanna take up any more of God's time with something than he lets me. So Lord, please help us as we work our way through the remaining bits of this very difficult, very difficult history of that land that you promised unto your people, a land that you're gonna stand on again one day. and rule from. So Lord, please help us. If there's any person here tonight that Lord is in need and Lord of salvation, I pray you'd help them most especially, Lord, to see themselves in light of the Word of God and help them to see Jesus. We love you. Thank you for all you do. In Jesus' name, amen and amen.