This is another dark passage, Revelation 18, one through three, and yet God holds our hands in the midst of it. After these things, I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. And he cried out with a strong voice, saying, It fell, it fell, Babylon the great, and has become a dwelling place of demons, even a prison of every unclean spirit, also a prison of every unclean and detestable bird. Because all the nations have drunk of the rage of the wine of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have fornicated with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the strength of her luxury. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for your word. It is our desire to grow. in our worldview, our understanding of how we should relate to the things around us as we relate to you. And Father, help us to never lose sight of the fact that you hold our hands in the midst of our difficulties. Help us to never allow our gaze to be removed from Jesus, but may we fix our eyes on Jesus, who is the author and finisher of our faith. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we thank you for your presence in our lives, even in our difficult times. We love you, we bless you, we continue to worship you. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, in chapter 18, we finally come to the very heart of why it is that Jerusalem was judged so severely. To some people, it may seem like these judgments were overkill, but they certainly were not. The leadership of Jerusalem had become a criminal organization. When you read the histories of that time, that is no exaggeration. They were a criminal organization. Corruption, intimidation, murder, assassinations was rampant. Through the international banking of the Sadducees, many countries had been drawn into this corruption. Many lives had been ruined in the process. We'll look at how lives were ruined in verses 9 through 20. Overt idolatry, not just idolatry of the heart, but overt idolatry had crept into the temple. The occult of the two main secret societies was more and more on the surface. So Jerusalem was a mess, and it was a mess that could only be resolved through conversion or through judgment. Now, God chose to bring judgment. He is sovereign. But we'll see later on in the chapter that he continues to convert a remnant even after AD 70. And the first phrase of this paragraph here anchors the timing of this vision. It says, after these things. Now way too many commentaries either completely ignore the time phrases of this book. You'll read their commentaries and they just skip over the phrase. They don't even comment on it. Or others will say, well, it's not really any historical sequence here. It's just that this vision came after that vision. Well, if that was the case, it would make a simple statement like after this, or after I saw this, here is another vision that I had. But instead it says, after these things, these things. He's referring to the specific events listed in the previous vision. And we saw that the last of those events took place in 8069 when ten kings got together with Titus, and they conspired in a one-hour meeting to do three things. First of all, figure out how to get their father, his father, Titus, and Domitian as well, but his father onto the throne, and Titus was a co-emperor. Secondly, how to destroy Jerusalem and the temple. And thirdly, how to destroy Christians, Christianity. And last week, I documented some of the fragments that we have from that meeting that showed all three things went on in that one hour conspiratorial meeting that took place in Beirut in 1869. But that destruction that they had determined to do had not yet happened. It's now being described in this chapter. Where verse 2 describes the fall of Jerusalem, verse 1 describes the cause of that fall. So let's look at the cause first. This was no accident of history. This was God at work. It was not simply Rome that was at work. This was a judgment that came down from heaven. The same Jesus who in the Gospels had guaranteed that that generation would not pass away until all of those things in the first 34 verses of Matthew 25 had come to pass. Every one of them had to come to pass. So he's now bringing those judgments through this angel, and then Rome, of course, is another tool in his hand. Verse 1 goes on to say, After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven. This is not Jesus as so many commentators assume based on the amount of glory that is being radiated from this angel. The text is quite clear, it says another angel and the word for another is not heteros which would be another of a different kind. This is Olos, another of exactly the same kind. So this is not a divine messenger. This is a creaturely messenger, just like the other angels were. So even this little verse tells us a bit more about angels. The text says that this angel came having great authority. Like all authority, it was a delegated authority. He was sent. He came down from heaven representing heaven's authority. Romans 13 tells us this is really the way it is with all creaturely authority. that we have no authority unless it comes to us from above, from heaven. This is what Jesus told Pilate. Jesus told him, you could have no authority at all over me unless it had been given you from above. No authority at all. Unless God had given the authority, the state has zero authority. The same is true of the church. We have zero authority unless God has given us that authority. Same is true of other creatures. Okay, so this angel was simply carrying out the decree of the Father and the Son. But this angel also had glory. In fact, he had so much glory that it says in the earth, or literally the land, it's the land of Israel, the earth was illuminated by his glory, which is the more literal rendering of what Pickering in his translation renders as splendor. It's more than just splendor. This is doxas. This is glory. And I find it interesting that angels have glory. Luke 9 verse 26 says that the Father has glory, the Son has glory, and the angels have glory. And just as the authority that this angel had did not originate with himself, The glory did not originate with him either, it came from God. And I'll just give you one scripture as an example of this. Luke 2 verse nine says, and behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. This is not Jesus. Jesus is in his mother's arms, okay? The angel's glory was the Lord's glory. He received that glory from the Lord. Now, if you're trying to figure out how that works, just think of Moses on Mount Sinai. Moses spent so much time basking in the glory of God that he came down from that mountain. His face radiated with the glory of God. It was so bright, People couldn't look at him. It must have been dazzling like the sun. He had to put a cover over his face because of the power of that glory. When we have the heart's longing that Moses did when he said to the Lord, please show me your glory, then 2 Corinthians chapter three says, we too can absorb more and more of his glory into our soul. After talking about the glory that transferred to Moses' face, Paul says this, but we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. It is impossible to be in the presence of God without becoming more like him. This is why Acts 6 verse 15 says that when the Sanhedrin summoned Stephen into their courtroom, it says, all who sat in the council looking steadfastly at him saw his face as the face of an angel. How did it get that way? Well, I believe it was from spending so much time with God. I'm convinced that many of these early paintings that you see in the church were not superstition at all. A lot of people mock the idea of halos around people's heads, but I believe that those glories that were around some of those early church fathers in the early paintings, very early, paintings and drawings were a glimpse of the temporary glory that these people had radiating from them. It was God's glory that was upon them just like it was with Stephen. These were men and women who were specially gifted to spend hours of prayer every day with the Lord and they experienced what they call the beatific vision. It was an awareness of God, an overwhelming awareness of his presence where they lost track of all time and space. They were lost in the wonder of who God is. And I have watched prayer warriors who spend hours in prayer, I've watched them begin to catch some of that glory. You can just see it reflected from their faces. They're not aware of it, but I have seen it. But most of us, myself included, are so shallow in our prayer walk with God that the glimpses of glory that we do get, and I do get these glimpses of glory from the Lord from time to time, do not really show forth on our faces outwardly that much. Apparently this angel was one of the angels that stood right in the very chamber where God's glory presence is, and he was exposed to far more of God's glory than even Moses was. So no wonder His glory was so strong that it illuminated the land. But I want you to notice that like Moses, he doesn't just pray. Some people are so heavenly minded that they're of no earthly good. But he advanced God's cause on earth. Like Moses, he worked. And so he comes from heaven to earth, and the text says that he cried out with a strong voice. And the commentators say that the strong voice either emphasizes the angel's authority, his power, the seriousness of the situation, or the certainty of judgment. And it could be that all four are wrapped up because all four were certainly true. And the double reference, it fell, it fell, probably points to the certainty of God's judgment or else how astonishing that judgment was. And when we've looked at the judgment that happened, it was indeed astonishing. The temple burned on Ab 9. of AD 70 under remarkable circumstances. We looked at that in the first half of the book. And every portion of the city was subjugated by September 1. But I believe this reference is to Ab 9, not to September 1. Ab 9, there's so many references that parallel this that point to the very center of that seven year war against Jerusalem. To the very day, 1260 days later. was the day that the temple burned. And this is further confirmed by the fact that Revelation, if you look at my big chart of the book, you'll see that it parallels Ezekiel. And in Ezekiel's vision of the fall of Jerusalem under Babylon, that fell on Ob nine as well. So we have two cities that we have documented were burning on Ob nine. By the way, I'm just forced to that conclusion anyway, just by the rest of the sequence in chapters 18 and 19. But in verses two through three he goes into the reasons for why it fell. First he calls Jerusalem Babylon once again. Now earlier he had called the city where our Lord was crucified Sodom and Egypt. Later he calls it Babylon. And the reason is clear. It had taken on so much of the demonic religion of Babylon and the empires of Greece and Rome that God thinks it appropriate. You are acting like Babylon. You are like Babylon the Great. Now I've dealt with this Babylonian connection before, and there are other reasons why God gives that symbolic name to Israel. But since this verse here is giving the reasons why Jerusalem fell, let me amplify on the Babylonian idolatry. that Israel deliberately engaged in after they rejected Jesus. It's almost like demons took over once the rejection was complete. Matthew 27 verse 51 says that the curtain in the temple was ripped from top to bottom by God himself the moment that Jesus died. Now that should have been a sign to the Sadducees and to the priests that that there was no longer to be any sacrifice, that God was now transitioning into the new covenant. And indeed, many of the priests, according to the book of Acts, did take that clue. They became converted, they became Christians. But those who persisted in the rejection of Jesus became hardened and blinded, and they had to patch things up. And so they made a curtain that fit their secret societies, Babylonian, occult, practices. By the way it was a curtain far more beautiful than the biblical curtain and yet it was sinister. It had some sinister aspects to it. I believe this was the first time that an occult curtain had ever entered the temple. Josephus describes the curtain this way. In front of these hung a veil of equal length of Babylonian tapestry embroidered with blue, scarlet, and purple, and fine linen wrought with marvelous craftsmanship. This mixture of materials was not chosen without mystic significance. It typified the universe. The scarlet denoted fire. the fine linen the earth, blue the air, and purple the sea. If any of you have studied the pagan philosophies of Greece and Rome, you'll recognize the four elements of the universe and some of the pagan philosophy there. He goes on, he says, the resemblance in the two cases was one of color and that of the fine linen and purple, their origin As the first comes from the earth and the second from the sea, worked into this tapestry was the panorama of the heavens, except for the signs of the zodiac. Now by that last clause, Josephus does not mean that the zodiac was not in the curtain. It most definitely was, and he speaks of its mystic occult meanings, but what he was saying is that the pictures of the zodiac, that's exactly the word he uses, the pictures of the zodiac were not on there, And so all of the lines that were mapped out of the zodiac were on the curtain, but it was more subtle. Sometimes they would add pictures to denote where these stars all lined up, and this was more subtle than that. But it's clear that the Sadducees had reinterpreted everything in the temple away from Jesus because they were used to hearing what the Christians were saying. Every piece of furniture in that temple pointed to Jesus. They're trying to get away from that and they reinterpret it in terms of the occult. For example, if I can find it here, Josephus, yeah, here it is. Josephus says, now the seven lamps signified the seven planets, for so many there were springing out of the candlestick. Now the 12 loaves that were upon the table signified the circle of the zodiac and the year. I mean, you can see there they've completely rejected the biblical meaning that points to Jesus. They've substituted, they know it's symbolic, so they substitute an occult meaning for those connections. And if you read on in Josephus and you read some of the other early Jewish writings of the time, you can definitely see the same occult, especially the Kabbalah. Wow, you see it just rich in there. In fact, new evidence of this Babylonian occult is beginning to be written about and documented by a number of scholars. And you can see the occult images carved right into the furniture of the temple. It was absolute blasphemy. Scholars, even Jewish scholars, are beginning to recognize there's just no way to argue against it. It was right there. And I've given you some sample pictures of those idols that were in the temple. Take a look at the top two pictures in your outlines there. Instead of the simple menorah that God commanded in the scripture that was present in the temple, we know for sure that the biblical menorah was in the temple as late as 37 BC. but likely way beyond that. We just know it was there. We've got some concrete evidence. The menorah that Titus removed out of the temple in 8070 had the gods of Babylon, Greece, and Rome carved right into its base. There were eagles with slightly spread wings and a garland in their beak. And several scholars have pointed out these symbols were identical, identical to the symbols that are very popular in the various Roman temples and other temples pointing to Zeus. There were dragons on this menorah with the tail of a fish, what some people call capricorns. All dragons were strictly forbidden for Jews because of the occult connections. But scholars admit, hey, the dragons are right there on the menorah. This was one of the gods on the Roman standards. This was a sign that Octavius August took as his zodiac sign for himself. But the same occult symbol goes way back to Babylon as well. On the next panel were images of griffins. In Greek and Roman tradition, these were connected with Apollo, the god of beauty, art, and death. But the griffin itself is plastered all over the Babylonian walls and furniture. The next image is a hippocampus, which was a horse's torso and a fish's tail. These two are connected with the cult of Apollo. And then the final image was of lions. Now we don't know what was carved on the back because it wasn't, you know, it's just the front of that that's carved into the Arch of Titus. But scholars who look at that have made their assumptions based on other images that we've seen in Jewish synagogues that are spread throughout the empire. They too had some of these symbols that were in there. So this Babylonian connection is very, very strong there. There was an occult presence throughout Judaism in the first century. Now here's where it becomes interesting. Many years ago, Israel made the menorah that is on the Arch of Titus as their official symbol of the nation. And I think to myself, wow, how appropriate. I mean, they continue to be in rebellion against Jesus. What better way to show that rebellion? Now if you look at those, like on their stamps and different things, you'll see that the images are stylized. But they point out it is stylized representation of that exact menorah of the Arch of Titus. And after a couple of archaeologists began publishing the proofs that these were pagan symbols, It aroused huge debate in Israel with many insisting that the biblical menorah needs to replace this obviously unbiblical menorah as being the national symbol. But here's the problem, and they're struggling with this. This was the menorah that was in the temple at the time of Titus. So they're trying to be authentic, they're trying to go back to their roots, to their history. How on earth did it get there? We know from coins and from other references before the time of Christ that the menorah that was in the temple did not look at all like this. In fact, it had three legs. It did not have that double base that we see there, which is a much more Roman kind of a base. So how did it get there? The evidence seems to point to the fact that these changes were made in the first century AD, probably after Christ's crucifixion. And so you can see the bits and pieces of the puzzle coming together with rejection of Jesus comes demonic blindness. And while there has been a debate, the evidence is more and more overwhelming that somebody somehow introduced overt Babylonian idolatry into the temple. Anyway, once citizens of Israel caught on that the state emblem is not the menorah of the Bible, that it has pagan symbols on it, that even the base is different than the biblical menorah, the fur started to fly. You ought to read the debates that went on. It's pretty interesting. Every attempt that people tried to frantically make to explain that this is not idolatry actually dug the hole deeper and proved the exact opposite. So some rabbis simply responded to say, hey, we don't care. The same symbols are in the Kabbalah, which is a very Jewish, and we say, yeah, the Kabbalah is an occult religious document that's a syncretism of Babylonian occult together with the Bible. In fact, those Babylonian symbols, if you trace the history of symbology, have crept into every empire after Babylon, and crept into Judaism, and crept into the Roman Catholic Church. You can see that the demonic likes to borrow from the past. They don't tend to be creative. They seem to use the same tried and true and proven strategies. But things got worse when an archaeologist by the name of Richard Freund started studying a treasure trove of temple tools and vessels that have been discovered buried in a cave together with some other temple scrolls. By the way, Dr. Freund was the rabbi here in Omaha who taught me modern Hebrew and how to write in modern cursive. And he since moved from UNO to another university, but he pointed out that it's not just the menorah that was covered with all of these pagan gods. The temple pots, the incense shovels, and other artifacts also have pagan religious symbols all over them. Now initially this was covered up, and then they just said it was artwork, but Dr. Freund, even though he's a Jewish rabbi, he demonstrated rather conclusively that this is not the case. Now when he wrote the book, he was the director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford, very well-known archaeologist, and his book demonstrates three things quite conclusively. First, these artifacts were indeed from the temple. We cannot attribute them to anywhere else. They came from the temple. They were preserved for the temple. They're dated to the precise time that leads up to AD 70. that all of these things, including the incense shovels, were patterned after pagan vessels that were well known in other pagan temples. In fact, they look so similar that they initially assumed that exactly the same mold had been used when they were casting these things. Now as they examined them, they said, oh no, they're a little bit off. It's obviously not the same mold, but it's very clear that the temple patterned there Temple furniture after pagan furniture in pagan temples elsewhere in Rome. Now if you look at the bronze engraving that is second from the bottom on your outlines you'll see that one of the images on the Temple Patera is a picture of the god Achilles and Thetis. Now, people in the past have criticized the book of Revelation since it claims that the temple was engaged in idolatry. And they say, that's impossible. Well, now we see that the impossible has proved to be true. Anyway, the debate is fascinating. And how to interpret the evidence is hotly debated still. But the evidence is pretty convincing to me that the Sadducees who ran the temple introduced Babylonian and Roman occult symbols directly into the temple worship. They were indeed engaged in idolatry. Now, some have claimed that Herod forced them to do it. They don't have any proof of that, but a chapter of 16 and 17 show that the temple priests were in deliberate rebellion against Christ, and I believe that it mirrors the Pharisees. Remember, there were two secret societies. It mirrors the Pharisees' own rebellion against Christ, described in their own words in what they call, the Babylonian Talmud. I mean, this Babylonian connection, you see it all over the place. There was a reason why chapter 11 called the city where our Lord was crucified spiritual Egypt and Sodom. Why Paul in Galatians calls Jerusalem Arabia. Why this calls Jerusalem Babylon. It no longer had a claim to being the holy city of God. It had become a pagan nation under God's judgment. Now the second reason for its fall was a false trust in the city's reputation for being impregnable. As Chilton worded it, loyalty to Jerusalem had become an idolatrous loyalty. and loyalty to the temple made the temple into yet another idol. And Josephus, when you read through, he mentions quite a number of times that the Jews assumed that God would never let Jerusalem fall. He would never let such a beautiful temple be destroyed. They thought that was impossible. So their false confidence was on the level of ancient Babylon's false confidence before them, That member, the impregnable walls that they had there, they thought nobody's ever gonna be able to get into these walls, and yet their false confidence let Babylon be captured by Cyrus, the emperor of Persia. Well, in the same way, Jerusalem was a pretty amazing fortress, but like Babylon, the great of old, it would fall. Now, the third reason for the fall is that Jerusalem had become a stronghold of demons. Verse two ends with, and has become a dwelling place of demons, even a prison of every unclean spirit, also a prison of every unclean and detestable bird. Now the background is Isaiah and Beal's commentary says that even the detestable bird reference is a reference to a kind of demon. He says of this city, within which sit only demonic bird-like creatures. Jewish interpretation of the creatures in Isaiah 1321 and 3411 understood them to be demonic. This final revelation shows that the demonic realm has been Babylon's guiding force. Well, if Babylon is a symbol for Jerusalem, which we've already in past chapters seen it very clearly is, then the demonic realm has been Jerusalem's guiding force. Is there historical evidence that this was the case? And I say, yes, there is. And we'll look at that in a bit. But I want you to notice, first of all, that phrase, dwelling place. The Greek word for dwelling place is a rare word that is used elsewhere for God's heavenly temple, and God's earthly temple. So one commentator said, the temple had been the dwelling place of God, but was now the dwelling place of demons. You may remember some of the references I've given from historians who speak of the glory cloud, the Shekinah presence of God leaving the temple in AD 66, standing on the Mount of Olives, and then going up to heaven in AD 70, exactly three and a half years later. So if God's presence has left the temple, why? Because there are no Christians there anymore. This is the end of the old covenant. There's this transition of 40 years between the beginning of the new covenant, the ending of the old covenant. If God's presence is no longer there, What fills the void? Demons. Demons have come in to fill that void. Another commentator broadened it to Jerusalem and he says this, Jerusalem which had been God's dwelling place has now become the unclean dwelling place of demons. Now either way This verse makes sense, makes total sense of what we see in the histories. The histories show a sudden and very bizarre increase of demonism, of occult practices, homosexuality, transvestitism, torture, and all kinds of other irrational behaviors that even Josephus doesn't understand. He said it was bizarre. I could not figure out why these people had changed so much. Josephus recorded people earlier stealing a statue of Queen Berenice, putting it on top of a brothel, simulating sex with it, then drinking toasts to a pagan god. These were Jews drinking toasts to a pagan god. Okay, it's just very, very bizarre. Some of it's so bizarre I cannot speak of it from the pulpit, but let me give some tamer quotes. Josephus, the Jewish eyewitness of the war, said, In another place he says, Indeed, that was a time most fertile in all manner of wicked practices, insomuch that no kind of evil deeds were then left undone, nor could anyone so much as devise any bad thing that was new, so deeply were they all infected. They were infected by demons. He then adds this, comparing them to Sodom and Gomorrah. I suppose that had the Romans made any longer delay in coming against these villains, the city would either have been swallowed up by the ground opening upon them, or been overflowed by water, or else been destroyed by such thunder as the country of Sodom perished by. For it had brought forth a generation of men much more godless than were those that suffered such punishments. For by their madness it was that all the people came to be destroyed." And you can look at other examples in Josephus and other writings that I think incredibly illustrate this demonic presence. It was ripe for judgment. By the way, Jesus anticipated this. Matthew 12, verses 43 through 45, he likened Jerusalem to a house inhabited by a demon that has been cleansed. So that's a symbol of Christ's ministry of cleansing the demons out of the land of Israel. But then because nothing has replaced that, it's an empty house, Israel has not received Jesus Christ as their king. Because there's nothing to fill the house, he goes on to say, they enter and dwell there. The last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation. So he's using that symbol to indicate there's going to be far more demonic at the end of this generation than there had been when all of the demons that he had been casting out in his ministry. Well, by the time of the war, less than 40 years later, it was overrun with demons. We saw in chapter 9 that God opened up the abyss and allowed a massive number of demons to come out of the pit so full of demons. He said it was like a locust plague that covers the sky. Billions and billions of demons unleashed upon the land of Israel. Now Josephus himself distanced himself from his countrymen and he said he could not imagine a more wicked and deviant people in to have ever existed since the creation of the world. Now that's saying a lot. That gives you a hint of what he saw of it. He had been one of their leaders, but he was mystified by their behavior, but I think it can perfectly be explained by the demonic. Now the other interesting thing about this is that the demonic had made a literal cage or prison for the citizens of Jerusalem. Now Pickering's translation, which I've given on page 20 here, takes the Middle Greek word chi as an explanatory chi rather than a conjunction. I translate it with a straightforward conjunction so that it reads, and has become a dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit, also a prison of every unclean and detestable words. In other words, it's not the demons who are imprisoned, The prison belongs to the demons. They've imprisoned other people in their prison. Well, that's exactly what Jerusalem had become. There were people who tried to escape from Jerusalem, but the zealots would not let them. You could not get out of the doors. They tried climbing. If anybody got caught trying to use ropes to climb over the wall, they were either killed by the zealots inside or killed by the Romans on the other side. It had become a prison, so if Jesus Words in Matthew 24 had not been heeded to flee the moment they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies. They would have been in a trap. They would not have been able to escape. It was indeed a prison. Or if you simply translate that word as watchtower, it was indeed a watchtower for the demonic from that time forward. Now the fourth reason the angel gives for the fall of Jerusalem was its international religious and political prostitution. He says, because all the nations have drunk of the rage of the wine of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have fornicated with her. Now, one commentator thought, maybe this is just literal. Maybe this is just a literal reference to Queen Berenice, the Queen of Israel. And she may have been partially in mind because of her fornications with the kings in the area, including, by the way, an incestuous relationship, long-term relationship, with her brother, King Agrippa, and an affair with the Emperor of Rome. And she definitely got around. But if that is the literal reference, And I'm not opposed to that because we've seen that there seems to be literal reference to almost every symbol in this book. If that's the literal reference, what does it symbolize? I believe it symbolized the behavior of the spiritual and political prostitution of the leaders that I documented in my March 11 sermon. The Sadducees ruled the temple, but they also ruled Israel and beyond. Their religious prostitution, very appealing to the nations. In fact, we pointed out before that it converted Nero. Nero became a Jew. One commentary. says Judah extended her influence throughout the known world through her religion. Judah's immorality was in fornication with idols. The nations she comes into contact with are infected with her particular evil spiritual practices. Judah was particularly evil because she mixed knowledge of the truth with Baal worship, and the worship of many other pagan gods. Such a mixture is more deceptive and destructive than common paganism. This serves as a warning to modern Christianity that is so inclined to mix Christianity with psychology. But in addition to religious prostitution, we documented political prostitution of the elite in Jerusalem. And it really was astounding how much money exchanged hands. If they couldn't bribe the people, well, then they would resort to assassinations, blackmail, political pressure, police harassment, and other forms of pressure. And we looked adequately at that before. But I do want to spend a little bit of time on the last reason given for Jerusalem's fall, and it was economic. And the reason I want to spend some time on this is a lot of Christians just tend to assume the economy is neutral. It is not. God judges nations because of ungodly economies. In any case, Jerusalem's leaders had a statist business a lot of status business deals that enriched either themselves, their families, or their friends through incredibly unethical practices. Verse three goes on to say, and the merchants of the earth became rich through the strength of her luxury. Now the word strength is dunamis, and it's defined by the dictionary as power, might, strength, or force. And so there's this mixture of the force of statism together with the economics of the merchants. Only merchants who cooperated with that force became wealthy, very, very rich, and shared in her luxury. What did it look like? Well, I look much like what is going on in modern America between big business and politicians. We're not just talking about the bailouts, we're talking about massive corruption that has been going on. I wanted to read a couple of paragraphs from a historical novel that I thought pulled together in picture form so beautifully this period of history. A part of that novel, that historical novel, was dealing with Caiaphas, the high priest, and some of the ways he enriched himself, his family, and his friends by mixing the force of government together with his business empire. Fascinating study. I couldn't find the book. But they would pass laws that would favor large businesses that parallel very much how even in the early colonies, which I've had my idealistic ideas of the early colonies really smashed down a bit lately. The early colonies, you had these huge plantations that would systematically, one after another, law getting changed, what? To please the large plantations who were very upset that freed slaves and others had their own little plantations, and they were competing. And so they were trying to shut out the competition. I mean, we have this kind of stuff going on all of the time. There were even recorded assassinations that Caiaphas and Annas, his father, did, and then they would, they would put pressure on the widow to sell the property to them or else and they got the property for a song. Now some of the Sadducee families had become part of the international banking cartels. The Roman historian Tacitus speaks of boundless riches that flowed into the temple every year and the bulk of which the Sadducees pocketed. Josephus says much the same. Now when you take all of that money together with the tight social connections that they had with Rome, the Sadducees became an incredibly formidable force, very formidable. They were able to forge alliances with new businesses all the time. It was a massively growing international corporate conglomerate. And rather than trying to reconstruct it via academic notes, I thought what I would do is I would summarize the exact same techniques that are being used in America and compare them to what was going on there. I think this might be a little bit more interesting way of introducing this material. Some years ago, Peter Schweitzer wrote another book called Throw Them All Out that documented the insider trading that congressmen who sat on privileged committees were flagrantly involved. And they would use government investigation to gain access to information nobody else had. And then they would use that information to make a killing on the stock market. Now, when this was exposed, there was such an outcry that Congress itself felt embarrassed, and they passed the Stock Act. The stock is an acronym that means stop trading on congressional knowledge. Well, they didn't have a stock market back in the first century, but they did have a massive spy network, and so using these government spies, the Sadducees would use that to unfairly enrich themselves in terms of business. Now, you might say there was nothing illegal about it, but it was certainly unethical to use their government force, government position, to unfairly compete with others. Now, of course, sometimes they just used brute police force to steal things, and you might say, we would never do that here in America. Yeah, right. The videos that are coming out of brute police force, and actually, the asset forfeiture law, which, by the way, our current president supports, is absolute brute force theft, and it's been proven to be theft from people who are utterly innocent, taking years to get back. And I think that might be a little bit closer to what goes on. Now in Schweitzer's next book, Extortion, he did document how politicians have used mafia-like tactics to enrich themselves and others, very, very tight connection between state and business, commonly referred to as the Iron Triangle. Okay, if you just do a search on the web for Iron Triangle, you'll find a number of academic, very well-researched articles that document how this legal bribery goes on. It's not illegal in America, it's very legal bribery. In his next book, Clinton Cash, he outlined how the Clintons monetized access and official favors, dealt with a number of scandals like the uranium deal, And these guys just seem to be like they're covered with Teflon. Everything falls off of them. And granted, some of the things that they've engaged in were not technically illegal. But they were unethical wedding of the power of the state with business that enabled them to make money in ways nobody without government force would be able to make. It's a lot of creative stuff that they did. Well, the Sadducees were very skilled at that game. Schweitzer's most recent book came out last month, it's called Secret Empires, and it uncovers corruption by proxy. What he means by that is, I'm not getting rich myself. Well, maybe I work for the company that makes me rich, but I'm just using my influence to get my family members and their businesses connected, and maybe other friends connected, and they might make me a vice president on their board. And anyway, he has documented literally billions of dollars that have flowed into the families of congressmen from China. And he has shown that this is a lot harder because there are no disclosure laws on this kind of a thing. So it's harder to do. It's more like a smoking gun kind of a thing. The previous ones were much easier to show. But he implicates Republicans and Democrats both, who have their families have literally received billions and billions of dollars from China. Very interesting smoking guns. Now for your own independent research, all you need to do is take a look at the itemization of the pork barrel items on the most recent bill, the spending bill. And you will wonder, hey, I thought these guys that voted for this bill, they were voted in to drain the swamp. How come they didn't vote against this bill? How come Trump didn't veto this bill? This is one of the worst bills ever. It's just astonishing the amount of pork barrel items that are in there. Anyway, this problem being described in these verses and then amplified on in verses nine through 20 is found everywhere in the world. It seems impossible to stop. This book also documents cronyism, where Congress passes a bill to bail out a failing business with grants or with government-backed loans. I think there are enough of them under Obama, and that's recent enough. I think most of you could remember those. And though the Bible would describe the rewards as bribery, a lot of these things are technically legal. He also documents what he calls the smash and grab actions of politicians. Now, I'm not going to go into his documentation, but he's given a very concise definition of what he means by this and the way it's enriched businesses. He says, smash and grab in government works in a similar way, only while one guy smashes, another grabs. Say there is a particular company or industry with large assets. The government, by their words or policies, smashes the industry on the grounds that it is bad, destructive, or dangerous. This is often done because an industry or company is deemed harmful to the environment, or damaging to public health, or exploits vulnerable people. Once smashed, the valuation of that industry or company drops dramatically. But then something else happens. Investors or financiers closely tied to that politician suddenly buy the company or buy into the industry for pennies on the dollar. The company or industry is then resurrected to its previous luster and its valuations rise dramatically under new owners who have close ties to the politicians. And then he goes on in his book to document a number of cases of that actually happening. So that is kind of a small picture of what went on in a far less regulated first century industry. There's only so much people can do with the regulations we still have in America, but Josephus calls Ah, the high priest Annas, the great procurer of money. Tosefta speaks of the temple going to ruin because of avarice and hatred. As I mentioned before, the historian Tacitus speaks of boundless riches that flowed into their coffers every year. Massingbird Ford shows another way in which they got money. In his commentary, he shows the enormous amount of trade that happened in the latter years of the temple. Remember, that temple was, they kept on building generation after generation. Just after it got built, the final little bits of the temple were done. God destroys it, takes it out, and then they spent how many generations building it? But here's the point. No government funds were withheld in the overflow. This was a popular project. Everybody loved this temple and so they would throw a lot of government funds at this temple. It was a monstrous pork barrel project that gave plenty of opportunity for graft cronyism, and expansion of the Sadducees financial empire way beyond the bounds of the Middle East. You know, the Roman historians speak of the temple as being one of the wonders of the world. They said there's no more spectacular building than the temple in Jerusalem. So there was massive amounts of money. The businesses that vied for the trade They had to go through the permissions, and of course, there's always bribery. If you want to be part of this business deal with the temple, then here's the things that you have to do, and they would make their deals, and we'd get a certain percentage of your monies and things like that. Now, John did not have to expand upon this. It was so well-known in the first century. This little phrase that I've been expanding on for a long time, because you don't know about it, this little phrase would have immediately said, oh yeah, Everybody knew about the corruption that was going on. Now when we get to verses 9 through 20, we'll see that the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem was not just the destruction of some petty tyrants. It destroyed the international banking system. It hurt businesses all over the Mediterranean. It impoverished many who had become wealthy through dependence upon this crooked system of the Jerusalem-Rome alliance. You see, if business is dependent upon the government, as Planned Parenthood and so many corporations, big corporations are, then it might fall with the civil government. A blow to the center of corruption can negatively impact the entire world economy, and the Sadducees and the temple were a key gateway to that corruption of the world economy. Okay, what can we take home from this? You're not billionaires. This doesn't relate to me, I'm not a billionaire. You're not profiting like the Sadducees were profiting from Jerusalem, so what on earth can I take home from this? Well, there are four attitudes I believe God wants you to put off. The first reaction to our statist economy is don't be naive. Don't be naive. It would be very easy to assume as it appears that the merchants and bankers and the rich people in verses 9 through 20 must have assumed. that the economic luxury they were enjoying would continue forever. But these verses remind us that economic blessings cannot last forever without an ethical and covenantal relationship with God. How many times have people tried to fix the problems in D.C. without the gospel of Jesus Christ? It will not be a long-lasting solution. It is naive to think we can drain the swamp without Jesus changing hearts. The seductive power of the enormous potential of statist wealth I think is just too strong. It's an incredibly strong temptation. If you read some of the testimonies, like I went to a conference when I was teaching in Texas where two Christian people, one in the Senate, one in the House over there, were talking about the enormous pressure that came upon them mean the one guy he was standing up to speak into the microphone against something absolutely horrible it's just basically welfare to wealthy corporations who didn't need any money but they're given billions of dollars to these corporations he's standing up to speak against it as soon as he stands up he gets a text message on his phone that says we'll give you whatever it was $100,000 it was some kind of a big bribe obvious blatant bribery. He just turned it off and continued to speak and all of a sudden the phones were going off all over. This is the kind of corruption that happens. The corporations have their hands in the pockets of people or grease in their palms, whatever the expression might be. Nor should we be naive in our investments, nor should we be naive about America being Christian nation any longer. It is not a Christian nation. It used to be, but the only remnants we have of our Christian nation still appear on our money, in God We Trust, and on our statist national pledge, One Nation Under God. By the way, the Sadducees would not have had any problem with saying that national pledge. They were quite religious, very religious. And I believe John in this book did not want the first century people to have the illusion that the synagogue system and the temple and all of these were serving God, that they were believers. They were not. In fact, twice, Revelation 2.9 and again in Revelation 3.9, he calls it a synagogue of Satan. Now next week we're going to be seeing the call to leave corrupt churches. Why it must be that people who are genuine believers in Rome must leave the Roman Catholic Church. They must leave liberal churches. We'll look at that next week. Nor should we be naive about the conservative versus liberal false dichotomy that is out there. I think these books by Schweitzer have shown that both parties have benefited. The demonic has taken over both. Nor should we be naive about the military being exempt, being conservative. They're not going to buy into this stuff. I think you talk to the military people here, they'll say, well, that's not the case. You got liberals in the military as well. But if you talk about the military-industrial complex, people will look at you like you're a nutcase. But I just challenge you, follow the money. Who benefits from the declarations of war? Who benefits from the what is it called, a rebuilding that goes on in countries. I think if you read the evidence, you will see that there's a lot of bad stuff going on. Now, of course, Schweitzer's books are exposing far more problems than simply the military-industrial complex. The demonic spirit of the Sadducees has completely taken over D.C. So don't be naive that everything's hunky-dory, because we've got a new president in. Don't be surprised by the inability of politicians to drain the swamp. So that's my first take-home for you. Don't be naive. Be like the sons of Issachar. 1 Chronicles 12, verse 32 says that they had understanding of the times and knew what Israel ought to do. So you need to have a knowledge of the scripture, but you must have understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do. So don't be naive. Know your times. The second reaction that we should put off is frustration. There is no need to feel helpless and frustrated. God is sovereign. God is the one who has allowed this, no doubt as a discipline for our nation. He is sovereign. He can help you to navigate through this mess. but make sure that you're working with God and not working against God's purposes. If you insist God cannot discipline our nation and you act upon those assumptions, then yeah, you're gonna be frustrated, you're gonna be unprepared. Nor should you be frustrated as if Satan is winning. That's frustration in the opposite direction. These kinds of things are God's sovereign discipline for a nation who has thrown off God and thrown God out of the courts, out of the schools, out of business, out of public life altogether. So what happens if God is not there? The demonic comes to fill the void, right? And yet, where do government, where do Christians send their kids? They send them to government schools expecting that they're going to get a good education. They say, my school's different. Hey, if the demonic has taken over, I don't care how good, how academically good your school is, you are sending them in to a fortress, a cage that they cannot escape from, at which the demonic can work in their lives continually. Frustration indicates a lack of faith, but so does the next point. Third reaction God wants you to put off is fear. If Christ is on the throne, if you are united to Christ and secure in Him, if you are the apple of the Father's eye as He says that you are, you have no reason to fear. Nothing, not even death can separate you from the love of God. You are secure in Him. The last reaction that God does not want you to have is to deny that judgment is coming simply because people have cried wolf so many times. You remember that story? The person cried wolf, wolf, wolf, and finally nobody came out to help him. Okay, well, in that story, the wolf eventually did come, right? In any case, Romans 1 through 2 describes what a nation looks like when God gives it up to a depraved mind. My view is we're already experiencing judgment and have been for quite some time. This is why we have such irrationality. You look at the legislation on something to do with sexual orientation in California. It's just bizarre, absolutely bizarre what they're trying to impose upon people. And you're seeing more and more of this thing. It's the irrationality of demonism. As long as our country continues the political and economic prostitution that it's been increasingly engaged in, the words, it fell, it fell, need to stand as a warning. Our economic system can fall just as surely today as it fell back then. Psalm 49 verse 6 warns all who trust in riches by saying that our riches are a lousy, lousy security. May we fix our eyes on Jesus, the one who holds us and the one who holds nations in his hands. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the warnings that it gives to us. We thank you for the descriptions it gives in such a short compass, and I pray that you would open up the eyes of our understanding to give us a worldview of politics, of economics, and of how to navigate the waters in the midst of these. We thank you for the two songs that we were able to sing earlier that reflect your scriptures that even in the darkest of times we can trust you. that you are walking with us through the fire, through the flood, not just around it, but no matter what your will for us is, no matter what your will for our nation in the future might be, help us to fix our eyes on Jesus, knowing that He is the author and finisher of our faith. And it's in His name we pray. Amen.