Welcome to the King James Bible Seminary. My name is Myron Boffman and I'll be your instructor today in the Word of the Lord. This is the Minor Prophets class and today we're looking at Zephaniah. The title of this lesson is Introduction to Zephaniah. We're going to consider the entire book, in other words. But, for the sake of brevity, We are going to only look at the first three verses of chapter one. So if you'd be so kind as to turn there, we'll get started with today's lesson. Zephaniah chapter one, verses one through three. It's our earnest prayer that today's time together will be a blessing to you. And we earnestly pray that everything said and done here will be honoring and glorifying the Lord, and what results, what are the results, will also honor and glorify God through what you say and do. May the Lord be praised. Quote, the word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cushie, the son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah, son of Ammon, king of Judah. I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. I will consume man and beast. I will consume the fowls of the heaven and the fishes of the sea and the stumbling blocks with the wicked. And I will cut off man from off the land, saith the Lord." End quote. Now today's lesson will perhaps appear to be a little controversial and we're just going to leave this, we're going to throw things out to you for discussion. I need thinkers, I don't need to spoon feed people and I've been criticized for putting out things that people don't agree with sometimes but it's If you run across it in class, you will be prepared, okay? So you discuss it with one another. And may the Holy Spirit give us all discernment. Now, Zephaniah lived during the reign of King Josiah. He reigned during the years of 640-609 BC. Due to the corruption described as being throughout the entire nation, we can judge the date of this prophecy to be before Josiah's reformation which took place in 621 BC. The fact that Nineveh is still at peace with the nation confirms this time period as being correct. Zephaniah gives his background listing his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and finally his great-great-grandfather. Now the last one there, the Great Great Grandfather, whose name is spelled in the King James Bible as capital H-I-Z-K-I-A-H, but is spelled Hezekiah, capital H-E-Z-E-K-I-A-H in most modern translations. This may be the actual King Hezekiah, even though the title or framework of his station, he is not labeled as king. It may be King Hezekiah, and Jewish expositors, as well as most modern commentators, make this to be the case, that this is King Hezekiah and his family. in Zephaniah's family. However, outside of the statements of the Jewish commentators, as well as more modern Christian commentators, there's no real solid evidence that I can come up with that this was indeed the King Hezekiah. The difference in the spelling from capital H-I-Z-K-I-A-H to capital H-E-Z-E-K-I-A-H comes only from the way the vowel pointing is done in the Hebrew. Now if you remember, original Hebrew didn't have the vowel pointings. So this is later editions. Now it depends on how they pointed for this to be spelled. Now the Hebrew Old Testament religion that originally spelled like this, without the vowel pointings, actually changed to what we consider Judaism after the return of the exiles from the Babylonian captivity. The Jews since then follow the teachings of the rabbis and their Talmud, capital T-A-L-M-U-D. making it a different religion than what is found in the Old Testament. It's Rabbinic Judaism is what they have today and these are the same ones that consisted of the Sanhedrin during Christ's time. The same teachings that reject Christ now are the ones, the same teachings that rejected Christ then. Now if you look at who the nation or the people of Israel, the Jews of today, the believing Jews of today, they believe in Judaism, not Christianity, They have a political messiah that they're looking for, not a spiritual messiah. That is where they're wrong because God's kingdom is a spiritual kingdom. Anyways, let's continue on. So the Old Testament religion of the Hebrews has been altered since Old Testament times and does not exist. Not today anyway. The spiritual condition of the entire nation that we're reading about here in Zephaniah's book here deteriorated after the death of King Hezekiah. The Assyrian influence through the nation of Judah and Israel became very pronounced. Assyria had a very strong influence and this included the methods of worship No longer was the plain, simple, and straightforward worship of God, as given in the Mosaic Law, practiced. But instead, a strange mixture of heathen idolatry was added. The places of worship were now numerous, instead of the simple one place to worship being that of the Temple in Jerusalem. What was occurring in the nation was that the people had gone after false gods of every sort and every inkling. Service and worship were matters of preference as well as self-justifiable rationale, that is, thinking instead of the regulations of worship given in the scriptures. the scriptures regulate what worship is to be like. Then they gave themselves permission. They gave themselves permission to worship the stars, sun, and moon in the sky, all in the name of God. After all, God could be seen in a tree. Yes, and a beautiful sunset. Thus, it represented God to them and was worthy of worshipping. They worshipped God through it. That's important. They worshipped God through nature, through what they saw. Now, this idolatry included sculptured images or statues, They could be of divine animals or heavenly beings. These things were bowed down to. They were bowed down to in heart or mind, if not in the physical body. Those were considered as addressing points to God. People would turn to the image or statue and address God through it. It was their point of contact. As long as one was knelt before an image, one was knelt before God. When one left the presence of the image or statue, then one left the presence of God and he was dismissed and quite often forgotten. This then was what worship at the high places was often like. Let's hope we don't know of anybody who goes to modern high places. So, an image or a statue was not necessary for this idolatry to take place, since the worship of God included all of nature, as in Baal worship. Baal worship is worship of nature. the environment. In this religion, the laws and forces of nature were of supreme importance. Objects of nature were regarded as more important than individuals or since God was more important. Thus, it was sickly rationale for them to believe that sacrificing their babies to the false god they named as Moloch, that involved burning them alive in a fiery oven shaped like their false god, was actually doing service to God. Supposedly, as much as they loved their children, so they said, they loved God more, and so gave them to him. This was done in God's name. Let's just say that this demonstrates that everything labeled Christian, or as non-profit, or a work of charity today, may not, just may not be what it appears to be on the surface. Now looking at the sacred text we see that God pronounces what looks to be harsh judgments upon not only the people but the land as well as the animals living there. He said, if you remember, quote, I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. I will consume man and beast. I will consume the fowls of the heaven and the fishes of the sea and the stumbling blocks with the wicked. And I will cut off man from off the land, saith the Lord, end quote. God began the punishment with food shortages. He began the punishment with food shortages in his process of removing the gross sinners from the land. He would punish them by depriving them of the basics. Sadly, animals were part of the destruction. This was done many ways. It was done by theft. as well as mass slaughter of livestock because of disease. Later, God would replace the inhabitants of the land with invaders. And finally, they, the original inhabitants, were taken away out of their homeland, as we well know from their history. Sadly, if we see this method of replacement being carried out in Western Japheth countries today, Western Japheth, capital J-A-P-H-E-T-H, Western Japheth countries today, it will be for the same reasons, the reasons of corruption. Even today, nations We're going to bring this up to date here. Nations that promote crime without proper punishment. A nation that doesn't punish the wicked for their crimes promotes it. They promote atheism. Nations that promote abortion on demand for any reason. Nations that have corrupt justice, nations that oppress human rights, have and encourage sexual perversions, have arrogant intellectualism, have corrupt worship of God, God being cast out of the government and educational systems, widespread medical malpractice and detrimental prescribed procedures and protocols, death for profit plans being carried out, This is just among other horrible things and the list could go on. These nations that do such things as Zephaniah describes are an abomination and will be treated as Israel and Judah were treated. Quote, Behold I leave you barren saith the Lord of hosts end quote. Why would today's sinner think that they are exempt from God's corrective wrath? Well, the reason why they think they're exempt from that is, one of the reasons is they've been taught a certain theology. Today's sinner doesn't think that any punishment will come because they imagine and have been taught to believe in a false god. They imagine God to be Cupid. They believe in a Cupid God to be the real God. Since their false God is only a God of love, their God can't help himself but to love that person no matter how corrupt, wicked, and evil they may be in their hard actions and mind. God can't help but to forgive anyone who simply asks. because he is unconditional love. They've been also taught that they will have, they probably have an escape route through a secret rapture. Now that's a different topic, but whether these people who believe in the keep of God will it be involved in a rapture is debatable don't you think so any real student of the scripture knows that God is holy and just God will withhold his punitive judgment back only for so long. He is merciful, but then it will come. His judgment will come and without remedy. God isn't stupid. He knows fake repentance and fake love in the heart of any person. The truth of the matter is, King Josiah's implemented reforms that we mentioned earlier, which cleaned things up in the nation, those things were only on the surface level and at the top tier of the government. So when King Josiah came in and he reformed the government, There was only the upper echelon of government. It didn't trickle down. The people still clung to their corruption. So later the axe fell. They were cut off from their land and their freedom and lifestyles. Sadly, history repeats itself and much of modern society today finds itself in similar circumstances. Modern false prophets have reinterpreted revelation to give their foolish followers an escape route, an escape hope that stands only on their word and not the word of God. The truth about the future is found only in scripture. do not follow false prophets who strangely come up with a new revelation, please. And just know what God is going to do. The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 gave the correct timeline to the future and clearly described the process. 1 Corinthians 15 is very clear on when things happen and how. God does not remove the church from the inhabited earth in the future. He removes the sinner. This is seen quite clearly in the quote of Christ which says, quote, the meek shall inherit the earth. It's the church that stays. The wicked are removed from the earth through the tribulations of Revelation. Often, as seen in our scriptures, God uses the heathen to punish the erring righteous. The so-called replacement theory is very much a viable theory. Nations of today, as Nineveh, need repentance just to survive. Nineveh repented and survived, but years later returned to the error of their ways and was then destroyed. Repentance and revival starts with the individual. Now all this, this lesson, it teaches that diligence is needed to keep one's life clean and pure before God even if a person has had a major repentance earlier in their life. Now we are going to close with this thought here, quote, Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth, lest the Lord see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him. Proverbs 24, verses 17 and 18. So if we see our enemy, or somebody who wants to be our enemy, we're not to have enemies in our heart. But anyways, and if they become punished or fail in something, we're not to gloat over it. According to this, and finally, what we need to do instead of gloating over one another's faults and failings, we're to pray for one another. And this should be a lesson for discussion. And I hope it has stimulated a few minds. And we appreciate your attention to this. And we're going to close with a word of prayer. Let's bow. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee for the testimony of Zephaniah and his encouragement in the truth. We pray now that you'll cause each and every heart listening to this message to examine oneself and if there be any wicked way in us that we'll let loose of it and Give our lives and hearts, souls, minds, bodies, totally over to Thee as we should. Forgive us our sins, O Lord. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem. We ask Thee for the repentance of our nation, not just our nation, but the nations of the world. that thy word may go forth throughout the world as it's supposed to before your final return. We ask now that you just be with us, protect us, help us Lord as we go to serve thee in our various places throughout the week. Watch over us and protect us. May we all give Thee the praise and honor and glory for what is said and done in our lives. For it is in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, we pray these things. Amen. Thank you.