As we study, as we've studied from all the way to this chart, I've been teaching from this chart for a few years, about 45 years. I taught preschool with this chart, and I taught vacation Bible school one time with that chart. Do you remember that, Brother A? And that chart helps you get your mind in what period of time that we're talking about. What we're talking about today is riches to rags and gold to mud. Now, there have been a lot of empires in the world, hasn't there? We're going to start way back here when we start talking about empires. We start talking about this first empire here. And every empire that the Bible has anything to do with has something to do with the land of Palestine or Canaan. Okay. Here we have human government. It failed. They were supposed to scatter and multiply. They didn't scatter. And now we have judgment, the confusion of the languages, and we have the division of the earth. This is when the earth was divided. Now, The book of Daniel, it talks about Daniel's image, which started out with gold at the top and went to, yeah, gold at the top and went to mud down at the bottom. Gold to mud. It went from purity and divine to mud. Or from riches to rags. Now there have been Seven great empires that ruled the land of Israel not counting Israel. We're talking about Gentile empires the very first Gentile nation that ruled the land of Canaan was Egypt and Then Assyria and we have to realize between Egypt and Assyria Then we have Israel there in their own land for a very short time in all reality. Then Babylon with Nebuchadnezzar's image. And then we have Medo-Persia. We have Alexander the Great, Greece. Then we have the Roman Empire that was there when Jesus was crucified, don't we? The Roman Empire was when Jesus was crucified. Then after the Roman Empire fell, we have the Ottoman Empire. Many Bible scholars and teachers, and I did also, I looked upon the last empire to be the revision of the Roman Empire, but that's not what I was talking about at all. It's the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire ruled the Middle East until the 1920s. And they still have a lot to do with it today. And then, this last empire that's going to rule, according to Revelation, the 17th chapter in Daniel, is going to be a revision of the 7th empire. And what's that one? Again, it will be Islam. Do we see that today? Is the Word of God being fulfilled today? Okay, now many nations have risen and fallen. America is only a little over 200 years old. That's a very young, infantile nation compared to all the rest of these. And the Bible doesn't really say much about America. Now, we have eternity past when God created the heavens and the earth. The earth, she became formless and void. And then God reconstructs it. He puts man on this earth to take, who did man take? He took somebody's place. Lucifer, Hallel. Hallel. His name is really like this. We get the word Lucifer from the Latin, All right, so we have Lucifer. Lucifer means the same thing as this Hebrew word right there, which means shiny one or bright or light carrier, okay? Now, all of these things will take place, but in the middle of all of these empires, which God says are going to come to place, is it taking place? Has God word said this would take place. In Genesis, the ninth chapter, verses 24 to 27, he said that, he said that Shem would dwell in the tents, or Japheth would dwell in the tents of Shem, which we have the church, the Gentile church today. Now, in the 11th chapter of the book of Romans, and Romans is a miniature gospel and a miniature history book of the whole Bible. Tells us about all of this in there 11 and verse 1 I want to read this from English and talk about it from Greek also and Hebrew Israel Israel Yisrael. Yisrael. It comes from Aish, or Ish, which means man, and then El is God, all right? And it has something else in there too. It has the word Sarai. Sarai. Sarai. Sarai means what? To wrestle contentious. And with Israel, we have a man that wrestled with God. And Israel was not his name, was it? His name was Jacob. Let's go back in time. Here we have Adam. Here we have Noah's time. Here we have this human government that failed. And now we have the division of the earth. And over here, we have Abraham in Genesis the 12th chapter. God calls Abraham out. And Abraham's promise And then during this period of time in here, in this period of time right in here, we have Abraham, we have Isaac, and now we have Jacob. Now Jacob has 12 boys. And we have Esau, his twin brother, and Esau is called Red and Harry, Harry Red. That's what his name is in the Bible. Esau is a bad boy, isn't he? He's nothing but a womanizer and a playboy, and that's all he ever does. And he's a hunter, and that's it. He doesn't care anything about his family. He doesn't care anything at all about his future. He doesn't care anything at all about God. But he wrestles with his brother over his birthright. Now, Esau was the firstborn. He's a firstborn twin. God knew that he's going to be a bad boy. And he says to him, to his mother, before they're ever born, before they ever did anything good or bad, OK? God knew what they would do. He said, the older will serve the younger. The older will serve the younger. In other words, I'm going to reject the firstborn. Just like you, you're born the first time you're born of Earth. If you don't get born again, you're rejected. You're in file 13. You're not going to make it. You must be born again. That's what Jesus told Nicodemus. Well, Jacob has 12 boys. He has two boys that he loves tremendously because he wanted to marry this one girl. He loved one girl. He ended up with how many wives? Four. He didn't want them. He didn't want four wives. He wanted one, Rachel. Rachel means lamb, okay, lamb. She was his little lamb. He loved her. He met her and he fell in love with her. When he saw her, he kissed her. And then he told her father later on, I want her to be my wife. And he tricked him and gave him Leah. Leah was a beautiful woman. She had such beautiful eye that when people saw her, they just melted with her eyes. But Rachel was pretty in every way. And we find out that Jacob fell in love with Rachel. Well, he ended up taking her handmaid. He woke up, he got real drunk on his wedding night, and he went to bed with the wrong woman because his father-in-law slipped her in there. Leah, when he woke up in the morning, he had a wall-eyed clutch and fit, because this wasn't the woman that he worked seven years for. So he goes back and tells her, you've tricked me. What's the deal? Well, OK, well, in our land, the laws of what? Of comorabi, we cannot give you my second born, the youngest before the first. And so he said, OK, if you agree with me that you're going to work seven more years, that's 14 years now, I will give you Rachel after this week. You have to spend a wedding week with her. And then after that, then you will marry the daughter that you wanted. So he did. And here he ends up all together with four wives and 12 kids. But the two children that he really loves is Joseph and Benjamin. This has a lot to do with what we're talking about in the 11th chapter of the book of Romans today. Joseph and Benjamin. Joseph became the ruler of Egypt because his brothers were going to kill him. They threw him down in a cesspool, in an outhouse. They threw him down in an outhouse. That was an outhouse that they threw him into. And they kept him there for a while, and they sold him twice before they ever took him out of the outhouse. finally they said he went down in Egypt and he's and he was sold to Potiphar and and then we know that Potiphar's wife plotted against him and tried to seduce him and then he was thrown in the prison and all the different things and he finally comes out of prison because he interprets the the the dream of Pharaoh And he became becomes the number one man in all of Egypt. This is Jacob Jacob's son, okay, Jacob's son, Joseph. And then he has them come back in there, and they spend 400 years in there because God told them they were gonna spend 400 years down in that area. Again, he tells them, you're gonna spend 400 years down there. And this is all prophecy in it, all prophecy. So now, they go down there, they become a mighty nation, so God sends Moshe, Moses, down there to draw them out. And he takes them back into the land. And they're in the land. And finally, God's going to give them a king. But they want a king before God's ready to give them a king. And they ask for a king so they can have a king like all the rest of the nations. And God said that they would have a king. In the 49th chapter and the 50th chapter of Genesis, God said they would have a king. But God wasn't ready to give them a king because this is what we call a what? a theocracy. They want a monarchy, but we have a theocracy. God wasn't ready, and so they see this real tall, nice guy, and they want a king. So God says, you got him, and his name is Saul. You asked for him. You asked for it. You asked for it, so I gave it to you. And then Saul displeased the Lord, and God replaced him with David. This is the Davidic line. The rejection of the firstborn, the rejection of first chosen we have. Now let's go on down. Israel leaves Egypt, goes into the promised land, and they receive the law at Mount Sinai, by the way. They have to wait 40 years to all of them die, and they go into the promised land. Now let's go to Romans the 11th chapter. As they go into the promised land, they receive the law and they go like this. Israel's just like that. Highs and lows, highs and lows, highs and lows forever. We come from gold to mud. From riches to rags. Over and over and over again, God punishes them and brings them back. And finally, when the Messiah comes, which is of the seed of David, Again, just like the Bible said he would. When the Messiah comes, what happens? They murder him. They kill their king. They kill their king. And he is Adenai ha-Adenaiim. Say Adenai ha-Adenaiim. Adenai ha-Adenaiim, the king of kings and lord of lords. This is him. There was a thing on TV. Was it last night, Maryland night before last talking about all the excuses why Jesus was just a person and how that he wasn't really the God of glory or anything else and how that he was rejected and how they allowed him to do what he did in the promised land. But I'm gonna tell you what his Pontius Pilate allowed him to do that Polish Pontius Pilate tried to save him from those Jews. But those Jews were hard-headed, hard-necked people, and they killed their Messiah King, and they have paid for it ever since. And Paul is telling them that here. He said, you've gone from gold to mud, from riches to rags, and you are a mess. And Paul said, I'm part of it. And he says here, I say then, God has not rejected his people, has he? May it never be, for I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of what? Benjamin. Rachel's. The first king of Israel was Saul, and it was a relative of the Apostle Paul, or Saul. Saul was rejected Saul's first birth when he was born into this world He became a ravenous wolf against the Jewish against the Christians, didn't he? He was killing him. So God stopped him on the road to Damascus and now he's writing to his people and around his people He said Israel Israel is not completely thrown away forever We see over here again In Ezekiel 36, 16 through 19, we see that God is going to disperse Israel, but that He's going to regather her later, after 2,000 years. 2,000 years is what? To the mind of God. God inhabits eternity. God can look down upon earth. Here's God. God is inhabiting eternity. This is eternity up here. And here is space and time. God can look. Here's from eternity to eternity. This is what we're talking about right there. He can look down and see all of that at the same time. Present tense. That's how He can make all of these prophecies that we have. 11 and verse 1. He said, I therefore not And this word here is aposato, it means thrown away. Now why does not God throw away Israel once forever? The Davidic covenant and the Abrahamic covenant that he made. God limits himself, do you know that? I once preached a sermon, seven things God can't do. Seven things God can't do. God is omnipresent, he's omnipotent, which means all powerful, and he is what? Omniscient, he knows everything. But within the person of God, God's person, his personality, and his holiness limits him to what he does. If he makes a promise, he will not break it, will he? We have no trouble breaking promises. When we go down the freeway down there, when we take our driver's license, we promise we're going to abide the rules by it, aren't we? And we might well be doing 75, 80, 90 miles an hour, and the cops have to stop us because we've broken the rule. All right? When we get married, we promise we're going to be faithful forever, but we become unfaithful and we have divorces every day. We have traffic tickets every day. We have divorce court down there. We have all these things going on. OK? We break our promises, but God does not. God does not break his promises. So God, if he makes a promise, he can't break it. In Genesis 9, 24 to 27, he said that there will be a church age when the dogs will take over. We're gonna go from gold to mud, riches to rags, Israel is going to. God's gonna give his kingdom to the dogs, to the Gentiles. to the mud-wrestler, so to speak. He said, therefore, they haven't been thrown away, the people of God. The word there is laos. Leon is laos. Laos. Laos. Laos. Laos. That means people. People. Laos. Okay, people. And then there's another word in Hebrew, and that's the word right there, om. Om means family or people, okay? Avad is different, that's servants. We are the people of God. We are the family of God, okay? He said God didn't throw away permanently the people of him, his family, that's Israel. Jesus was born of the line of David, but just remember this also Rahab the harlot was in there and Ruth the male robot the Moabitess So they were Gentiles weren't they they're Canaanites too and not may it become And then you have we have a emphatic particle here Kai It says for even yes for I an Israelite for I am of Israel I am, out of the spermatos, out of the seed of Abraham. Abraham. Abraham. Okay? That was his name originally, Abraham. Okay? What is the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Sharon? Hey? That's the word right there, hey. So God says, Abraham he puts an H in there H is the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and five is the number of what brother grace grace My grace were saved My grace were saved Israel wanted to work everything they wanted to be proud of everything they did and that was a problem when Jesus came he said you're right ratchet righteousness is as rags as Rags riches to rags they want from riches to rags from gold to mud Not may it become for even I have Israelite I am out of the seed of out of the sperm of Abraham literally the fillets the tribe of Benjamin I Am the elite I am of the tribe that Jacob really loved that Israel really loved And if it had been up to Israel, the child, the Messiah King, would have been up out of whom? Benjamin or Joseph. Number two, God has not rejected his people, all right, whom he foreknew. Or do you know that the scripture says in the passage about Elijah how he pleads with God against Israel? Now let's look at this one too. He said, not, oh, adverb of negation, that's ook. Not he is placed away, not he is thrown away for himself. The God, the people, the family of him, belonging to him, whom he foreknew. Proagno is that word there. That means he knew this. And how did God know this? Because he's up here in heaven and eternity looking down through here and seeing everything's going to happen. He knew what these rascals would be like. He knew what we would be like. When you're saved, you know what? You're not saved out of sin, are you? Do you still sin? Yes, but we're saved by grace. When we sin, God spanks us up straight and he gets us in line, he convicts our heart of sin. But once you've asked the Lord to save your soul, and he saves your soul, you are forgiven forever. And in Israel's lessons, we see how God loved Israel, this little bad child, the mean little brat, the mean little brat. Only a mother could love them. You ever heard that before? Only a mother could love him or her. People who he foreknew. Or didn't you know Elijah? Elijah. What is Elijah? Elijah comes from two words. El and this word right here. Now we don't say that word much. It's Yah. Elijah. Elijah. Elijah means Jehovah is God. That's what his name means, Jehovah is God. That's what Elijah means, Jehovah is God. What he says in the scripture, what she says in the scripture, literally, it's legay, hay, grafay, and that what she says in the scripture, how he whines and squalls, that's what it says, Brother Ray, how he whines and squalls. He squalls and whines and complains to the God. against Israel Now Elijah is whining against to God said I'm the only one left in the whole land and they're trying to kill me I'm gonna tell you something Isis is killing Christians over there. Even those that aren't Christians, even though they just named the Mormons are getting killed over there Joe What is getting killed over there not Christians? Are they not really? Christian science all these people if you name the name of Christ, they're gonna kill them and they are killing they kill them in Egypt just yesterday one killing people Now let's look at number three now verse number three Lord they have killed your prophets. They have torn down your altars and I alone and left and they are seeking my life Now in Greek, it's a little more explicit than that brother, right? He said Lord Jehovah the prophets of you they have ripped apart They've cut down with a sword and the altars that the asteria the asteria the asteria That means the sacrificial altars. That's where they made sacrifices now this sacrificial altars brother a not only that they tear them down they tore up the foundation they were on and They literally took the altars the altars were built on foundation the house is built on foundation They took the altars and threw them away and then they tore the foundation up and made it look like they were never there That's what this what it says here they killed the prophets Here we have a what we'd call a ravenous wolf type behavior. But they hate God so much that they tear down the altars and then they dig up the foundations and throw them away so they can't even tell what the altar was. Completely up. You know what Israel did? Israel's foundation was on Jacob, wasn't it? And upon the Davidic promise that was to come and upon the Abrahamic promise. They completely destroyed their own house. They tore their own house down, and they tore the foundation of it down. They muddied and blasphemed the very covenant of God. And he said, they dug down, katah skah psalm, they dug down and tore up the foundations of the altars, and I was left behind only. And they keep on seeking the life, that word is psyche there, the soul of me. They want to kill my soul. They want to damn me. They say that they have the plan of salvation. They say they have the only way of salvation, but they want to damn me. They want to kill me, body and soul. They want to kill me, body and soul. Israel was like Daniel's image it went from gold to mud from riches to rags Number four verse number four now Well, what is it the divine response to him I have kept for myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal And in Greek it says all the tea legato I But what says to him the response, the divine response? I have reserved, I have deposited. I have reserved and I have deposited. Any of you got money in the bank? Deposit? And then you look at the bank and make sure that it's got, your money is guaranteed, you're gonna get it back. Remember back in 1929 and 30, people had a lot of, people had money in the banks and the banks went kaboop. They went koofoof. Gone. It's over with. No more. I have reserved, I have deposited to myself 7,000 andros. Andros, that's men, that's not women. There's at least 7,000 men that haven't, and here is the next word, who have not shamed me. When you bow down to another God, do you shame God? You blaspheme God when you do that. Israel had blasphemed God. But there was 7,000 men, not counting any women at all. Maybe there wasn't a woman. He just said, there's 7,000 men that have not shamed themselves by bowing down before idols. They're bowed the knee to Baal. Baal. Baal. That means Lord and Master. Lord and Master Baal. Baal. What was Baal? It was an idol, wasn't it? Baal, the Baals. There were many Baals. There were many idols. There were all kinds of idols. The word Baal means to be a master and sometimes the word Baal is used in the Hebrew Bible as good. Referring to our God our Lord and Master but most of the balls in the Bible are demon gods and when Israel When they answered Jesus after he had performed all those miracles. They said he is what? He is empowered by bail all the elves above the L the Lord above the L is above the Lord of the above and That's who, in other words, that's demons. That's the fly god, the demon god of Egypt, okay? The Ba'als, Ba'al. So we see all these Ba'als, they haven't bowed the knee to all these shameful things. By the way, the Apostle Paul is quoting the Hebrew instead of the Septuagint. 11 and verse five, 11 and verse five. In the same way, then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to the gracious choice. Now, this is a whole lot shorter in Greek. It says, thus for in this same manner, therefore, hutosoun, thus for in this same manner also, this little cumulative and emphatic particle there, chi, in the now, in the present tense. See, now God lives in eternity, doesn't he? And so everything is present tense. The only time we know present tense is where we live today. And in Paul's present time, he says, in this season, but now in this Cairo, in this season, a remnant. By the way, this is only used one time in the New Testament, this word. Lema. Remnant that means to leave and to limit where they go according to the election Act Logain and to according to the election of grace the election of grace How does God elect us unto salvation? Does God limit himself Yeah, you know He limits himself Can God? Overrule your sovereignty God made man in his image the sovereign image can God overrule that sovereignty that he put in you If you go to hell It won't be because Jesus didn't die for you. It's because you limited God from saving you Because he cannot look upon sin and when you die You don't die and go to hell because of sin you go and die and go to hell because of rejecting the sin payment. So when you don't have the sin payment, then the sin is upon you. And when you go to hell, you don't go to hell and suffer in hell because of sin, because of sin, because you rejected Christ, but what sins you committed then you are responsible for. And those sins are upon you and God cannot look upon sin. Now God Son died for you and it's sufficient for all mankind. But it's only efficacious to those that believe. It only will affect, it's only good for those that believe. Because God said, he will not look upon sin. And God said, my son will die, and he did. But all of these people that rejected Christ got to die. then, all of Israel, they were thrown all over the country, all over all those nations. They got to be scattered again because they would not believe. Even those that did believe, they got killed, but they got killed by those that rejected Christ. Pontius Pilate's father-in-law was Tiberius Caesar. Tiberius Caesar became a believer through Pontius Pilate, and Pontius Pilate believed that Jesus was a Messiah, and Tiberius Caesar did everything he could to protect the early church from the elect Israel. Because Israel had gone from gold to mud, from riches to rags. But they're still powerful in all these places. Let's go on a little bit further. He said, God has a season. We are living in a season. During this season is what you call the Church Age, Brother Ray. We're living in this season of the Church Age, the Cairo. This season of the Church Age. And at the end of this Church Age, we find out that God is going to start calling Israel back in the land. Has he done that? How far are we to the end of this church age? I don't know. But at the end of this church age, there's going to be a rapture, and there's going to be people's translation of all of the saved that know Christ. Zip. And the church is all going to be gone, plus all the saved. And then we have a tribulation period that starts right here. And all of this has been told in the Bible. We know the nations that are going to rule after the Lord leaves, don't we? We know exactly what's going to happen. There's going to be a man stand up and make a covenant with Israel for how long? Seven years. And how long is the wedding weeks that we just talked about Leah's week? Seven days. But Daniel talks about a week of years. And in heaven for seven years, Christ is going to rule. Well, he's going to be on his honeymoon with his bride. And then after that, he's going to bring his bride back with him to the earth. Woof. coming back to the earth and he's going to set up his kingdom for how many years? We have all this information, don't we? We have all this information before it ever happens and it will happen. Let's go on. Verse number six. But if it's by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. Israel lived under the works of the law. They were very proud of that. We had a group in there called the Pharisees. That comes, that means to divide and separate, phares, that means to divide and separate, the Pharisees. Comes from pelag, that means to divide, to separate. They separated themselves from all the other Israelites and said, we are more holy than you are, and we have a whole lot more laws that we obey than you do. Pharisees and guess who one of them was Saul and Nicodemus And Joseph are Matthea these were all Pharisees Forever by grace no longer out of works since the grace no longer becomes grace great here Gracia No longer. Nisi gratisi. Grace is no longer grace. Either grace is grace. Favor. We're saved by grace, not by works. You can't work your way into heaven. That's impossible. You cannot work your way into heaven. It's not possible. No way. How do you get to heaven? The ticket you have is the life and the death of Jesus Christ and his resurrection you believe in him that he really came Died for your sins was dead in that grave and raised just like Jonah was in the belly of the dog Dog, I don't know what it wasn't Leviathan or something a fish. I don't know the whale or what it was, but it was some big monstrous thing and he was dead and Then God spit him out through that fish or dog on that shores. And then after getting them out over tens of thousands of miles, we see this. But if grace no longer is grace on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. Seven, what then that which Israel is seeking for, it has not been attained, but those who were chosen obtained it and the rest were hardened. Look at this now, this is something else. What therefore? Israel seeked after this they saw it sought after works the law of Moses you use the name of Moses in a derogatory way They would kill you just like the Islam will do about Muhammad. They kill you You can use God's name in vain or whatever in Israel if you use my Moses name in vain you were a dead man They haven't obtained that they haven't grabbed it they haven't snatched on to it they they snatched on the works they didn't snatch on grace and But the choice, but the election, he obtained, but the ones remaining, they were hardened. Look at that word hardened there. Epo-ro-the-son. They were hardened. This means they were anesthetized. Israel should have known the hour of their visitation. The three magi did, didn't they? Did the three magi come seeking Jesus when he was supposed to be born? They had the same books that Israel had. The book of Daniel said when he was actually going to be born, and even they figured out exactly what day he was going to drive in to Jerusalem on the donkey and take over his kingdom. That day they knew when it was. Israel should have known that, but they didn't want to. Now this word here, they were hardened, that means they were calloused. They were anesthetized, their hands were anesthetized, right up here in these mountains and up in Glendale. I was working for my cousin, Bo Walker, Clint Walker's cousin, the movie star. These guys all had great big muscles. They all looked like Clint Walker. They all looked just like all my cousins did. They're all, I think they're Cherokee Indians. Anyway, I was up there and I used to have real strong hands. They're nothing now. old hands. But my cousin said, Don't ever buy gloves. Make your own gloves right out of your hands. Whether I had a I had my uncle back in Oklahoma. We were back in Oklahoma and my aunt, my great aunt, actually, my grandfather, sister and brother. That's who they were. They had a wood-burning cook stove, and we were sitting at the table, and we were having possum and sweet potatoes. And my uncle reached around and opened the door of the oven. And those ovens are hot, aren't they, Marilyn? Yes. And there was a pan of biscuits in there. And Burley reached right around there with his hand and got the pan of biscuits with his hand and reached out and put them on the table. And my dad grabbed it and burned his hands. Burley's hands were like leather. They were desensitized to the feeling. Now, God knew what these rascals were going to do. God spoke beforehand what was going to happen. 11 and verse 10 now, 9 that is, 11 and verse 9. And David says, let their table become a snare and a trap and a stumbling block and retribution to them. Let their table. And David says, let become the table. The trapezoid there, the table of them, their land, let their privileges become actually the trigger to the trap, the trigger to the trap. Their privileges have become their downfall. They were gold and they go to mud. He said, let the table of them, their privilege of them, become a snare and the net onto the trigger device. for their retribution and reward to them. Because of what they had done, let all of this happen to them. Jesus looked out to those Pharisees and scribes and hypocrites, as he called them. He said, you whitewashed the graves of those people that you killed and murdered. And you praised them. And yet you murdered them. That's like somebody coming up and shaking your hand and putting a knife in your side at the same time. He said, you're killers, you're murderers. He said, let your privilege become a snare to you. I remember when I lived in Fish Lake Valley, when I was a young boy, I was a Mustanger. I caught wild Mustangs. And we would go up in the mountains. And as you go up there today, Marilyn, you can see, when I'm driving up here, I said, there's an animal trail there. I always look at the animal trails, don't I? See, I'm a hunter. I look at the animals. Because on the animal trails, you see animals, OK? And up there, we would go up there on these trails, and we would go up, and we lived in 57, 58, 59, and part of 60 in the summertime, we lived in Trail Canyon, which was right up above where I live in Nevada, on up about 7, 8, 9 miles, something like that. We'd live up there, and we'd go up there, and this old Indian by the name of Harry Butterbrett, That's those girls' grandfather that you saw in the laundromat up there. We went up there with him, and he showed us how to catch Mustangs. Now, Mustangs can run. You get up there in 10, 11, 12, 13,000 feet, and you run a horse 100, 200, 300 yards full blast, that horse is liable to drop dead out from underneath you, because there's no air up there. You've got to have a good horse. to run in that country, and they cannot outrun those Mustangs. They cannot outrun them. So what you got to do is you got to trick them. Trick them. And so what we did up there, we went up there, and where you step on a log or a rock or something up there, we dig out a hole, which was real hard, because this is hard ground up there, like rocks. You dug it out here like this, and you took a plastic dish pan that was just began to be made back then. This is when they started doing this stuff. And you dig that hole, put that down, and you cover it. And then you put a rope over the top of it, a loop of the rope, and then you tie the rope to a log, a small log. And the horse steps over that thing, and they step, and this bucket goes around her foot. And the rope tightens up, and now they slow down enough where you can rope them. But you better have two people, because you've got to rope that rascal. And somebody else has got to cross-rope him, and you lead him down. Here's the horse in between, and you've got to keep it tight. And you've got to lead him down that canyon back where you roped him, down off those mountains, which are like this. That's dangerous enough. But when we get him down there to the camp, and we get down there where the horse trailer is, we do something to him. That's in this thing right here. In this verse, we anesthetize them. We tranquilize them. God says, I'm going to tranquilize those rats to live in their sin. I'm going to let them be satisfied in it. We got the horses down there. We shoot them with a tranquilizer, which was nicotine, and they go, hmm. They're walking around and everything else, but they don't know where they are. We get out there and we trim their feet and everything else while we're doing this. So you take advantage to all of this. You trim their feet real good, saw them off with a hacksaw, a chisel sometimes. The horse is just standing there like, mm. This is a wild Mustang, see? You put him in the trailer, tie him up, get down there, get him down the mountain right down there where Jim Bias used to live, right down below, a half a mile from where I live now. We took him out there on the round trail. We'd lead him out there and put a halter on it and a long rope And a horse wakes up out there in a different world. We got him. Israel, because of rejection, the initial rejection, we're going to wake up one of these days, over here in the tribulation period, after they've signed the covenant with the antichrist, and he stands in the temple area and says, I am God, they're going to wake up and say, oh boy, did we goof up. We've been anesthetized, we've been desensitized to God's word. It says, let their eyes be darkened and see not, and bend their backs forever. They're going to be slaves. It means to bend together there, that word means to bend together in verse 10, and let them carry all the burdens. Crime pays, they're gonna get it. They murdered the Messiah, they're gonna get it. They're going to get it. Now, if you're not saved, you are guilty of the murder of the Messiah, too. You need to let Christ save you. He won't make you be saved. He will convict your heart of sin, righteousness, and judgment to come. He will let you know that you are lost, that you need to be saved, but he will not go against your will. See, that's one of the things God can't do. You're going to decide your own destiny. The Lord has died for you already. He died for you, but he won't be efficacious until you say, Lord, forgive me of my sins and save my soul because I believe in you and I know I'm wrong and I know I need to be saved. That you have to do. Israel went from gold to mud and riches to rags. And we're born in this world. We're born into this world and your sins are covered until you come to the age of accountability. We go from gold to rags. But if we come to the age of accountability and ask the Lord to save our soul, then we are back in the running again. Where are you today? Are you without Christ or do you know that you need to be saved? Have you accepted Christ as your Savior? If you've accepted Christ as your Savior, will you serve Him in one of His churches? Will you? Brother Minson, what song do we have today? Hymn 94. Hymn 94. Now, if you're out there, and I was looking last night at all the places these sermons go out, and I know those Muslims out there listening to the sermon today, they're going to be. Now, Muhammad didn't die for you, Jesus did. Jesus died for you. If you go to hell, now, without Christ, you're not gonna make it. If you go to hell, it's because and in spite of what Christ did to you. If you go to hell, you'll go to hell on your own will, or your own volition. And the Bible teaches us that The Lord will convict us of sin, righteousness, and judgment to come, and then all of a sudden, the call stops. Have we gone too far? That's what you call the going beyond the point of no return. If God is convicting you of sin, righteousness, judgment today, I don't care if you're 70 years old out there in some land far away. The Lord will save you if you let Him. He will, because He died for you. Brother Vincent. On a hill far away stood an old rocky cross The emblem of slavery and shame And I love that old cross, where the dearest and best For a world of lost sinners was slain. Though I cherish the old rugged cross Till my trophies at last I lay down. I will cling to the old rugged cross and exchange it someday for a crown. Thank you.