second Thessalonians 2 and nobody's gonna tell you that well say nobody but you're gonna look along and hard to find a minister that will say that publicly or even think it will allow himself and even entertain the possibility but second Thessalonians 2 Now, we've been going over verses that have commonly been singularly interpreted as referring to the Paraseer at the end of time, the resurrection and the judgment of Christ at the end of all time, and yet we've discovered that some of these verses do not refer to the second bodily coming of Christ, a very real event. but instead are to be understood as being fulfilled in the first century. Maybe some of those have also an application in the future as well, but that's a less definitive thing. But certainly we can grab from some of them, understanding it's referring to the first century, when Christ apocalyptically came, biblically came in that Old Testament way against his enemies, and in this through the Roman armies in 70 AD. Now, amongst the passages that have been erroneously thrust into the future, I believe, is 2 Thessalonians 2, verses 1 to 8. I haven't held that position for a long time. It requires a big shift for myself personally. But I am coming to that conclusion. Do I think 2 Thessalonians 2, 1-8 may have a dual fulfillment? I think that's possible. But I can only go so far with the dogmatism there because I don't have an apostolic directive again. But I do think that's possible when I look at history and the statements of the individuals involved in our modern day. Something's going on, it seems to me. And I acknowledge that. But I believe that this passage is in its immediate context referring to the sacking of Jerusalem in 68 to 70 AD. And the text here tells us, as we've already seen, that the day of Christ, for instance, cannot come until there be a falling away first. And we dealt with that issue last week. And we proved that the falling away, the apostasia, did take place in the first century, and you actually can find it all throughout the New Testament being spoke of, leading right up to the days of Nero, and it was a very serious form of apostasy. I think we normally, in the past, would discount that as saying, well, they don't even have the full canon of Scripture gathered together. The letters were being sent to assemblies. It didn't matter if some church from far away had a council get together and say, we recognize these as coming from the apostles and therefore authoritative. These churches to which these letters were sent, they recognized them as authoritative. They knew the apostle that wrote it to them. They knew this to be the teachers that Christ had sent, His chosen ones. So when the church formally recognized the canon of scripture, is not when the scripture became the canon of scripture. And so that doesn't make a difference. So you had apostasy right in that first century. The whole sermon last week was almost devoted to that. We see it all through the New Testament. It's all proof in the New Testament. The apostasy was full force in that first century, and it got worse and worse as you led up to the days of Nero before 70 AD. So I'm not going to rehash that. I'm just reminding you that's one of the issues brought out in this text in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. Now, there's other issues in this text we have to look at. For instance verse 3 let no man deceive you by any means for that day shall not come the day of Christ Except they come a falling away first and that man of sin be revealed the son of perdition I don't think that one is very difficult to explain that the man of sin must be revealed before the day of Christ. If the day of Christ is his apocalyptic coming in judgment in 70 AD on Jerusalem, that means the man of sin must be revealed before 70 AD. And I think it's easy to see, looking at Nero, how that was the case, because Nero became Caesar, He didn't stop persecution of Christians on the first day. That would come over the course of time. So he was maybe on the throne of Caesar, but the fullness of his anti-Christianity had to be revealed over the course of time. And before 70 AD came, he did get to the point He began a systematic persecution of the Christians, the torture, the murder, the sadistic behavior of him and making them for sport and the horrors of what he committed. Now and then he murdered the Apostle Peter and he had murdered the Apostle Paul. So what in the world do you think the first century Christians are thinking? The man of sin. There he is. Paul, Peter. Now us and the horrors of Christians being fed to the lions and covered with wax and pitch and lighting them as torches and the horrors of him defiling them and sodomizing them before thousands of people for sport. We've never faced anything like that. Oh, the anti-Christ is here, it's Obama. He gets me really angry. You know, that sort of does compel, pale to what these believers had to go through, and it included the apostles. So that persecution was real, and by that persecution was not the man of sin revealed, before the day of Christ, because the persecution of the Christians was happening before he ever started the war against the Jews. And that war against the Jews, when he would send the Roman armies in, if that's the apocalyptic coming of Christ for the Roman armies, he was already revealed for who he was before that happened, before he went to war against them. So this portion of the text is very easy to understand. I think you get my point. I figure you'd be able to figure that out without my pointing it out, but we are looking at the text. Okay, so that's verse 3. Now we come to the next big question, which is verse 4. So this man of sin, speaking of the man of sin, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. So the question would be, is that true of Nero? Did he really do that? Let me get my papers out of here. Did he really do that? Well, let me say this, and this isn't going to bolster my case. Nero never went to Jerusalem. Nero never went into the Jewish temple in his life. Well, then how can he be fulfilling what is described in verse four? If he is the man of sin, Caesar Nero, Nero Caesar, Mr. 666, it says, but this man of sin opposeth and exalted himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Then how can that be true of Nero if he was never in Jerusalem? Well, there's two ways to look at this. First of all, I do not believe that Nero himself had to physically do this in order to fulfill it. And there are two reasons I say that. Number one, and there's two different perspectives that men can have in this regard. Some take the position, I don't really lean in this direction, but I'm going to give it to you because I think it's a legitimate a possible understanding. Nero is not actually the man of sin. Maybe that's an assumption. In other words, Nero is the beast of Revelation 13. But who says that the man of sin is the beast of Revelation 13? Nero is the personification of the Roman beast, to be sure. But they are two different individuals. And if they're two different individuals, well then who is the beast Who is the man of sin in 2 Thessalonians? If Nero's the beast in Revelation 13, who's the man of sin? His agent, Titus, the Roman general, who will go into Jerusalem and who will go into the temple. Now that's an understanding that does have some merit. But I'm going to tweak it a little bit, and I'm just tweaking it to my understanding of it. I'm not speaking authoritatively, but I am trying to put pieces together to the best that I can. See, we don't have a biblical explanation of the details. That's the nature of prophecy. He spoke in visions and dreams and dark sayings. It isn't all spelled out. So it isn't wrong to be thinking and mulling it over and wondering about it and trying different thoughts and theories, as long as you keep them in that category, because it's there for us to study and to be warned. And even if we've got three quarters of the answer, the Lord may say, you only need three quarters of the answer to get you through this thing that's going to happen over here. You don't need it all. I'll give you what you need. Sometimes we think we need to know it all to make it through. That's not true. You know how many instances we can give the Old Testament of guys like Abraham who didn't have all the answers but he got through by faith, see? Well, what's the other understanding? Well, the other understanding is that the beast of Revelation 13 is the same person as the man of sin in 2 Thessalonians 2. And I tend to lean in that direction, for several reasons that I'm not going to get into now. I think most Christians today think that the man of sin is the beast anyway, so you don't have a hard time bringing that out. You say, well, if that's true though, and Nero was never in Jerusalem, how could verse 4 apply to him? Well, really for the reasons that were brought forward in verse 1. Titus is his agent. The beast and the man of sin, if they are the same man, and we're understanding the beast to be Nero, then what Titus does as the general and the commander of the Roman army, he does as the authoritative representative or the right arm of Rome, which is controlled by Caesar. And he acts on Caesar's behalf, not his own. And so General Titus, in his actions, in a war started by the Romans, and as a general in that war, he is the legal representative of the Caesars who sent him. And who started the war with the Jews? Nero. Nero declared the war. Nero sent the soldiers. Now, he wouldn't be around to see the war through. He died in the early portion of that war, which lasted for three and a half years. But that doesn't change the fact this was Nero's baby. And Titus is there because what Nero decided to do to Jerusalem. Now, some people find that incredible. I would remind them of Isaiah 13, which we're looking at just a few weeks ago. In Isaiah 13, the Lord said, get on a mountaintop and put an ensign there and call the people and wave your arms and say, come get the booty. I'm going to destroy Babylon. And God was forming an army. And they would be the army of his indignation. We're told later in the text, that same chapter, it was the Medes. And history tells us the Babylonians gave way to the Medo-Persian kingdom. So history tells us the Medes came. The Bible tells us it was the Medes. So the gods form an army. We had a whole, I think, more than one lesson on Isaiah 13 and the destruction of Babylon. God himself was doing. He even said that he was coming. This was him. God was coming to earth to destroy the Babylonians and he did it through the armies of the Medes. So when the armies of the Medes acted, when the generals that led the army of the Medes, according to Isaiah 13, explicitly were told that was God doing that. Now that principle is laid out as a scriptural principle. If you wanted to give, you know, these crazy guys on TV, they like giving, you know, the law of, and they have all these laws they make up to make people give them money. This would be the law of representation. You know, Titus acts on behalf of Caesar. What Titus does is the action of Caesar. If President Obama sent troops to Syria and bombed them, they could say, hey, why did President Obama decide to bomb our nation? Are they wrong in saying that? No. Because the only reason those men went over to bomb Syria is because President Obama, as the Commander-in-Chief, sent them. He did it. You can say the mafia boss didn't kill anybody. Yes, he did. He had others do his work for him. They only went because he said so. So it's not a hard principle to understand. And so what Titus did, that was Nero. See, that was Nero. Okay, someone may say, we get that principle. It's very biblical, and it's common sense, and we speak that way all the time. But did Titus the Roman general really do what is described in 2 Thessalonians 2.4? Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God? Did Titus do that? Did he, on Rome's behalf and ultimately on Nero's behalf, as the representative of Rome and ultimately of Nero, did he exalt himself and Rome, the Roman Caesars, the beast, and Nero? Did he exalt them above God? Did he sit in the temple of God? blasphemously making himself to be equal as if he were God? You know what the answer to that question is? Yes. It is. Which may seem incredible, but when you hear the details, it won't be. Before Titus utterly destroyed the temple in that siege when they got into Jerusalem, because they were just starving them out for a long time. They surrounded the city and starving them out. Anybody comes out, they get killed or crucified. And no one can go in, no one can go out. So they're just going to starve them out and wait them out. Rome could feed their troops. It's an easy tactic, right? But they got sick of it. It was gone three and a half years. Before Titus utterly destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, his soldiers entered into the temple while it was on fire. And they planted the Roman standards in the ground, the ensigns. Ensigns, you can say it two different ways, I guess depending on the meaning maybe. They put the ensigns in the ground in the eastern part of the courtyard at the eastern gate. And all the Roman soldiers got on their knees and they worshipped the ensigns. Now the ensign represented Rome and the Caesars and many of them had the image of Caesar on it who was considered to the Romans a god and they were worshipping the Caesars through worshipping the ensigns in the temple of God. Okay, so here's Josephus, Jewish historian, who was a Jew who fought against the Romans in the war. Did you know that? Josephus fought against the Romans from inside Jerusalem. He was on the Jew's side. He was one of them. But they spared his life, and he was a scholar and a historian. And the Romans said, we want you to write the war of what happened here for posterity. So Rome took this Jewish man of great intellect who had fought them and said, we want you to write the details. You hear the details. Now in here, you also have the history of Old Testament characters. This isn't all in the War of 70 AD, but there's a good kind of hunk that is. I'm going to read from page 900 of what Josephus, the Jewish historian who lived through the war and was Rome's historian on the matter, what he had to say about Titus going into the temple. He says, And now the Romans, upon the flight of the rebellious into the city and upon the burning of the holy house itself and of all the buildings around it, brought their ensigns to the temple and set them near to its eastern gate. And there did they offer sacrifices to them. Here's a little detail. They actually had animal sacrifices to the ensigns that had the image of Caesar on it in the temple of God. What do you think about that? According to Josephus. Not, you know, some anti-Semite or something. Offered sacrifices to them and there did they make Titus Imperator with the greatest acclamations of joy. Now Imperator was a title given to the Roman generals by his troops. Whenever he gained a decisive and monumental military victory, his men would declare him Imperator. And when he got declared, and they'd have to authorize, yeah, we did, in writing, then he could take that. And now that was a political advantage to a general. When he got the title of Imperator, given to him by his own men about his military successes, That allowed him opportunity to go into the Senate and have all sorts of political power for future, later on when he gets older, he can rise the ranks and go up the ladder. And you read in history that they say a lot of these Roman generals would bribe and pay off their men to give them the title so that, you know, so there's all sorts of men, you know. It's not just limited to Rhode Island, see. Been around a long time. But look at that. There they are planting their standards of idolatry and all the men falling down and worshiping Caesar in the temple of God. I think I know God's destroying the temple. But what do you think God thinks about that? Watch this. OK, probably a lot of you have seen the name or heard of F.F. Bruce, evangelical writer from years ago, late 1800s, it was F.F. Bruce. And so you've seen his name in a lot of Christian material. So we know he's some man of substance, and I don't want to get into it, but this is what he writes about this. He writes, when the temple area was taken by the Romans and the sanctuary itself was still burning, the soldiers brought their legionary standards into the sacred precincts. set them up opposite the Eastern Gate and offered sacrifices to them there. Now, obviously, he's getting a lot of this from Josephus himself, acclaiming Titus as Imperator, the victorious commander, as they did so. The Roman custom of offering sacrifice to their standards had already been commented on by a Jewish writer as a symptom of their pagan arrogance. But the offering of such sacrifice in the temple court was the supreme insult to the God of Israel. I've got a list of things here. from different men. Jameson, Fawcett, and Brown, that's that set of commentaries that you gave me a couple years ago at Christmas time. That Spurgeon said a minister shouldn't be in the ministry without having these valuable sets of commentaries. This is what Jameson, Fawcett, and Brown had to say. That the abomination of desolation, that's what this is. That the abomination of desolation here alluded to And he's speaking of Matthew. And I'm going to show you, you can't separate the abomination of desolation from Matthew 24 from 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, the man of sin who sits in the temple of God showing himself that he is God. It's the abomination of desolation. That the abomination of desolation here alluded to was intended to point to the Roman ensigns as the symbols of idolatrous and so unclean pagan power may be gathered by comparing what Luke says in the corresponding verse in chapter 21, verse 20, and the commentators are agreed on it. So I'm just reading you what some famous Christian commentators have said about this. If you think I'm all alone on this because you never hear this, A lot of these fellows who comment on this, they don't want to say Nero is the guy, but they end up having to admit this is the fulfillment of that, which seems strange to me. Here's Augustine, 379 A.D. Augustine said, Luke, to show that the abomination spoken of by Daniel will take place when Jerusalem is captured, recalls these words of the Lord in the same context. when you shall see Jerusalem compassed about with an army, that's the Luke version of Matthew 24, then know that the desolation thereof is at hand. And then he says, for Luke very clearly bears witness that the prophecy of Daniel was fulfilled when Jerusalem was overthrown. Matthew 24, 15, when Jesus says, the abomination of desolation, spoken of by the prophet Daniel, that's Daniel 9, and you look at 26, 27, and 28 in there, the abomination that the people of the prince that shall come, who's the prince, Titus, the Roman armies, or the prince really, Nero or the Caesar alive at the time, sends his men, not the prince doesn't come, but the people of the, the dispensationalists say the prince is Jesus. They're flipping everything upside down. The people of the prince shall come. and they shall destroy the temple in Jerusalem with a flood, and will cause an abomination that makes desolate." And I'd go into it, but I don't plan to do it now. And that's the same thing, that's what Jesus referred to in Matthew 24, that's what we're reading about in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. The man of sin who sits in the temple of God showing himself that he is God is the abomination, that abomination in the temple of God that's going to make Jerusalem desolate. That's what the abomination of desolation is. Here's Christostom, Church Father, 379 A.D. to confirm their desolation, saying, But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, let him that readeth understand. And Mr. Christos continues, He referred them to Daniel, and by abomination he meaneth the statue of him, who then took to the city, which he who desolated the city and the temple placed within the temple, Wherefore Christ calleth it, quote, of desolation, end quote. Moreover, in order that they might learn that these things will be while some of them are alive, therefore, he said, when ye see the abomination of desolation. That's 379 AD. He's admitting this was spoken to a living generation. He says, there are some of you, this generation will not pass till all these things be fulfilled, and you will see the abomination of desolation. We throw it out into the future when they've all been dead for 2,000 years. That's new doctrine. That's dispensationalism is new doctrine. A hundred, a hundred and fifty years might not feel new, but in history it is. Clement of Alexandria, that's the second century. Quote, for he said that there were 2,300 days from the time that the abomination of Nero stood in the Holy City till its destruction. These 2,300 days make six years, four months, during the half of which Nero held sway. I'm not going to go into all this theology because it gets too involved. B.H. Carroll, one of the most famous Baptists of all time, this is 1947. B.H. Carroll, this is what he writes, speaking of the Roman soldiers coming into the temple. These soldiers brought with them their ensigns. The Roman sign was a straight staff capped with a metallic eagle. And right under the eagle was a graven image of Caesar. And there's actually different styles, there's different standards. Caesar claimed to be divine. Caesar exacted divine worship. And every evening when those standards were placed, the Roman legion got down and worshiped the image of Caesar thereof. And every morning at the roll call, a part of the parade was for the whole legion to prostrate themselves before the graven image and worship it. Remember, they're doing it in the temple. You know how we know this? A man who was alive and was in Jerusalem when this was happening wrote it down. He was a Jewish man. This is still B.H. Carroll, "...when ye shall see the abomination which maketh desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, set up where it ought not to be, and see Jerusalem compassed with armies..." He's just bringing in the parallel to Luke. "...that is the sign of the destruction of Jerusalem. The greatest desolation ever wrought in the world on a people was made under that standard and by the Roman power. Therefore, it was the abomination that maketh desolate." Lastly, just giving you some examples. Spurgeon, he says, this portion of our Savior's words, speaking of Matthew 24, the abomination of desolation, this portion of our Savior's words appears to relate solely to the destruction of Jerusalem. As soon as Christ's disciples saw the abomination of desolation, that is the Roman ensigns with their idolatries stand in the holy place, They knew that the time for their escape had arrived, and they did flee to the mountains. Now, a little side note there. I don't have time to prove it to you, but the actual abomination of desolation doesn't have to be singularly the standards being placed in the temple and their falling down in worship. I think that's fundamental. But when you go to the parallel account in Luke of Matthew 24, The abomination of desolation, rather than using that phrase, he just tells you what it is. When you see the armies surround Jerusalem, then you know your desolation is nigh. And you're supposed to flee when you see the armies. So you can flee when you see them place their standards in the temple, but in Luke we're told they were also given instructions to flee when the armies surround. So the general point is the abomination that makes desolate Jerusalem is the Roman armies. And when they're on the fly and they're beginning to surround The city you need to flee and if for some reason you don't and when they get in the temple and start doing that That's your last chance Now I read all these things not because our doctrine is to be derived From other men's opinions, but I do that just to tell you that You know, we're not alone in these things as extravagant as they seem in 2015 They're not brethren. I think in 2015 the Christian community is extravagant and they sell books and they're making money and that's part of the root of their extravagance, the motivation in many instances. Now there's one last issue to deal with I don't have time for but it's huge. I'll just present the problem and answer it another time and leave you hanging but if we go back to 2 Thessalonians 2 There's one more big issue here. Okay, so we've dealt with verse 3, we've dealt with verse 4. Nero was sitting in the temple of God showing himself that he is God by virtue of Titus placing those idolatrous standards that represent Nero and the Roman Caesars and the whole Roman Caesar system is the beast, it's personified Nero and they were the ones that made themselves as God in the temple of God. Verse 5, Remember ye not that when I was with you I told you these things? This is personal to those people then. Obviously Paul had spoken of this issue with them in more detail in another time. And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. I'd love to talk about that in relation to Nero. No time here. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work. But it hasn't happened yet 2,000 years later. Again, Satan's really bad. He's not on top of his game here. The mystery of iniquity was already working, but we're still waiting for he who lets to be taken out of the way. That's just preposterous. For the mystery of iniquity, and we can talk about the meaning of that another time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he who now letteth or hinders the man of sin, Nero, from reaching his full evil. will continue to hinder, someone's hindering Nero from his full evil. See? But then when that someone or something is taken out of the way, we'll talk about it another time, then he will be revealed. Verse 8, and then shall that wicked, the man of sin, be revealed. Now here's the last real big issue to discover here. Whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. Well, Nero wasn't destroyed by the Romans attacking Jerusalem. If the Roman siege on Jerusalem is the coming of Christ apocalyptically to judge the nation state, then how can you say it was the coming of Christ or the attack of the Romans that killed Nero? Maybe I can answer that question. Let me give it a shot. I think I can do it in five minutes. Here's what one man said about that, but I want you to hear someone else's words here. Nero would come to his end by the coming of Christ. Having murdered his brother. Wife. Mother. Aunt. And waged a reign of terror against all his real and imagined political enemies. Having disgraced Rome and the throne by singing and acting upon the common stage. having polluted his own body in chastity with unspeakable sins and vice, having married himself to one man and having taken another man as his catamite and pretended wife, having done all these things and more, can I add, killing Peter and Paul? A conspiracy arose in Gaul to wrest the government from Nero and settle it upon a more worthy object, Julius Vindex, governor of Gaul, raised an army to depose Nero, offering the purple, the chair of Caesar, to Galba, governor of Spain. The Senate of Rome, the Senate shortly declared for Galba and decreed Nero a public enemy. Fixing his punishment as that his neck be fastened by a fork to a post where he was to be stripped naked and beaten to death with rods. To escape punishment Nero committed suicide. So when did Nero, when did this happen to Nero? When did Nero kill himself? See how could, if the man of sin is Nero and he's destroyed by the brightness of Christ's coming and Christ's coming is the Roman army is destroying Jerusalem, how could he have been killed? He killed himself. When did this happen? Well, Nero had already slaughtered, tortured, mutilated, and persecuted the Christians. He had already been revealed to that generation. And he had just murdered Paul, the apostle, and Peter the year before he killed himself. In 67 AD, he murdered those two apostles. In that same year, in 67 AD, Nero sent the Roman armies to crush the Jewish rebellion. It was in 67 AD that the war against the Jews was called by Nero and he sent them. This is right after he persecuted the Christians and killed the two apostles. When he sent those Roman armies, unbeknownst to him, he was initiating the right arm of God's indignation on the Jewish nation. It's interesting that the Antichrist God uses to make his will come to pass. Isn't that beautiful that he does that? Just like Satan could enter into Judas Iscariot to cause Judas Iscariot to completely fulfill the mission of God for Christ on earth. Months after Nero sent the Roman armies to destroy Jerusalem, months later, in the next year, 68 AD, on June 9th, 68 AD, and this is the early stage of the three and a half year war that he initiated against Jerusalem, at the outset of Rome's attack on Jerusalem, Nero had the death sentence placed on him by the Roman Senate so he fled and he took a sword and jammed it through his throat or he had his servant do it, whichever the case is. Nero was destroyed at the outset of the coming of Christ apocalyptically upon Jerusalem and he called it to happen and then because of all his outrages His own nation turned on him, put the death sentence on him, so he went and killed himself. And when did this all happen? At the beginning of the war that he declared. So through the brightness of Christ's coming in these circumstances to destroy Jerusalem, Nero fled for his life and killed himself and that desire to take a sword and stick it through his neck was the right arm of the indignation of Jesus Christ because he had persecuted the Lord's people to the death and he had to pay for it. You know, and the more familiar you are with scripture, there's no stretch to that at all. If you don't really believe in the sovereignty of God, that's too much for you. But when you see it as it's explained in the Old Testament, and then you believe it and carry that belief into the New Testament, this is power for the cause, biblically. Never forget Isaiah 13. And God came to earth to destroy Babylon. Well, that was the Medes. No, it was God. And Christ came in 70 AD to destroy his enemies, the Jewish nation. And he would also destroy the man of sin with the brightness of his coming. At the outset of that war, Nero killed himself. Let's close with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we marvel at how much has happened. We marvel at the satanic reaction to the coming of Jesus Christ to planet Earth. It seems as though the fiercest demons of hell were unleashed in that phase of history because of Christ. Satan is a reactionary to Christ. Satan in the garden, Lucifer in the garden, saw the love and devotion of Adam and Eve to God. And he coveted that kind of devotion. And he wanted men to worship him the way they worship God. He reacted to God and desired to be as God. And here, again, that same covetous, blasphemous desire of Satan makes itself manifest in a man like Nero and the Roman Caesars, the Julian Caesars. Father, we thank Thee for the illumination of this. We mourn over the horrors those Christians had to go through at that time. And Lord, we acknowledge, and we don't know for sure, but we acknowledge there may be future horrors at the time of the end of the world that may parallel these things, and thereby the Lord's people will have a warning, even as John spoke in veiled language in Revelation, so as not to bring a danger to the believers of that day by naming Nero by name. Instead, He gives the name of Nero as 666, and it can only be understood in the Hebrew, which the Romans wouldn't catch on to. And maybe that same wisdom is for the benefit of the last generation as well, that these things could be seen, the parallels will be seen, and although not every jot and tittle can be fully understood and dogmatically known, we will know what we need to do when the time comes upon that generation. So, Father, bless them, whoever they may be, and whether it be us, we don't know. But, Lord, bless Thy people and help us not to veer off from the centerpiece of Scripture, which is always Jesus Christ, and that's why the centerpiece of evil will always center on Jesus Christ Himself. Bless us and strengthen us to serve our Lord and Savior in the days that Thou dost give us here on this earth. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.