This all took place 2,500 years ago. Again, it's history to us, but just insert in your minds from 300 to BC, 300 BC to about 175 BC, a period of 125 years, this all took place. And we find this zigzagging, this tit for tat, this getting even, this ongoing struggle taking place between Assyria and Egypt. The Bible says that the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation. Welcome to Pulpit Power featuring Pastor Tony Skeving, Senior Pastor of Fargo Baptist Church in Fargo, North Dakota. Today's message was previously preached before a church audience. And now, here's Pastor Skeving. Let's take our Bibles, please, at this time and turn once again to the book of Daniel in the 11th chapter. We're going to be talking today about getting even. That's an expression that goes back to our childhood, doesn't it? And the little neighborhood squabbles that we have, you know, kids getting revenge. I'll get you, Timmy Kramer, if it's the last thing I do, you know, and and it's a carnal nature, isn't it? And we grow up with that. And you find it within families. You find it within nations. This business of getting Well, the time period here that we're going to be looking at historically is somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd century B.C., and there's going to be a ton of getting even within these verses here. Now, Alexander the Great has died. We know his kingdom has split four different ways, and that the Assyrian kingdom, led by Seleucus, he excels. That's what The end of verse number five says, says he should be strong above him, Ptolemy, that's the king of Egypt, and have dominion, and his dominion should be a great dominion. And that really was a big, big kingdom. Now I'm going to direct you to the map behind me here, and I'm going to use the pointer. The blue arrow here represents Jerusalem. But here's Alexander's kingdom and it's split. You got this purplish area and this goldish area, but we're not gonna even talk about them. We're gonna focus on two other kingdoms and two other kings. And that's kind of this greenish area here. That's what would be the Syrian faction of that. And then down here, you've got the Ptolemaic reign. That's kind of an Egyptian name. And so you find kind of Egypt down here, Syria up here. And guess who's right in the middle? And we'll talk more about that in just a moment. But by far the greatest dominion out of the four that carved out a kingdom or an empire from Alexander the Great was that of the Assyrians. So in verse number three, it all started with a mighty king shall stand, that's Alexander the Great, and shall rule with great dominion and do according to his will. That's Alexander the Great. And when he, Alexander, shall stand up, that means be at his peak, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven. Make note of that four winds business, we'll come back to that in a moment. It says, and not to his posterity, meaning his children would not inherit it, his generals would, nor according to his dominion, which he ruled, meaning all four of them would not have the size that he had, they would have had to split it four ways. It says, for his kingdom shall be plucked up even for others besides those. And so we find out that's exactly what happened. Well, it brings us to verse number five. It says, in the King of the South. Now remember, the kingdom on the South behind me here, that salmon colored kind of pinkish colored kingdom there, that's the Egyptian kingdom. So we're talking about Ptolemy I, okay? And by the way, I'd encourage you to write in your Bible these names if you want to, and it would help you to keep it all straight. So the king of the south, Ptolemy I, of Egypt shall be strong, and one of his... Now next to the word his, I've written Alexander or Alex, to help me remember this, one of his princes. So one of Alexander's princes, next to that, I've written Seleucus. Now we're talking about the king of Syria. And he shall be strong, the king of Syria, Above him, Ptolemy, and I know it goes back and forth a lot, and that's why it really helps to write in those names, and have dominion, and notice this, his dominion shall be a great dominion. So the king of the north, Assyria, is going to have this huge dominion. Now, as we talk about these kingdoms here, they're really nothing to God except for the fact of how they affected Israel. how they touch God's people, because sandwiched in between these two is Israel. And don't lose sight of the bigger picture. Everything else mentioned here is only in the Bible because it affected Israel. Heaven's camera is fixed on Israel. Anyone who passes through that camera gets on screen briefly in the Holy Writ, the canon of the Bible. I have a nephew down in Florida, And during the tenure of the last president, there was a rally in his town, and he was standing in the crowd right behind the president. There's the big president with a big red tie. And right over his shoulder is my nephew, and he's on national TV. thought my wife and I are going, there he is. But you know who I got on camera? He's nobody famous, but the guy in front of him was. And so it is with these other nations. Russia is mentioned in the Bible. Iraq is referred to. They're really only mentioned in the Bible because they touched God's chosen, the nation of Israel. And we don't want to lose sight of that. Now, in verse number 6 we find a gap of 53 or 54 years between verses 5 to And six, so there's 54 years, let's just say, after Ptolemy I. And verse six says, and in the end of years, they, I've written in the margin Egypt and Syria, shall join themselves together. There's gonna be an alliance made here. For the king's daughter, I've written the word daughter, Berenice, you can call her Bernice if you want to. It says, the king's daughter of the south, obviously again, Egypt, shall come to the king of the north, obviously Syria, and shall make an agreement, but she, Berenice, shall not retain the power of the arm, neither shall he, that's Seleucus, stand, nor his arm, I've written there his son, but she, Berenice, "'shall be given up, and they that brought her.'" I've written the word attendance there, more about that in a moment. "'And he that begat her.'" That's Ptolemy, Philadelphus. "'And he that strengthened her in these times.'" That's her husband, Seleucus again, the second. Now, that's quite a mouthful. The joining together of the North and the Southern kingdoms came about with this matrimony that took place between them. and now something happens that causes this rift between Syria and Egypt, and I'm telling you, they fight like the Hatfields and McCoys, which, by the way, were two really real feuding families. You can Google them. I think they lived in the latter 1800s along the edge of West Virginia and Kentucky, and I'm telling you, it got violent, at least over a dozen deaths on both sides. They were just going back and forth, And it was totally senseless. Now, here we have these two new kings, and they have long names. One is Ptolemy Philadelphus. We'll just call him Ptolemy II. I think it would really help us to keep it more straight. And we'll call the other guy Seleucus II. And in verse 6, we find out that the king's daughter of the south came to the north for an agreement. It was an arranged marriage, pretty common. When you have two bitter enemies, and they bring their children together, the custom would be for a marriage to take place, so a truce might be called, and the child that was born out of that marriage would be the king over the whole thing. They would have one king after that. And so, here's Tomy II, and keep in mind, he's 23 years older, than Seleucus II. And he's going to marry the daughter of Ptolemy II, and she's going to be the youngest daughter of his, marrying the oldest son of Seleucus II. Ptolemy II's daughter is named Berenice, again, or Bernice, if you want to call her that. She didn't want the marriage. According to history, she was pressured into it. And anyway, they get married. So far, so good. And after 54 years of fighting, that's all they wanted. There's this tit-for-tat thing, this getting even. And so we find Bernice, she comes up north to live in Syria with her now Assyrian husband. Everything's going awesome, but it gets messy. I'm telling you. And I don't watch soap operas, but I guess this is what they're like, all right? It becomes this soap opera. Everybody's on board, except I don't think Bernice was really keen of the idea. I don't think that Seleucus II was very big on it. History doesn't tell us what Bernice looked like. I don't know. I won't speculate. But anyway, it mentions in verse 6, she, Bernice, and he, Seleucus II, aren't going to survive this thing. nor his arms." That means the son. And here's a skinny. Ptolemy II, the Egyptian, the guy who's 23 years older, dies first. Obviously, he's older. This marriage was arranged before he died, and the marriage went through, and Bernice and Seleucus II, Had a boy. That's all they were shooting for. Kind of like Henry VIII in England, you've heard he just couldn't have that son. So everything's looking great. And here's Seleucus II in the middle of an arranged marriage, really not that happy with it. He's kind of fuming. Apparently, Bernice was no catch, I don't know. But Seleucus had to divorce a woman to make this arranged marriage work. Her name was Laodice or Laodice, and she was not happy at all. So now, Ptolemy II from Egypt dies, and the only thing that was keeping this marriage going was him. So he dies, and now this accord, this pact, this arranged marriage, this covenant goes out the window, and Seleucus said, forget this shotgun wedding, I loved my old wife, Laodice. And so he divorces Berenice, he goes back to Laodice, and she comes back to the palace, Laodice does. That was a huge mistake. I'm going to show you in a moment what a huge mistake it was because hell knoweth no wrath like a woman scorned. She had been scorned. So what does she do? Well, she poisons the husband who brings her back into the palace and dusts off Seleucus II. That makes her The queen of Egypt, the queen of Egypt. Well, what about Berenice, the former wife? She has her put to death, basically. And what about their son? Well, he's half Syrian, and she didn't want anything to do with a half-breed, and she didn't want him being the future king of this combined Syrian-Egyptian thing, so she gets rid of him. And I'm telling you, you think the ongoing drama of the royal family now is bad, and it is. But this has been going on for a long time, thousands of years. And the best laid plans of mice and men still go awry, because this is how the unsaved work. And this is how they think. It just doesn't work. In fact, we read in Isaiah 48, God says, there is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked. Now, keep in mind this was all written 200 years before it happened. I mean, it was still out yonder in the future. And if Seleucus II and if Berenice had known how to decipher this, think about this, it was written before they came along. The Bible was there. If they had known how to figure this out, He would have never taken, Seleucus II would have never taken Laodicea into the palace. But you know, God wrote in riddles. And we plug in names like we do now later. It's easy for us with incredible detail. But the reason we understand it is because we have 20-20 hindsight. It's so easy to look back at history and insert names into the puzzle. But this was not really written for Daniel to understand. There's no way he could have understood what he was written here. This was written for us, that it might enhance our faith, right? So that we might be able to look back and say, wow, God nailed it, and the Bible foretold it long before it happened. Why? So we would trust our Bibles. Only God could do that. You know, it builds our faith because we have some things in the future that have yet to happen. And we can look back and say, well, God nailed it before. So is the rapture really going to happen? No question about it. Is there going to be a tribulation period? Definitely. Definitely, it's out in the future, but because it happened to pinpoint precision before with God, I know there's going to be a millennial kingdom on earth. As incredible as that sounds, I know there's really a heaven. I know there's really a mansion that awaits us there. I know all of that because God said it all before it happened, and there's no question that it happened. This all took place 2,500 years ago. Again, it's history to us. But just insert in your minds from 300 BC to about 175 BC, a period of 125 years, this all took place. And we find this zigzagging, this tit-for-tat, this getting even, this ongoing struggle taking place between Assyria and Egypt. So it brings us now to verse 7. And it says, but out of a branch of her roots. The her there is Bernice or Berenice. You can write that next to the word her if you want. And next to the word roots, write parents. This is Bernice's parents now we're talking about. Out of a branch of her roots, her parents, shall one stand up in his estate. That one is Ptolemy III, if you want to write it down there. And we're talking about here now the brother, all right? Again, out of the branch of her roots, her parents, shall one stand up in his, that is, his dad's estate. So here we find one mention standing up Bernice's brother, and he's Ptolemy III. And Ptolemy III rules Egypt from 246 to 221 BC. He's the son of Ptolemy II, or Ptolemy Philadelphus, that older guy who died, he was 23 years older. And Ptolemy Philadelphia had a son, that's Bernice's brother, we call him Ptolemy III, but he's Regetes. Now, Regetes is the same person as Ptolemy III. So what happened? As Popeye would say, what happened? In verse 7, it says, but out of a branch of her, Berenices roots, parents, shall one stand up, Ptolemy III, or Regetes, in his dad's estate, which shall come with an army. Ptolemy III assembles a mighty army. And so, what's his grief? Well, Bernice was his sister, and Laodice had her dusted off. His sister was killed. Would that sit well with you? There was a coat of honor in that day, you just have to understand. It was eye for eye, and tooth for tooth, and revenge, and vengeance. You know, it was Christ who brought up forgiveness, like 250 years later, and introduced it to this world. Forgive your enemies and all that, but at this time in history, you had to uphold the honor of the one who was deceased. and defend that honor. So, Ptolemy III amasses a huge army, and that's what's said there. In verse 7, in the middle, it says, which shall come with an army, and shall enter into the fortress of the king of the north. So he heads back up north, Syria, and shall deal against them and shall prevail. Here's what happens. He puts his big army together, Ptolemy III, and he heads up north. Guess where he goes through? Israel. And historians tell us that as he crossed the land of Palestine, he was not in a good mood. and that doesn't spell much good for the Jewish people, so he plunders Israel, kind of a warm-up, if you will, practice. He takes out his wrath upon the Jewish people, and he's mad about the death of Berenice, and so he keeps heading north. He's going to wipe out this great dishonor upon his sister. It was a cultural thing. And by the way, there are some turbo-proud nationalities who really put a lot of emphasis on honor. We have to avenge this thing. There are a lot of hotheads in this world, and there are a number of cultures still like that to this day. There are wars that have been started over this. So, who does Tomi III now go up against when he goes up to Syria to fight him? Laodicea is now the queen of Assyria. And so, she takes her own son, her own son, she groomed him for leadership, and here's his name, Seleucus Callinicus. Seleucus Callinicus. He's a young guy. He's a novice, probably unqualified for leadership. And so, when Ptolemy III goes up to avenge the death of his sister, Benise, He beats the socks off this young guy. And here you've got this little landmass of Egypt down to the south I showed you a moment ago, taking on this giant landmass to the north of Assyria, much smaller than Assyria. It's kind of like World War II, where little Japan took down this giant nation of China. And you say, how did that happen? Well, it happened here. So now you've got this young Seleucus Callinicus. He's got to face the wrath of Ptolemy III, the Egyptian king, the brother of the deceased Berenice. It's kind of like Laodicea gave him this role, and it's kind of like, thanks a lot, mom. You bumped off everybody, got them all ticked off, and now you've made me the king. Thanks a lot. And again, it was a mess. Kind of, again, like these royal families who'd want the job. I don't know about you. There are times when I watch royalty and politicians and presidents, and I just thank God for making me a commentator. Imagine being the drama even of a president and the attacks. It's kind of like, who wants it? Give me a house on a lake someplace. Let me enjoy the one life I've been given to serve God and forget about all that other stuff. But there are people who jockey for that stuff. So here's young Seleucus Callinicus. He has to face the wrath of Ptolemy III, the younger brother of Bernice. Seleucus Callinicus gets beat, but ironically, he doesn't get killed in battle. And I'm going to show you that's all told here. So what happened? After Laodicea, the Syrian, poisoned her husband Seleucus for divorcing her, after she killed Bernice, after she killed the son of that arranged marriage, after she killed the attendants that brought Bernice there, The king of Egypt takes out his wrath on the land of Syria and the army of Seleucus. But really, he was after Laodicea, the one who killed his sister, Berenice. So now... Laodice gets what's coming to her. She gets what the chicken got, who got the ax. And the Bible says in Proverbs, whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein, and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him. I always think of the coyote and the roadrunner whenever I read this verse. Always trying to get that roadrunner and that stone would roll back on him. but it's really a principle to remember. Honestly, Laodicea sealed her own fate by her evil, and so now she gets it, and she had reaped what she sowed. So we find in verse number 7 that out of a branch of her, Laodicea's roots, her parents, this brother Ptolemy III is going to stand up in his dad's estate, going to come with an army, enter into the fortress of the king of Syria, the north, and deal against them and shall Prevail. Here's what happened. The boy king, if I could call him that, of the north, Seleucus Callinicus, did not die in that battle. I don't know why not. He was allowed to live, not his mother. But Jerome the historian tells us what happened. The king of the north came and recovered 40,000 talents of silver. plus 2,500 idols, statues, images of gods of gold that had been previously taken from Egypt. And all that said in verse 8, notice this. It says, this king of the south shall also carry captives unto Egypt, their gods with their princes and with their precious vessels of silver. 40,000 talents of silver and of gold. And he shall continue more years than the king of the north. He comes back and he rescues his gods that had been kidnapped and taken up north. I smile when I say that because it's the irony of idolatry. Imagine having to rescue your gods. I have a god who rescues me. And I'm telling you, it's pathetic when you think of what people will worship. But anyway, while Ptolemy's up north fighting and beating the Assyrians, he gets word that there's possibly trouble back home. So he's got to hasten back to Egypt. On his way home, he's in a good mood this time. He's beat the Assyrians. He stops off in Jerusalem. And Josephus now, the historian, tells us that he had a sacrifice offered up there. This was the same temple he plundered on his way up north. But now he's in a good mood, and so he offers up a goodwill offering. He's carrying his gods back, and maybe he wants to cover all the bases, not offend any gods here. Obviously, God's not impressed with his offering here. And so there's his little gratuity that he sends up. Well, that brings us to verse 9. And if there's a seat belt on the pew, you better use it because here's where it really gets complicated, okay? Verses 9 through 12 introduce us to four new kings, and two of them are from Syria, two of them are from Egypt. The two northern kings are Seleucus III and Antiochus III, or Antiochus the Great. Those guys are brothers. We'll be talking about them in a moment. The two from Egypt, I'm just gonna call them Ptolemy IV and Ptolemy V. The V is Epimanes, but it would help you just remember as we go by number here. So we see the Ptolemaic kings of the South Egypt avenge The death of the sister Bernice, does that end the getting even? Does that end the tit-for-tat stuff? Does it ever? Human nature just keeps seeking out vengeance. And, you know, the Hatfields and McCoys, they fought so long that honestly they forgot what they were fighting about as time went on. And so here's Syria now. Syria is just feuding and fuming And they want retaliation. So that brings us to verse 9. It says, so the king of the south, you're going to write Egypt there if you want, shall come into his kingdom, that is the northern kingdom, and shall return to his own land. He goes up north, he gets his idols, he gets his 40,000 talents of silver, he reclaims his gods, and he goes back down south. But the feud is handed off now to the new kings. In verse number 10, it says, but his sons, note the S on sons, these two guys are brothers, and his, you can write king of Syria there, okay, king of the north, his sons, Seleucus III and Antiochus III, shall be stirred up." These guys now are ticked. They're seething about what they had lost to the Egyptians and they're ticked off. So what do they do? Well, it says, they should be stirred up and shall assemble a multitude of great forces. I think that's obvious there. They amass a huge army and they had a big land mass and a lot of people to do it with. They just needed to get their act together. They waited a few years, according to historians. They put a big army together and kind of had a battle cry now. Remember the Alamo, right? It gives you an incentive, a purpose, a cause, and now they have a goal to retaliate. There's people like that. They live to see vengeance. There's people that you know that are living day to day stewing and bitter and wanting to see some form of vengeance. But as Christian people, we live a different way, don't we? We read in Romans 12, dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. I'll be honest with you, there's been times I've had to remember that. And I don't know about you, but there's times when you get dumped on. So here's these two brothers, they assemble this great force, but there's an ironic twist to this. I mentioned a moment ago to note the word sons, plural. In verse 10, it says, but his sons shall be stirred up. and shall assemble a multitude of great forces, but notice the next words, and one shall certainly come. What happened to the sons? What happened to the plurality there? What happened to the two brothers? It says, one shall certainly come. Folks, This is how specific, this is how accurate the Bible is. This was all said hundreds of years before it happened. The Bible does not overlook minute detail. In fact, Christ said, For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth shall pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." I wish I had the time to turn you over to the psalm, Psalm 119, and show you the minuteness grammatically of what a jot or a tittle looks like. It's like a bump on a comma. And Christ here is saying, not even a bump on a comma is going to pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Now, we were talking about two sons or brothers. They're both stirred up. They both assemble a multitude. But only one is going to lead the army into Egypt. What happened? Well, we find out that Seleucus III went into a previous battle in Asia Minor, kind of a warm-up battle. Guess what happened? He got killed in battle. And so now it's just one son. And who but God would have known that a couple hundred years before it happened here. So the younger brother Antiochus carries on the mission. Antiochus here is only 18 years of age. That's incredibly young to be leading an army, isn't it? They did stuff pretty young back then. In fact, when we get to verse 17, we're going to be talking about Cleopatra, who does another arranged marriage. She's an Egyptian. And she's only 12 years of age at the time. But Antiochus III carries on the mission against Egypt. And we find in verse 10, but his sons shall be stirred up, king of Syria's sons, Seleucus III and Antiochus III, going to get stirred up, shall assemble a multitude of great forces, and one, Antiochus, shall certainly come and overflow and pass through. You say, what in the world? Overflow and pass through. That's a Bible expression. We're doing a Bible study right now. I'm going to take the time with our Western minds to maybe understand a little bit more about a Middle Eastern culture. You know, we use expressions here. We'll say, our backs to the wall, or we'll say, behind the eight ball, or we'll say, tongue in cheek, or over the top. And we mean something by that. Well, this expression overflow and pass through means something. And we're going to compare Scripture with Scripture to figure it out. When the Bible in this context speaks of an overflow, it's talking about an army that swells and goes over its banks the way a river overflows. I think we can understand with the Red River just to the east of us here. separating the two states, what it's like for a river to overflow. When it leaves its banks, it does some damage. Trust me, I live by it. And in the Bible, it denotes a swelling army that has left its boundaries to inflict some damage upon somebody. I'll show you an example of this in Isaiah. In Isaiah 8, it says in verse 7, Behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river. You say, well, this is a literal river. No, it's not. I'm going to show you. Behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them, that is the enemy, the rivers of water strong in many, even the king of Assyria and all his glory. And he shall come up over all his channels and go over all his banks, and he shall pass through Judah, and he shall overflow and go over. Now we're talking here in Daniel 11 about the expression overflow and pass through. And you see it right in this verse. It's Bible lingo, language or verbiage that talks about this army that is going to come up from where it's normally and plunder and destroy and devastate with a flood of soldiers. And that's when Antiochus III did. Had a big army and he was victorious. This happened in 218 BC. Now on his way down to Egypt, he passes through Israel. And guess what? He's in a bad mood. And so he plunders Israel, gives them a black eye, warms up on them, uses them for a punching bag. He goes down to Egypt. By the way, home field advantage meant nothing in these battles. It's always the visiting team, if you could call it that, that goes and they're ticked and they go and they win. So Antiochus III goes down to Egypt, he wins, he returns victorious. And in verse number 10, it says at the end, then shall he return and be stirred up even to his fortress. You say, what's that mean? Well, that first battle was 218 BC. He goes back home victorious, but one year later, he's still not content. He's still stewing, and so he wants blood again, has another campaign against Egypt. He goes down, pops him in the eye again, just for good measure, just to show him who's boss, just to stay in practice. And anyway, God gives us that detail at the end of verse 10. It says, "...and then shall he return and be stirred up even to his fortress." Well, the unfolding drama continues. That brings us to verse 11. And I think you're going to be so familiar with the wording here now, you're going to be able to figure this out for yourself. In verse 11, It says, and the king of the south, who's that? Ptolemy, the fourth king of Egypt, shall be moved with choler. We've seen that word already in Daniel when it talks about that ram, which is a picture of Alex flying so fast, his feet don't touch the ground, moved with choler. That word means anger. So the king of the south shall be moved with anger, and shall come forth and fight with him, even with the king of the north, that's Antiochus III the Great, and he, the king of Syria, shall set forth a great multitude, but the multitude shall be given into his hand." See how it's never home advantage. And we find out here that now Egypt has gotten the upper hand here. Now remember back in verse 4 of this chapter, when the kingdom of Alexander the Great split four ways, we find it compared to these four winds. What is it about winds? Winds keep sweeping back and forth. Have you ever noticed that? We've seen that over the last few days. It was boiling hot on Monday and Tuesday, And then the wind shifted out of the north, and it was cold again. And now it's shifting out of the south. It's going to get hot again. That's exactly what was going on here. These two warring nations kept going back and forth like a wind. So what happened? Well, Ptolemy IV is angry. He puts an Egyptian army together. He goes up. It's a fierce battle. He retaliates. He inflicts some heavy casualties upon Syria. Historians tell us there were tens of thousands of infantry and large cavalry, and it was a bloodbath. And I'm not gonna get into it right now, but I do wanna say in closing that it is important for us to study this. You say, well, this isn't soul-stirring to me. This doesn't give me goosebumps. Let me just say this. Studying God's style helps us to understand future prophecy, the book of Revelation. We see how the wording goes. And here's Daniel getting this from Gabriel. There's no question in my mind he was clueless about what he's writing. He's in his 90s and I'm sure he went to his grave scratching his head going, what in the world did I write here? But it wasn't for his benefit. You say, well, whose benefits it for? Ours. Ours. To be able to do exactly what we're doing. This is written in 1 Corinthians 10. Now all these things are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Do you think we're living in the end times? I do. This is describing us, folks. And all of this stuff It took place for our example, our admonition. And here we are living in the last days. And so now we know as we study this, it doesn't give us goosebumps, but it's Bible study and it helps us to understand how God gives prophecy. You say, well, why doesn't he just say it plainly? So that we'd study like we are right now. So that we would dig it out like we are right now. I find this admonition in 2 Timothy 2. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. I think God likes it when we seek his truth. I think God likes it when we take the time and say, I wonder what this means. And, you know, we're curious by nature. At least I am. And we can take our smartphones and we can look up who the Hatfields and McCoys were and read that, I do, and say, man, that's interesting. We look up everything else, but you know what? God is more interesting than anything else. He's limitless. He's inexhaustible. There's so much we could learn and when we investigate the things of God. It's pleasing to Him. I know it's pleasing to Him. And in the process, we get the mind of God. And that's good for us. You've been listening to Pastor Tony Skeving of the Fargo Baptist Church in Fargo, North Dakota. If you would like a CD of today's message, you can obtain one by sending a gift of $2 to Fargo Baptist Church, 3303 23rd Avenue South, Fargo, North Dakota, 58103. That address again, Fargo Baptist Church, 3303 23rd Avenue South Fargo, North Dakota 58103. We hope you'll join Pastor Skeving next time right here on Pulpit Power. Pulpit Power is a production of Heaven 88.7.