No modern technology. I'm a Luddite. I recognize I can't do without it, but I don't know what to do with it. And I must say, now we know who the elite of the elect truly are, those who show up at 8 a.m. for the Bible study. I'm at that stage of life where what I'm going to do, I need to do. And one of my interests in... I've enjoyed novels of suspense, just as a relaxant. And I've written a series of novels of suspense. I've brought several along. One, Holy Smoke, is a thinly disguised First Swedish Covenant church in downtown Minneapolis. said in the Scandinavian subculture of Minnesota. But I've written on Spurgeon. My newest is on St. Augustine and the abduction. You see, what I do is I master the facts about an historic preacher, and then I spin a storyline. I'll get people to read this, and this study is particularly of interest in this conference because Augustine, 354 to 430 AD, was like almost everyone in the early centuries, premillennial. He was also free willed, but he changed all of that. And under the influence of a Donatist lay theologian named Tychonius, he became the father of amillennialism. And the curse of that has hung over the church for a long time. It's really very sad. But all of that is explored in this little piece, St. Augustine and the Abduction. Let's bow in prayer as we open the Word today, our dear Heavenly Father, in this morning hour. We lift our praise and our thanks to Him who keeps on loving us, who has loosed us from our sins in His own blood, and made us a kingdom of priests unto God forever. O dear Lord, open the word now to our hearts, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Last night, in pursuing this theme, great contrast in the book of Revelation, Israel the church. We sought to establish that ethnic geopolitical Israel, God's ancient covenant people, are prime movers in the action in the book of the Revelation, in what our Lord called the consummation of the age. There they are, those who crucified him, especially identified in the first chapter as seeing him when he comes with the clouds. They're still here as an identifiable entity. Like Jonah, called to be a witness, refused, swallowed up in the sea, the great fish consumed him. I can't believe I ate the whole thing. But undigested, unassimilated, like Israel, scattered among the nations all these centuries, vomited up on the dry land, the land, and told, the Word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, just as to Israel, which really refused her divine call to be a witness to the nations. She will have her chance again. And the second time with the conversion of the 144,000, in the last three and a half years, in the time of Jacob's trouble, an intense time of particular suffering for the inhabitants of the earth, but especially for Israel, the woman who brought forth a man-child, Israel, pursued and persecuted by the beast, by the dragon. and the cohort, the false prophet. Now, the church. Where is the church in the book of Revelation? This is a very critical point, and I'm going to invite you to read with me in the third chapter of the book of the Revelation, the letter of the living Christ to the church at Laodicea. This is Revelation 3.14. I'm going to read on through verse 22. So let's hear the Word of God. Revelation 3.14. And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know your works. that thou art neither cold nor hot, I would thou wert cold or hot. So then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear, and anoint thine eyes with salve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Be zealous, therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." The Church is in a number of places in the book of the Revelation, most conspicuously here in chapters 2 and 3. Here we have, of course, the living Christ addressing seven actual local assemblies, starting in Ephesus and going a postman's route, as it were. Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. It's a circle. These were seven actual churches in the first century in Asia Minor. And a great biblical scholar like Sir William Ramsey at Aberdeen University in Scotland, in the 19th century, made a meticulous examination of these sites, some of you have visited these sites, as Sweetie and I have, where these seven churches actually were, and he looked into the Book of Acts, and he affirmed unequivocally and categorically the historical and geographic accuracy of all of the references and language about places and customs and products Sir William said, you know, this is the truth. This is accurate. Friends, no one knows enough to say there's a mistake in the Bible. We believe this book is perfect. Accurate in every issue it addresses. And fascinatingly enough, an Australian, Colin Beamer, the late Colin Beamer, in more recent years has reaffirmed, revisited the historical and geographical data of Acts and Revelation 2 and 3 and said, Ramsey was right. It is impeccable. It is without error in any respect. Well, that's not a surprise to us. We've treasured the Word of God. We believe the Bible can always be trusted, and that's what inerrancy means. But I think, of course, that's the meaning of the text. There are applications. What was written to these seven churches in the first century transmitted from the living Christ to the seven assemblies, this can be applied in any age. I think there are churches which have a more Smyrnian atmosphere. I think Christians in Darfur, for instance, or under siege in Indonesia, or in the underground church of China, there's a particular applicability of the Smyrna, the persecuted church. I think there are some churches which are more Laodicean, some more Philadelphian. And in any church, among the members and constituents, you may have some which are Ephesians who have left their first love, you know. This is the richness of biblical application. Now, I'm going to advance to an even further application. I may not have all of you with me on this. There's been a little From my standpoint, erosion of dispensational thinking on this in recent years, I'm sorry to say, but I'm still one who goes along with this and, bear with me, indulge me on this point. And I'm not surprised to find it such being the perfection of Holy Scripture. I am of the persuasion that these seven churches do in point of fact foreshadow, adumbrate, that is, preview some ages in the history of the Church. I think that Ephesus is the apostolic church, just a honey of a church. Who wouldn't want to be the pastor at Ephesus? Oh, there was a challenge. Smyrna, what follows the Apostolic Age, the church that was persecuted until the Edict of Toleration under Constantine, 313-314, the Ten Days, the Ten Empire were wide persecuted. You say, well, you're pushing it a little. You're pushing it a little. Indulge me. Pergamos, the church under imperial favor, the Constantinian era, When the church and the state united under Constantine, who didn't submit to baptism until he was about ready to die, this was not a good... The church was more thriving under persecution than it was in the Constantinian era. There was compromise here. And the head of the Roman religion, the pagan religion, the Pontifex Maximus, That was the name they just transferred over automatically to the Bishop of Rome, which he bears to this day, Pontifex Maximus. Thyatira, the medieval church. Now, these churches are not strictly sequential in an absolute absurdiatum. That is to say, it's not a sharp, clear differentiation. I think Sardis is the church of the Reformation. Listen, it was an advance. There were some extraordinary things about the Church of the Reformation. But the living Christ said, you've got a name that you're alive but you're dead. There came a spiritual ossification in the Reformed churches. All of them. Do you realize that not one of the Reformers believed in the Great Commission? Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, they all felt it was fulfilled in the days of the apostles. There was no missions enterprise among the Reformers, with the possible exception of the Anabaptists, where there was a little quiver of missionary outreach, which eventuated among the Moravians and Zinzendorf and the Pietists, et cetera, et cetera. But we've still got a Sardean church today, but the lines aren't sharp here. There still are preserved churches of the Reformation, which are sound, but basically lifeless. They subscribe doctrinally to the creeds, but they're dead as a dodo. Then you've got the Philadelphian Church. This, I think, is the missionary revival church. It still exists in some places, praise be to God. The Church of the Open Door. I'll talk about that tonight when I talk about where the church is during the tribulation. They enter an open door. Where is the church during the tribulation? That's our subject tonight. But as the age draws to a close, there will be developments ecclesiastically, ecclesiologically, doctrinally. The Bible has much to say about the shape of religion as this age draws toward a close, and I believe this is Laodicea. You say, well, you're pushing it. Indulge me. I'm going to talk to you today about the church of the closed door. I think this is The apostate church, at the end of the church age, fulfilling many prophecies, which was repulsive to the living Christ, he said,