Why don't you grab your Bible and turn with me to the book of Proverbs. We'll start with Proverbs chapter 29, just for fun. It's interesting, I believe, you know, when Timothy was told by Paul, in the last days perilous times would come and, you know, and the list that's there, we've done that, studies in depth on that one. I don't wanna, you know, do that, over and over and over, but it really is amazing how our culture, our nation, our people are really in those end times sort of vibes. But when you see what's going on in the world, it can be disconcerting and troubling. But I've noticed that there's kind of a theme that I've noticed where pastors and churches are tiptoeing and walking on eggshells. They don't want to say anything that might get them in trouble or that's controversial. A lot of churches won't even talk about Bible prophecy because it's too controversial and it'll get you into trouble. And I've never really thought even about that. I love just teaching the Bible and if it gets me in trouble, so be it. I really could care less. Somebody said, bro, what are you gonna do? You're on Candace Owens this week. What are you gonna do? I just replied back, it's no big deal. Because it really is not. I don't look at that as a big deal. I'm just speaking truth about what's going on around us. And we'll maybe address that a little bit, not much, but tonight. But because of the fear of media or repercussions of what you might say or stuff like that, people try to sort of tiptoe through some of the topics. I always like people that kind of just speak their mind and say what they're thinking, and especially when it comes to the Word of God, to never shy away from just speaking what is true. We need to be bold. The Bible says, wicked flee when no man's chasing you, but the righteous... are as bold as a lion. I love bold people, especially bold Christians, not purposefully offensive or just being jerks. That's not what the Bible is saying, but to not be afraid. But this culture of fear has kind of settled into the church of Jesus Christ. And that's why I want you to kind of look at Proverbs 29, 25. because this is really what I'm seeing, and the word is always true and right. But it says in Proverbs 29, 25, the fear of man bringeth a snare, but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe. Fear, there's an anxiety and fearfulness in our culture. Well, what if I get in trouble? What if somebody at work tells on me? Or what if I get on the Candace Owens show for what I said? No, we can't really be ruled by that. We gotta speak truth and we gotta speak it powerfully. We also have to speak it in love, but at the same time to not shy away. But what does the fear of man bring? It brings a snare. Now, a lot of, you know, you might be thinking, okay, like a trap, and it is that, but there's an interesting word that's associated with the Hebrew word for this word snare, and the Jews would have a mental image that we don't have from the original language, and the word snare is linked, does anybody know what it's linked to in Jewish times? Hook in the nose, right. Now, what's a hook in the nose? You guys from Portland, you're like, huh? Awesome, hook in the nose. Can I get a hoop in there or whatever? That's awesome. No, hook in the nose. The idea is when the Jews were taken off into captivity by the Assyrians, you know, 720 BC, the Assyrians were brutal people, but they hooked all the slaves and the captives together with hooks in their noses. If you didn't have a perforated septum by that time, you sure did afterward. They just hook you right in the nose. And it was a way for them to control people. You wouldn't try to run for it, you know, cause that kind of hurt if you had a hook in your nose. But that's the idea. You know, and Satan wants us to operate in that kind of fear where we have the fear of man so that we're afraid to move. And we have that hook in the nose. It's just a snare. It's a trap. It's meant to disable you. That's the idea here. The fear of man bringeth a snare, but whoso puts his trust in the Lord shall be safe. What a promise that is. Speaking of which, flip over to Proverbs 3. Since we're in Proverbs, we're living in such weird, perilous times, I'm reminded of maybe one of the most famous of all Proverbs, in Proverbs chapter three, where we're reminded in the wisdom of Solomon, Proverbs chapter three, verses five through seven. It says, trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes, fear the Lord, and depart from evil. Wow, what a simple and profound declaration of what we're supposed to do. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, not with just part of your mind and heart, with everything you got, trust in the Lord. For sure, don't lean on your own understanding. Why? Because your understanding and my understanding combined, is a waste of time. Like what I know and what you know, and we combine all of our knowledge, all the human knowledge in all one big basket, guess what? It's still a waste of time. We need to go with the biblical understanding. So in all your ways, acknowledge Him, the Lord, and He will direct your paths. And then it sort of puts on there, a lot of people leave this part out, verse seven, you know, don't be wise in your own eyes. Boy, that describes our culture. We think we're so smart. We think we know what we're talking about. And all the talking heads and all the people, well, Brett, you're a talking head and you think you know everything. Here's my sort of disclaimer. I would admit that I sit around and talk in front of people. But I'll just tell you, my goal is to say, look what the Bible says, look what scripture says. I wanna get away as much as I can from my own thoughts and my own opinions, as much as I possibly can. That's why I go verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book through the Bible. If you're just joining us here online and watch only our Prophecy Updates, I'm just gonna say this is the JV, Prophecy Updates JV. Varsity is when we go through the Bible on Wednesday nights, Sunday mornings, we go verse by verse, chapter by chapter through the Bible. I love Prophecy Updates, but it's funny, it's one of the biggest things we do online. But here in Athie Creek, it's one of the smallest things we do here is a prophecy update. And you know what? I'm not discouraged by that. I'll tell you why. Because I want people to pile in our Wednesday night Bible study as we go through the Bible. We don't skip a verse, chapter, book. We just go right through. By the way, when it comes to end time stuff, There's so much disagreement, and we might even talk about that a little bit today, but among churches about how the world's gonna shake out, eschatology, as it's called, the study of end times and the last days. But one thing you'll note is people, churches, pastors that go verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book through the Bible, we're all on the same page. We all teach the same thing. We're all dispensationalists, the evil dispensationalists. I'll talk about that later, but you know, we're all dispensational, we're all pre-trib, you know, like most verse by verse, chapter by chapter, they're pre-trib, pre-millennial in their views of eschatology, and I'll tell you why. It's really hard to teach the Bible if you're an amillennialist, because, well, one fourth of the Bible's a waste of time. Why even talk about stuff? Because it's already passed. There's no prophecies that need to be fulfilled. The end of the world really was technically AD 70 when Jerusalem was crushed. So Matthew 24 is all done now. So it doesn't mean anything to us. And the book of Revelation, that's already happened or whatever your view is, preterism or whatever. It's really hard to teach through the Bible. You kind of want to skip those passes because it doesn't make a lot of sense. By the way, it's easy to avoid Bible prophecy if you're just strictly, I'm not saying all topical teaching churches do this, but if you just choose your topics in a church and a pastor just picks his verses, 50 plus sermons a year, minus Christmas and Easter and stuff, and you're just picking your topics, you get 50 topics. But how many topics do I cover in a 15 year period? I'm trying to do what Paul said he did to the Ephesian church in Acts chapter one. He says, I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God. We cover every verse, every chapter, every book of the Bible. And man, I just think that's so needed today more than ever. We're really lacking that in the world today. You know, our radio program has gone national in the last few years now, and we're all over the country. But one of the comments we're getting is, wow, we thought J. Vernon McGee was the only guy in the cosmos who went verse by verse. Like, they're acting like I'm doing something new and innovative, but it's actually something really old and what churches used to do. But many of them, most of them have bailed. from verse by verse through the Bible teaching. So you can avoid the rapture of the church, the millennial kingdom, literal. You can avoid literal interpretation of the Bible and stuff like that. You can just talk about balancing your checkbook and having a happy family and how to raise children and all the topics that people are tithing and then more tithing and then tithing after that. You can talk about whatever topics you want. But when you go through the Bible, it's funny. The frequency that topics come up, it's divinely ordained. When I'm going verse by verse, I'm not saying, hey, today I think I'll talk. By the way, one of the accusations that I got from Sunday's teaching was Brett's just talking about politics, about how we're supposed to treat or think about Israel. Well, that's just incorrect and I can prove it. The reason, we're in the book of Romans and we go through the book of Romans and guess what Romans 9, 10 and 11 is about? How we're supposed to treat Israel and our attitude as Gentiles and you know, like it's where we're at in our Bible study, like it's not a coincidence, we call that a Godowince. God has ordained where we're at in the Bible and the topics come up in the right frequency and what have you. So anyway, I'm just wanting to, you know, I know a lot of you Atheist Creekers are like, yeah, we already know all this stuff. But for those of you that are out there, look for a good solid through the Bible teaching church. Wherever you can find a verse by verse Bible teaching church, I'll show you there's probably a really healthy church there. Now, what if you can't find one? What if the nearest Bible teaching church is 150 miles from you? Find a local church and try to be loving and kind and clean what you can, but then join us on Wednesday nights live online. You can just jump in with us. We're happy to have y'all. And even you can catch up on our Sundays and Wednesdays online. So just a quick reminder of that. So, you know, so it really pays to read your Bible. And by the way, you know, through the Bible, people tend to be smarter, I think, in theology and in doctrine. I've noticed that. I know guys that have seminary degrees who know less than a lot of atheist creakers who've just been going through the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter. People will act like you're stupid. or you didn't get a college degree, or you only go to a church that teaches through the Bible. Like people diminish that, but it is funny. People that actually love the Bible and are smart, I've noticed there's a lot of those people, smart people. By the way, did you see this just this last week? Man with the highest IQ in the world, Young Hoon Kim, he's got an IQ of 276. He said this boldly, he said, as the world record highest IQ record holder, I believe that Jesus Christ is God and the way and the truth and the life. I thought that was kind of cool. So the smartest dude in the world is on our side. You gotta love that. But you might be the dumbest person in the room, but if you know Jesus Christ as your savior, that's all you really need to know. I mean, that's the beautiful thing. The most simple of people we can come to Christ and believe. But I would say it's a smart thing to believe in Jesus, to accept him as God in the flesh who died on the cross for our sins and rose from the grave and accept. So now when it comes to the things of the Bible that deal with prophecy, it's at least one fourth. There's kind of a little bit of an internal debate. We Bible prophecy lovers, we debate how much of the Bible's prophecy, minimally one fourth of the Bible's prophecy. Some say one third. So if you don't want to talk about Bible prophecy, like a lot of churches, you've got to rip out one fourth of your Bible and not talk about those things. I hope you understand that. So that's an important thing to know. And it's such a bummer. You know, the churches are so poor, they're so much poorer because they're not getting the richness of Bible prophecy. It confirms the validity of the word and its power. It helps us to have trust. And honestly, you know, some people say Bible prophecy updates they freak me out, you're talking about wars and weapons and stuff like that, it freaks me out. Yeah, but we know the end of the story. We know how it's all gonna shake out and we know the Lord wins in the end and because he wins, we win and he's overcome the world and we're embedded in the safety of Christ and we know how it's gonna work out. And not only that, I kinda like that we get to have the signs of the times. what's going on around us. You know, a key verse about discerning the times that we live in, Jesus was talking and really rebuking the religious leaders of that day. In Matthew chapter 16, verses two and three, Jesus answered and said to them, when it is evening, you say, it will be fair weather for the sky is red. And in the morning it will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, you can discern the face of the sky, but can you not discern the signs of the times? The context of this is the religious guys going, show us a sign. Like there should have been signs that they acknowledge. Jesus feeding the 5,000, Jesus raising the dead, Jesus cleansing the lepers. There was plenty of signs, but they didn't want that sign. They wanted their own particular sign. And Jesus is basically saying, man, you guys are really missing out. You can even look out in the window and say, what's the weather gonna be tonight? But you're a hypocrite. You can't even discern the signs of the times. So Jesus, in criticizing them, it makes me wanna be a person who's saying, should we do what Jesus is suggesting here and be discerners? of the days we live in? I think the answer is yes. And I think it's hypocritical to be someone who says, we're religious and we know scripture and we know the Bible, but we don't care about discerning the times that we're living in. I think that's why Jesus called these guys hypocrites. So that's why we do look at the signs of the times. So I'm gonna do a little around the world in 60 minutes tonight, maybe, we'll see how long, but we'll kind of discern the times we're living in. Now, since our last prophecy update, we do these once a month, I gotta say a lot's happened. There was a whole war, the Israel and Iran war. Now, just to get you updated on that, the conflict between Israel and Iran in 2025, it's known as the Iran-Israel war, but the United States was involved with it as well, but it lasted 12 days. On June 13th, Israel launched a major operation against Iran. Now, what was interesting was the population of the world that acted like Iran was just attacked unprovoked. Like that's the narrative of a lot of the world, which is so ridiculous. Oh, it's so painful to know that people just don't have a clue. All the proxies of Israel's been fighting a seven front war. And really since October 7th, a long time ago, like it's been a long, hard war. Rockets have been smashing into Israel and killing people. Now, some will say, yeah, but the ratio is just a few hundred Israelis that have died, and the Israelis have killed tens of thousands of people. But if you really kind of think about that logic, Israel's been getting pounded by rockets for decades now. How long is a nation supposed to just sit there and let rockets fly over their border and spend billions of dollars trying to just defend yourself with your, even though you have good technology, should they be docked for their technology? Like, it's almost like Israel should be docked. Well, they have the Iron Dome, so it's really not fair. Oh, so should we make a fair and take away their iron dome and say, okay, go ahead and get killed. Cause those rockets would kill y'all if we took away your iron dome. Like the logic there is so painful. And Israel's been fighting really historically, it might just be one of the most amazing wars in that they fought a seven front war. But it really, is it a seven front war or is it Iran with all of her proxies fighting against Israel? That's the thing. Iran's paid, they paid for Hezbollah and for Hamas and for the Houthis and all the people that have been fighting against Israel. And Iran's been doing that for a long time, sort of the proxy war sort of thing. So if you didn't know what was going on, it wasn't an unprovoked attack. But not only that, it wasn't just, you know, in a retaliation. It wasn't that. It was a preventative attack that Israel did make on Iran. And it has to do with technology that was being made. So, you know, the nuclear weaponry that the Iranians so desperately want. This is why Israel attacked June 13th, 2025. It ended just 12 days later. Ceasefire was announced on June 24th, brought the war to the end. A few key aspects, Israeli strikes. Israel initiated a conflict by targeting not women and children and population. It's funny how nobody talks about Israel in a good way. Like it's always those horrible Israelis attack the poor Iranians. No, they attacked nuclear sites, military installations. You're getting it backwards. The Iranians have been shooting rockets at neighborhoods and civilian population. It's just a lot of lies out there. But Israel called it Operation Rising Lion and hitting nuclear facilities and military sites and part of their infrastructure. The response of Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks on Israel. Now, Trump was sort of tickling the trigger. Was the United States gonna get involved and were we gonna help? And why was that such a big deal? Well, I'll tell you here in a minute why it was a big deal. But, you know, the United States did involve ourselves targeting Iran's nuclear sites that Israel couldn't get to. Ceasefire was brokered largely, I think, and Trump gets the credit for brokering this ceasefire. Hopefully it holds. There's a lot of people that are dubious about that. I wouldn't really want to argue one way or the other. But the conflict ended with basically a ceasefire. But there's a lot of imagery that comes. People kind of think this was a short little war. This is a picture of the Western Wall on June 13th. And why is nobody there? Jerusalem, everyone's in bunkers. Nobody was out. I've been to the Western Wall a ton of times and I've never seen it where it's empty like this. Attack on IRIB's live news. This is a picture of their news station in Tehran that Israel bombed. That was because they were communicating with their television. But basically it was the Air Force, United States B2 Spirit, This is one that went preparing Operation Midnight Hammer, was the United States codename, at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. The technology the United States has to be able to fly these from Missouri, to Tehran or to Iran and then come back, nobody else in the world can do that. It really is, Trump wasn't just boasting, we're better than everybody else. In this particular area, the world cannot do what we can do. We can take a missile, whatever kind of rocket or missile, bunker buster or nuclear weapon if we wanted, and we can fly it anywhere in the world. And because of these are stealth bombers, they can't see us coming. And it is something that's quite amazing. You have to sort of applaud our Air Force for their invention. And also it was really proven to be quite successful as far as that goes. Now, by the way, was it a successful attack? Well, there's a lot of mixed opinions. I'm of the humble opinion that I think it was way more successful. than the Iranians want you to believe. And the enemies of MAGA and enemies of Trump, they like to say it was a totally unaffected and the bombs didn't do any damage at all. I meant to put a video snippet of, there was an Iranian official that was caught talking about how much damage was actually done to the deep bunkers of the nuclear program. And it was substantial, he said. And he got in trouble for saying that. In fact, I haven't seen him. since he said that. I meant to bring that video. You could probably look that up, but you know, it was quite an amazing, you know, this midnight hammer kind of, if you're interested in anything, it's worth looking at the mission itself. It was quite a deal, but destruction, you know, in Tehran and in Iran was substantial, but also don't forget Israel, a lot of those missiles went through. and caused all kinds, this is a town, I've driven through this town in Israel, in Bat Yam, Israel, after the Iranian missile strike, they're cleaning up debris and getting bodies and stuff like that, it's really sad. Israel, civilian populations were hurt, quite a few deaths in Israel, sad to say. You know, I gotta say, no matter who's dying, it's so sad. Warfare is ugly, and I never relish in anybody dying, especially children and families, you know, even the Palestinian people that have been killed. You know, I think the numbers are really messed up. If you're listening to Al Jazeera news, all those people the Jews killed in Gaza were just children and women. That's what you'll hear. But if you talk to the IDF, if you believe them, which I think their numbers are more accurate, most of those were active Hamas fighters of the tens of thousands of people that died. There were obviously civilian casualties like there always is in war. And if anybody's chiding against Israel for killing casualties or civilians in the Gaza war, then we all have to owe Israel an apology, because we were way worse. They've been way more surgical in their attack in Gaza than we ever were in our wars, whether they talk about Vietnam or World War II. I mean, we just carpet bombed cities. We nuked. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of people indiscriminately. So it's really funny how the world sanctimoniously looks at Israel, which surgically put out strikes against the tunnels in Gaza and really did their best, even dropped leaflets saying, we're gonna bomb this area, please get out of this area, unless you're a Hamas fighter, you can stay if you want to. Nobody's ever done that. And yet Israel gets all the grief even though there's nobody like Israel who's tried to avoid civilian. Now, I know there's people online saying, oh, that guy's just giving rhetoric and all that. Boy, I'll tell you, if you do a little deep dive in that and do your research, you'll find out that is in fact the truth. I'm not saying every IDF soldier is perfect. I'm not even saying the decisions IDF make are always right. But I'm saying their main objective was to get the Hamas fighters, kill them because they can't afford to have any more rockets flying over their southern border. Israel has the right to defend itself and God even talks about Israel and how the nations would come and make war against Israel. So the hatred for Israel, the vitriol and even the propaganda, These are some of the signs of the times that we're watching that really is setting it up for the very last days, the Battle of Armageddon. Because all the nations of the world are eventually gonna come against Israel in the Battle of Armageddon. That's gonna be the end of the story. and God's gonna come and save them. It seems to me like Israel will be hanging by a thread when that happens, but that's when Christ will return. And then what is Christ gonna do? Christ is gonna make war against all the nations of the world and save Israel. That's the end of the story. So as we see the world hating Israel more and more, it means we're getting closer. These are discerning the times that we're living. So this is sad to see the destruction on all sides. But again, I'll just say it again, because people haven't heard this enough in my opinion. If Israel dropped their weapons today and said, okay, we're not fighting anymore, they would be annihilated by the Arab nations surrounding them tomorrow. But if the Arab nations and the Palestinians and the Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis and Iran would drop their weapons, there would be peace in the Middle East. That should tell you a lot. And that's not, I mean, you don't even have to be very smart to understand that's the fact in the Middle East. Israel's not looking to be warmongers. It's funny how there are people that are trying to, not only Israel, but the United States, because Trump attacked those bunkers with the nuclear weapons of Iran, that he's a warmonger. And by the way, Bible prophecy pastors that are pre-millennial dispensationalists that believe in the rapture of the church, they're warmongers. Did you know that? We're all warmongers now. That's the narrative Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and others are trying to purport, which is kind of interesting. Now, one of the things people don't realize also about this is Israel had to do this because Iran has made their objective very clear. They said, we want to wipe Israel off the map. And we want to build nuclear weapons to do it. Oh, Brett, they're just enriching uranium for the purpose of power and resources in the country. Iran wouldn't use nuclear bombs against Israel. Iran wouldn't blow up the United States with nuclear weapons. Iran's not that bad. They're just angry with Israel and America should stay out of the problem. They're not bothering us. So why did the United States, like there's, this is kind of the narrative here. Have you guys heard this narrative? That's kind of the narrative. It's ridiculous. By the way, kind of interesting that people are saying that, but they just haven't been watching. One of my favorite Iranian presidents was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The reason is because I like saying his name, and you have to wipe your mouth after saying it, but Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he, He didn't hide any of his cards. He just said, we want to kill Americans and we want to kill Jews. We want to wipe Israel off the map. We want to annihilate, exterminate the Jews from off the planet. Like he was very, now the leaders after Achmed and Jud were a little tiny bit more diplomatic, sort of, but even they, death to Israel, death to America, Israel's the little Satan, America's the big Satan, and that they wanted to blow both nations off the map, and the idea is that's why they need a nuclear weapon. But they've told us, I believe I ran, that they don't wanna develop nuclear weapons. They need 90% enriched uranium just for power. If you know the way it works, 90% enriched uranium is for weapon grade, you know, nuclear bombs. It's a weapons grade level. If you don't believe me, just, this stuff's all over. This is the Iranian parliament video I wanna show you. The MPs are there in their parliament building. This is like, this would be like in our House of Representatives or our Senate, you know, the Iranian leadership. And listen to what they're chanting, you know, but they're saying it in their own language, but they're chanting, death to America. And in this chant, they're threatening to use a nuclear bomb against the American homeland. Here you go. These guys can never have lights though. They could make that happen. That's so ridiculous. Why do they have lights on? If you don't believe me, look this up. This is easy stuff. There's an interesting website, what is it called? Memory, how many of you guys have looked at Memory? M-E-R-I, I think is what it is. It's a great site because basically they take all the crazy stuff you hear from the imams of the Middle East and what they're saying, and it just translates them. It's just simple translation, news programs, preachings from imams, and they're saying stuff that's just crazy, that Americans don't believe. But I'm just saying, if this nation, Iran, is saying, we're gonna blow up America, We should probably listen to that and not just go, whatever, they're nice people, they're not gonna blow us up. Because the minute they can get the weapon, they will do that. That's why Israel and the United States have, we've always said, whether it's Bill Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama, Trump, Bush, whoever your president, that we've all said, Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. It's not just a Trumpian sort of thing. It's anybody that knows the world scene, as our presidents tend to do once they get into office, like, yeah, Iran is a real threat to the security of the United States. So that's one thing. So I think Iran actually is an American problem. I don't know how that ties into Bible prophecy as much. It is interesting. I just wanna tuck away as far as Bible prophecy. America is shockingly sort of out of Bible prophecy. We're not really talked about in the last days, which is really interesting. It makes me wonder what's gonna happen to America. I have a fun theory and sort of a not so fun theory. Which one do you wanna hear? Both, okay, I'll do both. First, the not so fun theory. You know, Iran has been sending its people along with a bunch of jihadists all around the world, and they've been setting up their places, especially in Portland, because that's where, if you notice, that's where some of the biggest cells, jihadist cells are in Portland, Oregon, if you didn't know that. And they're getting ready to attack us internally and maybe they're gonna be successful. Maybe Iran, maybe other nations are gonna all turn on America. And because we're so woke and wacko and our military we let go in the next 10 years or so, maybe we just cease to be a strong, powerful nation and we're not even a factor. That could be a possibility. To me, maybe the more fun theory is the rapture of the church happens tomorrow. And then what happens to the United States of America after the rapture of the church? I think we will be back on our heels to say the least. because I think a lot of key American people will be taken up to be with the Lord. And we'll be just trying to figure out how to survive as a nation after a massive disappearing of our military and people and leaders. But you know, we'll still have all the news people and stuff like that. But no, I'm just kidding, just kidding. So all that to say, Iran is a threat and it does kind of make me think as a watchman, as somebody who's kind of looking at the signs of the time, what's going on? What's gonna happen with the United States of America? That's why when I was talking about Trump being elected, whether you love him or hate him or you're a Republican or Democrat or liberal or conservative, whatever, no matter what your view is, I do think that Trump being our president, if you're comparing it to biblical, things that are going to happen, particularly with the United States and around the world, it seems to me like because of that, it seems to be slowing down. I would say maybe this is just a season where things are actually getting better. Boy, I should probably spend some time talking about, you know, every time war happens in Iran and Turkey gets in and Russia, we always talk, what about Gog and Magog? What about Gog and Magog? But if you remember in Ezekiel 38, you know, one of the things that it talks about is it'll be during a time that's very different than most of the other times in the world. Does anybody, what's gonna be this like during, when the Gog and Magog thing comes down? Time of? peace and safety and security for Israel. So that's why, you know, when Steve, the tour guide gets on, he's always like, ah, this isn't Magog, Magog. And I'm like, why do you think that, Steve? And it's because he says, it says it there in Ezekiel, it says it's gonna be time of peace and safety and unwalled villages. Like it's gonna be a time of peace when that all comes down. Now, by the way, Steve believes, I think he's kind of landing on thinking that the Gog Magog War, I shouldn't speak for Steve, I'll have him on again. And I don't say I agree with him on this, but I do understand his argument. He believes the Gog Magog War is the Battle of Armageddon, which is kind of interesting. Maybe I'll have him talk about that. I don't want him to convince you though, so I'll put some duct tape over his mouth. No, I'm just kidding. No, it's an interesting theory, and I think it's worth listening to. All that to say, so really one of the things that we do notice, if Israel suddenly making like the Abraham Accords and there's peace and all this stuff, some people go, oh, well, that means Gog and Magog is not gonna happen. It's actually kind of the opposite. Well, Brett, which one is it? Is it gonna be war and terror or peace and safety? The answer? Yes, I think all of it is interesting to watch. I think it makes us Bible prophecy guys, by the way, when we get all in fact, this is Gog Magog, which I hear prophecy people do that all the time. I've always said, don't do that. Don't say this is Gog Magog until it really is Gog Magog of Ezekiel 38. Don't say that because it discredits us. But I think we're kind of looking at what's going on and sort of discerning. That's what we have to discern the times. And peace and safety is part of the equation that we should look at. Could Israel be leaning that way? They took out virtually Hezbollah. Hamas is all but destroyed. Iran is powerless to some degree right now. The question is, how long will it take them to get it back into shape or whatever? But Israel's sitting pretty good right now. And that to me might be evidence of things to come. I hope you guys kind of keep that tucked away in the back here thinking. Now, with Israel and all that, I've got my second point here. I wanna talk about the boy who cried wolf. Does anybody know who I'm talking about? That the world is saying there's a boy who cried wolf, anybody? Somebody said it, Netanyahu. Why are they saying Netanyahu's the boy who caught a wolf? And remember the old story, the kid made up that there's a wolf, there's a wolf, and the town's all like, yeah, whatever, you lie all the time. Then there really was a wolf, and he came and said, there's a wolf, and the town's like, oh, he always lies, so whatever. Well, they're saying Netanyahu is the boy who cried wolf. And this was all over the media, but mostly Muslim. Like if you're watching Al Jazeera TV, one of their main narratives on Al Jazeera the past few weeks, from basically the war that started June 13th until the present day, But I thought it was interesting that Megyn Kelly picked up the narrative and did her own sort of thing on this. And I want to show you this. But I understand why she thinks this. It's really a valid question. But I'm a little shocked because Megyn's really smart. And she knows a lot of geopolitics. I think she knows a lot of stuff. But I'm a little surprised she doesn't know why what she's saying is irrelevant and not even worth talking about. But it's worth defending, I think, a little bit. Here, let me just, this is a couple minutes, so stick with it. Here she goes. That is real, is Bibi Netanyahu is suffering right now when it comes to some large factions of the American people with looking like the boy who cried wolf. All right, now, I'm sorry, but I've been in the news business for 20 years now, and every single one of them, I have heard him say that Iran is months, at most a couple of years away from getting a nuclear bomb. Every single one of them. I mean, we pulled a little montage of it over the years, but I mean, we could have gone back to the 1990s with Bibi doing this. Here's just a sampling. The most dangerous of these regimes is Iran. Only the United States can lead this vital international effort. to stop the nuclearization of terrorist states. But the deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely close. They're very close. They're six months away from being about 90% of having the rich uranium for an atom bomb. By next spring, at most, by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it's only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb. You don't want this Iran to have neither nuclear weapons or the capability to make nuclear weapons to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb in short order. In a few weeks or a few months, they could do that unless that's changed. With this massive capacity, Iran could make the fuel for an entire nuclear arsenal. and this in a matter of weeks once it makes that decision. Okay, so he said it a lot and I think a large portion of the American populace is reacting to that in not believing him and not believing him when he says it now and our president acts Okay, so interesting, and it really, you're like, yeah, he's gonna lack credibility there with the way that's presented. And she sort of, in my opinion, took the bait of Al Jazeera and made that the narrative. But here's the thing, if you know what really is going on, and maybe you, AC Creek Prophecy Update folks know the answer because I've been feeding you the answer to this for the past 20 years myself. What happens? I believe the truth is Iran every single time, I'm not defending Netanyahu by the way, I'm just saying this boy who cried wolf thing is ridiculous and here's why. Every time he got in front of the nations and stuff and said that stuff, Iran was close to getting nuclear weapons, they were. But the world was inactive and could care less and did nothing about it. Well, brethren, why didn't in three weeks they get a nuclear weapon? Like Netanyahu said, anybody have the answer to that? Israel killed them. by the Mossad, like it wasn't a big warfare thing. It was like, well, let me just remind you, I'll just give you a few of the fun news that everybody's like, what's going on? Do you remember this in 2021? I showed you this, blackout hits Iran nuclear site and what appears to be Israeli sabotage. This power failure that appeared to have been caused by a deliberately planned explosion struck Iran's Natanz. That's one of the big three that the United States bombed the daylights out of just a few weeks ago. What happened in 2021? A mysterious explosion struck the uranium enrichment site on Sunday in 2021, April 13th, in what Iranian officials called the act of sabotage that they suggested had been carried out by Israel. By the way, this happens all the time in the last 30 years. Here's another one, Institute for Science and International Security article, mysterious fire and explosion in the new Natanz Advanced Centrifuge Assembly Facility. The article says, following closely, this is in 2021. Following closely on the heels of two unexplained incidents in Iran involving explosions and fires, in that case reportedly killed 19 people, media reported early on July 2, 2020, that a fire and apparent explosion had occurred at the Natanz enrichment site, which houses large underground enrichment halls and several above-ground workshops. I could go on and on. What about this one? This one was back in 2007 when it was first deployed. It's a virus or maybe more technically a worm, Stuxnet, NBC article. Stuxnet was deployed against Iran in 2007, researchers say. This is, of course, Akhmedenejad, right there, back when he was president then, trying to figure out what in the world is wrong with their nuclear reactor program and stuff. Researchers at Symantec have uncovered a version of the Stuxnet. Stuxnet computer virus that was used to attack Iran's nuclear program in November of 2007, two years earlier than previously thought. Planning for the cyber weapon, the first publicly known example of a virus being used to attack industrial machinery, began at least as early as 2005. According to an 18-page report, the security software company published on Thursday. So the Stuxnet net worm was a sophisticated piece of malware discovered in 2010. It was at work since 2005 that targeted basically Iran's control systems, industrial control, specifically used against Iran's nuclear program. So every time Netanyahu was getting in front of the U.N. saying They're this close to getting uranium. We need to, as a world, we can't let this happen. Yeah, whatever. And so the same week he would go say those things, mysterious explosions and a setting back of Iranian nuclear program that nobody really talked much about other than, what are these mysterious explosions? And what's interesting is that's the way Israel was doing that. Netanyahu is interesting. Remember when he was speaking at the UN and as he was finishing up his rap in front of the UN, missiles started flying. Remember that? As he was speaking, it was already underway and the world like, wow, he attacked while he was speaking at the... This is what's really going on. With all due respect to Megyn Kelly, she's asking the right question, but the answer is simple. It's irrelevant because the world could care less. So the reason he's been saying that over and over again is because Israel kept taking steps to repeatedly push back their timeline. Now, you say, well, what made the difference this time? Why did Israel all of a sudden go to big war against Iran? Why didn't he just do the same thing? Mossad seems to be doing really well for themselves. Need I mention pagers and walkie talkies and stuff like that? The Mossad is six, eight, 10 years ahead of everyone right now. So why now? And why did the United States have to get involved? The answer to that is, Israel was taking care of these sites, Natanz and the others. But there was a certain bunker that was so deep, and the Iranians figured out that the Israelis could not, with their weapon systems, go as deep as they needed to destroy the program. So the Iranians just kind of were, outsmarting the Israeli technology by just going deeper and deeper bunkers and stuff like that. Well, that's where the United States had to use its weapon systems, because we have bombs that those B-52 bombers, stealth bombers, can fly and go way deep into the earth and then explode. Our weapons technology is scary. It actually blows through the ground, goes really, really deep, and then there's a huge explosion. There's some that are called bunker busters, but there's even more high-tech weapons than that, that we can't even talk about actually in some ways. But United States does have that technology. So kind of interesting. Now, there's another thing that I'd like to talk about before we leave the topic of Israel right now. I wanted to mention just quickly tonight, Israel and Syria. because there's a lot really happening that I think is key to the end time scenario. And that is, I wanted you to see this article that brought out, basically it's World Israeli News, W-I-N. Syria demands Israeli withdrawal from demilitarized zone in exchange for peace deal. And this is largely, I've noticed, people haven't really noticed this. But this is the new leader of Syria. He looks very in a suit and everything now, but he was Mr. Al-Jazeera, or Mr. Al-Qaeda just a few years ago. He even had the big Al-Qaeda giddy-up and stuff. Now he's looking very formal and stuff. But the Syrian sources have suggested the Golan Heights could be turned into, this is what the Syrians are saying to Israel, the Golan Heights could be turned into a peace garden. for joint economic projects of Syria and Israel and possibly also Jordan, which borders the strategic plateau. Boy, if that's not a bunch of nonsense, I would never, this is what they want. Israel, if you've ever been to Israel, you realize that the Golan Heights is strategically important for Israel to keep the Golan Heights. Well, but they're occupiers. Nope. Israel won that fair and square in battle when they were being attacked by Arabs. We've been up on the Golan Heights. The barbed wire is still there. The foxholes are still there. There's blown up tanks still there. Some of the biggest tank battles in the world happened for that very area, the Golan Heights. Trump, interestingly, in his first term, declared the Golan Heights belongs to Israel, the end. And Israel was thankful for that, because they're not gonna give up the Golan Heights. It's too strategic. If you give up that, it basically lets the Syrians put their weapons up on the top of the hill, just looking down on Israel. And even in modern weapon technology today, the high ground is the place you wanna have, even in modern day. So the Golan Heights is the high ground, and Israel looks down on Syria to defend themselves. When we're on the Golan Heights, we've been there when rockets were flying and you could actually see them and hear them even feel the repercussions because there's still warfare going up on the Golan Heights. But I just wanted you to keep your eye on that. The Syrians are calling it a peace garden that they'll make it into. By the way, remember Muslims can lie. Their doctrine teaches if you're furthering the cause of Islam and wiping out Jews, you can lie through your teeth and not have to keep your word. That's part of Islamic theology. Well, I did want to talk a little bit about antisemitism tonight because it is reaching even feverish levels around the world. You know, Rolling Stone article, Glastonbury Bosses, which is, interesting, appalled by Bob Villen's death to IDF chant at festival June 29th. This is a few days ago. The Glastonbury bosses have said they are appalled by the comments made by a rap duo, Bob Villen, during their performance at the festival yesterday. Rapper Bobby Villen of the group led the crowds on West Holt's stage and chants, Free Free Palestine and Death Death to the IDF. Let me just show you this this is I just I don't want you to see this because there's you know Like tens of thousands of people at this concert and let's know what they're all free free free But have you heard this one though death death to the IDF death death to the IDF death death to the IDF Death death to the IDF Death death to the IDF If that's not bad enough, at this concert just a few weeks ago, he even said it more pointedly. He's saying death to every single IDF soldier. I'm just showing you one example, but this is going on all over the world and it's going on at Berkeley and Columbia University and Harvard. This antisemitism of just death to the Israelis, death to the Jews, death to the IDF, from the river to the sea, That statement is just on a rampage in the world today. New York Times tells us about Zoran Mamdani. He wins the New York City mayoral primary in a decisive 12-point victory against Cuomo, which is kind of interesting. So he's possibly gonna be winning the mayor role in New York, which is interesting. Something you and I should be kind of aware of. Shouldn't we learn something from Great Britain and UK and Germany? Like, you know, in the British, all their mayors, most of their mayors, most of their towns are led by Muslims now. There's Sharia law being introduced all over Great Britain. And if we're not careful as Americans, we're gonna be right behind them. This guy is a socialist. Trump calls him a communist. I'm gonna reserve that for later, because I'm not sure we can say he's a communist, but he is a socialist, but he's also a Muslim. And he's said a lot of things that he's very much anti-Semitic. In fact, Times of Israel has been tracking him because there's a lot of Jews in New York City and the Jews in Israel are like watching him. And New York City mayoral front runner Zohran Mamdani has said about Jews and Israel. He took the stage with Mohammed Khalil, the pro-Palestinian protest leader who was detained by the Trump administration. Mamdani supports the BDS movement, that's the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is basically a global campaign that aims to pressure Israel to comply with international law and all of Palestinian rights. It employs boycotts, divestment campaigns and sanctions against Israeli institutions, companies and individuals to basically defund Israel. He co-founded the Beudoin College's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. Mamdani agreed with the American Studies Association to boycott of Israel academic institutions in 2014. Mamdani has consistently referred to Israel and their retaliatory actions in Gaza as genocide. He's saying that's what they're doing. Mamdani has multiple interviews, and this is the big thing that made news last week. He would decline to condemn the term, globalize the infitada, intifada. What is intifada? It's basically war. The intifada wars were Arabs blowing up Jews in Israel and in Jerusalem. But the mantra now is globalize, make all the Jews dying, and even Americans and Christians are part of that. Globalize the intifada, and he would not condemn that. They asked him three times in one interview, you're not going to condemn this idea of globalizing intifada? And he would not. As mayor of New York City, he said he would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he set foot in New York City. Mamdani told a former MSNBC host, Madi Hassan, in December. But I could go on. Before his political career, Maumdani released rap songs under the monikers Young Karma Maum, and later Mr. Karma Maum, in 2017 song Salaam, where he praised the Holy Land Five and heads of former Islamic charity organizations founded in the United States who were convicted of aiding Hamas. So indirectly he has supported and even aided, tried to push aid in the direction of Hamas. This guy could be the mayor of New York City. I think as Americans that should cause concern. Now that's New York City. What about, since we're going around the world, and I think I'm already past my 60 second mark, or 60 minutes mark, but what about our own town, Portland, Oregon? How are we doing? in the world's scene. Portland is the tip of the spear in America of stupidity, wokeness, and failure, and all kinds of things, but I can't do this prophecy without showing you what happened in Salem. Like this happened just this last month in Salem. What was it, the House of Representatives of Salem? You gotta see this. ♪ I've done everything that I can ♪ Watch some of the representatives there clapping their hands, all delighted. Yeah, why are they there? I don't know. The drag queens doing their thing. Man. See the people clapping and tapping their feet along with it. Even if I was a godless secularist, I'd be like, ew. That's just gross, I don't get it. But if you're a Christian, now I've been pretty hard on the Los Angeles Dodgers, by the way, because of their organization accepting so many things like this. But I wanted to give a shout out to Dodgers pitcher, Clayton Kershaw. They made him on this gay pride, they made the Dodgers wear the rainbow LA hat there. But I like that Clayton Kershaw stood up and wrote Genesis 9, 12 through 16 on his hat right there, which is great. It says, and God said, this is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you, which is the rainbow. I love that he did that. Kudos to this guy. I think they should give him a raise. Back to Portland though, you know, crazy stuff. Did you see, like, these are things a lot of Portlanders, they just are numb to, but did you see the anti-ICE protest? Let me show you this. I would have the audio on this, but there's so many expletives by Antifa and all these protesters. It's just too obscene, but yeah. Fireworks going off. You can't discern if it's gunshot. We need to pray for the police and the SWAT for Portland because these guys are putting themselves in real danger. And there were law enforcement officers injured. There were five arrests, I believe. It's just kind of what's happened. But, you know, Jesus talked about the last days. And one of the things that Jesus said in Matthew chapter 24, verse 11 and 12, he said, many false prophets will arise in the last days and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold." Portland is lawless. The mayor of New York City, if he gets that role the guy was just talking about, he wants to defund the police. He's a defund the police guy, which is kind of interesting. So that's not worked out so well with Portland and other cities, but that's kind of what we're watching right now. So, you know, again, this is linked to Bible prophecy, lawlessness increasing. Now, 1 Timothy 4, verses one and two says, speaketh expressly, that in the latter times, some shall depart from the faith, giving ease to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. The reason I wanted to kind of wrap up with this is I wanna just spend a few minutes talking about, I mentioned Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, John Rich, and it wasn't really to call them out specifically, But there are three big representatives. Candace Owens after Sunday freaked out. And now this is kind of weird. Why did she freak out? Because as it turns out, and I'm just gonna tell you, I had no idea other pastors were gonna talk about this this last Sunday. I literally thought I'm the only guy who's probably gonna talk about this. But as it turns out, a lot, hundreds and hundreds of dispensational Bible believing through the Bible teaching churches had heard what Tucker and these guys are all saying. And we just said, that's really wrong. And it's antisemitic, the view that Candace and Tucker, I think is intelligent. I think he's trying to figure stuff out. But Candace has shown things that have been very perceived as antisemitic. Like I said on Sunday, I liked, I was a big fan. I think Candace is smart. In a lot of ways, an amazing person. I think somewhere, somebody got ahold of her and gave her some really, really bad information. That's the problem. And I'm really sad for her. I literally am praying for Candace because I like her as a person. But okay, so you say, well, Brett, then why did you call her an anti-Semite on Sunday? because that's what she's doing, that's what she's saying. Very anti-Semitic type comments. Now, on our comment section of YouTube, people are like, she's not, she didn't say that. It's like, hello, you need to just watch the news. If you're gonna say that, you should probably know what you're talking about. There's a reason why hundreds of pastors of churches came out and said, yeah, Candace is way off. And a lot of people don't really understand why. There's a lot of reasons why she's off. First of all, she's a Catholic trying to figure out end times theology. Which, by the way, the Catholics don't believe in end times theology. So now Candace is really smart about a lot of things, but she admits, I don't know anything really about my Catholic faith. My husband, I talk to him, he knows all about it, stuff like that. That's what she says. I heard her say that last week. But so what's your point, Brett? Well, she's been saying, and she's been saying dispensationalism and the Schofield Bible is evil. And even demonic, she's used the word demonic. Now, by the way, I think they've taken that one down, which is kind of interesting. I couldn't find it today, because I was gonna show you, but I've seen her say that in times past, but evil, demonic, whatever it is, and she's still bashing the Scofield Bible and dispensational teaching. Now, She's kind of freaking out. She's not admitting that she's freaking out, but she was shocked. First of all, she's wondering, why is everybody coupling me with Tucker Carlson? I haven't been on the Tucker Carlson show for two years. Why is everybody doing this? And here's the answer. Candice, if you're watching, it's because you're all saying the same thing. And it comes off very anti-Israel. And you're saying stuff about me and pastors. And the reason she said, why are all these dispensationalists panicking right now? We're not panicking. I am the least panicky person I've ever met. Anybody who knows me. But I am a person that when I hear somebody saying that what I believe is demonic, I am someone who's gonna say, that's wrong. And I'm gonna stand up. Now, here's the thing I'm not sure Candace bargained for. I think she got the vibe that the Schofield Bible is a secret, weird Bible that has been passed out by Jews and all this stuff. That's totally false. The Schofield Bible was the top Oxford seller of all Bibles for Oxford books and stuff, which I think is wonderful. It's just a King James Bible with some notes that she disagrees with, theologically, because she's a Catholic. All Catholics disagree with Schofield notes. There's a lot of things I disagree with the Catholic Church, like stupid things like selling indulgences that they used to do, or purgatory, which is not even biblical, or praying to the saints, or Mary, or like, we could go on and on. Having priests with pointy hats and robes, that's not even biblical. Like there's so much we could bash away if we wanted to, but I'm not really wanting to tit for tat, you know, that kind of thing. But I do want to say this. I think Candace didn't realize there's, probably 50 million dispensationalists in America that she's saying are demonic and from evil. And I don't think she understands how much of Christianity has the same view as we hold. And I think that she's feeling the pressure from saying stuff that was kind of not really well thought out. That's my opinion now. I wanna answer a question and then we'll wrap it up, because I know it's getting late, but I've noticed there's not much of this anywhere to be found, but I'd like to answer the question, what is dispensationalism? Because that's a word being tossed around by Tucker and Candace and John Rich and a lot of others, this evil doctrine of dispensationalism. And they're acting like it's just a few crazy, dispensationalist pastors that are paid by Jews. Candace is a thing. She's like, pastors like me have been paid off by Jewish people to preach. Have you guys heard this? I can say, as God is my witness, I've never been paid to say anything, and I wouldn't. What I do is I teach the Bible. and I teach verse by verse, and I just don't, nobody tells me what to say or preach. I don't even look at who gives of our tithes and offerings. I've never once looked at who gives money to Athe Creek, why? Our accountants can do that. I don't wanna know who our big givers are, because if I know that, there'd be that temptation I see other pastors, like, ooh, that guy's a big giver, and I've noticed he's kind of not as pro-Israel, so maybe I shouldn't talk about pro or more pro-Israel or whatever. I don't do that. I say, I don't know who gives what. If you give a million dollars to Athey Creek, I won't even know who you are. And if you feel like you wanna give that, God bless you, that's great. But no, I'm totally kidding. Don't do that. I've never asked for money, not one time at Athey Creek. But I would say I don't look at the tithes and offerings because I'm just gonna preach what I'm gonna preach. And I'm an equal opportunity offender. And by the way, all the premillennial, pre-trib, dispensational pastors that I know, would be horrified to think of being paid off to preach in any direction. So I think she's way off on this one, way, way off. But it's all about what is dispensationalism? Well, let me just give you an answer, because it's really kind of a simple thing, sort of simple, but dispensationalism, what is it? And is it biblical? That's the question. So a dispensational sort of, view has primary distinctives, and I want you to know there's really just a few. It's a way of ordering things, sort of an administration, a system of management. Now, who's managing and who's ordinating? God. God is orchestrating what's going on in the world. Would you guys agree with that, that God is orchestrating and and ordering events in the world. There's churches, open theism that says God doesn't know the future and it's out of his control. That's ridiculous. God knows the beginning from the end, the end from the beginning. He's ordering everything. So in theology, a dispensation is the divine administration of a period of time. Each dispensation is a divinely appointed age. Dispensationalism is a theological system, really, that recognizes biblical ages ordained by God to order the affairs of the world. And you say, well, is that biblical? Well, you know, the reason why we, through the Bible, people teach it is because it's so obvious that God has seasons and time periods throughout history that he orders the affairs of the world, and they're not all the same. So the two primary distinctives, number one, dispensation limit is a consistently literal interpretation of scripture, especially when it comes to Bible prophecy. People that are not dispensationalists, they tend to take more of a figurative interpretation of the Bible and leave out Bible prophecy or think that Bible prophecy's already happened and there's nothing to see here. So for example, when the Bible speaks of 1,000 years in Revelation chapter 20, you know, the dispensation, we call the kingdom age. The kingdom age, 1,000 years. We take that literally. A dispensationalist says it's gonna be a literal thousand years. A non-dispensationalist, a lot of them, their kingdom now or dominion theology, they think we're living in the kingdom right now. Well, is it gonna be a thousand years? No, it's not literal, so we don't count the days or years, we're living in the kingdom. By the way, if we're living in the kingdom, would you be really happy about that right now? No, the kingdom's gonna be amazing. Read Daniel chapter nine, where the Lord says, I'm gonna do an end of sin, and it's gonna be a glorious time, and the lion will lay down with the lamb, and there'll be an end of war, and disease, and all the sadness and sorrow, it's all gonna be gone. The kingdom is gonna be a different time than right now. I hope you understand that. So that's just one example. I take it literally. There's a thousand year kingdom that's coming. Jesus taught us to pray for that literal thousand year kingdom, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. So that's the first main component, consistently literal interpretation of scripture. By the way, I gotta say this, because there's always the cynics. There are things what the Bible gives us that is, it's sort of flagged as figurative. If the Bible gives us sort of a hint, this is figurative, or a symbol, or a type, then we take it as that. We don't take everything literally in the Bible, because sometimes the Bible says, no, this is more of a figurative sort of thing. But it tells us when it's that. I have found in all my years of teaching the Bible, I've been teaching for about 40 years now, that teaching literally the Bible is the most rewarding thing I do. Why? Because when I take literally what the Bible says, I've always been rewarded with being sort of right. It's not me, it's just that I'm saying what the Bible says literally, and guess what? Wow. You know, like, let me just give you one example. If you were a Bible teacher back in, you know, 1850, and you took the Bible literally, which there weren't a lot of them back in those days, honestly, and you say, well, Israel's not even a nation, so everything we can read about Israel's not really gonna be taken literally. So that's where a lot of this amillennialism and preterism kind of came from. There was no literal Israel, so they all thought it must be all figurative. But on May 14th, 1948, when Israel literally became a nation, just like the Bible literally said would happen in the last days, I will regather my people and give them a nation back, their land, their language, and their people would become mighty. And here in our lifetime, we've literally seen that come to pass. The non-literals are like, what a coincidence that that happened, like the Bible said. But we don't believe that's literal, even though it's what happened. Do you see the problem there? I have found being a Bible literalist, if I'm gonna be guilty of something, I even have guys that are literal Bible people like me, but they don't take it as literally as me, I'm gonna err on the side of taking it literally, because it's never steered me wrong. But there are times where the Bible does say this is figurative. The book of Revelation has a lot of figurative imagery, but I think there's a lot that's to be taken literally too. So you have to kind of be careful with those things. Number two, distinctive, a view of uniqueness of Israel as separate from the church in God's program. Now, I gotta say, I'm gonna introduce this right now. There are levels of dispensationalism. In fact, H.A. Ironside wrote a book called Hyperdispensationalism. years and years ago. I think it was like in the 1950s he wrote it. But he was a dispensationalist, but he warned against hyper-dispensationalism. Maybe you Calvinists know there's Calvinism, but then there's hyper-Calvinism. And a lot of you don't believe in hyper-Calvinism, but you do believe in Calvinism. There's things like that within dispensationalism. But this sort of hints at something where I'd say, And if you're gonna ask Pastor Brett if there's any moderate part of his dispensational view, I have to say with this, when it says the uniqueness of Israel is separate from the church and God's program, there's some asterisks to that in my understanding of the Bible. And first of all, Ephesians 2 talks about three groups, Gentiles, Jews, and the church. So I believe that the church, Gentiles that are saved, we're grafted into the vine. So it's not kind of an either or. We get to be joined to God's chosen people, grafted in. We talked about that on Sunday. Some of the hardcore dispensationalists really wanna keep it separate. You got your Jews, you got your church. And I think that that gets a little tricky, and just be aware of that. But remember, today, a Jew who accepts Jesus and is saved is now part of the church. and the saved group of people, saved by grace. By the way, dispensationalists believe that you're saved by Jesus. There's only one way to be saved, and that is Jesus Christ. So let me just show you a graph. I'm not gonna go into this in depth tonight, but this is kind of the way dispensations break out when you read your Bible. Most dispensationalists believe there are seven, distinct dispensations of time. You know, the first one is an age of innocence. When Adam and Eve were created and they walked without sin in the garden, it was a short-lived age. From the time they were created to the time they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. By the way, we don't even know how long that period is. I mean, it could be two weeks. It could have been 500 years. Like we really don't know how long Adam and Eve walked with God in the garden in the cool of the day and then ate of the fruit. but that's the age of innocence. Would you agree that the Garden of Eden era of the world is different than today? It's a different dispensation, time that God sort of governed the world in a little different way. I'm not gonna go into all these. The next one's the age of conscience, then the age of human government, and you can follow that through the Old Testament, then the age of promise, where God gives the promise to the Jewish people. That's a big one. You'll notice Genesis 12 is a reference there because that's part of the Abrahamic covenant. And so there was a covenantal period between Abraham receiving that until Moses and the law. That's the next dispensation. Are you guys kind of following me in these dispensations? I'm not going, you can look this up, but then there's the dispensation of the law after the law of Moses was given from the law until Jesus died on the cross. That was the dispensation of the law. Don't be troubled by the word dispensation. It sounds weird, but it shouldn't freak you out. It's just a God-governed period that God has ordained. And after Jesus died on the cross, that leads to the dispensation, you could call it grace or the age of the church, the church age, largely made up of Gentile people. But then what happens? Remember Romans chapter 11. And by the way, this is where dispensationalists, we clearly see that there's an age of the Gentiles that's gonna be over. And the rapture of the church is what ends that age. When the fullness, Romans 11, 25. When the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, then what happens? Then all of Israel shall be saved. And that's during the time of the tribulation period, which brings in the dispensation of a thousand year kingdom. We believe that's literal. And so, if you want to do a deep dive, there's a lot of good resources for you. But again, these dispensations are not paths to salvation or anything like that, but they're manners in which God relates to man. That's what dispensationalism is. Literalism is the best way to interpret scripture, and that's why we that teach verse by verse through the Bible all tend to be dispensationalists for the most part. You know, every prophecy, by the way, people say we shouldn't take all the prophecies literally. Well, one of my arguments is every prophecy about Jesus Christ in the Old Testament was fulfilled Literally, born in Bethlehem, riding on the colt of a donkey, born of a virgin, like on and on it goes. Literally every prophecy of Jesus was literally fulfilled. What in the world would make us think that Jesus' second coming, we wouldn't take it literally. Like that's just not expositional constancy to say, well, we don't take his second coming literally. So you dispensationalists are a bunch of weirdos. That's what everybody's yelling at us for. But it's ridiculous. Jesus' birth, his ministry, his death, resurrection all occurred exactly as the Old Testament literally predicted. And I'm not a Gen Z-er saying literally, because they don't mean literally when they say that. I'm meaning literally. So this is a great argument, by the way, if you're wondering for a literal method. So if a literal interpretation is not used in studying the scriptures, there is no objective standard by which to understand the Bible. That's why the Catholics can make up stuff like papal edicts and they can make up what they are supposed to wear and how you're supposed to do communion and whether you say father to someone, even though Jesus said, call no one your father in a religious context. The Catholics just blow that off and say, yeah, I'm gonna call him Father so-and-so, even though Jesus said don't do that. Why? Because they just don't take anything literally, including especially end times theology. So that's why Candace, I think she's so new to this, she's like, wow, there's a bunch of people that disagree with the Catholic church. Hello. Millions and millions of people. I think she stirred up a bees nest and had no idea, and it happens to be the right one. And that's what she doesn't understand. Bless her heart. Biblical interpretation would devolve into, what does this passage mean to me? And that's what we're seeing. People that don't take the Bible literally, they become relativists, and that's the problem. I love dispensationalism, and I'm happy to be a part of that group. Sadly, that's already the case in the American church, is where we take everything so relative. And that's why pastors blow off end time stuff. They don't want to take it literally. Dispensationalists believe that salvation has always been by grace through faith alone in God, the God of the Old Testament and is the same of the God of the New Testament. But he's got, see, one of the things that non-dispensation, they almost want to disconnect from the Old Testament. Say, well, that's a different God. than the God of the New Testament. The reason they think that is because they don't want to recognize God was working differently in the Old Testament, but he's the same God and he hasn't changed anything as far as what he's planning to do. It's all part of his sovereign plan. So dispensationalists hold that the church has not replaced Israel, but it's part of God's plan to restore Israel. And dispensationalism teaches that God's promises in the Old Testament are gonna be fulfilled literally for land for Israel, and it is being fulfilled right now, for many descendants and to be blessed. That's ultimately gonna be fulfilled after the tribulation period and the thousand year reign. Dispensationalists believe that just as God in this age focus his attention on the church age and on the church, he will again focus on Israel in the millennial kingdom and in the tribulation period. Now you say, well, Brett, has God sort of put the Jews on hold? Does anybody remember biblical language we read last Sunday that kind of suggests, yeah. Yes, remember in Romans chapter 11, blindness in part has happened to Israel. Don't be ignorant Gentiles, don't be arrogant about this, but God has put Israel, and we even read earlier that they're deaf and they're blind spiritually, and they're the zombie mode. Remember in Ezekiel 37, the Valley of Dry Bones, God put them on hold, like they're literally like the game player that's just standing there going like this. Right now, that's Israel. And see, we dispensationalists, we know that we're in that dispensation. That's why Israel's unbelieving. That's why they're gathered in unbelief. That's why we can't support everything that Israel does. By the way, another thing non-dispensationalists will say is, you dispensationalists condone everything Israel does. I would say a hyper-dispensationalist, yes. But most dispensationalists I know, we say, yeah, Israel's in a state of unbelief and they do a bunch of bad things, including they're the most supportive of gay and lesbian, LGBTQ. I don't even defend Netanyahu and everything he does and the missiles that are always flying. I'm not even gonna try to say that everything they do is right. And we don't unequivocally support everything Israel does. That's a lie about the main line of dispensationalism, but that's something that they're really pushing. dispensational preachers you may have heard of. Let me just give you a little list. One of my favorite guys that I read is H.A. Ironside. I mentioned him earlier. because he was the one who wrote the book on hyper-dispensationalism, but he himself, and he died in 1951. John F. Wolvard. If you want some great commentaries on the book of Daniel, on the book of Revelation, he's second to none, in my opinion. If you want to understand the book of Revelation and Daniel, I think... I wish I could remember the titles, but I think Daniel is the key that unlocks the book of Revelation. Is that what he called Revelation too? Revelation, the key that unlocks the book of Daniel. His two commentaries on Revelation and Daniel are awesome. He died in 2002. He was a famous dispensationalist. Does anybody ever heard of Dwight Pentecost? Yes, he died in 2014, born in 1915. He was a dispensationalist. Have you ever heard of Charles C. Ryrie? He's felt fairly well-known. Anybody ever heard of old Chuck Swindoll? I like Chuck. He just retired this last year. Kind of shocking, but I love Chuck. He's a good dude. He's a dispensationalist. Anybody heard of this guy? Billy Graham was very much a dispensationalist. You know, it's funny because I don't agree with everything John MacArthur says, and he doesn't agree with everything I says, but guess what? We're both dispensationalists, John MacArthur. I like John MacArthur in a lot of ways because he's really solid. maybe a little hardcore on Lordship stuff. I think he softened a little bit on that, in my opinion. There was times in the 80s, got a little rough, but I generally like MacArthur. But also Charles Stanley, he's a dispensationalist. I don't think his son Andy is, because he doesn't even believe the Bible anymore. But Andy Stanley's probably one of the biggest pastors in America right now, and it's really sad. His theology's gone cattywampus, but his dad was pretty solid. Anybody heard of Norman Geisler? Yes, he was a dispensationalist. Anybody heard of Chuck Smith? Founded Calvary chapels. There's more than 2000 Calvary chapels all over the world, churches, and they're called non-denominational, even though they're kind of like a denomination. But I kind of consider Chuck Smith sort of like a spiritual grandfather to me. I think I shook Chuck's hand one time and said, hi. But what I got from him is he was a through the Bible, verse by verse guy. And if you ever listened to Chuck Smith's old teachings, it's like sitting by the fireplace with your grandpa and having him tell you the Bible. and he does it really well. I like Chuck, but he was a dispensationalist. J. Vernon McGee, dispensationalist. And I could go on and on. I'm just, the reason I'm showing you all these guys is because the way they're sort of framing this, all these crazy, wacko, way out there dispensationalists, that's just a false, propaganda that Candace and Tucker and John, what's his name, Rich, they're all just kind of pushing this out there. As much as it's ridiculous and I sort of chuckle at it, I'm actually a little shocked how many, you know, Candace has five million followers on Instagram. So she, you know, and she's all surprised that pastors were giving a word of defense about who we are and what we believe. And she's all upset about that, which is kind of funny. She's bashing us and calling our views demonic. And for us to push back and say, eh, she's wrong. I think she needs to probably just get a little tougher skin on that one. And I hope she actually realizes how misguided Her doctrine really is. What does the Bible say about dispensations? Well, Ephesians 1, nine and 10 says, having made known, Jesus, having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him. Is anybody looking forward to that dispensation of time? When we are gathered with Christ all together. That's the dispensation I'm looking forward to, amen. Amen. Lord, as we close out this evening, I thank you for this crew that stuck with us on this long study, but I do pray, Lord, that you'd give us wisdom, how to point people to the right truth of just to read your word and to take it literally and to believe the scriptures and not be sucked into this seducing sort of spirit that is misleading people theologically. But I pray that we'd be solid, biblically directed, submitted to your word, not to some church or some pastor or preacher or whatever, but truly to the scriptures. Lord, bless these people who've taken this time tonight, may it bring good fruit in our lives, we pray. We do pray for unsaved, unbelieving people right now, that they would just hear even the words we've shared and be drawn to your love, that they'd repent of their sin and be saved. and accept Jesus as their savior. So just tap them on the heart, Lord, and may they know that you're there and that you love them, that they repent and be saved. So we give our evening now to you in Jesus' name, amen.