We are in Daniel chapter 11, but the reading that Jim read came from Daniel chapter 10, which we covered last week. An unnamed angel was sent to Daniel to reveal Daniel the future of his people. I have come to make you understand what will happen to your people in the latter days. So who are Daniel's people? Well, some suggest that all Christians in general are Daniel's people, but specifically They are the Jewish people Some of the prophecies in chapters 11 and 12 could refer to all believers But much of it deals specifically with the Jewish people who are studying under the prophecy near and far and part of the prophecy the angel gave to Daniel was for the near future and some was for the far distant future. Now most theologians put the near part of the prophecy at verse two of chapter 11 through verse 35 of chapter 11. That part of the prophecy, verses two through 35, has been fulfilled in events that occurred before the coming of Jesus. the portion of prophecy beginning at verse 36, we believe remains in the future. We'll begin at chapter 11, verse 2. It's critical this morning that you have your Bible open. It'll be very difficult to follow if you don't. In fact, if you were reading through the Bible in a year, and you come to Daniel chapter 11 and begin reading, it's very confusing. What is all of this talking about, the King of the South, the King of the North? And it'll be difficult enough with your Bible open and with me trying to give a few comments on it. The sermon will be unique, at least from this pulpit anyway, because it's covering prophecy that's already fulfilled. If you're a history buff, you might find this interesting. A few names will come up that you recognize. We're not gonna get to all the notes in your bulletin. In fact, I think chances are you won't write a single note as far as filling in the blanks goes. But we'll get started with the prophecy nearer to Daniel's time. And I will tell you the truth. Behold, three more kings will arise in Persia, and the fourth shall be richer than them all. By his strength through his riches, he shall stir up all against the realm of Greece. I will handle this by reading a small section of scripture and then I'll comment on the fulfillment historically. So Daniel received this prophecy in 536 BC. The fulfillment of the prophecy began with the next Persian king you can see there. The next Persian king after Cyrus was Cambyses. I'm not sure if I'm going to pronounce all of these correctly. His reign began in 529 BC, so the fulfillment of this prophecy began 70 years after it was given to Daniel. The next Persian kings were Smyrdas, Darius the Great, and Xerxes is that fourth king that's referenced in that verse. He's the one that fought Greece. Xerxes was also known as Ahasuerus, who was the husband of Queen Esther. In 480 BC, Xerxes invaded Greece and destroyed Athens. He destroyed the old Parthenon and the old Temple of Athena. All right, verses three and four. Then a mighty king shall arise who shall rule with a great dominion and do according to his will. And when he has arisen, his kingdom shall be broken up and divided toward the four winds of heaven, but not among his posterity nor according to his dominion with which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be uprooted even for others besides these. So 150 years after Xerxes ransacked Athens, the mighty king, came into power. That is, Alexander the Great. He conquered Persia in 331 BC, which started the third of the fourth Gentile empires, which would hold sway over the Jews. Babylon, which was the ones that originally took Daniel into captivity, then Medo-Persians. This is where Daniel was at when he received his vision. And then in 331, the conquering of Persia by Alexander the Great started the third of the fourth kingdoms. Now both Persia and Greece, these two middle kingdoms, both of them would attempt to destroy the Jewish people. The Persian kingdom, that happened during the reign of Xerxes. Remember that man Haman? Remember that plan he had to exterminate the Jews? And in the Greek kingdom, it happened under the rule of Antiochus Epiphanes, which you're gonna hear a lot more of today. According to the angel, Alexander's kingdom would be broken into four parts, but not go to family. Alexander died at age 32, maybe 33. He did leave three possible heirs to the kingdom. But after some infighting, All the possible heirs ended up being murdered, and the kingdom was split between four generals. From verse 5 through verse 35, the prophecy has to do with these four Greek kingdoms that were divided among the generals after Alexander's death. But only two of the kingdoms are featured. that is represented by the kings of the north and the kings of the south. So two of those four kingdoms are what is in focus here this morning. Now the king, I know this is fuzzy and you can't see it, the wording, but you can see the general areas. So the kings of the south are represented by the yellow, and the kings of the north are represented by this light green. And right here in the middle, This is the Holy Land, Israel and Jerusalem. And so the Israelites were caught between these two hostile kingdoms, always fighting each other. And whichever one was ascendant at the time, they took over Jerusalem and ran the city according to their desire. For 130 years, these two kingdoms were at war. Jerusalem always in the middle of it. Okay, verse 5, also the king of the south shall become strong as well as one of his princes, and he shall gain power over him and have dominion. His dominion shall be a great dominion. Now, Ptolemy I was the King of the South and the prince who gained power over him was named Seleucus. Now Seleucus gained power in the North. The Seleucids are associated with the Northern Kingdom and the Ptolemies are associated with the Southern Kingdom. Verse six, at the end of some years, they shall join forces for the daughter of the King of the South shall go to the King of the North to make an agreement, but she shall not retain the power of her authority. Neither he nor his authority shall stand, but she shall be given up with those who brought her, and with him who begot her, and with him who strengthened her in those times. All right, all of that boils down to this. The marriage referred to here was a marriage between Antiochus II and Berenice. Berenice was the daughter of Ptolemy II. But the peace that was expected to unify these two kingdoms didn't last because after Berenice's father died, Antiochus II, who was married to Berenice, put Berenice away and took back his former wife, Laodice. Laodice then poisoned Antiochus and she had Berenice murdered and she put her own son, Seleucus II, on the throne. But the southern kingdom fought back in verses seven through nine. But from a branch of her roots, from a branch of Berenice's roots, one shall rise in his place who shall come with an army, enter the fortresses of the king of the north and deal with them and prevail. And he shall also carry their gods captive to Egypt with their princes and their precious articles of silver and gold. And he shall continue more years than the king of the north. Also, the king of the north shall come to the kingdom of the king of the south, but shall return to his own land. So it was Ptolemy III who avenged his sister Berenice's death, and he attacked and gained control of the kingdom. over the northern kingdom. In the seesaw fight for supremacy, the north made the next move, and that's in verse 10. However, his sons, that is the sons of Seleucus II, who is now dead from poisoning, his sons shall stir up strife and assemble a multitude of great forces, and one shall certainly come and overwhelm and pass through. Then he shall return to his fortress and stir up strife. Now this was fulfilled when Seleucus III and Antiochus III, both sons of Seleucus II and both generals, took back control of the Holy Land from the Ptolemies after a fierce battle. That didn't last long either, and now we're in verses 11 and 12. And the king of the south shall be moved with rage, and go out and fight with him, with the king of the north, who shall muster a great multitude, but the multitude shall be given into the hand of his enemy. When he has taken away the multitude, his heart will be lifted up, and he will cast down tens of thousands, but he will not prevail. So the King of the South, who was moved with rage, is now Ptolemy IV, who defeated Antiochus III, and the Holy Land was taken over then by Ptolemy IV. Now we're in verses 13 through 16. For the king of the north will return and muster a multitude greater than the former and shall certainly come at the end of some years with a great army and much equipment. Now in those times, many shall rise up against the kingdom of the south. Also, violent men of your people, Daniel, shall exalt themselves in fulfillment of the vision, but they shall fall. So the King of the North shall come and build a siege mound and take a fortified city, and the forces of the South shall not withstand him. Even his traced troops shall have no strength to resist. But he who comes against him shall do according to his own will, and no one shall stand against him. He shall stand in the glorious land with destruction in his power. So the North fought back against Egypt. Historically, this happened when Antiochus III, still in power, invaded Egypt during the reign of Ptolemy V. Now note in verse 14, the violent men of your people. So some of the Jews joined in with Antiochus III to defeat Ptolemy V because they resented the Egyptian control of the promised land. But that turned out to be a mistake. because Antiochus III then brought destruction to the Holy Land. You see that in verse, I think, 16. Well, the next twist of the plot is verse 17. He shall also set his face to enter with the strength of his whole kingdom. upright ones with him thus shall he do and he shall give him the daughter of women to destroy it but she shall not stand with him or before him so Antiochus the third sought to gain permanent power and In Egypt, he thought he could accomplish this by giving his daughter in marriage to Ptolemy V in Egypt. And this was fulfilled when his daughter Cleopatra was married to Ptolemy V in 193 BC. She was 10 years old at the time. That arrangement did not work for Antiochus III. Cleopatra was not really faithful to her father's desires in making Egypt a permanent part of his kingdom. Incidentally, this is not the Cleopatra, but an ancestor of the famous Cleopatra who came 100 plus years later. All right, verses 18 and 19. After this, he shall turn to face the coastlands and shall take many, but a ruler shall bring reproach against them to an end. And with the reproach removed, he shall turn back on him. Then he shall turn his face toward the fortress of his own land, but he shall stumble and fall and not be found. Now, after the ploy involving the marriage of his daughter to Ptolemy V failed, Antiochus III turned westward to expand his kingdom along the coastline. Over here, he was gonna take more land there from the Western empires in Asia Minor into Greece, but he was defeated with the help of a Roman general. And he returned home defeated and humiliated. And he died shortly thereafter in an uprising of the people against him. All right, verse 20. There shall arise in his place one who imposes taxes on the glorious land. But within a few days, he shall be destroyed, but not in anger or in battle. So following the death of Antiochus III, his son Seleucus III reigned for a short time. Now his plan was to raise money by imposing taxes, especially by imposing taxes on the Holy Land. But he was assassinated, we think. He was poisoned, likely. The culprit was his brother, Antiochus IV. Now verse 21, and in his place shall arise a vile person to whom they will not give the honor of royalty, but he shall come in peaceably and seize the kingdom by intrigue. So after the short reign of Seleucus III of the northern kingdom, a vile king would rise. This was Antiochus IV, better known as Antiochus Epiphanes. From here at verse 21 through verse 35, this prophecy is centered around Antiochus Epiphanes. Now, Antiochus Epiphanes was a flatterer. And other than the likely murder of his brother to gain access to the kingdom, he gained power mostly by schmoozing and by flattering and by making promises and through deceit. All right, now verses 22 through 27. With the force of a flood, they, that is, Epiphany's enemies, his foes, with the force of a flood, they shall be swept away from before him and be broken, also the prince of the covenant. That is to say, the priest in Jerusalem. And after the league is made with him, with the epiphanies, he shall act deceitfully, for he shall come up and become strong with a small number of people. He shall enter peaceably even in the richest places of the province, and he shall do what his fathers have not done, nor his forefathers. He shall disperse among them the plunder, spoil, and riches, and he shall devise plans against the strongholds, but only for a time. He shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the south with a very great army. And the king of the south shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army, but he shall not stand, for they shall devise plans against him. Yes, those who eat the portion of his delicacies shall destroy him. His army shall be swept away and many shall fall down slain. Both these kings' hearts shall be bent on evil, and they shall speak lies at the same table. that it shall not prosper for the end will still be at the appointed times. Really, neither of those two kings got what they were hoping for. Epiphanes would seek to make a deceitful covenant with the king of the south. That effort failed. A great battle ensued between Epiphanes and Egypt. That's alluded to in verse 25. He shall stir up his power. and his courage against the king of the south with a great harmony, ultimately Epiphanes, a greatly treacherous man, was kept from gaining power in Egypt by the treachery of his own counselors. That's alluded to in verse 26, yet those who eat of the portion of his delicacies shall destroy him. But he did get a lot of riches, And in the next verse, we see that Epiphanes came from his failure in Egypt back to his homeland in a great rage. And he made Israel pay for his wrath. Now we're reading at verse 28, and we'll read through this section, 28 through 35. While returning to his land with great riches, his heart shall be moved against the holy covenant. So he shall do damage and return to his own land. At the appointed time, he shall return and go toward the south, but it shall not be like the former or the latter, for ships from Cyprus shall come against him. Therefore, he shall be grieved and return in rage against the holy covenant and do damage. So he shall return and show regard for those who forsake the holy covenant. and forces shall be mustered by him, and they shall defile the sanctuary fortress. Then they shall take away the daily sacrifices and place there the abomination of desolations. Those who do wickedly against the covenant, he, Antiochus, shall corrupt with flattery. But the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits. And those of the people who understand shall instruct many, yet for many days they shall fall by sword and flame, by captivity and plundering. Now when they fall, they shall be aided with a little help, but many shall join with them by intrigue, and some of those of understanding shall fall. to refine them, purify them, and to make them wait until the time of the end, because it is still for the appointed time. All right, bitter from his inability to gain ultimate control in Egypt, Antiochus persecuted the Jews in Jerusalem, forcing them to adopt Greek culture and cease their Old Testament prescribed form of worship of Jehovah God. In verse 29, we see Antiochus aspired to invade Egypt again. At the appointed time, he shall return and go toward the south, but it shall not be like the former or the latter. This time, when he attempted to conquer Egypt, ships from Cyprus intervened. This was Roman intervention. And the Epiphanes was by no means strong enough to battle Rome. Now note verse 30. for ships from Cyprus shall come against them. Therefore he shall be grieved and return in rage against the Holy Covenant and do damage. So he shall return and show regard for those who forsake the Holy Covenant. So for a second time Antiochus took out his rage on the Jewish people. Now note the end of verse 30. He shall return and show regard for those who forsake the Holy Covenant. Now the Jews that left the faith and were loyal to Epiphanes, he treated well. Also the first part of verse 32, those who do wickedly against the covenant, those Jewish people who under pressure from Epiphanes forsook the covenant, he shall corrupt with flattery. The Jews that rejected Old Testament worship he flattered. In verse 31, we note that Epiphanes forced the daily sacrifices in the temple to be halted. He offered a pig on the altar, pigs being non-kosher, of course, and considered a great abomination. You can see that in verse 31, that Antiochus placed in the temple the abomination of desolation, referring probably to this incident of the pig being sacrificed on the altar. Now, no one would sacrifice on the altar after that until it had been ceremonially cleansed from the pig's blood. So, the temple was desolate for three years after Antiochus desecrated the altar and the temple. Three years later, Judas Maccabeus put up new unhewn stones for the altar and the temple, and thus effectively cleansing the altar, and then sacrifices resumed. Now, when the Epiphanes attacked the Jews, there was a division between the Jews. There were those who avoided persecution by going along with the Epiphanes. But there were those who remained faithful to worship Jehovah God. The faithful are referred to at the end of verse 32. But the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits. Okay, but notice what happened to the faithful Jews in verse 33. Those of the people who understand shall instruct many, yet for many days they shall fall by sword and flame, by captivity and plundering. Antiochus made the faithful Jews pay by sword, by flame, by captivity and plundering their goods. Same is true for Christians across the globe. When they refuse to bow to governmental demands, that they stop worshiping God, Paul said in 2 Timothy 3.12, yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ, Jesus will suffer persecution. The faithful Jews in the days of Epiphanes learned this way too well. Now they did get a little help. Verse 34, now when they fall, they shall be aided with a little help, but many shall join with them by intrigue. In other words, many people pretended to sympathize with the Jews, but they joined with them because of intrigue. They were actually spies. They were turning over the faithful Jews to Epiphanes and his forces. Therefore, many of the faithful fell. Verse 35, some of those of understanding shall fall to refine them, purify them, make them white until the time of the end because it is still for the appointed time. The persecution of the faithful was to refine them and to purify them and to make them white until God said enough. and did away with Antiochus Epiphanes. There's always a time when God calls enough to the persecution of his people. The problem for us is that it seems so delayed from our perspective. Well, here's where we need to apply scripture. God's people nearly always find themselves at odds with the collective power of Gentile government. And now it's been 2,600 years, 2,700 years since there was a government who is under God's direction. That's what Israel was. They were a theocracy, they obeyed God, and God was in charge of the government. Since then, there really has not been anything but Gentile nations. Jews living in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes had to make a decision. Epiphanes demanded they stop Jewish worship in the temple. When they wouldn't stop, he ransacked Jerusalem, he plundered the temple of God, he set up a statue of Zeus in the temple, sacrificed a pig on the altar, and persecuted the Jews who would not obey him. Historians tell us that he killed 80,000 Jewish men, women, and children, and sold another 40,000 into slavery. Now, that's a phenomenal number of people considering the population of the world in 170 or so BC. Now, when I was looking this up, according to mathematicians or whatever that try to calculate the population of the world around 170 BC, Very roughly, they estimated at about 160 million. If that's true, today's population is 50 times greater than it was in 170 BC. So today's equivalent of the catastrophe in Israel would mean the death of four million of God's people and about two million sold into slavery. Now, when the pressures of government and culture are brought to bear on the church, it always splits the people in the church. And that's the meaning of verse 32. Those who do wickedly against the covenant, he shall corrupt with flattery, but the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits. Antiochus came in with his persecution, and he split the Jewish people right down the middle. Some fell for the flattery of Epiphanes. Their cry was, don't kill us. Don't sell us into slavery. We'll do whatever you say. Just don't hurt us. The contrast was the people who knew their God. The people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits. Are we in this generation carrying out great exploits? Will Bethel Christian Church carry out great exploits, or will we be among those who say, we'll do whatever you want, just don't hurt us? Now, of course, the battle lines today are very different. For 170 AD Jews, the battle lines were bowing down to the image of Zeus and renouncing the name of Jehovah God. The battle lines today are accepting the sexual ethics of culture, renouncing belief in the sanctity of marriages between one man and one woman, and agreeing that transgenderism is right, it's good, it's healthy. And the battle lines are in the exclusivity of the gospel. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me, said Jesus. It's an offensive message to many people. The people who knew their God did great exploits, but they paid the price for their faithfulness. Verse 33. Those of the people who understand shall instruct many, yet for many days they shall fall by sword and flame, by captivity and plundering. Now, if you want to do great exploits, get busy instructing many. That's what they did. They instructed many, the people who knew their God. instructed many others. If you want to avoid persecution, you can do that. You just need to go along with the culture, and you just need to renounce your faith. You need to renounce the morals of the gospel, the morals of the Bible. But you'll never be a Daniel, will you? You will never do great exploits in the lion's den. You'll never be a Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego doing great exploits in the fiery furnace. See, we have to decide who we are. Will we be among those who meekly and weakly walk away from the faith? Or will we be those who carry out great work for God in this generation? See, Daniel had many peers when he was taken away from Jerusalem and brought to Babylon. Most of them who were taken into captivity were absorbed into culture. They gave up Jewish distinctives. They gave up Jewish worship. They took on whatever worship Gentile kingdoms had, whatever false, you know, gods they worshipped. And probably a lot of them, their life was a little bit easier because they avoided the persecution of worshipping Yahweh. But 2,600 years later, would you want to be in Daniel's shoes or Do you want to be in the shoes of those men and women who weakly and meekly gave up their faith and absorbed the mores of culture and government? This life is short. Eternity is long. Embrace Jesus Christ and all his commands. Verse 34 indicates the faithful would get a little help, and that is where perhaps the story of Judas Maccabeus comes into play. Judas was a priest who, against all odds, led a revolt against the abominations of Antiochus Epiphanes. He cleansed the temple. He restored temple worship in Jerusalem. One might call that a great exploit. It was a David and Goliath story, and the festival of Hanukkah celebrates this event. So we, friends, we may be among those called to endure persecution. I think we are in some fashion already, but if we are, The purpose is to purify us, verse 35. And some of those of understanding shall fall. Why? To refine them, purify them, and make them white until the time of the end, because it is still for the appointed time. The persecution and advance of godless forces will end at God's appointed time, until then. Never give up the fight for Jesus Christ and insist on obeying his commands. With that, we end the part of Daniel's prophecy, which is already fulfilled, and we, in verse 36, we shift to the coming Antichrist. Now, to be sure, Antiochus Epiphanes had many similarities to the coming Antichrist, and that's why he's juxtaposed here, set right side by side with the prophecy of the coming Antichrist. He served as a sort of a picture or a sort of a model of the coming Antichrist. But before we move on to the portion of prophecy yet to be fulfilled, I want to comment a little bit on verses, the first 35 verses of Daniel 11. One of the purposes of prophecy is to show God's foreknowledge proving that he is, in fact, God of gods. Now consider Isaiah 46, 9 and 10. Remember the former things of old, for I am God, there is no other. I am God, there is none like me, declaring the end from the very beginning. And from ancient times, things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure Now, God placed fulfilled prophecy in the canon of Scripture, such as Daniel 11, in order to give us support for our faith. Fulfilled prophecy strengthens our confidence in God and assures us that the remaining prophecies will be fulfilled in their time. The detail with which Daniel's prophecy was fulfilled, beginning in 529 BC and ending with the death of Antiochus Epiphanes in 164 BC is solid evidence for your faith. Now, what do Bible skeptics do with a passage like Daniel 11, 2 through 35? Some of you know. Typically, skeptics handle this by redating the writing of biblical books. They suggest that instead of Daniel writing the book somewhere around 535 or 536 BC, they claim that someone wrote the book around 150 BC. And then they attributed the writing to Daniel. That, of course, takes all of God's foreknowledge out of the equation. Anyone can write prophecy after it's been fulfilled. Now, it's not possible to date writings from this time in history in any authoritative way. Today that's easy, you can look at a book and see the copyright date and all of that. But the writing materials they used deteriorated quickly, so what we have from writings back then is copies of copies and copies of copies of copies. But there are good reasons to believe that Daniel was written by Daniel, as the book indicates. I'll give you just two. There are many others. The words of Jesus in Matthew 24, 15. Therefore, when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place. So Jesus said Daniel was a prophet. Prophets foresee the future, that's what they do. the abomination of desolation that Jesus spoke about was still in the future to him. It had a one fulfillment in Antiochus Epiphanes when he sacrificed the pig on the altar in Jerusalem, but it's got another fulfillment. Some would say it was fulfilled in 80, 70. Most would say that it's still to be fulfilled. during the Great Tribulation. Maybe you could say that there's really kind of three fulfillments of that. One in Antiochus Epiphanes, one when Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70, and one still coming. But Jesus had no doubt that Daniel was a prophet. No evidence that Jesus thought the book of Daniel was written by someone around 150 or 160 BC under the pseudonym Daniel. All right, the Dead Sea Scrolls, technically the Dead Sea Scrolls found or thought to be after 160 BC, a little bit, but given the slow, tedious process of copying and distributing written materials before Christ, it's highly unlikely that writings from 160 BC could have been in circulation long enough to have showed up in the Dead Sea Scrolls, there where the Essenes were cloistered away. Later late days for the book of Daniel and for many other books of the Bible have become popular among skeptics skeptics Start with the denial of the supernatural and they work out all their details from that basic starting point There are no miracles. There is no supernatural. Therefore, we date the books based on this. Therefore, we call Jonah and the whale a myth. The person denies the supernatural. They cannot be Christian in any kind of meaningful way. So here's some advice. If you hear anyone deny that God created the earth, get out. If someone redates scripture, the writing of scripture, giving more recent dates of writing, get out. If someone denies some or all the miracles in the Bible, get out. If someone refers to the book of Jonah or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as legends, get out. Don't send your sons or daughters to a college that teaches that. Don't support financially any institution that supports any of those. God is supernatural. He's a God of miracles. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful." People, it's scornful people who insist on taking the supernatural out of the Bible. Now, theology always ends up impacting behavior. What you believe ends up impacting what you do. However, it's also true that behavior ends up impacting theology. When a person wants to behave in a way that's unbiblical, they have two choices. You can deny that lust of the flesh, And you can say, even though I would love to do this, I'm going to honor God and I'm going to honor Jesus Christ by obeying scripture. That's one choice. Your second choice, you can change your theology to incorporate your desired behavior. People will not very long live under the tension of conscience that smites them because of their behavior. They're unable to do it. Psychiatrically, people are unable to continue to behave for very long under the weight of knowing that they are violating their conscience and violating their core beliefs. Happens all the time. For example, when young people go to college and they want to take on the behaviors of fellow students, sexually and all of those, and so they, what do they do? They deconstruct. What are they deconstructing? They're deconstructing what they believed in. They changed their beliefs. Their behaviors impacted their theology. And so the Book of Daniel comes with some warnings that we need to be careful about. And then next week, we'll go on to cover the prophecy, the future part, of it starting in verse 36. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to read and study. Father, truly, Daniel and the Jewish people in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes were living in hard times. The forces lined behind the enemy, the devil, were putting these people hard to it. Some compromised, others remained faithful. Father, I pray for the strength to remain faithful, and I pray for each one today that they would also have the strength to remain faithful. to keep up the good fight, to refuse compromise. Now I pray that you'd be with us as we continue to worship this morning in song and in study. We thank you, Father, for your word. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.