I wanna welcome those of you who are here, those who are gonna be listening on the internet. This is our 10-week series on the end times and the return of Christ. I'm Pastor Doug McConnell. I've been a pastor in the Grantsburg area for 30 years now, and I'm committed to preaching and teaching the Word of God, the whole counsel of God, and to teach through entire books of the Bible. But occasionally I do seminars or topical studies, and this is one of them where we're going to look at end-time events. Now, we're going to do this in 10 weeks, and the idea that we could cover all of the end-time events in 10 weeks seems a little bit much to accomplish, but I do have preaching on the book of Revelation and also Isaiah, which deals with a lot of prophetic material as well, and you can find that on our website at livinghopechurch and sermonaudio.com, or you can go to our own website, which is Living Hope Church, Grantsburg, Wisconsin, and navigate for the information you want there. Well, let's begin with a word of prayer and then we're going to get into this. Our Father in God, I do pray for grace and mercy. Help me as I explain these things. There's a lot of things that we're not going to understand fully until the events play out. But we've been given a broad outline of things through the scripture that we want to understand. We want to study them carefully so that we understand what's being taught to us by the biblical writers. So we pray as we go through this, Lord, that it would be a blessing for all that you would guide me so that I give accurate information and a clear exposition of the scripture. So bless us to that end. We ask in Jesus name. Amen. I wanna say something. First of all, I'm gonna give you a Bible verse here. This is a Revelation 22, 12. And those of you who can see it on the screen, for those listening, you're just gonna have to hear me read it. It says, So what are the goals of this seminar? Well, I'll give you three of them. First of all, to give you a broad outline of the events related to the return of Jesus. Notice I said a broad outline. There's all kinds of things that, particular details that we're not going to be able to get into. But I think this will be beneficial for you. And especially if you don't have much of an understanding of what the Bible says about the last times. Secondly, though, I want to encourage you to give serious thoughts to the claim made by and about Jesus. Now, some of you listening to this are not believers. And you know you're not believers. And a lot of non-Christians really don't have much interest in Christianity. But strangely enough, they always seem to have an interest in end-time events. And, of course, when we're looking at end-time events, we have to think about some of the claims that Jesus makes, and they're astounding claims. He claims that someday every person will stand before him in judgment and give an account for their lives. He claimed that he was the only Savior of the world and the only way to God. He claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by him. But I also want, as one of the goals of the seminar, to prepare you for this coming day, because this day may not be that far away. And Jesus, after giving end times teaching, always followed up with parables about the need to be ready for his return. 1 Thessalonians 5, 1-5 says this, Now brothers and sisters, about the times and the dates, you do not need anyone to write to you. For you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, peace and safety, destruction will come upon them. as suddenly as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that the day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to darkness." That's 1 Thessalonians 5, 1-5. So the signs of Christ returned. We're going to be looking at Matthew chapter 24, so if you want to open a Bible to get ready for that. But even before that, though, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever heard of William Miller and the Great Disappointment? William Miller and the Great Disappointment. Well, William Miller was a lay Baptist pastor in the 1800s, and through his study of the book of Daniel, particularly Daniel chapter 8, he came to conclude that Jesus' return would come sometime around 1844. He said this, my principles in brief are that Jesus Christ will come again to this earth, cleanse and purify and take possession of the same with all the saints sometime between March 21st, 1843 and March 21st, 1844. Of course, March 21st, 1844 passed without incident, but the majority of the Millerites maintained their faith. And then he said that on April 18th, he rearranged the time and pushed it back because he refigured his numbers based on a Karaite Jewish calendar as opposed to a rabbinic calendar. But like the previous date, April 18th passed without Christ's return. But then he pushed it forward to October 22nd, 1844, but that came and went as well. Well, Henry Emmons, a Millerite, later wrote this, I waited all Tuesday on October 22nd, and the dear Jesus did not come. I waited all that forenoon of Wednesday, but after 12 o'clock, I began to feel faint, and before dark, I needed someone to help me up to my chamber, meaning his bedroom, as my natural strength was leaving me very fast. I lay prostrate for two days without any pain, sick with disappointment. The Millerites had to deal with their own shattered expectations as well as considerable criticism and even violence from the public. Many followers had given up their possessions in expectation of Christ's return. By the way, I've never understood that. Why do you have to sell everything before Jesus returns? I mean, the money you get isn't going to be any good once he comes anyways. Well, they took a lot of guff and a lot of ridicule. Of course, that didn't stop people from making predictions. Some of you are old enough to remember back in 1988, someone wrote a book titled, 88 Reasons Why Jesus is Coming Back in 1988. I remember after 1988 passed, you could buy these books for really cheap. Probably a more recent one, though, was Harold Camping, the radio pastor who predicted that Judgment Day would come on September 6th, 1994. But then he changed it to September 9th, and then to October 2nd. Well, he was wrong about those three dates, but that didn't keep him from making new predictions. In 2005, camping predicted the second coming on May 21st, 2011, whereupon the saved would be taken up into heaven in the rapture, and there would follow five months of fire, brimstone, plagues on the earth, with millions of people dying each day, culminating on October 21st, 2011, with the final destruction of the world. His prediction for May 21st, 2011 was widely reported in the news. As a matter of fact, he himself believed it because he spent $5 million advertising this through his family radio network. And of course, that prompted all kinds of ridicule from atheists and claims that it wasn't going to happen, even rebuttals from Christian organizations. Well, after May 21st passed without the predicted effects, or event, I should say, Camping said that he believed that a spiritual judgment had occurred on that day, and that the physical rapture would occur on October 21st, 2011, simultaneous with a final destruction of the universe by God. Well, in March 2012, Camping finally admitted that his predictions were in error, stating, quote, He also announced that his end to his doomsday predictions, May 2012, a year after the failure of Camping's prophecy, Religion Dispatch published a report on Campion's followers' disillusionment over all the things that happened. And a lot of them came to believe he was a cult leader. He died of a stroke in 2013. He was 93 years old at the time. Let's read the text here where Jesus does give some signs that he says will indicate his coming is near. It says this. This is in Matthew 24, verses 1 and following. It says, Jesus came out from the temple and he was going with his disciples. And they came up and pointed out to him the temple building. And he said to them, do you see these things? Truly, I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another which will not be torn down. And he was sitting on the Mount of Olives. The disciples came to him privately saying, tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age? And Jesus answered and said to them, See to it that no one misleads you. For many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and will mislead many. You'll be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See to it that you're not frightened. For these things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these are just the beginning of the birth pangs. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation, and they will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name. At that time, many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. Because the lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold, but the one who endures to the end, he will be saved. This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. And he gives another sign. He says, But pray that your flight will not be in the winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be a great tribulation such as not has occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. Unless those days had been cut short, no life would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short. Then if anyone says to you, behold, here's the Christ, or there he is, do not believe him. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so if possible, to mislead even the elect. Behold, I've told you this in advance. So if they say to you, behold, he's in the wilderness, do not go out. Or behold, he's in the inner room, do not believe them. For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the son of man be. Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. But immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give off its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the son of man will appear in the sky, and then all tribes and on earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And he will send forth his angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of the sky to the other." Now, there's a number of signs that Jesus says will be present at his time. And by the way, I have to say this though, because Jesus gives these signs, but he says that this does not mean the end comes immediately. But he also said that this is going to be like a woman giving birth. Now, I have never given birth, not being a woman. And by the way, men can't give birth. We have to reassert that so people know. But I've been there when my four children were born. And the one thing I remember about it is that when the birth pangs come, they become more intense. and more frequent, the closer they come to the delivery. And so as Jesus gives some of these signs, these are gonna be things that are gonna characterize every age, but as we get closer to the end, it's gonna become more intense. So what's the first sign that he gives? Well, it's false Christ. Now, for those of you who are listening over the internet, I put up a couple of pictures. One on the left is a picture of a Korean guy. His name is Sung Young Moon. How many of you have heard of the Moonies? Yeah, Sangmun Moon claimed that he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. You know, one time when I was filling in, when I was younger, I was doing some pulpit fill as a pastor. I think I was in college at the time. But anyways, the place where I was preaching, it was a small Baptist church down in Gibbon, Minnesota. And they came up to me afterwards and they said, you know, we got this wonderful brochure. There's someone, an organization that wants to put on a family seminar. And it looks conservative. It looks good. And we want to know what you think about it. I looked it over. I looked at the bottom. I said, do you see what it says here? The Unification Church. Yeah, that's the Moonies. They were going to invite to the Moonies there. Probably a good thing that they didn't, huh? The other picture on this slide though is one of a man named David Koresh. He also claimed to be Christ. He was the one who was holed up in Waco, Texas in a compound and they ordered them to go in and it ended up exploding and a whole bunch of people dying. It's interesting because Time Magazine, the picture here, shows him looking up and it says tragedy in Waco and then they put underneath his name was death and hell followed after him, which is interesting because that's a quote from Revelation chapter 6. Here's another picture. It's a man. He looks like he's about 35 to 40 years old. He's wearing a nice flowery shirt, white and flowered. He's there with a woman. She looks like she's about the same age. The man's name is Alan John Miller. He's 54. He's from Queensland in Australia. And he's the founder of the Jesus group. Miller claims that he's the reincarnation of Jesus and his partner, his wife, Mary, is actually Mary Magdalene. He said this, just a little over 2,000 years ago, we, him and his wife, arrived on earth for the first time. He writes on his website and says, Well, Mary was my wife then, and the first person I appeared to after I was crucified. Now, you wonder, how in the world does anyone believe that this guy is Jesus? He's a nice-looking guy, but he's not doing any miracles or anything. But Miller holds that Divine Truth Seminars, which teach what he calls the Divine Love Path, which focuses on emotional clearing. He states that this path is emotional rather than mind-based, and it forms a direct relationship with God. Well, on his side, Miller gives doomsday predictions as well, and he says that it could start as early as 2012. Well, we're well past that. The other signs that Jesus mentions are wars and rumors of wars. You got a picture here of a bunch of guys in a trench in World War I. Did you know there were 20 million people who died in World War I? At the Battle of Somme, 57,000 British casualties in the first day. One million died over the course of that battle in just a number of months. Can you imagine those numbers? Or how about the Battle of Verdun, where 976,000 casualties occurred. Trench warfare, people dying of mustard gas. By the way, did you notice that if you see soldiers in World War II, they're all wearing gas or carry gas masks with them, but gas was never used in World War II. It was considered so horrendous and both sides were fearful of it starting again in the Second World War that none used it. You know, how about even before that? In 1915 to 1916, the Armenian genocide, 680,000 to 1.2 million people were killed. Now, Hitler, when he was asked by his generals how he thought he would be able to get away with the liquidation of the Jews, simply said, who remembers or cares about the Armenians? It happened again. Next slide here shows more of wars, World War II, 55 million people died. There's that famous picture there of a Japanese soldier ready to cut off the head of a Chinese person. I have a book in my library called The Rape of Nanking, just a horror story. You know, it was so bad that the Nazis told the Japanese that they needed to back off on their atrocities. On the right side there, we have a picture of Nazi soldiers, German soldiers marching in parade. The next picture here, we've got some Americans with a howitzer. And then the next one after that is a picture of a mushroom cloud above Hiroshima. And of course, when that went off, everyone realized that warfare had changed. There were millions of people who died, 55 million, in that war. This next one is a famous picture. It shows a little girl, doesn't have any clothes on, she looks like she's about 10 years of age, and two boys, each on the other side, and she's running. And this is from the Vietnam War, and what happened here was she had just been attacked, her village with napalm, and she got burned. But I want you to see what it says underneath. The young girl's name was Kim Phuc, who later grew up and she became a Christian. Here's what she says. Now, it's interesting because Kim Phuc has given all kinds of seminars where she's given her testimony and things like that. And one of them, there was a guy who came forward and he was shaking when he wanted to talk to her. But he mentioned that he was the one who had given the order for her village to be bombed. And then he asked her, can you forgive me? And she hugged him and he cried and she said, yes, of course I can forgive you. Isn't that great? You know, I think about when I was in Israel and we were doing a tour. And as we're doing the tour, the guy that was our tour guy was an Arab man named Saad. He was about probably 55 years old at the time. And we were all pastors there, but there was one guy who was a youth pastor who kind of kept goading Saad about the issues in the Middle East and the Israelis and all that. And finally, Saad got upset and he pulled back his shirt and he showed a scar that looked like it was about three inches long. And he said, you see this? He said, when I was 10 years old, I was stabbed by an Israeli soldier. He said, I watched my mother come out of the front door of our house holding her intestines in her hand. Don't tell me about this. Now, how is he ever going to forgive? And by the way, you can find just the same kind of atrocities on the other side, Arabs doing it to Jews. But how could they ever forgive without first receiving the forgiveness of God? So wars and rumors of wars are going to continue. The next picture we have here is of an earthquake. Jesus said there'd be earthquakes and famines in various places. Here's a picture of some starving children in Ethiopia. 70 million people died from famine in 20th century. Do you remember a tsunami that they had? What was that back probably 20 years ago? There were islands where the tsunami wave came over and once it passed over, there was nobody left. Everybody was gone. Back in July of 1976 in China, they had an 8.0 earthquake with an estimated death toll as high as 655,000. In 2004, there was a tsunami, 228,000 people died. Back in Haiti in 2010, there was an earthquake, 16,000 died there. And that earthquake and tsunami that they had Back in Japan in 2011, $320 billion worth of damage. Well, the next thing Jesus said that there would be is persecution of Christians. Of course, that's going on all over in the world. I listed here the top 10 countries where it's the hardest to follow Jesus. By the way, this is a picture. Do you know where this is from? There are some people with black hoods and some other people in orange jumpsuits and they're walking along the beach and they're pushing them. Well, those were ISIS fighters, captives, some missionaries from Korea who were there and they beheaded them and then they broadcast it on YouTube. Well, the 10 countries that are the worst as far as following Jesus, how difficult it is. Number one is Afghanistan. Of course, we pulled out of there about a year and a half, two years ago. North Korea. Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Eritrea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, and India. Notice most of those countries are Muslim countries, aren't they? Well, the next thing that Jesus talked about was false prophets. You got a picture here of Hitler as he's going on in a parade. He's got his hand outstretched. And I wrote for a caption this, Hitler and the church, resistance or compromise? Well, what happened? Most of the churches did compromise. Do you know that it started by just saying things like this, well, in your church, you have to have a Nazi flag. You can be over in the corner. But then after a while, it not only had to be over in the corner, it had to be in the front of the church. And eventually, they removed the crosses and left just a Nazi symbol there. Did you know that Hitler had the Lord's Prayer rewritten so that it was directed towards him? And a lot of the churches just compromised for fear. There was the resisting church, people like Niemöller and Reinhold Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. By the way, both of those were involved in an assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler. It failed and as a result of it, they were killed and their bodies hung on meat hooks for Hitler to watch later on. How about this false prophet? Who's that guy with a bushy beard? That's Karl Marx. Karl Marx said that religion is the opiate of the people, the opiate of the masses. You think he's right? Well, I would say false religion is the opiate of the masses. You know, it's interesting because he was Jewish, he was an atheist, and he actually had rabbis for ancestors on both his mother and his father's side. The guy never worked a day in his life. He lived off of other people and couldn't wait for his uncle to die because he was going to get an inheritance from him. But the reason I put him as a false prophet, because you usually think in terms of religious leaders, but Marxism is an ideology that functions as a religion for people. Or this guy here, that's Lenin. Not John Lennon, but Vladimir Lenin. The picture on the left I think is actually a wax portrait of him, but the one on the right, that's his actual body that's lying in state still in Red Square in the Kremlin in Moscow. Other false prophets? We have on the left here, Stalin, and on the right, Mao Zedong. Now it's interesting, by order of Stalin, 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death. He did it on purpose. Millions were sent off to the gulags. As a result of Mao's agricultural collectivization, an estimated 45 million Chinese starved. Total number of people who died at the hands of communist governments is estimated to be between 90 and 125 million. Now, I have a question for you. If you went to a public school, did you ever learn about all the deaths under communism? I'll bet you learned about Nazism, but why wouldn't you have learned about communism considering there were even more people who died under that system? Well, it's because a lot of the people who teach in our universities hold basically the same socialist worldview that the communists did. Did you know that the three most murderous people in history, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, were all contemporaries of each other? And so that functions as a false religion with false prophets. Next picture here is a picture of Ayatollah Khomeini. He was the leader of Iran. As a result of the revolution, they set up a theocracy, a clerocracy, where the clerics run the country. But you know what's interesting as a result of that? Because there weren't that many Christians in Iran when the revolution took place. But since that time, the church has been growing. There's estimated one million Iranian Christians now. It's the fastest growing church by percentage in the world. And something like 45% of all Iranians no longer claim to be Muslims. They've seen the hypocrisy and they don't buy into it. And as a result, a lot of them have given up and just become atheists or secular people, but a number of them have turned to Christ. Well, on the right there, we have a picture of the Kims in North Korea. By the way, when I said this last time, I said North Dakota, and boy, they roasted me about that. They were not from North Dakota. They were from North Korea. But look at the picture in the front. See all the people bowing down to the statue? Now, don't you find it interesting in countries where atheism is the state religion, they nevertheless put up statues and idols of their leader that people are required to bow before? How about this one? What's that a picture of? Hmm. Well, if you guessed a Buddhist temple, you would be right. By the way, I put a phrase under there that you're familiar with. Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore. Well, this wasn't in Kansas. This one is actually in Farmington, Minnesota. I drove by this not that long ago. I mean, I drove out and I look out in the field and there's this big Buddhist temple. If you go down to Minneapolis and you're there in the morning, what will you hear? You'll hear the minaret playing, Allah. I have a question for you. If a church in Minneapolis wanted to broadcast hymns on loudspeakers, would they allow that? No, but they do allow for the call to prayer to go out every morning in Minneapolis. And what I mean by this, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, is we're seeing our culture change. And by the way, the reason the culture changes is because the religion changes. And now we have a flood of people coming in who hold different religions. And you can't have different religions both influencing the culture where they can be at peace, because you have basically different understandings of stuff. Now, I'm not arguing whether we shouldn't, or should, or shouldn't allow people in who have different religions than Christianity. But what I am saying is this, is that these still function as false religions that lead people astray and their leaders are false prophets. Here's another one. The picture on the left is taken from an aerial shot. And if you look down, it looks like there's garbage all over, but it's not garbage. It's people. This was down in Jonestown. And the guy on the right is the Reverend Jim Jones. He was a pastor. in California who moved his whole church down to Guyana, South America. And while they were there, he convinced them all to take poisoned Kool-Aid. They drank it and they died. It's interesting because if you go online, you can find the actual audio clip of him talking to the people, telling the moms to calm their children and how we'll all be on the other side pretty soon. The guy sounds demonic. He actually sounded like Elvis as far as his voice. But he was a charismatic leader and he had a lot of respect. I remember he got some kind of medal or some kind of award from President Carter at the time. But the guy brought, what was it, 976 people to their death. But interestingly with that, one of his adopted sons who ran out into the jungle so they wouldn't kill him, he actually lived through it and he later became a Christian and wrote a book about it. Another sign that Jesus said that there would be in the end times is an increase of lawlessness. We got a picture here where it shows lawlessness from coast to coast. Or how about this one here? What's the picture on the left? Yeah, some of you know that one. That's the burning of the Minneapolis police precinct down during the time of the riots with George Floyd. They burned it down and the governor allowed them to do so. So did the mayor. Matter of fact, the mayor told them to give it up to the protesters, knowing they were going to burn it down. On the right, you see a bunch of people looting a Walmart. And by the way, you know, the guy who's running for vice president now, Governor Walz, he didn't order the National Guard to come out for the first four or five days. It was basically after they had looted and destroyed much. I hold him personally responsible for these things. It was his job to stop this. His wife actually said she kept the windows open because she liked the smell of the burning at the time that was going on. And by the way, how many people have been arrested and prosecuted for that? I only know of a couple, and one got, I think he got three years for doing that. And I think the judge said that, you know, he was acting out of his convictions. Really, you have the conviction of burning people's livelihood down? Their buildings? Do you know that 80% of the businesses that got burned down had no insurance, so they just lost everything? All for the sake of justice, right? We're going to get justice by burning things. But you know, when you talk about an increase of lawlessness, we tend to think of people gunning others down in the street. But that's not all of what lawlessness is. Lawlessness is when people don't recognize any law above themselves. They put themselves above the law. And think of our lawmakers. Think of all the stuff that went on with COVID, where we had all these restrictions that were imposed upon us, and yet our politicians didn't abide by them. So lawlessness, it's like what the Bible says, in those days there was no king, so every man did what was right in their own eyes. Well, they also, Jesus said there would be the preaching of the gospel worldwide. There's a picture of a man, it looks like he's probably in India, speaking to a small group of people with his Bible open. And of course, the gospel has gone out through most of the world, but there are still areas where they don't have the Bible in their own language. We support Whitcliffe translators, and so there's much work that has to be done, but Jesus said that that would be one of the signs of the end. The other sign, though, is this. I wrote this. Most people will be unaware and unconcerned. We got a picture here of people, a bunch of young people, looks like they're just partying and having a good time. Well, Jesus put it this way. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark. And they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them away. That's how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Matthew 24, 37 to 39. Now, I have to say, it's interesting because I mentioned, you know, these predictions that were made earlier, but Jesus told us that nobody knows the day or the time of his return, except for the father. He said, not even the son of man, meaning himself knows. And so when you get these people who are making predictions about how Jesus is going to come on this day or that day, you know that they don't know that. They're only guessing. And I have to tell you, I'm not going to make a prediction of when this will occur. But here's what I can say. I think every generation got to set it up so that it seems possible that the end could come at their time. For instance, Genghis Khan, he was the scourge of Europe and Asia, the Mongol leader. When he came riding across the steppes and conquering just about everything in his way, many Christians believed that he was the Antichrist because it speaks about someone coming on a white horse and they thought, well, that's obviously him. Well, strangely enough, Genghis Khan obviously wasn't the Antichrist, But when he took over the area, he allowed people to practice their religion freely. So actually, the Christians did better under Genghis Khan than they did under their Muslim overlords. Well, we're going to look at all kinds of things that the Bible talks about. But, you know, these false prophets that I mentioned, it reminded me of another story I saw. It was a video, and it was a guy who was going to lay flowers on his mother's grave in China. And they said that he does this every single week without fail. Do you know why? Because during the Cultural Revolution, he turned his mother in and the Communist government executed him. Now let me ask you a question. What do you think the chances are he can assuage his guilt and be rid of it by putting flowers on her grave? No amount of flowers will ever do that. You know, that whole issue of guilt and how to be rid of it. There's a lady that I know of, she is pro-choice and that comes as a result of the fact that she had had an abortion years ago. But what's really strange about this is she has this recurring dream since she had the abortion. And in her dream, she looks down and she sees her leg and it's tied to a rope. And on the other side of the rope is a body bag. But you know what's weird about that? over the years that she's had this dream, the body bag keeps getting bigger. Now I was telling that to one of my coworkers when I was working at a dairy. I was witnessing to him and he said, that's strange. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, when I was first married, when I was just like 21 or 22, my wife got pregnant. I didn't want her to have a baby at that time. So I pushed her, urged her and pressured her to have an abortion. He said, since that time, he said, I have this reoccurring dream. And in this dream, I'm walking through a meadow and I'm holding the hand of a little girl. But he said, every time I have that dream, the little girl is a little bigger, a little taller. Now, isn't it interesting? Those two people didn't know each other, but the dreams were different, but yet they had the same structure, didn't they? In other words, the idea that they're guilty and the idea of the child getting bigger in both cases. Now, how could that be if there is no God behind them? I mean, if abortion's no big deal, as they're arguing for, if there is no ultimate right or wrong, if there is no God, then how do you even explain that? But the issue of guilt is real. And by the way, that's where Jesus is coming back. He's coming back to judge the world. He's coming back to punish the world for its wickedness. And so what we're going to be looking at in the weeks to come has to do with, you know, the events that lead to these things, the difficulties the world's going to go through, and how it's all going to end ultimately with Christ sitting on a throne in Jerusalem, ruling over the entire world. Well, why don't we close with a word of prayer, and then I'll dismiss you. Our Father God, I do pray for grace and mercy. Help us as we look at this. You know, it's interesting. It's fascinating. It's scary. But most of all, it's supposed to be a motivation for us to live lives that are pleasing to you. Because we don't have forever. to get right with God. And Lord, even after we become Christians, we want to make use of our time effectively, because we don't know how long we have. And someday the world is going to end, this portion of human history. But if that doesn't happen in our lifetime, our life is going to end as well. And so we need grace and mercy. So thank you for our time together. We pray a great blessing upon each one who's listening. And we ask that you would dismiss us now and give us safety on the way home. For we ask now in Jesus' name. Amen.