Amen. As we go through some of these seals, which are judgments of God, we should always remember that they were being unleashed in the midst of praise and the worship of God's people on earth and in heaven. These things didn't depress them. They saw these as the victories of God. And if you want to follow along in the majority text that's on page 15, otherwise you can follow along in in your own versions. And each time I'm going to be reading the whole section of the first four. And I saw that the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living beings saying, like a voice of thunder, come. And I looked, and behold, a white horse. And he who sat on it had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering, that is, in order to conquer. And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living being saying, come. And another horse went out fiery red, and it was granted to him who sat on it to take peace from the earth, take the peace from the earth so that they would slaughter each other. Also a huge sword was given to him. And when he opened the third seal, I heard the third living being saying, come. And I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living beings saying, a quart of wheat for a denarius and three quarts of barley for a denarius, but do not harm the olive oil and the wine. And when he opened the fourth seal, I heard a voice from the fourth living being saying, come, and I looked, And behold, a sickly pale horse. And as for the one sitting upon it, his name is Death, and Hades followed with him. And authority was given to him over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword and by famine and by death, even by the wild animals of the earth. Father, we thank you for your word, and I pray that as we dig into it, we would see life from your perspective and have faith and hope and that we would be drawn even closer in our love toward one another and our love toward you and all that you have done for us. Thank you for your provision. And I pray now for your wisdom as we look into your scriptures. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. When you go through a book of a Bible, just a paragraph at a time, it's easy to get so focused on the details that you lose sight of where you are in the forest. And so what I'm going to do, I haven't given a review for a while. I'm going to give you a, first of all, a bird's eye view of the book as a whole. And we're going to give you a review of where we have come from so far. Now you'll remember that this book is constructed in the Hebrew form of a chiasm. A chiasm does not start like we tend to do in our Western thinking with the theme and then working it out. We tend to write the theme sentence and work it out in the paragraph or we write the theme paragraph and work it out in a chapter. And sometimes they would do that in Hebrew, but they had other structures as well. And one of the Hebrew structures is a is a chiasm, very, very common. If you look at the back side of your outline, you'll see a graphic that has a green arrow with words to the right of it. That's a broad outline of the book. And you'll see that each section of the book has the label A, B, C, D, E, and then it goes backwards. It goes D, C, B, A. And you'll notice that the A sections, in other words, the first and the last parts of the book are parallel to each other. And the B sections, so that'd be the second and the second to the last sections are parallel. And the third section and the third to the last are parallel. And then you get to the center of the book, which is the most important part. That's the theme from which, uh, everything has been flowing. Everything drives to it. Everything drives back out of it. It is the heart. of that book. So the first 11 verses of Revelation are the A section. They gave us 30 plus principles of interpretation by which we can understand the book. It's like John gave us a key. He said, man, you're gonna need this key if you're gonna open this book. And praise God, he gave us a key. If you take all 30 principles seriously, there's a whole lot of controversies that are very, very quickly settled. And then if you look at the bottom, so you've got the prologue and the epilogue, you see that they both deal with exactly the same subject material. It's giving us instructions on how to read the book and how to understand it, how to submit to the book of Revelation. Does that make sense so far? Then the B section is the first large section of the book, beginning at chapter 1, verse 12, all the way through to the end of chapter 3. It deals with the church militant, and it parallels the discussion of the church militant and triumphant in chapter 19, verse 11, through chapter 22, verse 17. But where the B sections deal with the church, the C and D sections deal with what Christ is doing out there in the world. He judges Israel and Rome in the court of heaven. He gives legal judgments. and has his angels execute those judgments on the earth. And I'm not going to walk you through the C and the D sections, but that graphic, I've tried to condense it as tightly as I could. I've given you the big graphic, but this is a smaller one. So you can have kind of a bird's eye picture of the book as a whole. In any case, backing up to what we have covered so far, chapters two through three gave detailed instructions on how the church militant can successfully please her Lord, overcome the devil, fulfill the Great Commission, and move planet Earth from wilderness to paradise. But just like every section of the book, that section has an introduction. Revelation 1, 9 through 20 was the introduction to the church militant. And what it did is it showed the victorious Christ walking in the midst of the candlesticks. In other words, he's in the middle of the church, which means every attack that comes against the church of Jesus Christ is attack against who? It's an attack against Jesus, right? And are they going to be successful in attacking Jesus? No, not at all. So his powerful presence in the church guarantees that eventually this church militant will become the church triumphant if the church will walk by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit. So it was really designed to give comfort and faith and hope to his people. Then a few weeks ago, we started the second major part of the book, the first C section, that's chapters four through seven. And this whole section is divided up into seven seals. I didn't put that into your outline. It starts getting complicated when you put all the substructures in. But those seven seals give legal judgments based upon the Old Testament law. The Old Testament is the only basis in which God has brought any judgments in planet Earth. That's really important to understand. Remember that the scroll was the Old Testament canon, and if each seal is affixed to that scroll, and the moment the seal is taken off, Jesus is bringing a judgment, It's very, very clear that the Old Testament is the foundation for those judgments. And that means the Old Testament law is relevant to Gentile nations. There are so many Christians out there, including Reformed Christians, who think we're just New Testament Christians. We really don't need the Old Testament law. And for sure, the Old Testament law is not at all relevant to the pagans. But I think these seals demonstrate conclusively it's not just Israel that is being judged by the Old Testament. Rome was as well, America is too. So the C sections show that the heavenly courtroom is initiating legal orders against both Rome and Israel. And like each of the seven sections of this book, This one had an introduction, and the introduction was the absolutely fabulous courtroom scene in chapters 4 through 5, where John is summoned into the heavenly courtroom, and he is a witness, as it were, as Christ brings a covenant lawsuit. Now, he can't do it by himself. John is just a witness. And Jesus is the only one who can ultimately advance those covenant lawsuits as well as the gospel to planet Earth. But when you look at all of these historical things that we get so troubled with from the vantage point of the heavenly courtroom, then you can look at those things with faith and with hope. It's really a perspective that we constantly need to have on life. OK well that brings us up to last week where we saw that the first seal was opened up and a horse and rider emerged. Verses 1 through 2 represent Christ's first judgment after he ascends to his throne in 30 A.D. Now he had been ruling planet Earth as God the son prior to that. But this is the first judgment of his mediatorial kingdom once he ascends to the right hand of the father. That demonic horse and rider had been restrained from coming into history. They've been held back, and it is champing at the bit. It wants to engage in its destructive behavior. And I think we can say, praise God, it's only when Jesus authorizes an angel to say, come, that those demons can come. They do not have free reign upon planet Earth. They can only do what Christ permits them to do. In any case, Jesus finally gave permission to that demonic rider to ride, and we saw last week that it turned Caesar Tiberius into a monster. I didn't have time last week to tell you the whole story that John's audience would have been thoroughly familiar with, and I won't this morning tell you the whole story. Some of it's just too gross to tell, quite honestly. But let me fill you in on a few more details that surround verses 1 through 2. Prior to 30 AD, in other words, prior to this demon possessing Tiberius, Tiberius would have been considered a fairly decent emperor. In fact, some of the historians that I've read said, you know, if he'd only died in 23 AD, he would have been considered an exemplary, an exemplary emperor. But prior to 30 AD, he would have been considered a fairly decent one. And you look at some of his policies, and you can see from a humanistic perspective where people would say that. I mean, he was a fiscal conservative. He left the imperial treasury with a huge surplus of three billion sesterces. Now, to just calculate in terms of current value, officers like Trevor would have been paid 900 sesterces per year. If you divide 900 into 3 billion, you get the equivalent of 3.3 million officers annual pay. That's how much surplus that he had. So he really was a fiscal conservative. But around the time of Christ's baptism and entrance into office, Tiberius got tired of politics and he retired to the island of Capri. putting the administration of the empire into the hands of two Praetorian prefects, Sejanus and Macro, and both of them were very successful in carrying out Tiberius' will, and that left Tiberius free to pamper himself in his resort island of Capri. And it was really in 30 AD that things suddenly changed for the worse. And people might say, well, that's just coincidence. I don't think it's coincidental at all that he changed for the worse at exactly the time that this demon was unleashed upon him in 30 AD. All hell began to break loose with both the actions of Sejanus as well as the actions of Tiberius. The Praetorian prefect, Sejanus, wanted the throne for himself, so he began to systematically get rid of other heirs, and since Tiberius didn't get any information except for what was channeled through Sejanus, he didn't even find out about what was happening until a little bit later. Sejanus banished the popular widow of Germanicus and her two sons, Drusus, the younger, and Caesar Nero, which was a different Caesar than we're going to be looking at in this book. Both died under very unusual circumstances, and virtually every historian that I have read says they're convinced Sejanus is the one who had them killed. The only survivors of his purge were Caligula and his two sisters. Actually, yeah, anyway, his sisters were very, very young. And people wonder, why did he spare Caligula? Because you would have thought he would have been just as much of a threat to the throne as the others. But you see, God spared Caligula because Caligula was going to be the next judgment upon Rome. So he had to be spared. But in 31 AD, Tiberius found out about Sejanus' treasonous plot to overthrow him and arranged to have him arrested while he was at a meeting at the Senate and had him immediately executed. Sejanus was replaced with Macro and all of Sejanus' co-conspirators were put to death. There was a bloodbath. But Tiberius became so paranoid, he started systematically killing anybody that he thought was even remotely a threat to his throne, whether they had been conspirators or not. But you could also see a major shift in the character of Tiberius in 30 AD, AD 30. Suetonius records lurid tales of sexual perversity, whole bevies of young boys, cruelty, masochism, sadism, bondage, all kinds of demonic activities that are just too gross to even mention. From 80, 30 and on, Tiberius was a major judgment upon Rome and Rome groaned under his bondage. Now just to give you a little bit of an idea of how much Rome despised him by this point, The Roman historian Tacitus tells us that when the crowds heard that Tiberius died, there was wild jubilation in the streets. And then a rumor came that he had been revived and there was suddenly quiet. And then they heard, oh no, Caligula has for sure killed the 78-year-old emperor. And there's wild jubilation in the streets once again. The Senate refused to give Tiberius divine honors and the crowds mobbed the streets yelling, to the Tiber with Tiberius. Referring to the tradition of killing criminals and then throwing them into the Tiber, not allowing them to be buried. So by this time it was obvious everybody despised Tiberius. But verse 3 marks the transition to the next emperor, Caligula, in 37 AD. After the terrible last seven years of Tiberius, the crowds were ecstatic, absolutely ecstatic to have Their hero, who had been killed by Tiberius, their hero Caligula, the son of Germanicus, they were ecstatic to get him. And so on the day of his accession, March 28 of AD 37, which was just 10 days after Tiberius died, the crowds hailed him as the perfect emperor. Suetonius said that the crowds called him our baby and our star and other words of endearment. He said that there were 160,000 animals that were sacrificed during those first three months in jubilation, celebrating the rise of Caligula. Philo claims that the first six months of his reign were completely blissful. He was their savior. But the crowds were naive as to his true character, which really was already evident, but behind the scenes, it was well hidden. From the moment of his accession to power in AD 37, he showed evidence of the evil demonic rider that had been unleashed upon him. He declared Tiberius' will null and void, claiming that he was insane, but it was a clear breaking of Roman law. And this was just the first of many, many examples where he thought of himself as being above the law. He immediately killed the young Gemulus who had been declared to be his co-heir. He didn't want any competition. But he hid his perverted practices for a period of time while he was consolidating his power. In fact, during the first six months, he actually deported all kinds of perverts out of the empire. while himself engaging in perversion. It was all calculated to show he's going to have a different reign than Tiberius. He destroyed Tiberius' treason papers and said, you know, treason trials are a thing of the past. He recalled people from exile. He lavishly distributed money. For example, he gave generous bonuses to the military, the Praetorian Guard, the city troops, the army outside of Israel. He gave money to those who had been harmed by the tax system. He put on lavish gladiatorial games, boxing, all kinds of entertainment. And I'm trying to paint a picture for you why it was, when you read the histories, you realize the crowds loved this guy. He was their favorite president. This was a really cool president, so to speak. And he also had a lot of fans in the Senate. But in the meantime, he was consolidating his power. By the way, he pretended to have humility. He said, oh, don't give me any divine honors. I am simply a servant of the people all the time, gaining as much power as he could. Now, some claim that he must have been poisoned in October. How else can you explain the insane behavior that he engaged in from October and on of 37 AD? You see, those who don't believe in demons, they have a hard time explaining sudden shifts like this. So they say, well, if everything's going to be explained materialistically, somebody must have poisoned him. He was sick in October. And so that's the theory, but I believe this passage shows why he turned into the worst emperor to date, far worse than Tiberius. So let's go through the passage and let's get God's perspective on these incredibly scary times. Verse three says, and when he opened, this is Jesus, when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living being saying, come. Notice that this is a renewed judgment. It's a second seal, and each seal increases in severity when there is lack of repentance. God brings judgment, there's no repentance. He brings greater judgment, there's no repentance. He keeps increasing. And I want you to also notice that this covenant lawsuit impacts not just Israel, it impacts Rome. Now, as far as Israel is concerned, this is where most of the commentaries focus, anybody who has studied the history of Caligula knows that He had the potential, he was out to destroy Israel. It's a pretty scary story and I'll tell you that in a little bit. But here I just want to emphasize that these covenant lawsuits are not just against Israel. Too many of the partial preterists only focus on Israel. Certainly Israel is going to face trouble in this book. But all nations are subject to God's law, and all nations that refuse to bow to King Jesus will suffer the negative consequences of rejecting His Lordship. You cannot read Psalm 2 without coming to that conclusion. Jesus wields His rod of iron. And the God who cannot lie has promised to judge Kings who refuse to kiss the Son of God. America is no exception. In fact, I would say if anything, we are deserving of greater judgment because we have fallen away from being a Christian nation. We have despised our Christian heritage. So if you think that we in America can escape judgment simply because things have been okay in the past, you've got another think coming. God has indeed judged our nation all down through the years. We have faced the judgment of tyrannical administrations from the county level to the national. We have faced numerous examples of epidemics and plagues, like flu, which killed millions, and measles, and smallpox. I read some medical background that was published in 2003. There was another article in 2005, another one in 2008. They estimate that smallpox alone killed somewhere between 300 and 500 million people worldwide in the 20th century, and the same smallpox epidemics killed many in America in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, early 1900s. See, people tend to think America has been free of all judgments, and I say that's not the case at all. That is absolutely not the case. Just count up the number of deaths that America has faced in wars and you'll realize that these various four seals, all of these kinds of judgments have already been happening in America. But I want you to also notice that it isn't the first good cherub angel that allows this demon to run. It's the second cherub who no doubt heads up his own armies. You see, cherubim are the warrior angels and we saw that these living beings were the four covering cherub. They were the ones who were in charge. of the cherubim armies. And so verse 3 really speaks of two generals in angelic wars that are pitted off against each other, one good and one evil. But to me this also implies that the armies of demons that the first demon led are now being supplemented by another general and his troops. See, nations can have wave upon wave of demons inflicted upon them. So it's not just an increase of physical judgments, there's also the increase of demons. And in America, we have, over the last several decades, seen an increase of the demonic that is phenomenal in this nation. And this book of revelation helps us to understand the times. It helps us to evaluate history. Now, verse four says, as a result, it says, and another horse went out and we're not told where he went out from in terms of of space. The demons in chapter nine are allowed to come out of the bottomless pit. Now, that may be the case here. We're not told. But certainly in terms of imagery, he went out of the seal, right? Since each seal represents a covenant lawsuit or a covenant judgment in the legal arena, the court of heaven must acknowledge legal ground for these demons to work. Demons want to always be at work, but the court of heaven allows increased demonization as there is increasing sin. Sin gives legal ground for demons to be at work, and what is true on the national level is certainly true on the individual level. If you have given legal ground to Satan and the way you do it is by persevering in sin and not caring about it, not repenting of it, that gives legal ground to Satan. For example, in Ephesians, it says, don't let the sun go down on your anger or give place to the devil. that word give place means you're giving ground to the devil. And we can do that when we fail to repent. So all a demon has to do when you're trying to get this demonic out of your life, all he has to do is look at God and say, I have a right to be here. I have a legal right to be here, don't I? And God says, yes. And there's not a thing that you can do about it because there is a legal dimension to spiritual warfare that I think is many times missing in the books. Now the fact that seals on God's law are opened shows the legal basis for these judgments. But that also gives us hope. Because it means if there is genuine repentance, the legal judgment can be removed. This is why Jonah didn't want to preach to the Ninevites, right? He was worried, if God's sending me to the Ninevites, maybe he's planning on converting them. He wanted them wiped out. He didn't want them converted, right? So when Nineveh converted, even though they were under threat of judgment in 40 days, The moment they converted, that judgment was wiped out. Why? Because the judgments come as a result of a legal basis. And let me read to you from Jeremiah 18. God says, the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. Why? Because with repentance, there is now the legal basis for removing the judgment. In any case, Jesus allows this demon to ride. Based on the seal and the law of God, it has the legal authority to ride. And take a look at the description of this symbol. The text speaks of the fiery red color of this horse. Commentators usually say that it symbolizes bloodshed, and that's true. I think it does symbolize that. I think, in fact, that's probably the central meaning of the red. His reign was a reign of bloodshed, but I did find it interesting that Caligula identified his reign with a red flying horse, a red version of the Greek god Pegasus. He minted several bronze coins, and you've got some of them in your outlines there. that pictured him on one side and Pegasus on the other side and both the bronze and the copper coins would have made Pegasus look red. And interestingly the paintings and frescoes and vases and other artwork from this period have a whole bunch of these Pegasuses where they could have made them white or black, they made them red. And I've given one example, I think I gave two or three last week of that. Another interesting fact is that Caligula made this horse the symbol of the brand new legion that he set up in Germanica. And so we've got surviving images from the Germanica legion. that have this Caligula symbol. So this red rider may very well be a reflection of the Caligula coins and his official emblem for his new legion army. Now of course Caligula was the first emperor to demand worship as a divine god while he was still alive. Usually they reserved that till after they died. And it's just one more evidence that he saw himself as divine. But I do want you to notice that Jesus grants this demon the authority to remove the peace from the earth. It says, and it was granted to him who sat on it to take the peace from the earth so that they would slaughter each other. Also a huge sword was given to him. It isn't just removing peace, it's removing the peace. And this is probably a reference to the peace that was bragged about by the Romans worldwide, the Pax Romana, the peace imposed by force that we looked at last week. Now, of course, we know from the Bible the kind of peace that Rome imposed was a fake peace, not the kind of civil peace that Christ's reign will eventually produce. And Jesus destroyed this messianic Pax Romana during Caligula's reign. He wanted to show that any status peace that is achieved will eventually crumble. And I'll just give you a couple of examples. Caligula invited the Mauritanian king, Ptolemy, to Rome, and when Ptolemy and Caligula, side by side, entered the amphitheater, the people, of course, rose up and applauded. Caligula had to be applauded everywhere. But there was oohs and aahs and comments about Ptolemy's gorgeous toga that he wore. And the histories say this instantly made Caligula envious. He flew into a rage and instantly commanded that they kill Ptolemy the king. It's just weird, very weird. So they killed him and this capricious execution of Ptolemy led the whole Mauritanian kingdom to an uprising against Rome. And there were a lot of other capricious and bloody acts like this by Caligula that removed the peace, the Pax Romana from the empire. As it related to Israel, Flaccus erected statues of Caligula in Jewish synagogues all over the empire. You can imagine that's not going to go over very well in the Jewish synagogues. And so there was rioting everywhere. Alexandria and Jamnia. Philo records that a clay altar was erected in Jamnia and the Jews destroyed it. Well, that's not going to be taken too well by the emperor. This is his official property they're destroying. Caligula ordered the government to erect a statue of himself right inside of the temple at Jerusalem. And though local officials really dragged their feet trying to delay, hoping that this would actually get reversed, This and other actions almost led to an outbreak of war. In fact, H.H. Ben-Sasson claims that Caligula's actions almost led to war throughout the entire Eastern Roman Empire. Very literally, Caligula had removed the peace. He had removed the Pax Romana. And the very people who put Caligula into power with such eagerness are the ones who suffer the most. And that's the way it's been down through history over and over again. People don't learn from history. When trouble is created by a Tiberius, the Senate and the people want to give more power to a Caligula to fix the problem. And when Caligula creates havoc and trouble, they want to give more power to a Claudius to fix the previous problem. And when Claudius's economic policies are an absolute disaster, they want to give more power to a Nero to fix the problem. You see, when the state is the god of that nation, You don't have anywhere else to turn except for the state to fix problems. So people keep trying with the same failed policies. They keep trying to look to the state to fix things. They look to the state to fix things. Somebody once said that that's kind of the definition of insanity when you try the same crazy policies that have failed in the past and hope that they will work in the future. And I would describe what is going on in Washington, D.C. as insanity. It makes no sense, but no one seems to be able to stop it. They're frustrated, but they can't seem to be able to stop it. Anyway, the death that resulted under Caligula is not just symbolized by the color red, but also by the huge sword that is given to this rider. Now, I've puzzled over this sword in the past, and I've never seen any comments and commentaries that can solve this, because commentaries say, by definition, a Micaira sword That's the kind of sword here. The Mechaira sword is not a big sword. It's a small sword. That's the very definition of this word. We'll get to that in a bit. Let me first of all say, who is the sword given to? First and foremost, it's given to the demonic rider, right? He has to have it because demons are not going to be able to move the humans to engage in this kind of death and destruction unless God sovereignly allows them to move in their lives. So first of all, it's given to the demons, but the demonic push towards statism causes Roman leaders themselves to give Caligula unbridled power of the sword, and he used it. Within weeks, Within weeks of being granted this unrestrained power of the sword, Caligula started killing all rivals. He killed his cousin, his adopted son, his grandmother, father-in-law, brother-in-law, Anyone else that got in the way, he exiled his sisters with whom he had been committing incest for years. Claudius was only spared because Claudius, he preferred to keep him as a laughing stock. Of course, we know from our perspective, Claudius has to be the instrument of the next judgment. So God's going to spare him. But here's the weird thing. The common rabble loved him. They loved Caligula because he restored the rights of democratic elections because of his lavish spending and because he constantly talked about how terrible Tiberius was. You know, how the people needed liberty. Oh, he said all kinds of offensive things about Tiberius. Reminds me of modern politics, you know? But by 1839, he had exhausted the $3 billion sesterce surplus in the fund. So to keep his spending spree going, he made false accusations against wealthy people, and he either fined them, being able to get money that way, or he just executed them and confiscated their estates, getting even more money. And the common people actually still thought, this is great. This was an old-fashioned style Robin Hood, you know. He's stealing from these filthy rich people and giving to the poor. What a great emperor this guy is. So they thought he was using his sword very wisely, at least at the beginning. But things kept getting worse until even the crowds despised him. He borrowed heavily, levied taxes on everything. Let me just give you an example of some of the things he levied taxes on. You have a lawsuit against somebody because they've ripped you off, you know, of $10,000. You go to court, and you bring him to court, and you win a judgment against him. He taxed that lawsuit. You have a wedding. He taxed that wedding on what he estimated the value of that wedding to be. He taxed prostitution. Almost anything he could tax, he tried to tax. Well, he ran out of things that he could tax, was running out of money, so he began auctioning the lives of gladiators at the gladiatorial games. He confiscated plunder from the army that should have been their legitimate due. He auctioned off slaves and imperial possessions. He became more and more petty, bloodthirsty, vengeful, and irrational. The hero of the people turned into a tyrant that they could not get rid of. He was so bad that Rome once again groaned under the tyranny. Now, this verse mentions him being given a huge sword. Let me comment on that briefly. The specific sword that is mentioned was a machaira sword, which was never big. It's the short Roman sword. And so commentaries point out it's almost like it's an oxymoron to call any machaira sword a large sword, let alone a huge sword, okay? A machaira sword can't be huge. So to me, that is a clue that we're not supposed to be interpreting this purely literally. In terms of word usage, we don't really need to. The Mechaira sword was also used figuratively in ancient literature to speak of the state's judicial power and punishment. In fact, if you look up the word Mechaira in a Greek dictionary, any of the Greek dictionaries will say it's a Roman military sword, or second definition, it refers to judicial power that the state engaged in. Okay, so there is a figurative usage for that term as well. And by calling it a huge makaira. I think it's almost certain. This is a reference to Caligula being granted unprecedented powers But if you want to be a literalist I did find it interesting that Caligula made constant references to his literal sword as a veiled threat. When he slept with women, and the historians maybe are exaggerating it, but they said whenever he slept with women, he had his sword with him and he made the comment, I could take your head off at any time. He made threats with his sword, constantly patting his sword as well. He just loved that sword. And he made threats to nobles and others. When the zoo had a meat shortage, he just on a whim ordered all bald-headed prisoners to be killed and fed as meat to the animals. Suetonius and other Roman historians record that he forced knights and noblemen to fight each other in the Colosseum. When he was killed by one of his guards, and the guard was in just a fit of rage, and all of a sudden realized, wow, am I in trouble? But then the rest of the guards killed him. I think it was a relief to everybody that this guard had killed him, but they found two books in his possession that listed all of the people. They were astonished at all of the names slated for death. The first book's name was The Sword, and the second book's name was The Dagger. Okay, so those are fitting titles of the power given to him. by those who now hated him. They gave him a huge sword, and he used it against his own people. And if you read Suetonius's, he was a Roman historian, but his book, The Lives of the Caesars, you'll see this is a very apt description of Caligula, whether you take it literally or figuratively, either way. But while the meaning is clearly applicable to Caligula, there are applications that make it very pertinent to the present. I've already made some applications during the sermon, but let me end with three more. First final application is that there has always been a tendency in history to give a big sword to the civil government to deal with big problems. Hitler was given a big sword, so to speak, to deal with the enormous problems that Germany was facing after World War I. And you can take a look at Lenin, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or Mao Zedong, or other saviors, deliverers, who were acclaimed as liberators, and the naive gave them a big sword of power. And it always has come back to be used against the citizens. Republicans argued for the Patriot Act to deal with terrorism. We need this to deal with terrorism. That is a huge sword. And who is it being wielded against now? It's being wielded against citizens. Always be wary of the big sword. Never give a huge sword to the state. States need to be limited. Somebody was just telling me this morning that one of the presidential, Trump I think it was, presidential candidates said that the government needs to force Apple to give them specialized software, a backdoor, and it'll only be used, you know, for this one terrorist phone. Yeah, right. They're going to have it to use on everybody's phones. But when you give this big sword, believe me, down the road it will be used against citizens. A second application is to realize that demons always take advantage of centralization. This was a demon that was champing at the bit to get involved. And the moment Christ says, OK, we're not going to hold you back any longer, things went from bad to worse. But they went from bad to worse because all of the checks and balances that had been in place in the Roman Republic before had been completely eroded, obliterated. The efficiency of government started by Caesar Augustus made it easier and easier for demons to control the nation. And the same has been true in America from its first Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, and on. Administration after administration has systematically eroded most of the checks and balances that this country has started. And even though D.C. started with a very small sword, it now has a huge sword. So demons will no doubt take advantage of this fact. It helps them to be much more efficient in their work. And so it's facts like these that need to inform our civics and need to help us to realize we want limited government. It doesn't matter how many problems limited government leads to, we want limited civil government. The last application is summed up beautifully in Psalm 146, verse 3, which says, do not put your trust in princes. The Caligulas of this world always look pretty good, and they always give lots of promises. Take a look at the Caligula statue, you know, that's on your bulletin there. He really didn't look very dangerous. Looks like a harmless, innocent fellow there. Everybody thought Caligula would fix the problem. Everyone thought he had a servant's heart after all. Didn't he promise to serve the people? Yes, he did. He made all kinds of promises of serving the interests of the people, protecting the people, providing for the people. He was the one who was going to get rid of bad government. Yeah, right. As you enter into this political season of the next few months, keep Psalm 146, verse 3 in mind. Do not put your trust in princes. God makes sure that idols will always let you down. And really, just study the doctrine of total depravity. That ought to be enough to make you realize you don't want to trust in unbridled power at any time. whether it's in the citizenry or whether it's in unbridled government. Certainly, our founding fathers didn't trust either. They hated democracy. They hated unbridled citizenry. They hated unbridled government power. Why? Because they cite the doctrine of total depravity over and over again as the reason you don't trust that. It's almost always a crisis that justifies such trust, and hundreds of illustrations can be given in America. I'll just give you a couple stories. When Abraham Lincoln responded to the Fort Sumter incident in South Carolina, he didn't wait for Congress to begin its next session to make that response. Instead, wielding powers that the Constitution did not grant him, without any formal declaration of war, he drastically enlarged the Union's Army and Navy, blockaded Southern ports, spent money not appropriated by Congress, arrested Northern citizens suspected of being Confederate sympathizers, and engaged in several other illegal acts. And as soon as Congress convened, he admitted that he had exceeded his authority. Now, a lot of people don't realize that, but he freely admitted that he had exceeded his power, but he said, hey, it's the emergency of the situation, and the people want this, and I'm gonna read to you part of his speech. He said, these measures, whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon under what appeared to be a popular demand. The people want it, right? And a public necessity, trusting then, as now, that Congress would readily ratify them. And Congress did so. Now, he'd already grabbed this huge sword, and Congress said, yeah, that's OK. We'll retroactively ratify that. It's OK for you to use that. And they continued to trust Lincoln with more and more powers to deal with the crisis. Now, it didn't stop with Lincoln. After Lincoln's assassination, 13,000 soldiers and civilians were tried before 5,000 military commissions. And the question came up, how is it constitutional to try civilians before a military court? And the answer seems to have been that they didn't really trust the civilian courts to be able to handle these problems, and the military courts could deal with them much more quickly. As historian James Hall later said, that's the beauty of the thing. From the government's perspective, things move quickly. And from a legal standpoint, it's all self-contained. So the Caligulas of this world ask people to trust them with an efficient government to be able to efficiently deal with crisis. Now there is hundreds of stories that go on between Abraham Lincoln's time and FDR. It's just a gradual whittling away, erosion, erosion. But I think Roosevelt made a major series of grabs for power and asked Congress and the people to trust him with more power for economic emergencies. I'm gonna read from History Commons. Says President Theodore Roosevelt, wielding what will become known as the theory of inherent power, declares that the presidency has a residuum of powers to do anything not specifically forbidden by the Constitution. Now, this is huge. This is the exact opposite of what the Puritans talked about as the regulative principle of government, that church and state may not do anything that's not explicitly authorized. He took the opposite view. He said, hey, you show me in the Constitution where I'm forbidden to do this. Well, that's just about anything. There's lots of things that aren't forbidden unless you take it as a regulative document. But anyway, he said, anything not specifically forbidden by the Constitution without asking Congress for its approval, Roosevelt launches the project to build the Panama Canal, sends the U.S. Navy around the world and sends U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic. Now, of course, that was just the very beginning of an unbelievable series of expansion of presidential power where Roosevelt created new agencies with new powers, new courts, a quick eradication of historical freedoms. not innocent till proven guilty in these new courts that were erected. And he illustrates, I think, beautifully why we must not put our trust in princes, why we must never grant them the huge sword. Any number of books have documented this trusting of the presidency in America. with unconstitutional powers. History Commons actually has a very interesting, it's a long, long list, but date by date of some of the series of how we have come to the place that we're at right now. But here is where I summarize it all. You could complain about all of that, but I think all of it boils down to a failure to trust Christ. And it's putting our trust in princes. Our trust must be in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Lord of history and only he should have unrestrained power because only he is in perfect submission to the father. So what do you do when Caligula's reign in the world? You do what the early church did. You pray, you worship, you serve God faithfully, you witness, you unashamedly tell the world about the crown rights of King Jesus over every area of life. You tell them that this Bible provides all of the answers that they need for life. You live out the Bible, and little by little, you take country after country back into Christendom. Christendom can be restored once again. In fact, Revelation, as we progress into Revelation, you're going to be seeing that it's not just going to be a restoration of Christendom. In fact, Christendom will be so glorious in the future, it's going to make any Christendom of the past pale by comparison. But we must know our enemy. And the enemy is not just flesh and blood. It is also the demons behind that flesh and blood. We must understand the legal dimensions in the courtroom of heaven. May God wake up the church and spare us from Caligula. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word and the warnings that it gives and the way it helps us to interpret history. And I pray that the Church of Jesus Christ would take heed to your scriptures. May we not be those who fail to learn from history and move on to our own destruction, but Father, may we be people who take the preparations needed to prepare for the various judgments that you prepared the early church for. These kinds of things, Father, we are convinced will come upon America if it does not repent. But we thank you, Father, that in the courtroom of heaven, you can reverse these judgments if there is repentance. And I beseech you, for the sake of your dear son, that you would bring repentance to America and restore this nation that Satan has robbed. Take out of Satan's kingdom a sevenfold restitution, Father, and glorify your son, glorify your name. and bring joy to the angels of heaven. Bring joy to our hearts as we see this nation going beyond anything that it was in the past. But Father, we submit to your will. Whether you choose to smash the nation or you choose to restore it, I pray that it would not just be a modicum of restoration, but Father, that we would find a nation that goes even beyond the vision that the Puritans held to. a nation that glorifies you and lives out your word completely. We long so much, Father, to see forward advancement, and we once again commit ourselves to be foot soldiers in your kingdom to advance your kingdom. And so we pray all of these things in Jesus' name, amen.