Well, the passage we're going to look at, very, very short, but it's part of a chapter that speaks about God moving heaven and earth itself together with his angels, together with his church in advancing his judgments. Here are the word of God, Revelation 8 verse 7. So the first one trumpeted, And there appeared hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was thrown at the earth, and a third of the earth was burned up. That is, a third of the trees was burned up, and all green grass was burned up. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the privilege that we have of studying it. And I pray that as we dig into this passage and the context of the previous and following verses that you would help us not only to understand it but to delight in the power of your kingdom and of the fact that your judgments are redemptive judgments. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, I'm pretty excited about this chapter, because in verses three, excuse me, verses seven through 13, we come to an amazing series of prophecies that were fulfilled to a T in AD 63, six. And the first important clue to interpreting these prophecies is to realize that they are God's judgments on both Israel and Rome. There has been a tendency in recent years for partial preterists to take everything in the book as applying just to Israel, to Israel alone. And I think it's a misplaced emphasis and it totally ignores the earlier clues that the Apostle John gave that the book involves covenant lawsuits against both Israel and Rome. And I believe even the immediate context here mandates this more comprehensive perspective. For example, who were the persecutors? And people will say, well, Israel was persecuting them. That's true. But it was Israel and Rome together. And who were these saints praying against? They were praying against their persecutors. And if the persecutors are both Israel and Rome, and if these trumpets are God's answer to those prayers, you would expect that you're going to see a manifestation of these judgments in both regions of the world. And I will be giving documentation that this was indeed the case. And let's also keep in mind the first century context of fulfillment. All the way along, we've been looking at detailed hints of the timing, and we've already seen that verses one through five took place on May 18 of AD 66, and the rumblings of heaven began to immediately be heard on earth as preparations for war began to happen, not just in Israel, but throughout the Roman Empire. Now let me clue you in on some of the rumblings of war that happened immediately after May 18. We only touched on this last week, but the weeks between May 18 and September 8 were pretty scary times. The war hadn't begun yet, but God's great wrath was already being felt, and the fire and the rumblings on the earth were the precursor to the war, and they were pretty bad. Almost immediately after May 18, in other words, almost immediately after verse 4, there were tumultuous relations between Israel and Gesias Florus, who was the Roman procurator of Judea. Now, both the legate of Syria, who commanded Rome's 12th Legion and Herod Agrippa II tried to intervene to try to settle things down. They actually made things a whole lot worse. And then you had a bunch of hot-headed war hawks within Israel who went up to Masada and they took over that lightly guarded fortress from the Romans. That was a huge arsenal that would be used by the the Jews in the next three years. But taking Masada was really one of the first nails in the coffin of Israel. You don't do things like that to Rome and get away with it. Nevertheless, there was widespread elation among the Jews at the prospects of revolt from Rome, according to Josephus. The second nail in their coffin was Eliezer's declaration of independence. His temple guard took control of the temple area and stopped the daily sacrifice that had been made for years and years to the emperor. And Josephus said that this act alone guaranteed the war because it was a declaration of independence and it was an act of defiance to Rome. See if Rome would dare to do anything about it. And that's the way that the citizens interpreted it. The citizens were just totally upset with Gessius Florus and his wicked actions against the Jewish population. Gessius Florus had stolen tons of money from the temple. He had attacked and killed men, women, and children within the city. So they thought Eleazar was a hero. He was a patriot who was finally standing up against the tyranny of Rome. They were excited. It was a popular act of resistance. Now, if you look at maps one through three in your outline, the rest of my summary of events will make more sense. Herod Agrippa II, recognizing that a potential revolt was on his hands, brought 3,000 horsemen to seize control of the upper city. while the rebels controlled the lower city. There were seven days of fierce fighting. This is not the war yet. This is just a local rebellion. The rebels and the Saqqari were pretty successful and they forced Herod Agrippa's troops out of the upper city, set fire to the house of Ananias the high priest, and burned down the palaces of Agrippa and Queen Berenice. Now, while they were at it, they decided to burn the public records building where all of the debt records were kept, and that made all of the people who were debtors joyful. I mean, they were in the streets really rejoicing, and they joined the ranks of the rebels. So you've got a motley crew of priests, zealots, Sicari, tax protesters, and debt protesters who are all excited about this rebellion. The Roman soldiers took refuge in Herod's palace, but the tower of Antonia, that you see there on your map, was attacked on July 25. And after a two-day siege, they killed the Roman guard. New Jewish coins were minted with year one written on them. So it's another declaration of independence. Zealots recruited Israelites from all over Israel and even outside of Israel to come into Jerusalem to join this glorious cause and they wouldn't let people leave Jerusalem. So it's almost as if God is hemming the Israelites up for some pretty tough times. Menahem returned from Masada with arms and he took over the leadership. He was a pompous, arrogant civilian who declared himself to be a king. He dressed up in royal robes. He had a whole guard retinue, went into the temple, And well he had killed Ananias the high priest. So that really ticked off Ananias' son Eleazar. So Eleazar killed Minahan. Basically there were three Jewish factions who were fighting each other with a sociopathic leader leading each one of those factions. It was a mess. Eleazar tricked the Roman garrison into leaving the three palace towers, promising to spare their lives if they would lay down their arms. But as soon as the Roman garrison left and laid down their arms, he slaughtered all of them. This was, that was on August 26 or Elul 17. Now that was yet another nail in Israel's coffin. Rome was honor bound to punish such acts very severely and to show no mercy. And anyone who knew Roman policy knew that Israel was in deep trouble at this point. But before Rome had time to take action, there were other catastrophes that became the prelude to war. On the same day and hour that the Roman garrison were killed, there were 20,000 Jews that were killed in Caesarea by the Graeco-Syrian population, and Caesarea was 100% emptied of Jews. That was still not war. This was the result of riots, much like the L.A. riots, but much worse. Okay, so this is not official. This is all rioting that's going on. The next two weeks resulted in more riots between Jews and non-Jews in many cities in Palestine as well as throughout the Roman Empire. The Jews in numerous cities retaliated by killing massive numbers of non-Jews. The Syrians retaliated, killed all the Jewish inhabitants within their cities. And just to give you a little bit of a head count of how many Jews we know for sure were killed in these riots, let me give you the figures that I've scoured from Josephus. Keep in mind, this is not even the war yet. This is just the prelude to the war. 13,000 Jews killed. Ashkelon 2,500 Jews. Ptolemaeus 2,000 Jews. Tyre a great number of Jews. Hippas a great number. Gadara a great number. Alexandria Egypt 50,000 Jews killed. Damascus 10,000 killed in one hour, Joppa 8,400 killed, Azamon 2,000 killed. In fact the numbers of dead are so great that some partial preterist commentaries put all of these events under the first and second trumpets, which is a possibility. But I think it's more accurate to see these historical rebellions and riots as the precondition that made Israel's destruction an absolutely inescapable fact. These were the rumblings, the shakings, the fire of verse five that preceded the trumpets. Now obviously there was a literal earthquake on May 18, there was literal shaking and noises and fire falling out of heaven on May 18. We talked about that last week, but those were the symbol, and I'm talking about what they symbolized. I'm talking about the repercussions that float out of that. So the repercussions happened from May 18 through September 8. And it wasn't just Jews who were killed during this time. Riots resulted in massive numbers of Romans and other nationalities dying. You gotta understand that both populations were ripe for God's judgment. It wasn't just Israel. And even though massive numbers of people died between verses five and seven, in other words, between May 18 and September 8, The killings that would happen in the next three and a half years, during the seven trumpets, all the way up through chapter 11, would make these killings seem pale, mild, by comparison. I know it's hard to believe, but this is just a foretaste, a tiny foretaste. There were millions of Jews and millions of Gentiles who would be killed in the next three and a half years of God's great wrath. But today, we're not gonna get beyond verse seven. Verses 1 through 3, we're at the festival of Pentecost. Verse 7 is the festival of trumpets, which my computer program dates as September 8 of 66. Cestius, who headed up Rome's 12th legion, had no choice but to invade and to inflict massive punishment upon Israel. And so in one sense, everything after May 18 is God's great wrath, but verse seven is the war proper. So the great wrath starts in verse one, but the war proper starts with the first trumpet blast. And I find it interesting that Cestius rolled out his war machine right around the Feast of Trumpets, and the first trumpet blows in verse seven. Tishri one, which my computer program says is September 8th, was the first day that the trumpets would be blown at the Feast of Trumpets. And because, again, I'm giving kind of an overview of all of these things today, I only have time to deal with one trumpet, but let me read verse seven again. So the first one trumpeted, And there appeared hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was thrown at the earth, and a third of the earth was burned up. That is, a third of the trees was burned up, and all green grass was burned up." When Cestius's 12th legion came through, his 35,000 soldiers devastated the cities and the land, pillaging and burning anything that got in the way. And what made it easier for him to do this is a lot of Israelites had gone to the festival up to Jerusalem. And so he came in and swept through Galilee and then conquered city after city in Judea and many commentators, um, put all of the blood and the fire to Cestius. Now, I agree that that was the result of the symbols. That's what the symbols were pointing to, all of the blood and fire that Cestius engaged in, but there is something that falls from heaven. I think the symbols came from heaven themselves, and I think we need to account for those symbols. Both Rome and Israel suffered enormous losses in the next three and a half years, and both had supernatural signs that would symbolize those enormous losses. Were there such symbolic things happening in Rome? Yes, there were. The Roman historian Cassius Dio speaks of a storm over Italy during this time and says this quote at Albinum. That's Italy at Albinum. It rained so much blood that rivers of it flowed over the land. That's a lot of blood. Okay, this Roman historian was not talking metaphorically of people killing people. He was talking about literal blood falling out of the sky, raining blood in such quantities that it formed rivers all over the land. So this Roman historian speaks of a storm that happened around this period that would have had literally hail, lightning, and blood-colored rain falling out of the sky. Was there evidence of blood covering the ground and waters in Israel? Yes, there was. When we get to the second trumpet next week, I'll give quotes of so much blood flowing that a third of the sea became blood. But for now, let me mention what Josephus saw at the very beginning of Cestius' campaign, which is what verse seven is describing. Josephus describes such massive amounts of blood on the ground at the site of Cestius' first attack that he was either using exaggeration or he may well have been indicating that a similar rain of blood happened in Israel. In any case, Josephus says, Quote, the whole district was deluged with blood and 50,000 corpses were heaped up. Now the Greek word that Josephus uses for deluged is defined in Brill's dictionary as to be submerged, flooded, or completely overflowed. It also indicates something is coming down, okay, to create the flooding. Now you take all of the blood of 50,000 corpses, it's still not going to deluge or flood that entire district. Something else is going on. So Cassius Dio speaks of literal blood pouring out of sky, forming rivers of blood in Rome, and Josephus speaks of the first city being deluged or flooded with blood. And next week I'm going to be giving quotes to show that this blood came in such quantities that it turned the sea red for quite a distance out. Likewise, both Rome and Israel were devastated by raging fires and by fierce hailstorms. Frederick Farrar points out that the vineyards of Lombardy, for example, were destroyed by hail in just a few minutes. So there is an entire industry wiped out in one region. Now it's not at all hard to document the hail, the fire falling from heaven, and Cestius and others lighting fires. It's not at all hard to document the brush fires, the forest fires that happened. What skeptics question is the blood falling out of the sky. I've read numerous essays and books that insist that this kind of thing has to be talking about something at the end of history. I mean, who has ever seen blood falling out of the sky like this? That's ridiculous. Come on. You can't believe that, can you? And it just seems too hard for them to believe. So they just discount the testimony of first century historians. Many premillennial websites say categorically that this did not and could not have happened in the first century. Apparently, these premillennialists believe any kind of miracle can happen in the future. But it can't happen in the first century, even though the historians say that it did happen, okay? It's just an odd, a very odd thing. So I wanna spend a bit of time showing how this symbol could have happened literally in history, just like the other symbols of this book happened literally in history. And keep in mind, just like Moses struck a literal rock in history, but it was a symbol of something, these are literal events in history that symbolize something. Now I've already read from the Roman historian Cassius Dio who claims that it did happen that literally rivers of blood formed as a result of blood raining from the sky. Now he knew what blood looked like and it could well have been literal falling of blood. There actually have been documented cases of blood and actually pieces of meat falling out of the sky and not just the red rain that's been recently documented so heavily. For example, the case in Kentucky of a meat shower in 1876 that had flakes of red meat and blood falling out of the sky for 15 minutes. Scientists identified two of the samples as lung tissue from a horse, three as muscle, two as cartilage. I have found over 400 reports of blood raining from the sky, or at least what witnesses thought was blood raining from the sky over the last 1,000 years. And I bring this up because there are skeptics who think, you know, that can't possibly have happened. Modern scientists have in the past poo-pooed these ideas and they think, oh yeah, these guys are just exaggerating or it's their imagination running wild. Until 2001, when scientists rushed to examine blood rains falling in India. This event stunned the scientific community and gave them a change of heart. The Pakistan weather portal described this deluge of blood in these words. You are standing outside in rain, enjoying the cool breeze and the smell of the rain. Suddenly, you notice that your clothes are turning red. The pond of rainwater is turning red. The walls of houses are red. And when you look up at the sky, red rain is falling on you, thick as blood. That rain completely covered two districts in Kerala province in India and red rain continued to sporadically fall from July 25 through to September 23. Now initially scientists had no idea what this was. There were quite a number of theories. Because of a sonic boom and a flash of light that happened right before the first fall of rain. Some of the scientists, in fact it was the Center for Earth Scientific Studies, concluded maybe a meteor had exploded and it was a red meteor and the dust from that was falling in the rain. Well they retracted that pretty quickly because week after week it continued to fall despite the fact they would say all of that dust would have settled onto the ground. They next explained it as a massive LJ upload into the clouds. The trouble is that that kind of algae didn't occur in India. Later, they definitively identified it as a kind of algae unique to Austria. Very, very strange. National Geographic did a background video on the subject. There are numerous other theories that are still out there, despite what the official news is, including a very weird one that says, this must be aliens who are seeding our planet. But the establishment view on this is that for the most part they say it was due to LJ in Austria that somehow got sucked up into the clouds on a massive scale, got carried across the ocean to India and they say we have no idea how or when. It's a mystery. In fact, here is a picture of the first part of the National Geographic video where some of that blood is being poured out on the ground just to show you how thick that rain was. That was July 25 of 2001. Now since that time, scientists have studied similar phenomenon in another location in India, Kanur, in Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, England, Spain, Switzerland, as well as large bodies of water becoming suddenly red in England, Netherlands, France, Russia, Australia, Ukraine, Lebanon, and other countries. And it's not always algae. Sometimes it's dust. Sometimes it's bacteria in the water. Sometimes they can't figure out what's in the water. It's just red. There doesn't seem to be anything living in the water. The 2014 event in China, where actually it was more than just one river, became beet red still is being investigated. There is a hypothesis out there that maybe there was a bunch of dye that got dumped into the river. The trouble is the whole river turned red within just minutes. And so they have a hard time explaining it that way. And in one sense it really doesn't matter what the source is. God is sovereign. He is sovereign over even pollution and the poisoning of the waters that we're going to look at under the third trumpet. So here's the question. Why have scientists rarely seen this before and all of a sudden these are popping up everywhere? No one knows. On November 14 of 2012, red blood-like rain fell for 15 minutes in four cities of Sri Lanka, dumping such large amounts of red rain that large bodies of water became a deep red color. Here is a picture of the red rain falling in Sri Lanka. In 2013, Australia's main beaches were unswimmable because the blood-like water made your skin itch. Here's a guy, they said, don't swim. Well, he went out because he wanted to investigate it. He swam out toward it and it's a large body of water. Here's another picture as that came in where you can see in Australia how red all of the water had become. And here's another picture of the Australian one where there's a clear water pool right next to the red water that was there. In 2014, huge amounts of what even scientists described as blood rain fell from the sky in the Spanish city of Zamora. When samples were analyzed, it appeared to contain a micro algae from where no one knows. And normally this algae is green, but the hypothesis is, is maybe this turns under stress, it turns red, red enough to dye your clothes red, okay? Here's a picture of that Spanish rain falling into a blood red pool. So no longer are scientists discounting the over 400 reports of blood rain from the past 1,000 years, even going back beyond that, back to ancient Greece. Now they still doubt the reports of literal rain and meat falling out of the sky at various times, but whether this was literal blood or a blood-like substance like fell in Kerala, there is absolutely no reason why we cannot take Cassius Dio's statement literally. As we've mentioned before, the book of Revelation is filled with symbols, but the symbols actually happened in history. So if these things that happened in history were intended by God to be symbols of something, as chapter 1, verse 1 clearly says, John was going to communicate with symbols, What do they symbolize? Well, I believe they symbolize exactly the same thing that the hail mixed with fire and the blood in the 10 plagues of Egypt symbolized. Commentators point out that Revelation 11 verse eight declares Israel to be the new Egypt and true believers, the church being the new Israel who's fleeing from Egypt. So it would make sense to describe it in terms of the 10 plagues to show that fact. But actually seeing those plagues falling on them would have been a powerful statement that Israel's in deep trouble for siding with Rome and God's judgment was about to come on both of them. In Exodus 9, the hail and the fire devastated the crops of Egypt just as they did here in Israel. The blood plague killed the fish of Egypt, just as the second trumpet is going to show that the blood, whatever it was, was going to do a fish kill in Israel and in Rome. And as you go through the 10 plagues, you begin to realize that God was pronouncing his judgments against the idols of Egypt in Exodus. and he is pronouncing his judgments against the idols of Israel and Rome. And somebody might respond and say, well, Israel really didn't have any idols. Well, actually the New Testament says that Israel was very idolatrous. When they rejected the son of God, the scripture indicates automatically they rejected the father. And so they're already engaged in false worship of a false God. But they had several false gods, and statism was their biggest god, with materialism coming in as a close second. And when the book in the second half returns to this period, it's going to make that so explicit, the statism that was involved. The hail and fire destroyed a third of their crops as a sign that their whole economic system was going to be coming under judgment. And Revelation will develop that much more fully in the second half of the book. And the blood rain that freaked them out and the bloody lakes of the second trumpet was a sign that the very statism that they trusted in would turn on them and devour them. To the ancients, blood rain always symbolized coming death and calamity. This has been a fairly uniform interpretation in all of the writings that I've examined from 1000 BC up through 1700 AD. Even pagans saw it this way. Pagans like Cassius Dio, Tacitus, Pliny, Livy, and others. This was the view of the ancient Indian system of natural astrology. Now obviously we don't look to pagans for what these symbols interpret and what they mean, but the point is you're really standing out on a limb, a pretty thin limb, when you say that there is no way that these kinds of things can be warnings from God. And though I've not studied the context of every blood rain that has fallen, I did find it interesting that many of the blood rains reported over the past 1,000 years were followed by natural disasters, the death of a leader, plagues or war, or some other kind of national calamity. Let me give you some examples that have been cited by Christian historians down through history. Geoffrey Monmouth was a churchman in England who lived from 1100 to 1155. His history of England recorded a rain of blood followed by a decimating calamity, and he saw the blood rain as a warning of the calamity. Other witnesses wrote about the same event, including Laman, who said, in the same time, here came a strange token, such as before never came, nor hitherto since. From heaven here came a marvelous flood. Three days it rained blood, three days and three nights. That was exceeding great harm. Thereafter came such a mortality that few here remained alive. Afterward, here came an evil hap that King Raiwal died. John S. Tatlock, who himself is kind of a skeptic of these things being God-sent portents, very faithfully shows history book after history book that did indeed see these things as God-sent portents and showing a connection between the blood rain and the disasters or wars or calamities that came afterwards. Blood rain in Tours in 85-82 was followed by the death of Tiberius Caesar and the horrible wars between the Angles and the Saxons. He cites the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that records a blood rain in 86-85, about 100 years later, followed by death. He cites the Polychronicon of the monk Ralph Higdon that records a blood rain immediately prior to the bloodthirsty Viking invasions. or the Chronicom Scuderum, which said that prior to the Battle of Kilonir, quote, it rained a shower of blood, which was found in lumps of gore and blood on all the plains in Sienachta, at Dumha, Naun, Dezi especially. In Germany, a rain of blood was one of several portents that preceded the arrival of the Black Death of A.D. 1348 through 1349. Now, I'm not gonna bore you with more examples. Europe had at least 400 sightings of blood rain over a 1,000-year period, and the historians connected those rains with calamitous death. Were they right in taking these as warnings from God? I happen to think that they were right, But who knows? I'm not going to be dogmatic on this, but I think it's at least worth considering. Why have there been no recorded blood rains for so long? And now there are numerous examples cropping up since 2001. Is it coincidence? possibly, but the countries where these blood rains occur are status to the core. They are ripe for judgment. Again, I'm not being dogmatic on this, but it is fascinating that previous generations of Christians prior to the 1800s, you know, prior to the age of science, had no problem seeing these kinds of things as warnings from God. It was certainly the response of the Protestants after the Reformation. They thought these kinds of events were God's gracious warnings to a region or to a nation that they're in trouble if they did not repent. It's at least worth considering. It's worth considering whether there's a connection between Australia's blood tide and the apocalyptic fires and dust storms and cyclones and heat waves that came afterwards. It's worth considering whether there is a connection between Russia's hundreds of deaths after their Azov Sea became blood. It's worth considering whether China's deadly landslides that destroyed 500,000 buildings has any connection with the Yangtze River becoming blood red within a period of minutes. In fact, here's a picture of that kind of mysterious event. or Sri Lanka's unprecedented floods in December of 2012 immediately after their blood rain. Now whether God intends for us to continue to interpret such things in this way today, it was certainly intended in the first century. Shortly after these blood rains, Rome would face massive amounts of death and destruction In fact, Cestius' army would be devastated within two months, absolutely devastated, and so would Israel. It's not hard to imagine an out-of-control fire as a result of fire falling to the earth. Israel's dry season extends from June to October, with July and August being the driest months. So if this is September 8, They would have been a tinderbox, right? So it's understandable that there would be brush fires and a forest fire, but the Roman Empire was being devastated by fire during this very time as well. So these symbols were very timely, and if Rome and Israel had been smart, they would have repented, but they did not. Now, let me conclude with just a few more thoughts. First, It's obvious that Jesus rules in history. He's not twiddling his thumbs up there, waiting for himself to become king. He is a king right now. Second, Jesus is enforcing the rule of Psalm 2, that nations must bow before his kingship or face his wrath. See, Psalm 2 describes Christ from his first coming to his second coming afflicting nations and punishing them with his rod of iron if they refuse to submit to his laws. It's a guarantee. That's why I believe it is not presumptuous at all to say that America will face Christ's iron rod if it does not repent. So these warnings in Revelation chapter 8 continue to be relevant today. Jesus is on his throne and if the church is willing to present Their persecutor is before the court of heaven. In faith, that iron rod is going to come into manifestation. And we're gonna sing that Psalm in a couple of minutes. Third, Christ was very patient with Israel and Rome. He did not destroy either of them overnight. In fact, there is this ever-increasing timetable, very specific timetable, of ever-increasing judgments. that he brings, and each of those judgments gives them opportunity for repentance. To me this shows God's incredibly gracious patience, and he continues to be a God of patience, but there does come a time when his patience eventually runs out. Fourth, this passage makes clear that angels are involved in such things as brush fires, destructive hail, and pollution of waters. Later these angels will make several lakes bloody with massive fish kills. Even later these angels will be involved in making the drinking water undrinkable, poisonous. Okay, so angels are his servants, and we happen to have more angels on our side than Satan does on his side. But we should not ignore the role of angels in Providence. I think that we need a reformation of our theology of angels to bring it more into line with that of the Puritans, because most evangelicals don't give a second thought to what angels are up to, what they do. Fifth, the very physical creation is important to Christ's kingdom. If nations do not steward creation for Jesus, he can easily turn that creation against them. And since creation is important, creation suffers when a nation is judged, and creation is blessed when a nation is blessed. The most polluting, just as one example, the most polluting nations in the world are what? They're atheistic nations. It used to be the former Soviet Union, but you look at China other atheistic countries. God blesses or curses the worldviews of various nations in proportion to how far away they stray from his law. And as we continue to rebel against God's law order, we may find the very physical creation turning against this nation. And last, though this verse only deals with judgment, it is put into contrast with the end of the book where the physical creation enters into gospel redemption. God's grace goes far as the curse is found. So let's not be so scientific that we rule God out of his universe, that we rule his providence out of his universe, his gospel kingdom out of his universe. And I fault Christians with this. They try to be so rational, so scientific, trying to explain everything away. It is almost as if God and miracles and things like that are irrelevant, but science cannot work itself unless God is upholding all things by the word of his power. So let's praise God that he continues to govern all things. He continues to send his cherubim angels as a part of that governance. Amen. Father God, we thank you that you have put Jesus on his throne, that there is nothing that is by accident that happens in history. that you are ruling and that you are advancing the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth. And I pray that you would help the Church of Jesus Christ in America and in other countries to get on board with what you are doing and not have to come under judgment themselves. I pray that we would be encouraged that you do indeed mark the forehead of those who weep and groan over the evils that are in our nation. And we pray that you would protect your people, that you would vindicate your people, and that you would bring judgments against those who are determined to overthrow the laws of Christ and to destroy this nation. We pray that you would hear us as we sing Psalm 2 and we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.