Let's pray. Our Father, in this Holy Scripture, which we have just read, we have acknowledged that we have all sinned. Who here amongst us could confess that he has kept the will of God all times perfectly? Yea, we have fallen very much short of keeping the law of God perfectly. But all we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way. In many ways we offend all. So we come as a people to God as is right, not based on our own merits, but based on the merits of a substitute who stood in our place, carried our burden, was punished for our sins. By his stripes we are healed. We come here to honor Jesus Christ, our only hope of salvation. We pray that the preaching would be effected to that end, that all of us would be equipped, and that if there are those here who have not been reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus Christ, that today would be the day where all their sins are washed away. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. And we have two texts to read today. The first one is in Revelation chapter 19, and the other text we're going to read is in Acts chapter 17. This is not an easy text, Revelation 19. We are there not out of some sort of bloodthirstiness or macabre sense of the drastic But rather we've been going verse by verse through the Bible. And so here we find ourselves today where the Antichrist and his false prophet are cast into the lake of fire. So, that is our text. We read Revelation 19, 20 and 21. And the beast was taken and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him. with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire, burning with brimstone, and the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth, and all the fowls were filled with their flesh. And then the second text is in Acts chapter 17, verses 30 and 31. Paul is speaking to the men of Athens, the people of Athens on Mars Hill, and he declares to them in Acts 17, 30, that the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead. I watched, I saw an execution last night. of a wicked man who openly blasphemed God, characterized Jesus Christ as ignorant and mad, and impugned his character as having an immoral relationship with Mary Magdalene. This man was a fascist dictator who aligned himself with Adolf Hitler and the Pope. The end of World War II, 1945, he was apprehended by people in his own country of Italy. He and his latest mistress were summarily shot. Then their bodies were taken to a city square, hung upside down with meathooks as the masses came and spat upon them, cast stones on them, and filled their bodies with bullets. That's quite an event to watch. Of course, I'm describing Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy, World War II. I bring that up because as we look at Revelation chapter 19 and verse 20, there we see fascist dictator, one who mocked God openly, persecuted God's people, He's a blasphemer of the worst sort. And now we see him not riddled with bullets, but cast alive into a lake of fire and brimstone. And I think, what are we to do with this text? I reviewed the arrest and slaying of another evil man in history, which is on YouTube. You can watch it. Just to get a sense of the violence of this. What we have before us here is not the slaying of some comic book character or some video with Batman or Space Odyssey or something where the bad guy gets it in the end, but this is a human being whose misery does not end with death, but he is cast alive into a lake of fire and brimstone. And are we to Regale in this like the Italian citizens who kicked the corpse and shout victory? I mean, we even put a suffering animal down. Where does compassion and exhilaration and exaltation of right and destruction of the wrong all interface in such an event as when the Antichrist and his false prophet meet their doom? If that is our text for today, which describes it, there are some questions with which we cannot find adequate answers. But we do note that we are struck with the brevity of these enemies of God's rebellion. We are struck with the ease with which God puts them away and with the finality of their loathsome fate. And we are aware that this entire book of Revelations, to be most profitable, we are to study it garnering themes that apply to our own lives, And so we ask ourselves not just, oh, how should we react to those evil people, but how should you and I now live? And what are the universal themes we find here for bad guys who fight against God and are put down in misery forever? How does that apply to you and me now? What lessons should we take away? I believe the answer is lessons which have been declared throughout history. But this is no new thing. Is this surprising? Maybe in the intensity, maybe in the finality of the world's rebellion, but not in the lessons themselves. These are lessons which have been declared forever in the scriptures and summarized most eloquently and clearly. when Paul addressed the Athenians on the hill known as Mars Hill. So I'm going to ask you to return there to Acts chapter 17 and the themes which we find in Revelation 19 will find declared most clearly here in Acts 17. Just for a sense of context, Paul comes to this place in Greece, Athens, where there are these people who gather and really have not much else to do than to talk over religion, this religion, that religion, compared belief. And here are all these monuments to the various gods. And then there is one monument, just in case they left somebody out, called the Monument to the Unknown God. Paul, who's just sort of passing through, but his spirit is stirred within him and he cannot withhold. And so, he gets his chance to speak and he gets up there and declares, this God, well, I see you're very religious. Look at all these gods. I see you do acknowledge there's one you don't know. I'm here to declare him today. And his message is concluded with these words, Acts 17, verse 30 and 31. And the times of this ignorance God winked at. But now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead." We see here, first friends, mankind's malady. Mankind's malady, which is, in these words, the times of this ignorance. Mankind's malady is ignorance, cluelessness, stupidity. concerning the things which are of greatest value. Now, some kinds of ignorance may be harmless and entertaining, like the cuteness of a little puppy doing ignorant things, or children. Or of adults, I was sharing with members of my family something I read. It's supposed to be a true story of a woman whose first day in the office doesn't know much about clerical work. And she's down to one blank piece of paper left. So she goes to the photocopier and puts the blank paper in there and runs off 10 more copies. Then I found another story, also said to be true, of a police force in Pennsylvania, the city, who had a person who wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, who they knew was guilty of something. At least they fully believed it. They needed to draw out a confession. And they took a metal colander, put it on his head, ran wires from that to a photocopier. and had already put a sheet in the photocopier that says, you lie. And so then they would ask this fellow questions. And when they were confident that what he was saying was not true, they pushed that button and out would come up this piece of paper that said, you lie. He was convinced he was in a lie detector and he confessed it all. Some kinds of ignorance may be relatively harmless and entertaining. And there are some truths about which we can be ignorant but these truths are obscure and ultimately insignificant. Not all things about we are ignorant are important. For example, do you know how many brain cells a normal human being has? A lot. The answer is somewhere around, I don't know who counted them, but 100 billion brain cells. By the way, we're losing around 85,000 a day. But if you were to take all those brain cells out that all mass together and line them up end to end in a single file, how far would your brain cells extend? From here to the end of the wall in this building? Farther than that. How about from here all the way to downtown Sioux Falls, say five miles? Farther than that. Gulf of Mexico, 1,500 miles? Farther than that. To the moon? farther than that. If you were to take all the brain cells packed into your head and line them up in a single file, one linear direction, you could go to the sun and back. 300 million miles of brain cells. Well, that's an interesting factoid, but we could be ignorant of that and still survive. Some kinds of ignorance are harmless and entertaining. Some are ultimately obscure and insignificant. But some things about which we are ignorant are of huge consequence. Would you please turn to Ecclesiastes 12, 13. What is the whole duty of man? being ignorant of this and being ignorant of that and these things are inconsequential and those things are that, but what must you know? Here's the wisest man on earth concluding his missive to humanity by saying, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. And yet, when surveys are conducted of the world, very few can even list the Ten Commandments. If you survey the church, the great majority cannot even list the Ten Commandments, let alone know how to use them. And yet here we are told the whole duty of man can be summed up in the importance The Bible tells us what serves the law. It is the schoolmaster that leads us to Christ. Do you know the Ten Commandments? The Bible says, the first one is, I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Here Paul is talking to a people who have a lineup of all these various gods. God of this, God of that, God of these things. In this case, we missed one. Unknown God. God says, thou shalt have no other gods before me. You cannot turn to yourself and exalt yourself above the will of God, your pleasures, your interests, your apprehensions, nor the community and its values, nor material gain, nor the pleasures of this world. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. The second commandment is like unto the first. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. Don't carve any likeness of what God is like. If everybody here was given a bar of soap and a knife and told, carve out your best representation of who you think God is and what He is like, what would your bar look like? I hope none of you would even try. There's not a one of us here, even at whatever stage we are, that we have a 100% accurate apprehension of who God is. But the inclination of man is to carve a likeness after themselves and shape a God according to what they have been taught, or what they would desire, or what they fear. But there is an inherent inaccuracy in it. Don't shape God after your own proclivities. Yet we're all guilty of that as we are of the first one. The way we behave. Maybe God won't mind this, or maybe God doesn't see that, or maybe He'll have mercy on this, or He'll never forgive that, or surely He expects this. The third commandment is, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Lightly. With disrespect. Now, maybe most of us have broken this simply by cursing. Taking the name of the Lord in vain. Maybe for others it is in our behavior, our disposition. If our God is a God of peace, what are we doing being agitated? You take lightly the name of the Lord? Our God who has all power, do you fear Defeat rather than apprehend victory? Oh, there are a hundred names of God. Do you know them? You've taken them so vainly. You don't even know what they are. Let alone what they teach us about who God is and who we are in response. We have failed the third commandment as well. Fourth commandment is remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. That word translated Sabbath day means resting day. Do you know how to rest? Do you treat the Lord's day as the Lord designs it? And you treat the Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus Christ, as the one in whom you rest perfectly. Abide in Him and He in you, so that you're able to accomplish all that He desires. Not resting in your own strength, though we've all failed that one too. The fifth commandment is, honor thy father and thy mother. This is the commandment which has to do with respecting authority. First, our mother and our father. If we ever complained to them, criticized them, disobeyed them, then we've broken this commandment. Or the authorities who are in our church, or in our place of employment, or in our government, all follow the umbrella commandment having to do with authority. And note, it is not just the negative. It doesn't say, don't do this bad for them. It says, honor thy father and thy mother. Are you skilled to the degree that heaven is skilled in showing honor to those placed in authority over you. The sixth commandment is, thou shalt not kill. Now we might think, well, at least that one of the ten commandments I've honored, I've not murdered anybody. But Jesus says, if you have hated somebody in your heart or called somebody a name like fool, you've already broken the intent of that commandment. Bible says in the Old Testament, he who sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. For in the image of God made he man. God wants man to be honored and showed respect, not called names and not diminished and not maltreated because God made him in his image. All human beings have a dignity to them, but it is to be upheld. We've all broken the sixth commandment. Seventh is thou shall not commit adultery. The Bible says if we have lusted after a person in our heart, then we have broken that commandment. Who here can say he has not done that? And maintain all manner of discretion and dignity and respect for all moral that God would have us to respect. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Now most of us probably find ourselves guilty just in the obvious application of that. Who here can say he's never stolen any money or the last piece of cake or other things that belong to others or lied on their tax form. But we can steal time and we can steal dignity and we can steal other people's limelight. We can rob people's reputation. We're all thieves. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Number nine, who hears never lied. But even beyond the obvious lying rather than telling the truth, we are told we are to be Christ's witnesses. We are to give witness to who God is, who can say he has fulfilled that responsibility to perfection, always reflecting completely what is true about God. The final commandment is thou shall not covet. Some say the most intangible and spiritual and deep soulful of the ten commandments. Because the three great temptations that mankind is always faced with is dissatisfaction. They are dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction with the provisions of God. Who he made me to be, who my parents are, what my situation is. He's provided me the wrong set of circumstances. I'm not content with this. I deserve something else. Or dissatisfaction with the methods of God. I don't want to be corrected this way. I don't want the truth to be advanced this way. I don't want to grow in this manner. I don't like the way God works. Or dissatisfaction with the authority of God. I will take what I want to do and do it according to my desires. I will be my own God. I will be my own authority. All these represent coveting, lusting after something other than the lot we have received. You see, there's this misapprehension of the Ten Commandments in the world. Those who consider them at all, if they're asked what is their use, they might say, well, it's a moral code by which we are to live. We do our best to keep them. I think I've kept them pretty well. And as a result, I think I'll go to heaven when I die. The Romans chapter 3 tells us that we were given the Ten Commandments to this end. Let every mouth be what? Stopped and all the world be found guilty before God. There is not a soul on this planet, let alone in this room, where if we just live clean enough, righteously enough, we'll go to heaven and God will say, come on in, you worker of good works. No, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He has saved us. The way to have our sins washed away is not to deceive heaven on our way in and say, no, I didn't do bad. God knows. It's already written in His book. Everything we've entertained in our mind, everything that's come out of our lips, every deed of our hands, it's all recorded. All of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The purpose of the law is not for us to congratulate ourselves in having kept it, but to see our failure and repent and to call upon the mercy of God. You see, mankind's melody is ignorance. Paul declares, at times, this ignorance, God hath weakened. Oh, the times of ignorance. Some kinds of ignorance can be relatively harmless and entertaining. Some kinds of ignorance can be inconsequential, but some things we must know. One thing we must know is the law of God and the claim that it has on our guilty souls. Second truth we see in Paul's conclusion to the Athenians is how God deals with our malady. Times of this ignorance God winked at. Now that Greek verb there could be translated overlooked. that it means for a season. What this wink does not mean is that God takes it lightly. This is not a playful look at some baby who does something cute. What this wink means here, God winking at our ignorance, means He's been closing the eye to an offense momentarily. A wink is not the same as closing your eyes for good. It's a momentary closing of the eyes. A wink means closing the eye to an offense momentarily. Hence, here is a declaration of mercy. God has temporarily withheld the execution of judgment. The times of this ignorance, Paul says, not knowing who God is, not knowing what it requires of man, not responding correctly, God has momentarily allowed He has shown mercy. I think we can say generally we have no idea of the extent of the mercy of God. The Bible says in Psalm 119, 64, the earth is full of thy mercy. I'd like to review a story some of you may be familiar with. Repeat it so you'll have it down for others. A new story on mercy. Iris Sankey was on a ship floating down the Delaware River, Christmas time. Somebody recognized him. He was the great song leader for D.L. Moody in the evangelistic meetings. Great voice. And they said, Mr. Sankey, sing us a hymn. It was Christmas time. They thought he'd probably sing, if anything, a Christmas song. He just felt moved to sing a song. It's called a shepherd's song. It wasn't about Christmas at all. It's beautiful. People were moved by it. After it was done, this one older, rough-looking man, weeping, comes forward and he said, Mr. Senke, I have some questions for you. Did you fight in the Civil War? Yes, I did. North or south? North. Were you ever a sentinel, night watchman of a camp? I was. Did you ever sing this song then? I did. This man said, well, I fought for the south. Let me tell you a story. There was a time when I raised my rifle and set my bead on a sentinel outside a Yankee camp. And I was squeezing the trigger. when that man started to sing the shepherd song. And it was so beautiful, I paused. I decided I'd wait until the song was over before I shot that man. But as he sang in those true of the scripture, The truths of the scriptures sunk in on me and I recall my mother singing that hymn. I set the gun down and once that man stopped singing, I walked away. He told Ira Senka, you were that man, weren't you? And Ira Senka said, sounds like I was. But here's a man who had somebody's gun, the bead drawn on him, the trigger being squeezed. And he had no idea of the mercy that was shown to him and that the gun was set down and the shooter walked back. I'm telling you what Paul is declaring here and what we can see back there in Revelations with that false prophet and the beast. And what we can see apply to all humanity is that God has, as it were, his finger on the trigger. And at any moment he has full right to blast away any human being. That is, they're already under the sentence of death, and it only is by His mercy that He restrains the time that judgment falls. Why? Because as we have seen through the law, we've all sinned. And the wages of sin is death. If we are yet living, it is not due to our righteousness, but due to God's mercy. So we see our malady, ignorance. We see God's dealing with our malady, mercy. Then thirdly, we see the duration of the reprieve, as Paul goes on to say, but now. The times of this ignorance, God winked at. But now. The message is don't presume indefinitely on the mercies of God. Payday someday. I thought about the number of crimes committed in the last three years in Sioux Falls that have made the media, where an embezzler was involved. This person embezzled a certain amount of money from the fire department, and this person embezzled a certain amount from a charity, and this one from some business. And I wondered if at least some of these people, if not all of them, didn't have a feeling inside plaguing them that it's a matter of time before they get caught. that lingering sense of doom. Well, so here. Only it's not just a probability, it is certain. And now, he says, God commands all men everywhere to repent. Mercy is always but for a season. A person falling to the pavement will hit it. And if not so, surely even more certain a person on whom God is showing mercy for a season and winks his eye for a time for a brief reprieve. The day comes when the mercy is over. So now God commands all men everywhere to repent. So our fourth observation, this issue of a command. Do you believe in the authority of God? Do you think God has that right to command obedience? We have this question that arises. Recently, there's a declaration somehow, all of a sudden it's just out there in the news, that women now will be allowed to, in all areas of combat as men, in warfare. There's some caveats there, but that's the general declaration. And I thought, you know, this has been debated for decades. I've observed it, and I thought it was House and Senate and committees and discussed this stuff. But in this case, boom, it's just kind of like it's declared it's what's going to happen. Women can fight in combat. And as the Secretary of Defense, you just said it's going to happen. There are those who respond with, can he do that? Does he have that kind of authority? And whether he does or not, I'll tell you who does have this kind of authority, and that is God, who can just declare and that's it. And when he says, I command everyone everywhere to repent. Well, let's see what Nebuchadnezzar learned about such commands. Let's go to Daniel chapter 4. See, we can get so comfortable with our own presumed autonomy that we can say to God himself, Who do you think you are? Telling me I can't cohabitate. Telling me I should not curse. Telling me I'll be cast away from the presence of God for eternity unless I receive Jesus. Who are you? We can be settled in that kind of a recalcitrant mindset because of our culture, because of our own sin bent. Because of the world in which we have arisen, such is the case with this great king, one of the greatest kings in the history of the world, Nebuchadnezzar, who was so proud of his kingdom. And we're in Daniel 4 and verse 33, where Nebuchadnezzar is bragging on himself. In the same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar, and he was driven from men and did eat grass as oxen. and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds' claws. You see, the mind of this king was in the hand of the Lord. And he could turn it and make the man insane, believing he was an animal. And at the end of the days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up mine eyes into heaven. Finally, he's looking up to heaven. Sanity has come back. His understanding returns. And I blessed the Most High. And I praise and honor him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation, and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. God does according to his will. No one can say to him, what are you doing? That's sanity when you recognize that. Oh, I grieve often when I read the sermonettes in the Argus Leader in our local newspaper. One for this week came out in Saturday's paper, delivered by a lady preacher in a mainline denomination here in Sioux Falls Church. She's also a chaplain at a hospital. And the title of the message is, Let yourself be open to divinity everywhere. She cites some movie where somebody of another faith, Hindu or something, was challenged to go drink holy water out of church and then he gets his broader concept of God is everywhere. She said that's the way it is. There are diverse traditions and spiritual practices such as Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and divinity is everywhere. Here's the person called and represented as being called to be a preacher of the gospel, of the God of the gospel. God, the Father of Jesus Christ, who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. And here she puts her stamp of commendation on heresy and paganism. God is God, and he issues his command. And we are not to refute it or come up with a better idea. When God commands, we submit. Now, fifthly, we see the extent of the command which is to all men everywhere. The extent of the command of God to repent. All is all. Everywhere is everywhere. There is one God to whom the whole world is answerable. Whatever our age, whatever our understanding, Whatever our situation, God calls all men everywhere to repent. One can say, well, if you knew my situation. God knows our situation. He commands all men everywhere to repent. And the command is to repent. Sixthly, the command is to repent. To repent in its simplest form means to turn face, to turn around, to go the other direction. He's calling out to humanity. who is walking this way and he says, I want you to do this and go this way. Going this way, loving the world, loving self, doing whatever seems to be right according to the apprehensions of our own mind, indulging ourselves in those things which define life as we want it. And God says, I want you to do this. Turn from the world, turn to me. I command you to repent. Mourn over your past. Turn completely from it. Turn completely unto God. God is commanding an utter change of mind, an utter change of heart, because, seventhly, He has set a court date. The verse goes on to say, because He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge. He hath appointed a day. Now we see the day. Would you turn to Revelation 19? We see the day there for the beast and the false prophet. We knew their antagonism of heaven was short-lived. We knew there would be a payday someday. They had a court date. I've told some of you my court date down in Georgia once for traffic events and went down to this small town courtroom. We were told, OK, there's about 50 of us there lining up. And we're going to call your name and we'll ask you, how do you plead? If you say guilty, you go over to this line. If you plead innocent, we're going to have you go to this line. And so all the names are called through, called through, guilty, guilty, innocent, innocent, and people are separating out. And then they call out this one guy's name and he said, present. And this person berated him some and said, that's not one of the options. What do you plead? Guilty or innocent? The same is true here. When are you pleading to the courts of heaven? A court's date has been set. As we see here in Revelation 19 and verse 20, there's the beast, Paul's prophet. They're taken. And they're judged. And they can't say, present, not guilty, not innocent, just stonewalling. The date is set. We go to chapter 20. a revelation. We start reading in verse 11. There is what we call the great white throne judgment. Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged out of those things which are written in the books according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and the death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them. And they were judged, every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. There is a court death, a date. The punishment of man is once to die and then the judgment. There is a court date. There are some people who can put it off for five years, ten years, twenty years, it seems, before execution, even if they're found guilty. But God has set a date. God has appointed a date. How we know this is true. I mean, would God's standards be lower than man's? We want to see justice done. Look at our own conscience. We may try to suppress this truth, but we know it is correct. Right demands it. As Scriptures declare it, we read in Ecclesiastes 12.14, God will bring every act to judgment. Everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil. We read in Romans 2.16, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus. We read in 1 Samuel 2.10, the Lord will judge the ends of the earth. 1 Chronicles 16.33, the Lord is coming to judge the earth. Second Corinthians 5.10, the Son of Man will recompense every man for his deeds in the body. According to that, He has done. And so we conclude in Acts 17.30 and 31. Paul says, you can believe all you want, this God, that God, these Gods, debate it all day, but I tell you, there's one God. And he may have winked for a time of his ignorance, but now he's commanding you to change your mind. and repent, because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness. That means according to the perfect standards of the purity and perfection and holiness of God. And he will judge by that man whom he hath ordained, that is, Jesus Christ, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he raised him from the dead. showing his commendation of him. So, friends, as we conclude, and it's an interesting thing to see. We got a report this week of this message being preached here in a small church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. This last month, these messages have been downloaded in 30 states in our country and 10 foreign countries. And so there's a way we share this simple truth by the Spirit of God that everyone Everywhere, different parts of the world can hear this call of God to repent, to bow the knee and cry out for mercy to God, saying, I look at thy law and I know I sinned. I'm not coming here saying I haven't sinned. And I see in the Scriptures that the weight of the sin is death. I present myself here as one knowing he's under a death sentence, as though the gun of God were pointed at me and the trigger being squeezed. But thank God you have shown mercy upon me and not executed me yet, so that I've been given the space to repent. Because now I understand that there is one who took all my sin upon himself and died in my place. He who knew no sin, never sinned himself, he could take on my sin. That one is Jesus Christ, whose validity has been indicated by that God raised Him from the dead. He wouldn't have raised a fake. Now, at this moment, at this time, while yet the mercy has allowed me the opportunity, I call on this one Jesus Christ as my Savior. Come and cleanse me of my sin. I believe He died for me. I will confess Him with my mouth. I believe in my heart, God, raise this one from the dead. O God, have mercy upon me and wash me throughly of mine iniquity. Cleanse me from every fault. I confess with my mouth that I have sinned and I believe you are faithful and just to forgive me my sins and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Is this your prayer? are those here today, those who hear this voice, who know there is a need to call out to God to have mercy and believe by faith that Christ died for their sins and even now will receive the gift of forgiveness, be born again into the family of God. May we pray. O Lord, You have given us a glimpse into history, future, the end of those who had war against God, taken and cast like marshmallows into a fire. Brief rebellion, eternal consequence. Why would any of us here align ourselves with those rebels and see the same fate for ourselves? Why? Why would we die? when before us is the opportunity for eternal salvation. So we pray that you would speak to the individual souls here, any and all that you have called who are prepared, that today if they would hear thy voice, if they would not harden their hearts, turn to God and say, I believe, I receive Christ. It's not speaking to anybody here. We say, that's what's happened to me. I am the rebellion. And I thank God for His mercy upon my ignorance. Today I receive Christ as my Savior. I've never done it before. Now is the day. Oh God, wherever this message goes out, may it linger in the soul until what God has designed for His Word would occur. To thy glory in Christ, Amen.