We come to the second church in our series on the seven churches of Revelation. We'll pick it up in verse number 8. This is the church of Smyrna. Revelation chapter 2 and verse 8. And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write, These things saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive. I know thy works and tribulation and poverty, but thou art rich. And I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. Behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that you may be tried. And ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou fateful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear, what the Spirit saith unto the churches. He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. Brother Jeff Kennedy, will you pray? Ask the Lord to bless the message for us, please. As we said Wednesday night, when you begin to look at the seven churches, There are several ways you can look at it, and someone has taken the right key and unlocked the interpretation, so to speak, looking at it as far as parallelism is concerned. And when you look at the churches, they match periods in church history. The first period would be the Ephesus church, and that would have to do with the apostolic age. He says there in the early part, verse number 2 of Ephesus, You've tried those which say they are apostles and are not, and it's found them liars. So you're dealing with the apostolic age. And then when you get to the Smyrna period, you go from the second century up to Constantine, which he came around 312, 325. And that's the second period in church history. And notice the word Smyrna is used, the church at Smyrna. Smyrna was a city that was about 40 miles north of Ephesus. Back in the day, it was called the Ornament of Asia, prosperous city. I think now it's in southwest Turkey. It has a population of about one and a half million people today. But at that time it was a city that rivaled Ephesus in some ways. And the word Smyrna itself means myrrh. And myrrh, of course, is a perfume that comes from crushing the seed, and it's used like it was with Christ after he died. You know, the three wise men, not three, but some of the wise men that came, that crazy thing about threes in your head. The wise men, some of them that came, brought myrrh. That's because Jesus Christ was born to die. And when he died, Nicodemus, they took the body and they took spices and myrrh. The apothecaries used that to wrap the bodies with. And myrrh is a word that's used here, the word smyrna. And so when you look at the church age of what's taken place, it's a persecuted church. But I want you to also keep in mind, just a little bit of teaching here, if I can just help you out a little bit tonight regarding the churches of Revelation. There's also some prophecy regarding these churches. If you go back to chapter number 1, you'll notice in verse number 1 it says, Notice in verse number 3, I'm not going to keep a lot of these things that are written here. I'm going to tell you that right now, because the passages aren't aimed at me. Come on now, don't fall asleep or get out there in la-la theological land. Notice he says, for the time is at hand. So you have prophetically, and I'm going to show you here with these churches, doctrinal material that has nothing to do with you, and if you apply it to you, you might as well go ahead and change your doctrine. Because it contradicts everything Paul wrote. Look in the Ephesus church, look what he tells them in verse number 7. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life. In other words, if you overcome, if you hold out, if you endure to the end, you can eat of the tree of life so you can have eternal life. I'm not looking to eat the tree of life to have eternal life for the ages. I've been given eternal life as a free gift from God. I'm not trying to earn my salvation by overcoming. I've overcome through Christ already. So you can't take these passages and force them into the church age. If you do so, you've got all kinds of problems. Notice here for the church of Smyrna what he tells them. Verse number 10, Be faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. I'm not going to be hurt of the second death even if I backslide and don't overcome. Somebody gets saved right before they die and they never have a chance to live for God They will not experience the second death You say what is the second death revelation chapter 20? Whosoever's not found written the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death Here you have someone that has to overcome in order to avoid the second death Let's run a few references here. I want you to see this thing. Look in chapter number 12 of Revelation. I These people that teach that salvation is the same all through the Bible, they confuse Bible doctrine because they make contradictions. The Bible doesn't contradict. The Bible is God's perfect word. There are no contradictions in it. The Bible gives us a command to rightly divide the word of truth. It's your job to say, okay, this mail goes over here to the tribulation. This mail that comes in the mailbox, you do this all the time, don't you? You say, hey, this is so-and-so's mail. I better not put so-and-so's mail in so-and-so else's mailbox. You know what a lot of Christians do? They take somebody's mail for the Old Testament and they put it in their mailbox. They take somebody's mail for the Tribulation, I'll give you a good one, blessed are the pure in heart, they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. That's dealing with a millennial kingdom. You can try to be pure in heart all you want and your pureness in heart has nothing to do with you seeing God. What Jesus Christ does to you to change you as a Christian in this age has something to do with you seeing God. You've got to be careful that Jesus Christ said if you call somebody a fool you're in danger of the judgment. What are you going to do with that one? Paul the Apostle called the Galatians fools and he called the Corinthians fools. Jesus called people fools in Matthew 23. You've got to rightly divide the word or you have a Bible full of errors. When people bring up that thing, well, you can't call nobody a fool. I can't believe you said that. Okay, have you ever been tempted to call anybody Rekha? Do what? Rake leaves? No, no. Have you ever been tempted to call anybody Rekha? It's in the same verse. Nobody even knows what it means. Don't call nobody a fool. Call somebody a fool, you're going to hell. Just like if you kill yourself, that's suicide. That's the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. What Bible are you reading? I never found that. Samson killed himself and went to heaven. Anyway, let me get back to this before I go on a tangent. The problem is you have to rightly divide the word of truth. It's your job, but it's my job. He didn't say he's going to give you the divisions. He said study to show thyself approved unto God. Just because people are lazy makes no excuse for improper biblical interpretation and makes no excuse to overstep the boundaries of Scripture. Look in Revelation chapter number 12, come down to 17. The dragon was wroth with a woman and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, Exodus chapter number 20, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. Look in chapter 14, Revelation chapter 14, verse 12. I'm not betting on keeping the commandments of God to get me to heaven. Revelation 14, verse 12. Here is the patience of the saints. Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Look in chapter 22. It's all through here. Revelation 22, 14. This ties in with the Ephesus admonition about overcoming in order to eat the tree of life for eternity. You have to realize we get a glorified body at the rapture, amen? Everybody doesn't get a glory. Moses will not have a glorified body like me and you do you understand that he never was in Christ Moses couldn't be in Christ because Christ hadn't been born yet Those that are in Christ will get a glorified body like Christ people in the tribulation will not have a glorified body They'll have a human body. Therefore. They have to eat of the tree of life in order to have life in eternity I don't have to eat. I have a glorified body. I Get to sit down the marriage supper of land and eat though and probably never have to get worried about gaining weight when I do it All right, look in Revelation chapter 22, look in 14. Blessed are they, look at it, that do His commandments, works, that they may have a right to the tree of life and may enter in through the gates into the city. You have to be real careful when you get in passages like Revelation and passages like Hebrews chapter number 6, another tribulation reference written to Hebrews, In the last days, Hebrews chapter number 1, you've got to be real careful in the book of James. James is written to the 12 tribes of Israel, especially chapter number 5. James chapter number 5 deals with the second advent of Christ. And when you take these passages and you begin to apply them to yourself, you get your doctrine all out of sorts. And then you think, man, I hope I overcome. What if I don't overcome? Maybe I don't endure to the end. Maybe, you know, before I die, you know, I kind of go back on God. And I kind of backslide. Then I haven't overcome and then I don't get to eat of the tree of life and I go to hell. You see what kind of man, you all using scripture. I can show you verses where people lose their salvation. Saul, the Bible says the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul. The Spirit of God can't depart from you. He said in this dispensation, this age, the Spirit of God will abide with us forever. You can't get your wires crossed. You get your wires crossed and you begin to apply passages that aren't written to you, your doctrinal foundations, all out of sorts, and then that goes into your practical life and you don't know if you're coming in or going out. So, as I said, we can look at this thing prophetically, we can also look at it as far as parallelism is concerned, look at the church ages throughout history, but we're also going to look at it practically and that's where I want us to kind of tune in tonight just a little bit here with the Church of Smyrna. Let's go back in history a little bit and look at it and think about the Church of Smyrna. It means murdered, they're crushed, they're beaten, they're bruised. Number one, I want you to notice, they are a persecuted church. It's around the second century, like I said, or around 325 A.D. with Constantine. Constantine's the guy that came up and said, you know what, we're gonna just merge the church and the state. Instead of killing all the Christians, we're gonna take our pagan religion and we're gonna turn it into Christianity and we're gonna marry them together. Then everything will be fine. And everybody will get along together. That's when you first begin to see things like Roman Catholicism where the church and state mix begin to rear their ugly head about 325 A.D. So here we have the church of Smyrna, and this is after the apostolic age, and they're persecuted. It's a persecuted church. Notice what he says here. He says in verse number four, I know that it works, tribulation, poverty. Notice in verse number 10, suffer. Some shall cast you into prison. You may be tried. You shall have tribulation. Be faithful unto death." It's a persecution age. It begins with Nero, and it happened to begin a little bit under the apostolic age. Obviously, you see it in the book of Acts. But then from Nero to Diocletian, there are ten phases of persecutions under Diocletian. And those persecutions are very intense. And he says, be faithful unto death. They're persecuted. And you have to realize that's where we come from. We come, our lineage, our heritage comes from Christians that were persecuted for what they believe. That suffered for what they believe. All through the ages. This was a persecuted church. And they were driven and they were persecuted. And they were tried to, they tried to get them to go against what they believe. Just like you see in the early apostles, in the early parts of the book of Acts. A persecuted church. And I want you to notice that he says in verse number 10, God's telling them what's going to happen. He says, look, you're going to have some persecutions. I want you to flip over to Hebrews chapter 11. Let's read about these saints. I believe this kind of goes out into a little bit further from the time when it was written. I know you can go back to Old Testament and apply a lot of it, but look in Hebrews chapter number 11. Of course, there are other ages. This is not the only church age or period in imperialism that was persecuted. I mean, you get to the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, 500 to 1500 AD. I mean, you got people getting killed left and right. Every Christian should read a book called Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which we do have back in the library, and it goes through these different ages, and it gives you accounts of Christians that were persecuted for their faith. Look at Hebrews chapter 11, verse 32. Hebrews chapter 11, verse number 32. And what shall I more say, for the time would fail to tell. For a time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthah, and of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets," 33, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouth of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness remained strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead, raised to life again, and others," here it is, were tortured, not accepting deliverance. In other words, Will you recant what you believe will get you out of the fire? Will you deny Jesus Christ? Will you kiss this crucifix? Will you confess Mary is the mother of God when you get later on into the Middle Ages? John Knox, you've heard of him, the old reformer. He was against Mary, Queen of Scots, and he worked as a slave on a galley ship. And he was down there and they came and they tried to get him to recant. He was on that ship and they held that crucifix. They said, will you recant your beliefs? And he grabbed that crucifix. He says, this is a painted piece of wood. And he said, Mary, the mother of God. He goes, this is a painted piece of wood. It looks like it's suited more for swimming than for kissing. He threw it out in the water. I hope I would say something similar to that. But that's what they did. They tried to get them to accept deliverance by getting them to deny what they believed. They persecuted them. So it says here in verse number 35, 36 rather, "...trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment." They were stoned. They were sawn asunder. were tempted, were slain with a sword. They wondered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and in mountains and dens and caves of the earth. All these, and these all having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promises." There goes your Joel Osteen prosperity gospel. They were tortured. He gave, at first, he gave some great instances of people like Daniel and David and Samuel. Wrought righteousness, stopped the mouths of the lions, you know. Women received their dead, raised again. The Shunammite woman there in Kings. He gives all these great stories. We all love to hear the good stories. Where the bad guy gets it in the neck and the good people get all the glory in the end. But it doesn't end that way. Most of the time it's the other way around. As long as the devil's in control, there will be a persecution against the church. Mark it down. And he's in the control right now. And you gotta realize, practically speaking, when these folks went through this, they understood what they were dealing with. And they understood, when they denied Christ, what they were losing. Some of them have their doctrine wrong, I understand that, and they thought, you know, if I deny Christ, I go to hell. But he says, you be faithful and I'll give you a crown of life that fadeth not away. It's called a martyr's crown. Polycarp, he was the last of the saints to have known and taught with the apostle John. He was John's convert. He was burned at the stake during this age. He supposedly was the bishop of Smyrna. He died under the reign of Marcus Aurelius. And a Tertullian who lived at the time of this time, he said this, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. The blood of the martyrs. You say, when did we get a Bible that would go out into all the lands as universal language after all the blood of the martyrs were shed? That's when we got it, after the Reformation. 1611. 400 years next year. So this was a persecuted church. They went through some trials of cruel mockings. We really have no conception of what that's all about. You know, we think we're persecuted if the air conditioner goes off. I mean, really. We're spoiled. We have no sense. We have a sense on the other side of entitlement. We think we are owed something. We think we deserve something. The only thing we really deserve is death and taxes, I guess. Death and hell. That's what we deserve. We've lost that sense that the early church had, is that we have more in the life to come than what's down here. He says here, you're poor, but you're really rich. We got the thing all flipped around. They were a poor church, it says, but they were rich. Now flip your Bible over to Revelation 3 and notice the comparison. When you get to Revelation 3, the last church that he preaches about and speaks of is the Laodicean church, the church of Laodicea. Revelation 3, notice what he says about them. Revelation 3, verse 17. Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing. Look at the contrast. This one church is persecuted. They're poor. They have nothing. But what did he say about them, though? He said, you're poor, but then he said, thou art rich. The devil says, look how poor you are. Jesus can't even keep you out of the flames. You believe in God? How come God's letting me kill your wife right in front of your eyes? They would take the families of these Christians, you read about them, and they would torture them in front of the man to try to get him to denounce Christ. They'd tie up, they'd put snakes in a thing and put it around their head and tie it up. I got a book called The History of Torture. They've done everything in the book. They'd get them on a table, they'd sit them down, they'd take this big screw, they'd put it right through the knee and they'd screw it all the way down through their heel to the floor. in the name of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, the Mary, the mother of God. Has the Pope ever denounced any of that? No, he never will. Never kicked Adolf Hitler out of the church either, confirmed Roman Catholic. Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler, all those guys. So when you begin to go later on, I know we're before Roman Catholicism, but that same spirit's there and it all begins in Rome. Now, they were a poor church. The devil pours these temptations on, these trials on. He says, what kind of God do you have? Look what I'm doing. And God says, you know, you think you're poor? You're really rich, because you're layering up treasures in heaven. The Laodiceans on the other side are us. And you start getting in the, you hit about 1900, it begins to go... You know, and you hit about 1940, 1950. Folks, it was wicked in 1950, I'm telling you. Some of you grew up in the 50s and 50s, you hit the 50s, 60s, there was some bad stuff going on. I mean, like, read some of these old preachers and some of the same things they were dealing with and preaching on, the same stuff we're dealing with, just now it's more media and more out there, but it's still there. The change took place. And you begin to see the thing go down, and here we are, we're increased with goods, we're rich, we have all the money in the world. And even if you don't have money, you have the comforts. You can take some bum off the street, you know, and he can go walk in a mall and sit down in the most plush, comfortable setting and environment. Probably get him some free food somewhere in this country. The government will probably take care of him the rest of his life. Rich and increased with goods, but notice what Jesus says about him in Revelation 3. Thou knowest not that thou art wretched, miserable, poor, and blind, and naked. Look at the contrast of that thing. They were a poor church, yet they were rich. What I like about how the Lord identifies with the church at Smyrna, he often, whenever he mentions each church, he says, you know, thus saith he that, and he gives some analogy about himself that's revealed to John in Revelation chapter number one, you know, I stand in the middle of the seven golden candlesticks, or he that liveth and was dead, so on and so forth, that's what he uses with them. He says, I was dead one time. You know Jesus was poor? Amen, y'all with me tonight? The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 8 verse 9, For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich in heaven, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich. Jesus Christ understands their poverty. Jesus Christ also understands their circumstances and their persecutions. John chapter number 15, he said, the servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my saying, they will keep yours also. Jesus says, look what they did to me. So while this church is going through the persecution, they can always look back at what Jesus did. Jesus says, hey, it happened to me. They didn't like me either. If they're not going to like me, they're not going to like you. And the problem we see nowadays, we're all married to the world. We're so worldly and carnal that the world just accepts everything. Of course, they step on us whenever they want to, and you can talk about a Christian, do anything about a Christian you want to, but don't fend some other group. And the whole idea behind the world and the church being joined together is to break down any distinction so Jesus Christ can be magnified. Lay up your treasures in heaven, and that's exactly what this church did. They were poor, but he says, they were rich. But I want you to notice in verse number nine, there's some perversions that are taking place during this time. Look at the perversions, not necessarily with the faithful. Outside of this, and I don't believe this is really aimed at true Christians here in verse number nine, there is no word of condemnation toward this church. He'll say what's good about the church, then he'll say what's bad about the church. You don't find anything bad about the church of Philadelphia except they're weak a little bit. But I think their weakness was they relied on God, they did that. But here the church of Smyrna, nothing said in a negative sense except this, and I don't think it's really addressed to the true Christians. Look what he says in verse number nine. I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan." Now, Ephesus had trouble with the Nicolaitans. That was the people that tried to conquer the laity. They tried to take control over the common people. And, of course, you begin to see that later on develop in a greater sense in church history. They had trouble with that. This had trouble with people claiming they were Jews, but they were not. They were claiming promises in the Old Testament to the Jew, trying to apply it to them. It's the beginning of what we find in Bible prophecy, what we call postmillennialism and amillennialism. It's a wrong concept on how you view the Old Testament. In other words, they'd read over there about God promising Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob a piece of land. They said, well, that don't work anymore, because they killed Jesus. All the promises go to us now. You pick up some Bibles, and you look over there. And the Old Testament, as you read along, it'll say, God's promised to the church. And it'll be talking about Israel. You're thinking, who wrote this? Thompson Chain reference, I think, has a few of those in there. And you begin to go through that thing and you see how that these writers back in this day, you had Cyprian, 200 AD, Origen, 182, Clement, 200, Didymus, 313, Athanasius, 297, Cyril of Jerusalem a little bit later on, and Augustine, he finally, in the next period, he writes this book called The City of God, where it really solidifies this teaching, see, that these promises to the Jew go to us, the church. So they make no distinction between the Jew, Israel, and the church. You know what Paul says? He says you need to give none offense or three groups on this earth to the Jews, to the Gentiles, or to the church of God. You're either saved and you're in the body of Christ, the church, or you're a lost Jew or you're a lost Gentile. If you're in Christ, there's neither Jew nor Gentile. So you're either in the church, you're either a Gentile or you're a Jew. Three groups. So when you read that Bible, it's gonna either apply to some Jew somewhere, some Gentile somewhere, or the body of Christ, the church. And here you had the beginnings of this teaching begin to creep in because they say they're Jews and they're not. Well, we're spiritual Jews, brother David. Yes, I understand that. You know, Paul talks about in Romans, he says, you know, you're not a Jew that's one outwardly. We understand the spiritual concept of Abraham being the father of the faith, but Abraham was given the promises by faith before he was circumcised. So that's why Paul draws the analogy in the book of Galatians and the book of Romans going all the way back to Abraham when he believed by faith before his circumcision. Because Abraham can be the father of faith to the Jews and to the Gentiles. Everybody follow that? In other words, Abraham believed God before he had any kind of Jewish, if you want to call it that, circumcision. So therefore, we can take application from his belief and his faith and how he believed God, even though he didn't really have no evidence. He just said, okay, God, you said it, I believe it. People get all that mixed up, though. They say, well, since we're spiritual Jews, You know, we can take these promises. Therefore, when you begin to read Hebrews, who's Hebrews? Well, that's us. Well, when you read Revelation, you know, there we are. And interpretation becomes very vague. Instead of believing the Bible's literal when it speaks, now it can just mean anything. And that type of teaching begin to come. And it's called the Alexandrian School of Thought. I mentioned a fellow named Origen, 182 A.D. And Origen began this school down in Alexandria, Egypt. Egypt's always a bad place. And Origen began this philosophy, what we call allegorical interpretation. Instead of taking the Bible in a literal sense, for instance, when it says Jesus is going to come back, well, He did come back in His Spirit. You know, my mother is in the room with me right now, in Spirit. You know, and it becomes allegorical. This tree fell yesterday and it was over toward the place where my great uncle lived and I think that that's speaking to me in a sense of he's sending me a message. That's how they view the Bible. Jesus returned, R.C. Sproul, he comes on some of these radio programs. You know, Jesus came back in 70 A.D. I didn't know that. And we're in the millennial kingdom now. There's no such thing as a thousand year millennial reign as the Bible says six times in Revelation chapter 20. You know, a thousand years, that's any time, you know. It's not definite. You can't be dogmatic on those things. Okay, well maybe Jesus really didn't die. Maybe it was all an allegory and he just kind of acted like he was going to die and then he just kind of faded off in history. See how it goes? Once you leave the grammatical, historical sense of the passage and say, OK, it means what it says and says what it means, unless it's a passage that's absolutely speaking in a symbol. For instance, Jesus says, you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have eternal life. Obviously, he doesn't put his finger out there and say, take a bite. He explains that because he says, as I live by the Father, and as I live by the Father, so you should live by me. He didn't eat the Father, literally. He's speaking in a symbol, so you can interpret it that way. He says, the flesh, prophet of nothing, the words I speak into you, they are spirit, they are life. So there you know, okay, I can take this thing symbolically. Book of Daniel, he sees these visions, and then the interpretation's given. But when you have something that's definite, and Jesus Christ ascends up into heaven, and the two men standing by in shining garments say, this same Jesus as you've seen taken up from heaven shall so come in like manner. That means he's coming back to the ground. So we begin to see this and it's perversion. Anytime you get the Jew out of his place, when you read the Bible, you're going to have trouble. That's where people get in trouble in the book of Acts. They try to take the signs and the miracles and apply it to themselves. Those signs and wonders were to convince the nation of Israel that Jesus was who he said he was. That's why Jesus did miracles when he came. And he got mad with them. They kept asking for this and asking for that. And I'm thinking, you know, they said, what sign show us that? I'm thinking, man, look at all the miracles he's already done. He says, an evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign. He gave him all the signs in the world, walked on the water, cleansed the lepers, gave sight to the blind, raised the dead. What more do they want? Then after he died, he said, greater works than I've done, you're going to do. Peter walks by and the shadow passes by somebody and they get up. Paul takes a handkerchief and touches it and sends it off. They touch it and get healed. You talk about some miracles taking place. Of course, they made people blind, too. They get mad at somebody, man. You get on the wrong side of Moses or an apostle, you were in trouble back in them days. Because they could put a whooping on you. And so when you begin to get that thing out of context, and you get out of the apostolic age dealing with the Jew, and you start trying to apply those things to you, then you have what we see in some of these churches today, which is confusion, trying to make these signs and so forth, and they're getting out of place dealing with the Jew. God's still going to deal with that nation. He's gonna move us out of the way. The fullness of the Gentiles will come. The book of Esther is a great type of that. We talked about that, how that in the book of Esther, a Gentile bride is moved aside for the Jewish bride. Jewish bride of course in the Bible is married to Jehovah God himself the Gentile bride in the scriptures married to Jesus Christ the church the body of Christ so you see that in the book of Esther that that Jewish at Gentile brides moved out of the way for the June that's where we are now the Bible says in the book of Romans chapter 11 that the fullness of the times is about to come near in other words it says that be not ignorant of this mystery And some people are ignorant of this mystery, that blindness in part has happened unto Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles become in. So when God's through the Gentiles as a group, now I know that anybody that's saved, whether they're Jew or Gentile, they're in the body of Christ, but as a whole, corporately, God's been dealing with Gentiles. 90% of Jews are atheists when you go to Israel, practically. I mean, they have their traditions and their religion, you know, and put the thing on their head and do all the little stuff. I don't even keep up with all their traditions and all the things they have. Most of it has just got to do with their culture. They're practical atheists. God is not dealing specifically with the Jews. They're said to be blinded. He's dealing with Gentiles. But when he moves us out of the way, he'll be dealing with his people again. And those promises that he said would happen and come true will come true. That's why you're seeing all the stuff take place in the Middle East. When you start hitting the 40s and the 50s, that stuff starts really taking off. 1948, they become a nation. And all these things begin to fall in place, the beginning of the post-millennial doctrine and what we call the kingdom builders. Kingdom builders are bloody killers. Roman Catholicism, imperialism, all that stuff begins to come in and they take the name of Christ and they try to overcome physically what is done in the spiritual world. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Okay, hold on a second, do you realize what you're praying? Thy kingdom come is Jesus Christ on the earth. Now let's get back to this. I want you to notice they had some perversions. And I don't, like I said, these true Christians were being killed and you had these pseudo-Christians doing the heresy. But then I want you to notice some of these promises. Maybe we can get some practical help from this. Notice they had some promises. Jesus says in verse number 9, look at the first two words. Isn't that good? I mean, all of us, we need some sympathy every now and again. You ever get down and say, Lord, I'm really having a hard time. This has happened. I can't believe this is going on. I'm hurt. I got this physical problem. I got this financial problem. I have this problem here, this problem there. Jesus says, I know. I know all about it. I know. You know, sometimes we don't need somebody to just try to tell us, and that's what's hard. Sometimes you just want to say, OK, well, here, you do A, B, and C, just like Joe, you know, so far, and Bill Dadd, Shoe Height, and all those guys with Job. You know, they want to say, OK, you do this, this, this, and everything will work out. Sometimes it's not that easy. There are a lot of variables and a lot of factors in that situation. You can't say, OK, well, you just do this, this, this, check it off your list, everything will be fine. Sometimes you just got to say, I know. Sorry. Jesus says, I know what you're going to do. They're being persecuted. They're losing their families. They're suffering. And I guarantee you, if anybody was close to God, those people were. But yet, they still were persecuted. They were sawn asunder. They were tortured. Yet, they were close to God. Jesus says, I know. He experienced everything they experienced. He's the only one who really could say that. You know, if you've been through a similar situation, Paul says we can comfort those whereby we are comforted from God. Sometimes you go through things so you can help somebody else. It's not all about us. Sometimes it's about other people. God will never use a man greatly until he breaks him greatly. But you take the situation here, Jesus had been through everything they had been through, even death. And he'd come up on the other side. So if anybody's qualified to say, I know, I understand. It's him. I think a lot of times we forget that. We just want somebody to have empathy and sympathize with us. He's the one that can sympathize. He's the one better than anybody else that knows exactly what you're going through. And he can say, I know. I know what you're doing. I know why you're doing it. You have the right heart, the right attitude. I understand completely. I've been there. Jesus Christ got hungry. He got thirsty. Jesus Christ was tempted. Jesus Christ went through sorrow, grief. John 11, 35, one of the greatest passages in the Bible, Jesus wept. The Bible says he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Well, I just thought when I served God, when I turned everything over to God, and I presented myself a living sacrifice, that everything was gonna be good, and I'd have a smile on my face all the time, and a spring in my step, and everything would be happy. Well, I guarantee you if you came across Jesus, he wouldn't just be laughing and joking and have a smile on his face all the time. You ever read his Gethsemane prayer in Matthew and John? He's weeping and he's crying and he's praying and he goes a little further and he says the same words. And he can't get through and he goes a little further and he says the same words. He can't get an answer. He goes a little further and says the same words. He struggled in prayer. Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. We want to sail on flowerly beds of ease, as the old hymn says, instead of take up the old cross. But Jesus says, I know. He underscores the persecutions and says, I know all about it. He reminds them that he was once dead and he's alive. I know thy tribulation, thy poverty. Verse number 10, notice the promise, fear not. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. Now, if anybody else would have said that, they probably would have gotten mad. It's easy for somebody on the outside to say, oh, you know, no big deal, don't worry about it. Oh, your husband's leaving you, your wife, oh, no big deal, you'll have a good time. You can just take it easy, just you, you know. It's easy for them to say. Your spouse dies, or your mother dies, father dies, some, oh, you'll get over it, you know, it'll be okay, you know, it'll be easy. It's easy for somebody else on the outside to look and just, say it's going to be okay. But Jesus says, fear not. Fear none of those things. That's a hard thing to swallow, man. I've never been tortured before. I mean, growing up, you know, me and my brother, we'd get in some pretty good sparring matches, you know. I've been knocked out before a few times. And I've passed out several times. I've been tied up and all kinds of things, you know, messing around kids. But I've never really been tortured. I don't like pain. I don't know of anybody who really does. I'm a pretty big sissy when it comes to pain. I mean, I am. If I ever have to get in a situation like that and they give you one of them morphine things, man, I'll be pushing that button all the time, buddy. Just feed it to me. Feed it to me. I don't like pain. I don't know how I would react. You have to be real careful when you say how you would do in a certain situation, because you really don't know. Somebody's got your wife and kids, and they say, deny Christ or turn over all your Bibles, or we're going to take your kids into custody because you're not fit to raise your children, not teaching them this kind of stuff that's in the Bible that's against the state. The Bible says you're supposed to beat your child with a rod. We don't believe that. That's not what we teach in our country anymore. So folks, I'm just saying how possibly some of these things come down, right? The Bible says, thou shalt beat him with a rod. Well, go tell that to the human resource people or whoever, whatever you call it, social workers. Man, they'll have a fit. They probably don't know that's in the Bible. They probably go to church every Sunday and carry their Bible and don't even know that's in there. Go to one of these liberal churches and sit down and hear about the love of God. They don't even know it's in there. I shall beat him with a rod and deliver his soul from hell. Of course, their Bible probably don't have it in there. Probably been taken out. But you know, when it comes down to your family and it comes down to your life and the pain begins to touch you, it's easy for somebody to say, don't be afraid of that. But Jesus says, fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. And then he tells them some things that's going to happen. And as I told you before, prophetically, I believe the churches and the tribulation are going to get a hold of this. They're gonna know that the rapture's taking place. I believe there's a time, I don't know how long it is, maybe some of that stuff in the book of Daniel with those days has to do with it, but I believe there's a gap there before some of this stuff begins. I believe there's a gap between the rapture and the tribulation. So they got a little time to group, and I believe they'll look at these passages, and they read this, and this church is gonna have a special persecution to deal with, and he says, the devil shall cast some of you into prison. Now look, pain is bad, and having bad things happens bad enough, but at least if you have a little warning, it helps a little bit, takes the edge off of it just a little bit. He says, fear not other things, the devil's gonna cast some of you into prison that you may be tried, and you shall have tribulation 10 days. Be thou fateful unto death. and I will give thee a crown of life. They're told to be faithful. They're told not to fear, and they're told to be faithful. I guess really the mystery of it, when you look at the passage, is not that the devil would do this, and not that they would actually be in persecution, but the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks in the midst of the seven candlesticks, the one who is, you know, the seven thunders utter their voices, and he knows about it, and he lets it happen. Jesus Christ knows about all the suffering that goes on right now. I'm not doing a thing about it. People starving and dying right this minute and he's just sitting there. You ever think about that? You ever think about God in that sense? We're living in a period right now we call in theology the silence of God. God's just sitting there like this. Hurricane comes over, kills a couple hundred thousand, he sits there. Fire goes there and burns all these people to death, sits there. Little baby's starving, crying out, he just sits there. It's God. Old Testament with Moses and Israel and the judges, a little bit different. They cry out and God go down there and deliver them and get them straightened out and help them, right? The other day, he just sits there. Could God control the hurricanes? The tsunamis that killed how many hundred thousand? Yeah, sure he could. During this period in church history, those Christians were tortured. And here's the baby over there about to be tortured. The mother's praying and saying, God, please. God, please. I love you. I've given you my life. Be thou faithful unto death, and I'll give thee the crown of life. He didn't stop it when it was his son. You think he's going to stop it when it's you? You think you're better than Jesus Christ? Who do we think we are? What do you think God thought when Jesus Christ was going through what He went through? He had the power to stop it. Jesus had the power to stop it. God had the power to stop it. It's a mystery. Be thou faithful unto death, He says, and I will give thee a crown of life. That's called a martyr's crown. It's required in us to be faithful, it's not required in us to be figures. We like to be figure outers, like I preached way back in John chapter six, figure outers. Let them know why. Let them think we can put God in a box and we can figure God out. See, that's why I encourage you to read the entire Bible so you can get a broad picture of God and understand the nature of God, because we think we got God figured out. He's my sweet little Jesus, Jesus. A Jesus. No, He's not your little Jesus. People talk like He's, you know, some cuddle bear or something somewhere. And they don't understand that it's not us to figure God out and to try to have Him conform to what we want to make Him to be. You think, oh, well, I went through this because of this, and I went through this. You don't really know. I mean, really. You really don't. I mean, you might think you got an idea, but you're gonna get to heaven, and that's when you really find out. It's not our job to figure out why and to question and try to come up with some answer. It's our job to be faithful to what God calls us to do, and if persecution comes, it comes. If the trials and tribulations come, they come. It's our job simply to be faithful unto death, if it need be. What does he promise? He promises a reward, the crown of life. James chapter number one, this crown is the same crown promised to those who endure temptations. You may never go through persecution as far as pain is concerned. I hope we never do, really. I'm not praying for the judgment must begin at the house of God, you know, and it's gonna fall on us. It looks like it is, but I sure don't, I'm not tasting for it. I'm not hungry for it. We may never have to be persecuted physically for our faith. I hope we're not, but you're gonna be tempted. In some way, you'll be tempted to quit. You'll be tempted to sin. You'll be tempted to give up. There'll be a temptation somewhere. And you're to be faithful through that temptation. No matter how you feel, no matter what circumstances may be, you are still to be faithful. And if you're faithful, He'll give you a crown of life. It's one of the five crowns mentioned at the judgment seat of Christ. Same crown. You say, well, a martyr can get this crown. Yeah, you can get the same crown. You see, we're to be faithful, it's not all about the results, it's not all about the time. Different time, different place, we may be under persecution. We're here for such a time as this. We have to be faithful what God's dealt us. We have to deal with circumstances in life and what we have. Where are you at right now? What are your circumstances right now and what God's laid in your lap? That's what you gotta deal with and that's what you have to be faithful with right now. And God will reward you accordingly. He always rewards his servants. As far as death is concerned in the Old Testament, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. The devil thinks he wins when he persecutes and kills and mangles and does all these things, but for a child of God who loves God, it's called a sweet savor, it's a sacrifice to God. And it brings glory to Jesus Christ because it shows that even through the face of adversity and persecution, their faith is real. I mean, really, who's going to die for what they believe? I don't think very many evolutionists would die over believing that they came from a monkey. After all, it's just a theory, right? These Christians, they would die for what they believed. You might get hurt in this life, but you're not going to get hurt in the judgment who put a crown on your head. There was a missionary to a leper colony years ago and he worked and labored there and had a successful work and he'd go out and start his service every morning. He'd say, good morning my fellow believers. And as he was working during the week and getting ready for some things, he was in his kitchen and he spilled some hot water on his foot and he didn't feel anything. He was barefooted and he didn't feel a thing and he knew what that meant. The next morning he got up Leprosy, your nerve endings begin to go. He got up, and I don't know if they noticed it or not, but he said, instead of good morning, my fellow believers, good morning, my fellow lepers. That was the price he paid for serving as a missionary in a leper colony to try to win into Christ. You say, well, the price is just too high to pay. No, it's not. Jesus Christ is worth every bit of it. Practically speaking, we may go through some trials and tribulations. You say, well, nobody understands. Jesus understands. He says, I know that works. I know all about it. Fear none of those things. It's going to happen. He's going to let you be tried. Job says, when he tried me, I'll come forth as gold. He does not take what you do for him lightly. He is the record keeper. Not only do we find the book of life in the book of Revelation, you go to the book of Daniel, which is kind of like Revelation of the Old Testament, the Bible says the judgment was set and the books were opened. When you've done something for Jesus Christ and it cost you, and there was a sacrifice, and you went through a trial and tribulation, and you glorified him, it takes no doubt. Lay up treasures in heaven, not on the earth. Let's bow our heads for prayer.