Letters to the Churches Bunny Trail Part 1

Okay, we are getting ready to get started here with our Sunday school. If everyone would like to open up their Bibles to Revelation 15, we're going to kind of be a little bit all over the place, the best way I can put it today, is because we're going to try to pick up on a few themes that we can pick up on and try to tie a few things together in the book of Revelation so that we kind of get the bigger picture of what's going on.

So grab a Bible, something to write with, take some notes. And those of you online, if you would like to turn your video on, we've made it possible for you to do that during this portion of the service.

So let's see here. I'll look at questions after we pray. Let's pray. Blessed Lord, you have caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning. Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, so that by patience and comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and ever hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen. Okay, let me check questions before we get started. Hannah, the Sylvester family, I had an observation from today's Gospel text. I'm sure you've observed this, Pastor. Maybe not. I mean, you have a lot of faith in me.

It may be misplaced. Let's see here. Let's see. I've been there, done that, and I still have the scars to prove it. It's fascinating how many false teachings on works there truly are. I grieve for our Catholic neighbors in that deception.

Right. And here's the thing. In the take up your cross text and follow him, denying yourself is a metaphor, if you would, kind of another way of saying repent. If my problem is me, and we're most like the devil when we're looking out for number one, and number one is me, taking up your cross and denying yourself is saying that I was wrong and Christ is right.

And so it's a death to self. And that can only be accomplished by the work of the Holy Spirit. And on top of it, the Holy Spirit is the one who grants us faith in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins.

So when you preach the law without the Gospel, what ends up happening is that you end up having this complete weight thrown on you. And the weight is, if I don't do more, do better, do harder, all this kind of stuff, then I'm not even going to be saved.

Well, when you start thinking that, you're immediately slipping into works of righteousness. You're not saved by your works either in total or in part. You're saved by what Christ has done for you. And we do our good works because we are Christians.

Hello there, little baby. All right. Okay, so what we are going to do today. Let me see here. I'm making sure I'm not missing any more people. All right, what we're going to do today. We're going to continue through the book of Revelation.

We've made it through chapter 14. And in chapter 15, we're going to see the turn into more intense judgments of God. And we've noted, I think we're up to three or four times that the world has ended in the book of Revelation, which really kind of messes up the idea if you're somehow reading the book of Revelation and thinking that it's somehow a map of what's going to happen at the very end.

It's not. It's a picture of what the last days look like from Christ's ascension until his return in glory. And you're going to note then that the first time around when we saw judgments from God, and I'll show you this real quick, in the book of Revelation, we had the seven angels who had the seven trumpets.

And remember when they blew their trumpets, these curses here were kind of generic and where a third of the earth was affected by fire and a third of this by disease and pestilence. When we get to chapter 15, it's no longer thirds.

It's like the whole planet. So this is speaking to the ever-increasing magnitude of God's judgment. And in the judgments that we're going to see starting in Revelation 15, we're going to note that these have really interesting connections back to the plagues of Egypt.

So to kind of prepare us for what's coming, we're going to look at the story of the Exodus and the plagues of Egypt. It's actually going to be good foundation work moving forward in Revelation because the callbacks to Exodus are actually huge.

But let me ask you guys a quick question. All right, so those of you who are here, the fact that Faith and Josh and Nikki and Alex and Barb aren't here made it so you guys' levels were kind of, you know, because they're normally, I'm part of the loud family and so you guys were like, so I felt like you guys were kind of like hiding during the liturgy today.

But anyway, all of that being said, I'm not going to let you hide. Do you guys remember when we were reading the book of Revelation, how many churches were there that Christ had letters that were sent to them?

Do you remember? Seven, seven. There were seven churches that received letters. Who were the letters to? For instance, how did like a letter begin? To the angel of the church at Pergamum, right. To the angel of the church at Ephesus, right.

To the angel of the church at Laodicea, right, right. So how many angels received letters? Seven. Now we noted when we read them out that the right understanding is that these weren't letters written to spiritual beings because pastors are messengers, right.

Pastors are angelos. That's the Greek word, angelos. We are messengers and so these are sent to the angels of the churches, which are the pastors. Now I don't know if you guys think of me as angelic, but I'm not.

That's my wife. There she is. Josh is nodding his head, no, no, no. But the only way in which I'm angelic is that I'm bringing the message of God. But all of that being said, when we got to chapter 8, we saw the trumpets, the trumpet judgments, and seven angels sequentially come out and blow their trumpets, and with each of these trumpet judgments, there were, well, bad things happening on earth, right.

Now, if you guys remember then in chapter 12, you had the scrolls, the seals of the scrolls, and with each seal that was broken, an angel came forward. How many angels were there? Seven. In chapter 15, I'll give you a guess.

How many angels do you think are going to be coming forward with their bowls that they're going to pour out God's wrath on? Anyone want to take a guess on the number? Seven. All right. So watch the connection here.

Seven angels to the churches, seven trumpet angels, seven scroll angels, and then we're going to see seven bowl judgments. And Louis Brighton, in his commentary on the book of Revelation, he thinks that there is a connection, and I think he's right.

He thinks that there's a connection with the seven angels from the beginning, and here's the idea, is that when you consider the implications of the front end of the book, that the idea then is that it is the job of the church to proclaim the gospel, and along with proclaiming the gospel, calling people to repent and believe, but also invoking the judgment of God and let the world know that there is a day coming when God will send forth his judgments.

This is part of the message of the church, and so the implication here is there seems to be an overlap, if you would, between the heavenly angels and their task and the earthly angels and their tasks, and I think there's something that could be said about that.

I think he may be right, but I had to put my coffee down over there. All right. All of that being said, I want you to consider in this regard, I want to pull a text up. Give me a second here. I am going to go to Duplicate, and we're going to take a look at an example of Paul's preaching, Acts 17, and in Paul's preaching to pagans, what his message was, and I think there's something to be said about this.

So if you remember, the apostle Paul, when he went to Thessalonica, he preached the gospel to the Jews in the synagogue there. Some believed, some didn't, and the ones who remained unbelieving, they became hostile.

You ever notice that, that sometimes preaching Christ and telling people the truth, that sometimes people react to the message with hostility? You notice that? So what did they do? They had the apostle Paul sneak out of town, and he skedaddled off to the city of Berea, and in the city of Berea, we learned that the Bereans were of a more noble character than the Thessalonians.

Let's see here. This is a great text. I always like to point this one out. So the brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night. So they slunk out of town, out of darkness. So by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went to the Jewish synagogue, and now the Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica.

They received the word with all eagerness, and watch this, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Have you ever heard of the term, somebody being a good Berean? This should be a concept to you.

And so you'll note that God's word commends the people of Berea for basically saying to the apostle Paul, all right, we like the message that we're hearing, but we're going to need you to disappear for a little bit of time, maybe go and make a tent or something, and while you're doing that, we're going to actually look at the scriptures to see if the message that you've brought us is true.

If only the church would do that today, we'd get rid of so many false teachers, right? So being a Berean is a good thing. So they examined that. So note, they fact-checked the apostle Paul. And then after fact-checking him, they went, yep, that's what the scripture says, right?

But those in Thessalonica, when they got wind that Paul was in Berea, well, it says, so many of them believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men, but when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came thereto agitating and stirring up the crowds.

So then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there. Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him, as soon as possible, they departed.

Now, while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of, what, idols, right? So we're in pagan territory now. And the city of Athens at that time was just chock full of images made to false gods, Zeus, Athena, Mars, Hermes.

We're talking about Greek mythology here. These are the deities we're talking about. And so what does Paul do? Well, never one to miss an opportunity to tell people about Jesus. He reasoned with people in the synagogue of the Jews.

He found the synagogue there, and the devout persons who were basically catechumens who were studying to become Jewish converts. And in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there, some Epicurean and Stoic...

You notice here that Paul, he's preaching the gospel to people in the marketplace. He's not going to his local grocery store to ask if people need to have their legs lengthened. I just had to throw that in there.

Which is what Bethel teaches their students to do. Anyway, some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also, they conversed with Paul, and some said, what does this babbler wish to say? So you're going to note the message that they're hearing, they don't know how to process it.

And so others said, well, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus, and look what he was also preaching, the resurrection. So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus.

And by the way, this is in kind of the shadow of the Parthenon in Athens. It's a little rocky outcropping that's right in the shadow of the Parthenon. And says, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting, for you bring some strange things to our ears.

We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean. Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who live there would spend their time doing nothing except telling or hearing something new. It sounds like the megachurches.

Anyway, we continue. All right, so Paul, now we're going to pay close attention to the details of his message. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, he said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.

For as I pass along and observe the objects of your worship, I found an altar with this inscription, To the Unknown God. And I've said it before, and I'll kind of make the point again here, and that is that it's good that he picked one that we knew nothing about.

They were basically hedging their bets. They had all these images set up to every god that they thought they knew existed, and just to make sure if they had missed one, they set up a place for the unknown deity, the one they knew nothing about.

And so Paul here is going with that. Rather than saying Jesus is a lot like Zeus or Jesus is like Mars or any of this kind of stuff, nope, he starts with a blank slate. And he says, What therefore you worship is unknown.

This is what I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man. And so you'll note that in speaking the truth, this is going to make it so that he is going to make statements that are going to contradict false teachings and understandings of God that pagans have.

So he doesn't shy away from doing that. Nor is God served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.

Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and the imagination of man.

So here he rightly points out that their images are the result of human imagination, so he doesn't pull any punches. The time of ignorance God has overlooked, but now God commands all people everywhere to what?

Repent. Because, and watch the note, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

Now this is where they, at this point, cut him off. So when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. Others said, well, we'll hear you again on this. So they cut it short. But you get a note here, in Paul's preaching of the gospel, not only is he telling people about what Christ has done, he's also making it clear that it is God's will that everybody hear the command to repent, and for this reason, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness.

And so the idea then, as Christians, we don't know when that day is, and we'll hear in the book of Revelation chapter 15, Christ reiterating, or kind of one of the reiterations of one of the themes that Christ says, is that his second coming is going to be so swift that when it occurs, it's going to be like a thief in the night.

It's going to be, for everybody in the world, it's going to be something quite unexpected. Our job is to tell people of the coming judgment of God, and that God himself has provided the sacrifice for their sins so they can be reconciled and saved, rather than swept away in the flood of God's wrath.

That's the idea. So you'll note that the gospel and the preaching of the coming judgment, they go together. Is it any wonder then that the coming judgment is always mentioned in our creeds? Right? Rightly so.

Rightly so. But all of that being said, before we get into Revelation 15, we've got to do a little bit of work. So I want this fresh in your minds, and this is a good time of the year to do this, by the way, is to take a look at the plagues of the book of Exodus, which means we're going to do a little bit of work here, and by a little bit, I mean it might take us a couple weeks before we get to Revelation 15.

Don's looking at me like, this is so Roseboro. This is so typical him. I want these things in your head in their proper context because this is how we draw the connection. So Exodus chapter 1. Here's what it says.

All right. So these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, and all the descendants of Jacob were 70 persons.

Joseph was already in Egypt. And then Joseph died and all of his brothers and all that generation, but the people of Israel were fruitful, increased greatly, they multiplied, grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.

Now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph, and he said to his people, Behold, the people of Israel are too many, too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.

Now this is going to be a theme that we're going to see moving forward in Revelation, so I'm going to put a couple of stakes down so that you can kind of see how this is going. When we look at Revelation 15, I'm going to point this out, so I'm going to go back to Revelation 15 real quick.

It says this, I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished. And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire, kind of a mixing of two metaphors here, fire kind of indicative of war and conflict, and the sea of glass is God's calm and peace that he brings in order in the midst of chaos.

Those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands, and they sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God Almighty.

Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations, who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name, for you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.

And after this I looked, and in the sanctuary of the tent of the witness in heaven was opened, and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels with the seven plagues. They were clothed in pure, bright linen with golden sashes around their chests, and one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven bowls full of the wrath of God, who lives forever and ever, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.

16. Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God. So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth. Harmful, painful sores came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshiped its image.

All right, so you're gonna note, we're gonna see in the plagues of Egypt, sores. Now in this particular case though, we're gonna note that with these judgments then, everything's kind of ramped up. If you guys have seen the movie, This Is Spinal Tap, this is God's wrath at 11, okay?

That's what we're talking about here. We're at level 11. And so whatever this means, like you'll remember back in Revelation 8 and 9, when it talked about the pestilences, it only affected a third of the world.

Whatever's coming, you know, as we get closer and closer to the return of Christ, whatever the plagues and pestilences that God pours out on humanity, it's going to be of a magnitude of an order that's gonna impact everybody to one degree or another.

And that's the issue. So you'll note here, with the COVID pandemic, which now they're saying is gonna become endemic, which is an interesting statement. But with the COVID pandemic, we've noted that the entire global economy has been impacted.

Every nation has been impacted severely, negatively as a result of this. And yet the total number of people impacted, or at least directly having had COVID, it's still not the majority of the population.

But what's coming is something even far worse than that. So this is kind of symbolic of the pestilences that God's gonna send, and he's going to really ramp them up. So whatever God is sending in the future, we'll look back on the COVID days, people will look back on the COVID days and go, yeah, that was nothing compared to this, all right?

Second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing died that was in the sea. So remember in the early part of Revelation, the first time around, we saw that only a third of the sea was impacted.

Now what's coming is we're talking about in the days immediately before the return of Christ, like a complete failure, a complete failure for there to be actually any life at all in the sea. It's like the whole sea dies, all of the oceans, everything gone, all right?

And this, again, picks up on the themes of Exodus. Remember the first plague of blood, and we'll look at that again. So this is why I want to point these out. The third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood.

And I heard an angel in charge of the water say, just are you, O holy one, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments, for they have shed the blood of your saints, the prophets. Pay attention to that part right there, okay?

They have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve. So keep in mind that martyrdom is a real possibility, in fact, a high probability for real Christians in the days immediately before the return of Christ.

And I'll explain that a little bit more with one of the other ones. And then I heard the altar saying, yes, Lord God, the Almighty, true and just are your judgments. The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and he's sitting there going, if you know your plagues of Egypt, this sounds a lot similar.

You can see the tie-ins. And it was allowed to scorch people with fire. They were scorched by the fierce heat. They cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues, and they did not repent nor give him glory.

The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People gnawed their tongues in anguish. So here we've got a plague of darkness. And they cursed the God of heaven for their pain and their sores, and they did not repent of their deeds.

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the east. So here we've got a drying up of a major waterway and kind of invoking the crossing of the Red Sea or the crossing of the Jordan, kind of a similar miracle.

But the idea in this particular case is that with the Euphrates drying up, it allows then for forces that had been in check to then move forward, and the restraints that were on them have been removed.

And then watch where this goes. I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet three unclean spirits like frogs. And you're going to note, so here we've got the imagery of Revelation 12 and 13.

But here, rather than the beast of the earth, because remember there was the beast of the sea which is the political system. Then you have the beast of the earth, which here in this text is now saying that this is the false prophet.

It's false religion. Three unclean spirits like frogs. They are demonic spirits performing signs who go abroad to the kings of the world to assemble them for battle on the great day of God Almighty. Now, let's talk about this.

Yes, sir. Yes. So the question is, is there any symbolism of them being like frogs? Yes. When you look at the Mosaic Covenant, frogs are unclean animals and you're not allowed to eat them. And so it kind of invokes, if you would, something that is unclean, unsavory, and it's a picture of the demonic, if you would.

But also this, when we go back into Exodus, you'll see then there was a plague of what? Frogs. All right. So you'll see then the plagues of Egypt are types and shadows of the plagues that God is going to unleash on earth in the days before the return of Christ.

Now, in this particular thing, you're going to note then that if you remember the book of Matthew, when Jesus in the Olivet Discourse says that immediately before his return, there would be false Christs and false prophets who would perform great signs and wonders so as, if possible, to mislead or to deceive even the elect.

So over and again, I seem to have made a career out of pointing out false signs and false wonders, but I am reminded more and more regularly now by people in my audience that there is a day coming when the false prophets will be able to perform actual signs and wonders.

And we know from the earlier part of the book of Revelation that the specific sign and wonder that we know that they would be able to perform is the sign and wonder of being able to call fire down from heaven.

I want you to think about this for a second. Can you guys think of two... I want two potential, maybe a third. I know of three. Three times where fire has come down from heaven in the Old Testament. Okay, Mount Carmel.

Good. There's actually a few. We're going to get audience participation here by way of Mount Carmel. Yep. Give me another one. That wasn't fire from heaven. No, burning bush. No points for you, Don. Okay.

Now, technically you could throw Sodom and Gomorrah in the mix, but that's not quite it. There is a time when, let's just say that the king of Israel sent captains of 50 and their men to go and get Elijah, and Elijah called down fire from heaven and burned up two of those groups, two groups of 50.

That's another one. That's a second one. Solomon's Temple. That's not quite the same, and neither is Sinai. Specifically of calling down fire from heaven and doing so in a judgment kind of way. There's a third.

Let me show you the third one here, and this is why we've got to know our Scriptures, because what's going to happen in the future is that whoever these false prophets and false Christs are, they will be able to call fire down from heaven.

Revelation teaches us that, but Scripture has made it clear that that is not something that is exclusive to the work of God. Let me explain. All right, here, duplicate tab. Job's flocks. Mark, Holt, you got, I'm going to give you 10 extra points for that.

That's right. Okay, so let's go to the book of Job. All right. And let's see here. All right, let's see here. I want to find that. Mm-hmm. Let's see here. Is it the second time around or the first time around with Job?

Hang on a second. I'm going to do this. I'm going to look for fire, and I'm going to limit it to define range, and we're going to go to Job. Mark got it right. I just want to get our text. Okay, update.

All right, and done. There we go. And didn't I save it? All right, let's try that again. Name, Job. Job, update. There we go. All right, chapter 16. Okay, hang on a second. I don't know. I recently read it, but sometimes I'm just not all that smart.

Here we go, Job. Here we go, fire. All right. All right, so it is Job 1. Let me show you here. All right. All right, so here's the account code. There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and the man was blameless, upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil.

There were born to him seven sons, three daughters. He possessed 7 ,000 sheep, 3 ,000 camels, 200 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east.

All I'm saying is that he may have produced a lot of manure there. All right, so his sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and to drink with them.

And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, It may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.

Thus Job did continually. Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. And the Lord said to Satan, From where have you come? Satan answered Yahweh and said, From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it.

And Yahweh said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil? So then Satan answered Yahweh and said, Does Job fear God for no reason?

Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has on every side? And you have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.

And Yahweh said to Satan, Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand. So Satan went out from the presence of Yahweh. Now there was a day when the sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house, and there came a messenger to Job saying, The oxen were plowing, the donkeys feeding beside them, and the Sabaeans fell on them and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you.

And while he was yet speaking, there came another and said, The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them. I alone have escaped to tell you. Now here's the bit we've got to pay attention to.

The text says that they interpreted it as the fire of God. Who was behind the fire falling from heaven that burned up these flocks? Satan. And this is where we have to pay attention to the details here.

This scripture shows us that God can grant the devil the ability to call fire down from heaven. But the way the deception is going to work in the last days, since we know that this is the great sign that will occur, is the calling down of fire from heaven, that those who are believing falsely in the church will see that as proof that the people performing the sign are legitimately from God.

But this text here shows us that that sign in and of itself is not proof that the origin is God because Satan is the one who caused the fire to fall in the book of Job. You see how subtle this deception is going to be, but it's not going to be when it arrives.

So then coming back to Revelation 15, so note here, talking about the false prophet, talking about these demonic spirits. I hit a button. Hang on a second here. I've got to close that. There we go. For the demonic spirits performing signs who go abroad to the kings of the whole world to assemble them for battle on the great day of God Almighty.

Here's the idea. We now know how this false sign of being able to call down fire from heaven will be used. Revelation has given us the details. So fast forward to some time into the future. How far into the future?

I don't know. It's above my pay grade. I just don't know. But there is a day coming when false prophets and false Christ will be able to perform the great sign and wonder of calling down fire from heaven, and they will do so for the purpose of showing the kings and the governors and the presidents and the heads of state of all of the nations to believe that they're really from God, which will then cause all of the nations of the earth and their heads of state to unite against true Christians.

Does that make sense? Scripture says we will be hated by all nations because here's what's going to happen. True Christians are going to say of those people performing those great signs and wonders, those guys aren't real.

They're not from Jesus. They're false. And everyone's going to say, but they call down fire from heaven, and they're doing so in such a way in order to get the attention of the heads of states. And according to the book of Revelation, the heads of states of all the nations are going to believe the false prophets in order to assemble against Christ and his church.

We're talking about the big showdown. That's what it's all about. You're not painting a very happy picture of the future. You'll notice I'm not post-millennial, nor do I think Scripture teaches us to be post-millennial.

Josh says, oh yeah, governments would never weaponize a group of people who call down fire on their enemies or anything. Okay, you get the idea. So this is not a pretty picture. So going back then into Exodus, so we've done some work in Revelation 15 and 16.

We kind of see what's going on here. We see how these plagues are similar in how they work. And then if you know your story in Exodus, it helps you exegetically get what's going on here in the book of Revelation.

So we'll note then that now there arose a new king over Egypt who didn't know Joseph. And what did he do? He basically enslaves, and this is all-out warfare against the people of God. That's the theme.

And so you're sitting there going, well, how would I get out of this? You either die before it happens or you're in it. That's kind of how this goes. So therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens.

They built for Pharaoh store cities of Pithom and Ramesses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied, the more they spread abroad. And you'll note that one of the sayings that we have in the church today is this, is that the blood of the martyrs is what waters the seedbed of the faith.