Synoptics - Matthew 24

Apostolic Warning, Early Church Conflict, and False Teachers

Clearly, one would imagine that the Apostles experienced these things, you think of Paul's experience, he can name names of people who had once traveled with the Apostolic Band, had once ministered with him, and yet they were now leading people astray, they had gone back to the world, or worse, it's one thing to see an Apostate who just goes back to the thing.

There's many ways in which it's worse, in which they use the authority and name that they had developed to draw away disciples after themselves, and as the Apostle Paul said, that was happening and would continue to happen and grow worse and worse.

Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. Many people think that, well, we just want to get back to the early church. We want to get rid of all the centuries of accretions and developments and traditions and get back to the early church.

And when you read the history of the early church, what was going on? Well, read Acts. Even in Acts, you have the constant persecution, you have tremendous difficulties, you have stonings. I mean, listen to Paul's description of his own experience.

You know, shipwrecks and beatings and stone and left for dead. It doesn't sound much like a cruise travelogue, you know. And he said the tremendous pressure of the churches, both within and without. And there were many false prophets.

I mean, the first John, written again to that early period, used discernment when people come to you, examine their teaching. The Antichrist, many Antichrists have already arisen, is what he says. And so, people will look at that and they'll say, well, then who can know what the truth is?

That's a real common thing today, is they'll look at the early church and they'll say, oh, there's just so many different perspectives. You know, okay, one group happened to win out, but who's to say that they were the right group to win out anyways?

Proto-Gnostics, Ebionites, and Mormonism as a Proselytizing Movement

Now, these, the Proto-Gnostics and the various groups known to us from history, such as the Ebionites, who we sort of catch a glimpse of, I think, a little bit in the Book of Acts. These were people who denied the virgin birth.

They basically viewed Jesus as a human prophet. They existed for a period of time. They were never, in any way, shape, or form, a majority or vying for a majority. They may have been particularly prevalent in a particular area.

I mean, you know, if you lived in southern Utah, you would think Mormonism was the majority of Christianity. It's not, but if you lived in Manti, Utah, you probably think it was. That's where you were born and grew up in anyways.

But these groups existed and they were a constant, not irritation, but a constant challenge to each generation because they primarily grow by proselytizing the sheep, by pulling people out of the church.

Interestingly enough, that's pretty much how Mormonism has always existed too. Primarily, they don't blaze trails of missions work. They follow after Christian missionaries and then try to, you know, the Christian missionaries go out, plant the vineyards, and the Mormons come along and pick the fruit, is sort of how that kind of works.

And so, this was going on in the early church as well. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. And I think this is one of the reasons you don't see the apostles expressing any great shock at the tribulation that is theirs and warning us.

Perseverance, Lawlessness, and Love Growing Cold

You know, every time you listen to Paul talking to the next generation, when he contemplates his leaving, what's he saying? What does he say to Timothy? What does he say to the Ephesian elders? He says to the Ephesian elders, I know that when I'm gone, ravenous wolves will rise from your own number and they will mislead many.

And he says, Timothy, deceivers will deceive and being deceived and will deceive many. And this is always the warning to the next generation is there's no vacation here. There's no indication that I can see.

That's one of the reasons I hold the eschatology that I do and not another. I don't see any indication of any time where the church can go, hey, you know, we're sailing safely into heaven's harbor now.

The waters are calm and all is well. It would seem that each generation is called to epagamizomai, to contend earnestly for the faith that was once delivered to the saints. And that is something that every generation must do.

And great decline takes place in the church when the younger generation thinks that, well, you know, my parents had got all figured out. They're sort of giving it to me and I can just sort of mail it in.

I don't need to give myself in service of the gospel or as a servant of Christ. Everything's fine. Well, one thing's for certain in our day that that doesn't work. And we'll be talking a little bit about that during the morning sermon.

Because lawlessness has increased, most people's love will grow cold. That's an interesting phrase. When there is lawlessness, when there is no recognition of the fact that there is a good that God has defined and that we are called to follow that good and to treasure that good, most people's love will grow cold.

And again, you find the warnings to the churches in Revelation. What's one of the greatest warnings that we hear from the seven letters that Christ sends to the churches? The one that sticks in our mind is the lukewarmness.

You've become lukewarm. I'll spit you out of my mouth. There is this lack of fervor. It's the Ephesians. You start off well, but be careful. You're leaving your first love. Once things become established and there is a lack of zeal, then love can grow cold and become a mere formality, an external thing.

I do it because that's what we do. And certainly in the first few decades, that wouldn't have been the case. But once you're the, you know, you can look back over a couple decades, a couple, maybe even a generation, and it's real easy to start seeing how Christians especially slip into the idea of, well, you know, church is what we do.

And it's not that high on my priority list, but it's a good thing. Nice to stick with it. You know, I like to have some stability in my life. And the result is love will grow cold. And this not only would be the case in those first decades, but if you want a lesson from church history, come straight out of the page of scripture.

There it is. If you want to see the time periods in church history where love grows cold, it happens over, it's a cycle all through church history. You have a period of zeal and then there's slow decline as that initial fervor burns off.

And this happened a lot where you'd have a reform movement and there's excitement and there's dedication and self-sacrifice. And that results in the burgeoning of the movement. But once you've got other things to take care of, you've got churches to take care of and you've got lands and people donate to continue the cause.

And now you've got to take care of that stuff and there's this decline until someone else comes along. And then it's the very lesson of church history to be certain. But then you have in the middle of this a verse that is frightening to some Christians, but it should not be.

Endurance to the End as Description of Saving Faith

The one who endures the end, he'll be saved. The one who endures the end, he'll be saved. Now, as we've said many, many times about this text, you can read many verses in the Bible in two ways. Many people read a verse like this and it's in the context of perseverance, it's in the context of there's going to be people who betray one another and hate one another and false prophets and misleading people and people's love growing cold and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And these words have been fulfilled many times during church history, not only before AD 70, but many times since then. And you read, but the one who endures the end, he'll be saved. Well, obviously the end here isn't the end of the age.

It's talking about an individual's experience. But what does it mean? There are people who read it and they go, ah, it's endurance to the end that brings salvation. So they view it as a prescription. How are you saved?

You are saved by persevering to the end. So there's what you got to do. You just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you just get up in the morning and you rev yourself up. And for a while you can do that.

I mean, there's lots of folks come January, they make their new year's resolutions and for sometimes, sometimes a month, they get themselves out of bed in the morning and they're off to the gym or they're on the bike or they're on the road running and they, when it comes to lunchtime, they don't pick up that cupcake, you know, they just, just, just having the salad and they take their turkey out beneath the buns, they get rid of the buns, just eat the turkey.

But eventually, you know, that cupcake looks so good and, and turkey tastes a whole lot better with a bun and some mayo and mustard and, and then during the end, so they don't get saved. Well, they don't, at least they don't make their weight goal.

And, you know, by the time next January comes along, they're 14 pounds heavier than they were last time. And then it just gets worse and worse. That's how a lot of people look at this verse. But the one who endures the end, he will be saved.

It's a prescription. Here's the mechanism. It would seem to me that it's a description. The one who endures the end, he will be saved. There's something about saving faith that endures. I mean, there's no question and no one's sitting around going, yeah, well, all the apostates are going to get saved.

Well, actually I'll take that back. There are some people who say that. They primarily live in unfortunately, but there are some people who will say that as long as you, but once tipped your hat toward God and said a sinner's prayer or something along those lines, you didn't need to repent.

But as long as you shook the pastor's hand, filled out the card, sign your name, made an intellectual assent to the fact that Jesus died, was buried and rose again the third day. That's it. You got your ticket punched, you're on your way to heaven.

And those folks would say, enduring the end has absolutely nothing to do with salvation at all. So there would be some people who would go that far. And obviously we would identify that as a false gospel.

But when you talk about a description, what do we mean? Well, we're describing something. When God saves someone, when someone has true saving faith, it's enduring faith. It's not because I make it endure.

It's not that I'm better than somebody else. It's not that you can have, well, for example, Augustine did develop a theory, a theology. Do you know when you take antihistamines, it might dry up your sinuses, but it dries everything else up in the process.

And so right now I'm not snorking, but I'm going to have to get some more water here pretty soon, because after about 14 sentences, it's like, it's just a hair of desert in here. Man, just, just love how the outer man is decaying.

Biblical phrase. Anyway, what was I saying? Moses was in the bulrushes, right? Is that where we were? I had a professor, we just had, some of you are going to freak out, but last week I attended a meeting of a society that I'm a part of, the Society of St. Martin.

And you're all going, but you're a Baptist. Yeah, the Society of St. Martin is a group of us get together once a year around the birthday of Professor D .C. Martin from Grand Canyon University. We're all a bunch of Protestants, but we decided to make him a saint because we figured if Rome can do it, why can't we?

And, you know, to make somebody a saint, you have to have a qualified miracle. Did you know that? To be a saint. In fact, right now they're pushing John Paul II to become a saint, and they've found some nun someplace to pray to, and was cured of cancer, and therefore there's their miracle, and that's great.

I'm very thankful that I was one of the miracles that helped us to canonize D .C. Martin. I got, I am the only person that we all know of. Most of these were professors. We all, I was, I was a scholar in residence over there for a while, and so I graduated from Grand Canyon.

I studied under D .C., and then I taught with him, and so I was both a student and a teacher along with him. But we're the only, I'm the only person that we know of that never got anything but an A from D .C. Martin, and D .C. Martin's low A was a 96.

As low as you get, you get an A in D .C. Martin's class. So I'm one of the miracles by which we made him a saint, and we get together at a Mexican restaurant, eat chips and salsa, and tell our favorite D .C. Martin stories.

So we met last week for the Society of St. Martin, and what I just did there, well, first of all, that's a D .C. Martin thing. Does anybody know who D .C. Martin was? Anybody old enough here to remember who D .C. Martin was?

Probably not. That's a shame. About that tall, all white hair, Davis Carroll Martin, probably the most famous professor at Grand Canyon ever. I learned a ton from D .C. Martin. He was great to study under.

But whenever he'd lose his train of thought, he would just go, okay, so Moses in the bulrushes, right? And it's always default back to Moses in the bulrushes. So it's good, as I get older, to act more like D .C. Martin.

So I learned a lot from him. This was his thing. You can know all there is to know about Jesus. Remember, he's teaching at a Southern Baptist school back then. Teaching a lot of preacher boys and preacher girls.

So we emphasize, you can know all about Jesus, but until you are in him, it means nothing. I appreciate D .C. Martin. Miss D .C. Martin. He was amazing. I found out about his death by calling his home to try to make an appointment to go to lunch with him.

And found out he had died like two days earlier. And that was something else. But anyways, so if you ever hear me say, so Moses in the bulrushes, you know I'm just channeling D .C. back at you. So what were we saying anyway?

So, enduring to the end. Many texts then need to be looked at and seen as descriptive. We have nothing to fear from this text. And in fact, I think we are the only consistent when we look at this text.

Grace, Faith, Augustine, Pelagius, and Perseverance

Why do I say that? Simple. If you're not Reformed, and you think that faith is something that basically you work up within yourself, then you look at this, and even if you take it descriptively, where it's simply saying that saving faith endures to the end, you're not living consistently with your own profession of faith that salvation is by grace alone.

Because it's your pulling up that faith, creating that faith, keeping that faith going, that keeps it enduring until the end. Now, most of my Arminian friends say I'm saved by grace alone. But since they don't believe that that grace is actually a saving grace, it's only a grace that helps you along the way, then they're not consistent.

And that's where they get into trouble. And that was one of the things that pushed me into Reformed theology was dealing with cults. And I had some Mormon missionary press on my inconsistency at that point and make me realize that if I'm going to say that I'm saved by grace through faith alone, that I better be able to see that that faith is not some equal power to God's grace that I have to work up within myself.

We recognize that faith is the gift of God, is the work of the Holy Spirit within our lives. The only reason my faith endures is somebody else doesn't is because it has to do with God's election. And that's why I was I did start to mention, I'm not sure if I mentioned Augustine immediately jumped to D .C. because, oh, I jumped to D .C. because I was taking a drink of water.

That's what it was. But Augustine developed a theory that you could have true Christians who were not given the gift of perseverance. So, in other words, in his theory, you had the elect and the elect are given the grace of perseverance.

They will persevere. So for Augustine, the elect could not be lost. If you were of the elect, you would be infallibly saved. No question about it. But. And this is where your context comes in. You got to interpret people where they were.

Because of the two major, and there's nothing on the board, but just imagine that there is the two major debates in Augustine's life. Does anyone know what I've mentioned before? And I'm sure that George, if he looked back through his church history notes would find this somewhere.

But what were the two major conflicts in Augustine's life? Let's see if anybody knows. I'm sorry. Okay. The last of the conflicts was Pelagianism. And what in general, does anybody know who Pelagius was or what his issues were in general?

Actually, he was a monk. Wasn't he British? Yeah, I think he was British. If that had a meaning back then, that doesn't mean he had bad teeth. This is way, way, way back then. But I made a few people laugh.

If you've ever been to London, then it would make you laugh even more. You would think that the one thing that no little British boy pops out of bed one morning and says, I'm going to be a dentist. I just don't say it.

No, you're not! Okay, okay, okay. And that's just how it works. But anyway, hey, at least I can blame it on the active fed, pseudofed, whatever that stuff was. Claritin, that's what it was. I'm feeling claritin clear.

Yes, right. Yeesh. Pelagius was in the bulrushes with Moses and Augustine. And now we're really confused. So, Pelagianism was the idea. Pelagius taught that every man was a new Adam. There was no fallen human nature.

You don't have any connection to Adam. And that means that any man could, in and of himself, without grace, live perfectly. And so, grace is not a necessity for salvation. You just, look, you just do what you have to do.

You've got that ability. There is no sin nature. There is no total depravity or anything like that. That was Pelagius. But the earlier controversy is the Donethus. Now, he was a Manichean. Some of you are saying Manichean.

He was a Manichean, but that wasn't one of the controversies he was involved with. It was the Donethus controversy. And this was 30 years, 30, 40 years earlier in his life. And the Donethus controversy was surrounded, it circled around two Latin phrases, at least in church history, ex opera operanto and ex opera operanti.

And what in the world does that mean? Basically, what happened was, during a period of persecution, there was a man who was made a bishop. And one of the men who ordained him was accused of apostasy during, under persecution.

He had lapsed or given up the Christian scriptures or something. And so, the theory was that because he was lapsed, then any ordination that he would be involved in would thereby be inappropriate. Because he lacked the authority to do it, because he himself was an apostate.

So, it had to do with the power of the sacraments, in essence. And the two positions were, one side said, the one doing the sacrament, his state of grace is relevant. A non-Christian cannot perform a Christian sacrament and it be valid.

The other side said, it's the sacrament itself that matters and it doesn't matter who performs it. So, a pagan can baptize the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost and it's a valid baptism. Now, the Donatists were on this side.

The Donatists were saying, hey, that guy's not a true bishop because he was ordained by someone who wasn't himself even a Christian and therefore we're not going to follow him. Augustine represented the major portion of the church and said, that doesn't matter.

The ordination was valid because it's the ordination. It was the intention of the church. The person's state of grace doesn't matter. In other words, Augustine defended what would become, become, it wasn't at the time, but become the Orthodox Roman Catholic view of the nature of the church.

And that's why at the time of the Reformation, both sides quoted Augustine vociferously. And they could do so in context. The Roman Catholics could quote him from his earlier writings in regards to the nature of the church.

And the Reformers could quote him from his later writings in regards to salvation and grace. So, from Augustine's perspective, going back to verse 13, from Augustine's perspective, you could have someone who is validly baptized, Donatus Controversy, and therefore made a Christian, but if they weren't elected, given the grace of perseverance, they would fall away, Pelagius Controversy.

See how he's taking from the two, creating a middle position that isn't biblical, but he's forced to by the two great controversies, which created contradiction in his own theological experience. Well, Pelagius himself believes that grace is not necessary for salvation.

You could basically pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. The position, that's Augustine's later argument, but the Donatus Controversy had to do with sacraments. So, there's a difference between the two.

No, Pelagianism was the last controversy in his life. He wouldn't have had time to. Right, yeah, the three pits, but no, Pelagianism would be you're standing there and you can pull yourself, you can climb out yourself.

It was Semi-Pelagianism, but it was the second pit. So, you're going, what? What are you talking about pits? We did, I drew three pits on the board during the church history class, which was over a decade ago, describing Augustinianism, where the guy is dead at the bottom of the pit, Semi-Pelagianism, where he's sitting up, but he needs someone to help him get out, and then Pelagianism, where he's down there, he doesn't need anybody to come down at all, he can get himself up on his own.

Yeah, he can, well, he can make his own ladder. He doesn't even need somebody to throw a ladder down on him, actually. Yeah, Pelagianism, yeah, affirmed the absolute necessity of God's grace. That's why the reformers could quote him, because he was, well, what was Luther?

Luther was an Augustinian monk. So, there was the, you had the Augustinians, you had the Dominicans, eventually you have the Franciscans and the Jesuits, and they all take their reviews on this stuff.

But the Augustinians, well, they followed Augustine. In fact, you have a guy in the, what was it, late 9th century, off the top of my addled brain, it could be a century off one way or the other, but American election is late 9th century, by the name of Gottschalk, who took Augustine to his logical conclusion, believed in double predestination and particular atonement, a particular redemption.

And Calvin certainly saw himself as being consistent with Augustine on that point. Maybe more clear, but certainly consistent with him, in regards to predestination, election, the extent of the atonement, issues like that.

But where he was inconsistent was this idea that there were people who currently were Christians, but they weren't going to die that way, because they were not given the gift of perseverance. And so, that's an interesting thing to keep in mind.

The Gospel Preached to the Nations and the End of Jerusalem

So, anyways, back to verse 13, after that brief foray into church history, which I didn't see coming, and who knows what the rest of the day will bring, as far as rabbit trails that we just might end up going down that are not a part of the plan at the moment, but who knows.

But the one who endures the end, he will be saved, this gospel, the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. Now, again, my historical, my own personal history is that of hearing people come into the church and preach on how we need to raise missionary funds, to send missionaries to such and such a people group, because they may be the last ones.

This may be it. Once we bring the message to this people, they may be the last unreached people, and then the end will come. So, you give this missionary effort, and you might be, your dollars might be the one that allows the second coming to take place.

Okay, that's, I've heard that kind of presentation. But, which end are we talking about? Well, it seems to me that in light of verse 15, we're talking about the end of the people of Israel here. And given that Paul tells us in, what was it, 1 Corinthians, that the gospel had already been preached at the end of the world, which was the end of the inhabited world.

Only if you want to take the, oh, what that actually means is, you know, it has to go to the southern tip of, well, what would be the farthest place? Southern tip of South America? Would that be the farthest place?

Maybe interior aboriginal Australia might be farther away? I don't know. I don't think so. I think Chile would be about as far from the Holy Land as you can get. I've not Googled it, but we could find out now.

I'm sure Google Earth would tell us exactly where we need to go to make sure we've got this fulfilled. Something like that. Yeah, right, right at the Cape. So, I don't know, somewhere down. Anyway, the problem is that verse 15 had an immediate indirect fulfillment in 87.

The Abomination of Desolation and the Fall of Jerusalem

Now, again, the other interpretation is this is still in the future. And what that means is, and what's interesting, the real problem that I see in the futuristic interpretation is Christ could not come today from that perspective.

Well, I guess in some things you have to come up with, you have to come up with this incredibly complex system. But there can be no abomination of desolation which is spoken of through Daniel the prophet staying in the holy place today.

Not in a physical sense. And there are people who say that has to happen. And so, I remember, I remember at the church we were at before, there was a period of time, back when I was in Bible college again, where there was this big back and forth between the pastor of the church I was at, very big name in the valley at that time.

Biggest name in the valley at that time. Because the biggest church in the valley at that time. And D .C. Martin. Because D .C. Martin, brother Martin was an amillennialist. And I had basically been raised to think that amillennialists had horns and ate babies and sacrificed children and things like that.

And so, you know, when I end up in his classes and he's poking holes and poking fun at me and stuff like that, that was my first exposure to another perspective along those lines. And so, in fact, there was one day, I shouldn't tell you the story, a bunch of us ministerial students got together and we tried to pool our money.

This shows how poor ministerial students were. We tried to pool our money because one of the campus groups was selling helium filled balloons and you could have them delivered during a certain class to somebody.

And so, we actually tried to pool our money. What we're going to do is we're going to buy some balloons, have them sent to D .C. Martin during class with a note that said, in case of rapture, hold on tight, God might take you anyway.

But we couldn't come up with enough money to buy the balloons. That's how sad it was because it was after lunch. So, ministerial students would eat, but they would not necessarily have anything left over after we were able to buy enough balloons to make it funny.

So, we didn't do that. But anyway, there's this going back and forth. And I remember that there was a medical doctor or something who had written a book back in the 70s sometime all about what the rapture was going to look like and what the tribulation was going to be like.

And when I thought the biggest eschatological arguments when I was younger were between pre-trib, mid-trib, and post-tribbers. I didn't know there was anybody else. I mean, that's just the way things were.

So, there were sermons preached where you were throwing fiery darts toward 33rd Avenue and Camelback. And then there'd be classes where they'd be thrown back toward Central Avenue and Bethany Home Road.

It was so much fun. Con trails going through the air back and forth. It was wonderful. And I was in the middle of it listening to all this stuff. And there are many people who feel, and it's still out there, you can get this perspective expressed many times, that this means that in some way, shape, or form, somehow, either during the tribulation or somehow, the third most holy Islamic site in the world will have to be destroyed.

The Dome of the Rock has got to go because it's sitting on the temple now. And the only way that there can be a temple rebuilt so the abomination of desolation can take place, which is where you have the setting up of an idol or the idolatrous worship taking place in the Holy of Holies, which took place in the destruction of the temple initially.

You know, Gentiles going in and doing all that kind of stuff. And you know what happened in the initial destruction of the temple. The only way that can happen is if the temple's standing. And so, something's got to happen.

So, for some people, their eschatology is such that Christ can't come yet because the temple's not standing. Once something happens and, oh, were they excited. When Israel took over Jerusalem, you know, the Six Days War and stuff, and expansion of the Israeli borders and stuff.

Wow, man, I don't know how many trees died in service of the books that were published in the late 1960s, early 1970s. But I know that Hal Lindsey is still living off his royalties this very day and still has this TV show as a result.

So, just boom, an explosion of stuff. That's the problem. When you see the abomination of staying in the holy place, let the reader understand, then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains. Whoever is on the housetop must not go down to get his things that are in the house.

Whoever is in the field must not turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days, but pray that your flight will not be in the winter nor on the Sabbath.

Flight from Jerusalem in AD 70 and the Limits of Futurist Readings

Now, I suppose you can come up with spiritual applications or something, but I can tell you one thing. When Titus and the Roman legions surrounded Jerusalem, almost no Christians died in Jerusalem. You know why?

They ran. Why? Because they had already read Matthew 24. Now, it wasn't Matthew 24 back then. It wasn't written in red letters or anything like that, but this was well known to all the Christians. And they looked out and said, one plus one equals run, and they're out of there.

And they headed, didn't go back and get their cloak, and took off. And, you know, when I talk about the Sabbath day and stuff like that, that would only be relevant prior to AD 70. It wouldn't be relevant after that.

And why would you be concerned about Christians on the Sabbath day? Well, because they'd be the only ones on the road, and so they'd be really easy to point out. And this would only be the issue at that time in Judea prior to AD 70.

So, I mean, you can come up with some spiritual applications somewhere, something like that, I guess, to throw it in the future or do the, there's going to be a tribulation, and during that time, you know, the beast's going to take over, and somehow the beast is so powerful that he can wipe out the Dome of the Rock without going on happening what's happening.

Can you imagine a few charred Qurans in Afghanistan, and how many people are dead so far? Attack the Dome of the Rock, and what's going to happen? I mean, just, wow. Wow. I mean, that's why, twice now, I've gone to Houston, and the same fellow at this one church has asked me the same question twice, and I've had the exact same answer twice, which makes me wonder what happened the first time.

Why Destroying the Kaaba Would Not End Islam

But he's read this Christian who wrote many years ago a lot on Islam, and this Christian, in answer to the question, what would be the single most important effective way to rid the world of Islam? This Christian says, nuke the Kaaba.

Nuke the Kaaba. Drop a nuclear bomb on the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque in Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, and Islam would cease to exist. And my response, this is not normally how I respond to questions. You all can testify to this, but when I was first asked this question after a Bible study class at this church in Houston on a Sunday morning, I looked at the guy and said, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.

I literally said that. I normally don't do that in a class. And when he asked it the second time, I sat down and said, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. And I pointed out, I cannot think of a single other act that would solidify one billion human beings, who currently kill each other fairly frequently, into the biggest fighting force man has ever seen, than to do that.

Now his argument is, well, you know, they have to do the Hajj. If there is no place to do Hajj, they can't do Hajj. And they all prayed for the Kaaba, so they can't pray. So Islam will cease to exist.

I just want to go, you are a moron. What are you thinking? So it does not make the slightest lick of sense, but there are people who say things like that out there. So I'm not sure how I even got out of that, but maybe next time, once we get to Great Tribulation, verse 21, I'll be able to address it without snorking all the way through it as well.

So we'll pick up at that point, but let's close our time with the word of God. Father, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for the fact that we can look back at history, we can see what you've done with your people, we can see your faithfulness.

Help us indeed to be faithful as we face an increasingly wicked world that seeks to silence the proclamation that has been entrusted to us. We pray in Christ's name.