Introduction to Revelation P3

It's a great thing, because, you know, there's a lot of restrictions coming across the road.

You know, it's one of those pretty good essay -like retreats. Well, good morning. Good morning. Would you mind opening us up with a word of prayer?

I'd be happy to. Heavenly Father, thank you for wanting me to come before you and get your word taught to us.

Lord, we ask that you would give Brother Mike wisdom and understanding as he opens your word to us.

Help us be receptive, eager to learn. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Amen. Well, we will go ahead and start where we left off last week.

So I'll waste no time. Don't think

I need to spend a lot of time on this. One, because I'm pretty sure most everybody in here is pretty familiar with this.

We correct Preterist view. All right. Maybe we do need to spend some time on it. Anybody know what the

Preterist view is? Or what Preterist means? Looking back at history.

Not exactly. It just means past. I guess, yeah. I guess, applicationally, you would be looking back in history to see how it was fulfilled.

But it comes from a Latin word, praetere, meaning past, in the past. Everybody's done it.

Pretty much. But you have two branches of this. And you said the heretical version.

I'm calling you a heretic. And the other's the partial. Correct. So you have what would be heretical.

And then you have orthodox. This is full, meaning everything in the book of Revelation, everything in the

Olivet Discourse, everything in the book of Daniel, everything is over.

There is a group of people that do hold this position.

That's the JWs. They've tried to tweak it a little bit. In, I'd say, the last maybe 20 years, they've tried to tweak it a little bit, knowing this isn't the eternal state, knowing they all but broke back, bad eyes, arthritis in the hand, that this is the eternal state, and I don't want it.

OK? But the orthodox view is partial.

And even in the partial part, you have a variation of how much is fulfilled, how much is not, where is that stopping line and starting line for the other.

The Olivet Discourse is a, in my understanding of it, is a compressed understanding of not only the destruction of Jerusalem, but then

I think it's around chapter 24, around 35 or 36, it makes a shift.

And he begins to talk about the end of the world, his coming.

Well, most people think that that's why all of the Olivet Discourse is talking about the end of the age.

But if you go back and look, and if you want to make a note of this and see what I'm saying, it's true.

He compresses those two ideas in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 of another discourse that Jesus has in Luke 17.

He compresses those two ideas together. And my conclusion is why he compresses those two ideas together, and we'll see it also as we go through the book of Revelation.

He compresses those two ideas of, because from a Jewish standpoint, when you get to the destruction of Jerusalem, what would that look like?

The end of the world, right? I mean, they think it was the end of the world. He goes, well, wait a minute, it's not. There's still more to come.

And the end of the world's not going to look like the destruction of Jerusalem. It's going to look like the culmination of all things,

OK? So where the stop and start is with the Orthodox can be somewhat debatable, depending on your millennial position.

And we ain't got time to get into that today. This is the position that I hold. I am a partial preterist.

I believe that the vast majority of Revelation has been fulfilled, and the vast majority of the

Olivet Discourse has been fulfilled. Any questions or disagreements before we move on to one that's a little more complicated?

Although, this one is very interesting. Oh, if you want to know if there are any church fathers that held a preterist view, there was.

Most of them believed that the Olivet Discourse was talking about the destruction of Jerusalem. Eusebius did us no service for the

Book of Revelation. I'm just going to let you know. He wrote around 325. He wrote the Ecclesiastical History.

And I don't think there's anybody. Andy can correct me. Bert can correct me. Mike, you've been around long enough to know.

Correct me if I'm wrong. Most everybody believes that Daniel, Olivet Discourse, and Revelation are all connected with one another.

Well, Eusebius, in 325, in his Ecclesiastical History, he said that the Book of Revelation was a spurious book.

Okay? That's why he didn't accept it into the canon. He didn't believe it was a canonized book.

But, if you look at his writings on the Olivet Discourse, he believed that was concerning to Jews because his actual statement is, this is

God's wrath on the Jews for what they did to his Savior. So that's how much you would understand. And a good bit of the church fathers were preteristic in that point.

Now, the historicist view. This one can be a little complicated.

This is the vast majority of all of your reformers in history, church history.

So, if y 'all are doing your own studies as we go through the book, if you use

Matthew Henry, I think Unger, Barnes, Notes on the

New Testament, anybody from the time of the 1500s,

I'd even go back as far as John Wycliffe, because I think his is still available, his commentary is still available.

You go as far back as John Wycliffe, which would have been, he died around 1384. You go as far back as him, this is gonna be the view, historicist view.

Now, the historicist view is the looking in history and seeing how the unfolding of revelation happened.

That's how, that's the structure of the book. Now, how did they come up with their reasoning for that? They had what was called a day to year formula.

So, in Daniel, you have,

I think it's in chapter eight or chapter seven, chapter eight. You may remember when it says 2 ,300 evenings and days.

Y 'all remember when we were doing Daniel, it said that? Okay. They said that was days.

What would that equal if it's a day to year? That would mean 2 ,300 years.

When it says in Revelation, 1 ,260 days, what's that gonna equal?

This is important, because this is why I'm least sympathetic with this idea.

In its time, it worked well, but I'm least sympathetic because of this, these numbers right here.

I gotta do it over here. So, 457

BC. Anybody remember what happened in 457 BC? Anybody?

Artaxerxes made a decree for them that they could go back and do what they were already told to do with science.

Anybody got a calculator? Add 2 ,300 years to that.

What's it come to? It's gotta put you some,

I was gonna say, okay, yes. Depending on where in the middle of that it comes to,

I'm gonna do this, because this is important. This is hugely important, this number here.

This would be AD. Hugely important, okay? Then you have 1 ,260 days, mean 1 ,260 years.

The Historicist's View says that, also holds that it started at the time of 1st

Pope, which we would say was Gregory the Great.

This is AD. Add 1 ,260 years to that, what's that come to?

About the same, okay. So, these days are important.

And I'll even go as far as to say this, and I'll tell you why when I get there. They gave them a cush, okay?

And, least sympathetic for this position is because if this is the formula by which you interpret the

Bible or its prophetic trajectory, what will this by nature lead to?

Date setting, date setting. Anybody know a person in the

Reformation that stopped, huh? Yeah, Harold Campion, I'll go far back to the same, Martin Luther was a date setter.

Hey, just because somebody sets a date doesn't mean that they're a full -blown heretic, but I will say what's always been consistent about date setters is they're always wrong.

Always wrong. Now, well how did they come up with this? Well, they set their prophetic formula by looking at when

Moses sent the spies in, they went in for 40 days, they came back, they were wrong about don't go in, remember?

What'd he got punishing with? For 40 days you were in there, now you're gonna do what for 40 years? Wander. Wander in the wilderness, so that's what he did.

Then Ezekiel, he told Ezekiel, I want you to cut your hair, divide it up, blah, blah, blah, and he says,

I want you to lay on one side of your body for, I think it was 390 days. That's gonna be the punishment against Israel per day will be 390 years.

I don't think in any way, shape, form, or fashion that sets the prophetic formula for the Bible, but that's the one that they used.

I think it's wrong, and I'll tell ya, if they were here today, they would say they were wrong too, because that means the fall of the papacy from their formula, remember, this is the papacy, is gonna fall between these two dates.

That means the Catholic Church was gonna cease to exist. Then they also said, based on that, that Jesus was gonna return, actually, this was the date that they said, 1844.

Anybody remember in history? This is even in American history. What happened in 1844?

Great disappointment. The Millerites sold everything that they had and all of his followers, and they went up and waited for Christ to come, because he was coming on 1844.

He never came. That was the death blow to the Millerites. So they tried to fix their formula a little bit.

We're gonna redo it, and it didn't work again, and that was the death blow. Now, are there some people in denominations that still hold this view today?

Yeah, there is. The seventh day of Venice. But it ain't anything like this anymore, because they know they're wrong, and they're dating.

It really doesn't, the formula doesn't work, and it all has to do with the fall of the papacy and the coming back of Christ's second return, dealing with, basically, the

Western Church. What's the problem with that? There's more to the church than the

Western Church. Was North Africa under the papacy? No.

Was India under the papacy? No. Was the church in China at that time under the papacy?

So it fails to deal with the church as a whole, and only deals with Western Church.

That's kind of self -centered, isn't it? That means the church in China didn't matter at the time.

The church, every time I say papal bull now, I think of what you said last time. And even though one of them was under the papal bull, didn't count.

It's like, there's more to the church than Roman Empire. So, any questions about the historicist view?

That has to be understood, because as you're reading, I know some of y 'all do, you're gonna be reading commentaries, and you're gonna come up with a lot of commentaries that are gonna come up with a lot of the historicist view, if you're using anyone in the time of the

Reformation, and because we believe in Reformed theology, the vast majority of us would be reading people that are dead, right?

Okay, meaning the Puritans and stuff like that. So they're gonna have some pretty interesting views.

I can, just one right offhand, is their view of the hordes that are coming up out of the abyss.

Remember the locusts in chapter nine, the fifth seal? The locusts that come up out of the abyss,

I don't even think you're gonna find any of the historicists that probably agree on any of that.

You've got some of them that say it was the Muslim hordes that came. The Muslim hordes started coming across to conquer

Europe, in the 600s, 602, somewhere around there.

And as they're making their way across Europe, they're then crushed by Charles the

Hammer, Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 742, 743. It stops. But they see the

Muslim hordes coming up out of the, that's them coming up out of the abyss because what did

Muslims have? They had a crown, a turban that looked like a crown. They had long black hair.

And you know what they could do when they were riding on their horses? They could ride backwards and shoot arrows. Therefore, they thought they were scorpions.

But then you got another guy named Robert Ballinger who said that the star that fell from heaven that opened up the abyss that let out all the locusts was

Martin Luther, and the Lutherans were the ones that came up out of the abyss that caused all the problems.

So you see, and then when we get to the Futurist view, you'll see what other people think those were.

So, Futurist view. Any questions before I move on?

This is probably the one most of us are familiar with. Right?

I would say this is embedded in American culture. This is embedded in American culture because we've had men write books, make movies,

VHS tapes, for those of us who are old enough to remember the VHS tapes, the Thief in the Night, beta tapes, some of y 'all might remember.

Now, all of that, because it's embedded. Yep, Left Behind, or Thief in the

Night. And just to let you know, if you go by the Left Behind series, books or whatever, you know what it says?

Theological novel? Fiction. It ain't real, okay?

It ain't real. But it sells tons of books, makes a bunch of money, and the people read those books and think, hey man, this is real.

It ain't real. It's fake, okay? It's fake. Yes, sir? Yeah, those books were actually written by a homeschool mom because it shows that they all disappeared and the clothes are folded up neatly.

Well, needless to go any further. So, Futurist view is that the vast majority of revelation is all in the future, okay?

This leads to the dispensational eschatology.

Did every, what was the first book were there men in every stage of the churches, the church age that believed that some of it was future?

Yes, but it wasn't until dispensational eschatology came on made the

Futurism view absolutely just explode. Futurism shows that all of revelation is all in the future.

There's a problem with that. I think I said this last week. If all of revelation is in the future, then what relevance was the book at the time in which it was written?

Irrelevant. It makes it irrelevant. But that view in and of itself didn't come into that it was all in the future until you had one guy by the name of Francisco Riviera.

He lived around, I think he died in 594, I think it was. Jesuit priest.

Both these men, I'm fixing to give you a Jesuit priest. They wanted to make an apologetic against the

Pope being the Antichrist, okay? And the reason why the

Pope was called the Antichrist is because everybody that held the Historicist view of revelation said that the

Pope was the Antichrist, not an Antichrist, the Antichrist. And if you think

I'm joking, you can go read all of the historical confessions, 1689

Westminster Confession, all of those says that the Pope is the Antichrist, okay?

So they come out and say, can't be, because all this is in the future.

And they make an argument for everything in revelation dealing with the seals and the trump,

I'm sorry, the trumpets on dealing with the end of the world.

Well, then another man comes along, I guess probably 200 years later in 1791 by the name of Manuel Lucanza.

He wrote a book, The Return of the Messiah in Power and Glory. And he wrote a book saying everything from Revelation chapter four on was all in the future.

That set the foundation for dispensationalism to say, hey, everything, it's all in the future.

And there was a man by the name of Edward Irving who got that book and he read it, he started, he would be basically the father of the charismatic movement and he would lay the foundation for John Darby to come along and set up dispensationalism.

See, that's, it didn't just come out of nowhere. Men built upon those. It's interesting if you look at Edward Irving's view of revelation, he said that the tribulation was only gonna be three and a half years.

It didn't become to be a seven year tribulation till John Darby comes along and decides he wants to make it longer.

Okay, he just said, hey, you know what? Seven and a half years ain't long enough. Let's make it real bad, we'll make it seven. So that's where the futurism has developed over time.

Then as the futurist view developed over time, you would have other appendages added to it.

If you were to read Schofield's Bible, 1909 or 1919, you would have a vastly different view of Antichrist and who

Jesus was coming to save when he returns because what had not yet happened in 1919 or 1909, depending on which one you, the

Israel had not yet become a state. So once Israel became a state in 1948, books change.

Oh wow, the prophetic calendar is now ticking. So you see how those things add.

Isn't that, and it just, one stacks up on another. Then when the

Soviet Union was in the Cold War, when they were becoming, they were gonna be the bear.

You know, oh my goodness, they're going to, they're going to, they're gonna come down and they're gonna invade

Israel. Don't you know they're gonna invade Israel? They're building a dam to block off the

Euphrates. You know how stupid that sounds? Now that might've been good before planes and paratroopers and nuclear bombs weren't available.

Look, man, we're not gonna drop men, parachute into or have them walk across a dammed up river anymore.

What are we gonna do? Oh, we can kill plenty of them by just, pow, so it just becomes very sensational.

Are there parts of futurism that are true? I say yes. I know there's nobody in this room that doesn't believe that Jesus is gonna return at some point and consummate the kingdom.

Sure, so is there parts that's true? Yes, it is true. Are there parts of futurism that we can look at and say, hey, this holds a valid point?

Yes, is there a lot of it that we can say, yeah, that's utter nonsense and you better believe we can?

The very same passage that we talked about, the Lutherans coming up out of the abyss, whether it be

Jack Van Empey or who was the guy who wrote Late Great Plain of the Earth? Who was that guy?

Hal Lindsey. These were going to be Cobra helicopters. These were men that were literalists.

Now that is what, this leads to literalism. This leads to literal reading.

If I read it, I have to take it literally. That means everything that I'm reading must be literal until you are actually pushed on that.

And then when they're pushed on that, well, you know, it really can't mean literal because we only use our literal interpretation until it's absurd.

Matter of fact, the young man that Keith debated a few weeks ago, he said that very same word.

Well, I'm not going to take anything literally until it's absurd. I told Keith, it's like, all you had to do was tell him, but one man's level of absurdity is another.

So absurdity is subjective. And that's not how you do exegesis. It does lead to literal interpretation.

So when he said, when you take Hal Lindsey and Jack Van Empey and John Hagee, all those men that say it's literally, when they said he saw locusts coming up out of the abyss, that was not really locusts.

It was helicopters. Well, you just blew your literal interpretation of it.

Well, he's just trying to explain what he actually saw. No, I believe John actually saw a horde of locusts coming up out of the pit.

That's what I believe John actually saw. But we have to understand then from Old Testament, what did those locusts represent?

What were they coming to do? Why would they have had crowns? What was the significance of the long hair?

What was the significance of them stinging and their tails being like scorpions? You know, all of those imagery are rooted in the

Old Testament. So if you don't know your Old Testament, you're not gonna be able to interpret

Revelation because it is so filled with Old Testament illusions.

It's absolutely unbelievable. Now, I'm not gonna go as far as to say that every one that they say that's in there is accurate.

I mean, there's one in there that says it's talking about the Song of Solomon. I don't think there's an illusion to Song of Solomon in the

Book of Revelation. Maybe, I don't know, maybe the bride. I don't know, maybe. But if you're not rooted,

Ezekiel, Daniel, Revelation is going to then be, make it whatever you want.

I'll just go far enough to say if you're not rooted in the Exodus, the Exodus undertones. When we get into the structure of the book, the

Exodus undertones is unbelievable. It's unbelievable. Does futurism emphasize

Christ coming and consummating the kingdom? Yes, and I think that is its strength. I think its strength is, yes, the

Lamb will return, and he will return in power and glory. He will judge the living and the dead, and it will consummate the age.

I think that is probably its biggest strength. But its biggest weakness is everything has to be literal.

And it also leads, and we'll get to that when we get to the, it leads to the book being chronological.

There's a huge problem with reading it chronologically. Within the same chapter, it says,

I think it's in the fifth seal, chapter six, it says, they, the seal was opened, mountains, and the mountains and the rocks were done away with by the opening of that seal.

But you know what it says in the very next verse? That the people were asking for the rocks and the mountains to fall on.

Well, how can they do that? They're gone. So if you read it chronologically, you're gonna have probably seven judgment scenes.

You're gonna have seven different final judgment scenes. You're gonna have the coming of Christ coming at least four times.

Therefore, reading it chronologically makes it very difficult to understand. I'm not saying that when you're reading it, you go, okay,

I can see how they came to that conclusion. I think once you get past the seven seals, it gets very difficult to read it chronologically.

And we'll talk about that as we go through. Any questions? Yes, sir. Yeah, I just think that view also does a lot of disservice to the work of Christ in the return of sacrifices and a lot of that stuff.

Oh, yes, it does, because the system, futurism, that dispensational eschatology is built on a system.

It's not built on exegesis. They build the system, and then they plug it in. That's how they do, that's how any system like that is.

You don't go, hey, we're going to do exegesis and then come up with a system.

Anybody know who the first systematic theologian to ever pop up on the scene was? John Calvin. John Calvin didn't make

Calvinism. John Calvin wrote a systematic theology on what does the

Bible say, and it's his institute to the Christian religion. There's two volumes of it. You can still get them today, and you can still read it, and that's all he did, but that's systematic theology.

He didn't make the system. I mean, he didn't make a system and then plug all these things in. He says, hey, this is what the

Bible teaches, and just laid it out exegetically. Futurism and historicism do have something in common, though, that I did find.

From the apostles, we'll just say, let's do from Pentecost.

Pentecost here, this is the Holy Spirit, boom, okay, to 100 would have been the

Ephesian church. Then from 100 to about 313 would have been the church of Smyrna.

Then in 313, Constantine's converted. There was a good fit of persecution on the

Christians right here. In 313, Constantine does the Edict of Tolerance, which meaning

Christianity is no longer illegal anymore. You can't just go around seizing their property and all that.

Well, then you go from 313 to, I guess it's about, depending on where you see the

Pope, I'll just do here, we'll make a round number. From here is the church of Pergamon.

Then from 600 to, this would be Thyatira. This would go to about 1 ,500 would be

Thyatira. Then you would have from here to here in 1 ,600, you would have

Sardis, and then from, well, yeah, let's do it this way, to 1844, you would have had, in this, you would have had

Philadelphia and Laodicea. You see what they did?

They separated those churches into church ages. You know what dispensationalism does?

Does the same exact thing. It separates the churches into church ages. Their timeframes are different, and the reason why they're different is because they can never be wrong because it's always in the future.

Hey, if I missed my date, I'll just edit it and move it off. But they would say we are, in the

Laodicean church, when's it gonna end? We have no idea. We're in that lukewarm church.

I mean, many of you guys that grew up in, you know, heard that taught, that's where we're at.

So I did think that's somewhat interesting that two opposite ends of the spectrum did come to this conclusion that these were, that this is how

God has mapped it out. I don't believe that, okay? I don't believe that this is how

God has mapped out church history. Do I believe at any certain time in history these churches are relevant at any age?

Yeah, I think you could say this church is one of these, and you could go to that church at the corner, and it might be one of these others.

It's not to a church age. It's to that church's specific issue. And as we go through the seven churches of the seven letters,

I think, not I think, I know that's what Jesus is saying when he wrote them, because he didn't say, hey, when you get out of this struggle you're gonna become this church.

He never says that. He says to those ones, hey, if you don't repent of what you're doing, I'm coming, and I'm gonna remove my light from you.

That's what he says. He doesn't say you're gonna become one of these other ones. He's gonna say, I'm gonna knock your lights out.

That's what he says. All right. All right. And Mike also. Yes, sir. They base that whole historical thing on one thing called the rapture.

Pretty well. Yeah, yes. That's where it really starts. That's where, yeah, that's where it's gonna move to the seven year, well, the historical futurists don't.

They, the rapture is not, yeah. Yeah, I didn't wanna get, didn't wanna muddy the water already, but yeah.

The rapture of the church in the futurism view is determinative of when that seven years of tribulation begins.

Just to let you know, too, just like historicist, futurist, it leads to what? Date setting.

Date setting. Because you know when Jesus is coming back, when? Rapture happens.

When's his return? Seven years later. All you gotta do, just watch the clock.

Seven years later. You can hold out seven years. You can be saved, not by justification, by faith alone.

You can be saved by just persevering to the end, and that is the truth of dispensationalism. Dispensationalism and futurism leads to two ways of salvation.

Okay? All right, any disagreements before we do the other one?

Any clarifications before I do the other one? All right. It also leads to problems on plane flights if your pilot's a rapture.

What's that? It also leads to problems on plane flights if your pilot is a. Oh, yeah, yeah. And this one's gotta be right, because this is spiritual.

This is intellectually satisfying, and here's why.

It doesn't deal with anything in history. You don't have to worry about history. Who cares about history? Because you can look at time and go, oh, wow, this is happening now.

This has happened then. You can look through and see it's all based on principles.

Principles. And I think that's good, but I don't think that's the exegetical way of looking at the book.

I think this is the best way of applying the book. As we go through the book, we're going to see preterist, futurist, idealist, all have a lot to say about the book of Revelations.

We'll even look at some of the funny stuff that historicism say of it. It's great to say some pretty funny stuff, and we can look in history and say, hey, well, how did they understand it?

What can we glean from them? Yes, but I think the historicist view is no longer relevant in the sense of it can't be looked at as a way of interpretation because it has run out of time.

It has run out of time. That was the death blow. It just ran out of time. This leads to historical, redemptive, nobody's going to like this word, but eclecticism.

I remember, Mike Ward's not here today. 10 years ago, when I started coming here, he said, hey, man, what's your view on Revelation?

I said, well, I'm pretty eclectic. He looked at me like I was nuts.

I was like, yeah, pretty eclectic. He still probably thinks I'm nuts. He's not here today, but he probably thinks

I'm nuts still. Then I had to explain. This is why. And then this had that conversation of, you know, what do

I eat? And no idea, no idea. So we look at the

Bible, you know, the book of Revelation written before 70

AD. We're going to see it's preteristic in its approach. That means primarily that prophecy of that book was dealing with the destruction of Jerusalem, primarily.

We're going to look at how the futurist part of that book applies to us.

And every one of these has an application for an idealist approach. We don't interpret it.

You gotta remember, if the Bible, since the

Bible is written in history, it is written in history, we have to look at historical events and say, were they fulfilled?

Why? Because it's a book of prophecy. If we don't look at the fact that was it fulfilled, then that book of prophecy is really not prophecy.

It's maybes. So that's why we have to look at and say, was it fulfilled? And if it was fulfilled, that means what?

It's in the past. It's in the past. Can we look at what's in the past that sets our trajectory or motif or pattern that tells us what will take place when?

In the future. We'll just take the little horn. I thought it was interesting, when we're going through Daniel, he brings up the little horn in the

Roman Empire before he brings it up in the

Greek Empire. I thought that was actually very, very compelling for us to go, okay, he brought it up in the last one, the last empire, but now he's gonna go back and say, you know what?

The little horn doesn't show up at the end. He showed up before then, which then sets a pattern for us to go, there's gonna be a little horn in every empire, every generation.

We'll be able to look at the little horn that's gonna raise itself up, who's gonna mock the people of God, who's going to persecute the people of God.

I think we've said this already. We could look over the world empires today and look at those.

What's the guy out there in North Korea that looked like a penguin? What's his name? Kim Jong -il, okay? Don't he look like a penguin?

Looks like that guy, what was that penguin we saw on TV? Gusto or whatever? I was like, look, that's the guy from North Korea.

He looked like a penguin. But what does he do to people? The people of God, he persecutes them. If you don't have a picture of his face in your house, you can be put into some type of concentration camp, reprogramming camp, same thing,

Gigi Payne, okay, all of that. So that is a little horn that has raised that we see now in our generation.

Therefore, the little horn will be in every generation.

It's just where it can be pointed. Was the papacy the little horn? Yeah.

You know who killed more people up until the 19th century? I was like, people, let me say, who killed more

Christians up until the 19th century? You know who it was? Papacy. You know who killed it after then, though?

Muslims. Muslims. So is the

Soviet Republic of China, is it a beast? Is it a beast?

Yep. It's the beast. Why? Because it is a type of governmental structure that persecutes the people of God.

You see, that sets the pattern. That sets the pattern in Daniel to go, man, there's gonna be a beast in every generation.

There's gonna be a beast in every generation, and there's gonna be one that will raise itself up to be the little horn in that generation that will then persecute the people of God, claim itself to be

God, and then persecute the people of God till either the fall of that empire comes or until Christ returns, whichever it is.

Any questions? Next week, we will look at the structure of the book, and then

I will start an exposition of the book. Here's what you should expect as we go through the book.

You should expect from me an exposition on every text, and you should expect to hear me say,

I don't know. If we're gonna have some of those parts, well, we just don't know.

We'll try to draw conclusions together, but there'll be other times when, man, we just don't know.

What I expect from you is if I'm not speaking clearly enough or you don't understand, is to say, hey, you need to say that again like you did.

It's in my brain, and sometimes I don't get from here to here. And if I say something and you wanna know where it came from, all you have to do is ask me.

I try to tell you where my sources are as I go through this, but if you ask me, I'll tell you, and I probably could tell you page number, paragraph if you want.

You just need to ask if I've not made it clear enough. Okay? Anyone?

Anything? Andy, you'll close us out? Sure. Our Father, thank you for this time together.

Thank you for your word, Lord. Thank you for our ability to know that you will lead. Help us now,

Lord, as we worship you in spirit and in truth to glorify your name, to enjoy the fellowship with the saints, and to lift

Christ up in his name. Amen. Be proud of me.

Yeah. I didn't know that comes to us all the prayer requests yesterday. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. She's got a seizure and she was scheduled for a

C -section. She's got heart problems already. Right? And... Okay, so she's got a couple of weeks early.

One and a half weeks early. All right. Wow. So you did a

NICU mail for another girl? Yeah. Yeah, we're working on that.

Yeah, he's doing all of that. He's able to hold down. He's off the bed, but she's doing well.

Okay. Is there a rapture in the church?

Yes. Wow. So they can see his face?

Yeah. So he's got a little bit of time. He should be. How much time? Twenty -five.

Twenty -five. So that's amazing. Six pounds. Is it six pounds?

Six pounds. Two ounces. Wow. That's bigger than Will was. Will was five, fourteen.

I know. And he was full term? Will was a couple weeks. Oh, okay. Wow. But we had an early

Smith day. Yeah. Thomas was born exactly after that. Thirty -five weeks, six days.

Thomas was born seven years ago. He didn't do anything to you or anything. So it's just all the same and all.

She didn't have to be fully in that size for this. He said he wasn't in an emergency. And so they were careful of that.

They thought if he was having a baby, should they put him in so that he wouldn't stop breathing? And then when they felt like he was doing the breathing, they downgraded him.

Blow the bullet. Wow, that's awesome. Never done that before. Yeah, praise the Lord, that's the answer to prayer.

It is. When you kind of have blown away yourself, your prayers take a little more.

Yeah, you're a little more vested, I feel like. That's kind of bad to say, but it is.

Hi, Bert.

Hey, Pastor. How are you today? I'm good, sir, thank you. How you feel?