It's the end... AGAIN!

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Let's pray. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up your word, we ask that you would send the Spirit to open up our hearts and our minds so we may rightly understand what your word says, so that we may believe rightly regarding salvation by grace through faith, hope that helps us endure suffering as we anticipate your return in glory and the creation of a new heavens and a new earth and eternal life, and love for neighbor in good works.

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We ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen. We are in First Samuel. We're going to kind of refresh our minds in 29, but before we get too far into it,

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I wanted to ask you guys a question along these lines. Have any of you talked with any of your friends who are

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Christians who thought that yesterday was a big, important day as far as the end of the world?

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Anybody know? Anybody like that? You do? Yeah, you'll notice that the world did not end yesterday.

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All right, so let's talk about that real quick, and this is one of the things I've been critical of on my radio program, and for good reason.

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In our day, any crackpot can set up a

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YouTube channel talking about whatever they want, and there's a whole group of guys who claim to be like Bible prophecy experts,

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Bible prophecy experts, and they were promoting this idea that yesterday the sign of Revelation chapter 12 appeared in the sky.

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Okay, let's take a look at Revelation chapter 12 real quick, and we're going to, well, they think it's about the end of the world, and I'll talk about the claims that they were making.

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Here's what it says, Revelation chapter 12, and we're going to start, we're going to look only at verses 1 and 2 because that's all they were doing.

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It says, a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars.

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She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. So there it is.

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That apparently appeared yesterday. Now let me explain. Yesterday, a very interesting happened in the heavenlies if you're into astrology.

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If you're into astrology, you know that the zodiac has 12 different symbols. One of those symbols is

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Virgo, and for the last nine months, no joke, the planet

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Jupiter, as it's been making its orbit around the has been found in the belly or the womb of the constellation

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Virgo. Yesterday at 12 noon in the city of Jerusalem, Jupiter came out of Virgo's womb.

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I'm not making this up, and it just so happened that if you were to look at the constellation, the sun was kind of on one shoulder, and the moon, although a tiny little sliver, was at her feet.

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And the constellation Leo and a couple of other planets created the so -called 12 stars that were necessary to fulfill this.

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And so they were saying that Revelation chapter 12 verses 1 and 2 was fulfilled yesterday, and it's a big sign about the eschaton.

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Some were saying that Jesus was going to return yesterday. Others were saying yesterday was the day of the rapture.

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Others were saying that the dead in Christ were all going to rise yesterday. And I was on social media letting everybody know when their time zone had crossed into the next day, and they were free and clear, and no longer had to worry about the apocalypse.

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And in the past almost 10 years that I've been doing Fighting for the Faith, I have now survived 13 ends of the world.

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I'm really thinking about starting a reality TV show, How to Survive the

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Apocalypse with Chris Rosebro. But the problem is it would be really boring, because here's the secret to my survival.

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Anytime anybody predicts the end of the world, ignore it and just go about your daily business.

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Well, a few years ago we actually made t -shirts, and the t -shirt said,

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I survived the four blood moons, and all I got was this lousy t -shirt. Here's the issue.

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What was the question, Jamie? Yesterday. Yesterday, the 23rd of September.

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Oh yeah. Oh, this was all over the media. Oh yeah. So you're going to notice that non -believers were totally mocking

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Christians because of this. Because once again, those silly Christians think that Jesus is showing up tomorrow, and guess who didn't show up, you know.

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And so when this kind of stuff happens, and I'll be blunt, on my social media, if you've ever seen the conversations that take place on my

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Facebook wall, I am called all kinds of things, and people really get mad at me.

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So all those people who really thought that this was a big deal, they took me to task on my

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Facebook wall yesterday, because I wasn't taking it seriously. I had a mocking tone of voice, and my response back to every single one of them was, those people who think they know better than Jesus are behaving foolishly.

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Now do you recall Jesus ever saying something to this effect? No one knows the day or the hour.

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I literally had somebody on my Facebook wall tell me this morning, but now that was before the church.

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Now that the church is here, we can figure this out. Well, and this is already after nothing happened yesterday.

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Okay, now I'm going to ask you kind of a logical question. The constellation Virgo yesterday, this

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Virgo and Jupiter, and all the stuff that supposedly was a sign for the whole world, it took place at noon

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Jerusalem time. How many of you have ever been stargazing at noon?

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Have any of you? Yeah, they wouldn't be able to see it. So my big issue was, if this is a sign, how come no one can see it?

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But it even gets a little bit better than this. When somebody makes things like this up, it's best if you get into the biblical texts and actually just do a little bit of basic grammar.

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You would be surprised how much just basic grammar will save you a bunch of heartache and anxiety and stuff like that.

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I feel really bad for the people who really bought into what these YouTube prophecy experts were saying, because they were full of anxiety.

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They're mad at me for pointing out it didn't happen. And I mean, there's all this drama and trauma over nothing.

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If you just read the text, pay attention to the verb tenses, you would have never come up with this anyway. What they need to do is repent and read their

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Bible. All right. Don't even get me started. All right.

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No, no, that's not. There's nobody saying, I'm sorry.

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There's a lot of people saying, well, the sign still appeared. Okay. So let's take a look at the grammar real quick. I want to show you this revelation 12 one and a great sign appeared.

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There's your verb appeared future tense or past tense.

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If it already appeared, is that in the future or in the past? It's in the past, past tense, a sign appeared.

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Notice it does not say, and a sign will appear the

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Greek verb, by the way, here for appeared is horror. Oh, and it appears in the aorist tense.

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And the aorist tense is very similar to our past tense verbs and a great sign appeared in heaven.

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Where was John when this sign appeared? Where was he?

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Well, okay. Don't, don't think Pat Moss think at the moment he received this.

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Where was he? Nope. All right.

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Let me do this. You're not looking for a country. Okay. Revelation chapter four, revelation chapter four, verse one after this.

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So if you read the opening chapters of the book of revelation, first three chapters are letters that are given.

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I heard you, Mike, you gave me the right answer. By the way, I looked and behold a door standing open in heaven.

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The first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, come up here and I will show you what must take place after this.

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In revelation chapter 12, where was John heaven?

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He was in heaven. Now when, okay.

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A great and wonder sign appeared in heaven. Where was

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John in heaven? Okay. Now notice it does not say a sign will appear in the heavenlies or in the heavens plural.

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It says a sign appeared in heaven. Grammar really has a bearing on how we understand scripture is revelation 12, referring to an event that already took place or one that is supposed to take place in the future.

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From the time John wrote it, it's already been, the verb is past tense and it's not talking about a sign that will appear in the heavens.

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Heaven there is singular, not plural. So if you pay attention to grammar and tenses, oftentimes it will save your bacon.

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All right. My apologies. I know you guys work out and you get hungry and stuff like that. And bacon is absolutely one of the foods of God.

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Yes, yes, you should. Please consult your physician, you know, make sure that your heart is healthy enough for bacon.

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So, okay. So, so what does mean it says it was a great sign? Yeah. So what does it mean? All right.

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So let's take a look at the sign itself. A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head was a crown of 12 stars.

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She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains in the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a red, great red dragon with seven heads, 10 horns on its heads, seven diadems.

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His tail swept out a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she bore her child, she might devour it.

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He gave birth to, she gave birth to a male child, one who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was caught up to God and to his throne.

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And the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God in which she is to be nourished for 1260 days.

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Does any of that sound familiar to you as far as like Bible stories you already know?

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A virgin giving birth to a son. How much do you want to bet Mary is mentioned here?

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Think of Jesus and Mary. Think of the devil. And where is Jesus right now?

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Heaven. So in a real sense you can kind of talk about this is just kind of a word picture.

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If you've read the book of Revelation, the book of Revelation is word pictures. This is a word picture depicting the birth of Christ and the suffering of the church later afterwards as she waits for Christ to return.

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This is not pointing to September 23rd when Virgo gives birth to Jupiter when nobody can see it in the middle of the day.

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Oh, there's little Jupiter. Oh, he's so cute. Yeah, where's the red dragon in all of this?

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They left the dragon out, you know, who's supposedly sitting there right at the feet of Virgo waiting for Jupiter to pop out and kill him.

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You know, it just doesn't make any sense. No, we don't.

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But the one thing we do have is that we all see the same constellations at the same time if we're in about the same place as far as...

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If it's going to happen, we or somebody else is not going to see it during the daytime.

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Virgo still shows up during the daylight here right now. If we can get rid of, if we can get rid of the clouds and get rid of the sun, we'd see

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Virgo right now. Just like in the wintertime, we see Orion.

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Same idea. During the day? No, at night. We see him at night. What I'm saying, I'm going to see everybody is not going to see the same thing because we don't all have night at the same time.

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That's correct. But did anybody even see the sign yesterday? Nobody did.

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Nobody could. How could anybody see stars in the middle of the day?

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But it wasn't the middle of the day all over the world. Okay. All right. So does anyone have an orange?

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Something round. Pumpkin. Okay. No, I can't.

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I need something round. I need something round. Can you hand me one of those glass bowls, would you?

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I'm going to show you something. I understand that. You just have to think three -dimensionally. Yes, I'll take that.

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I knew that about you. Okay. You, you, you are the constellation

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Cancer. Okay. And you are in the sunlight right now.

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So this part of the world is in sunlight. And you, you're the twins, right?

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Okay. And you are in darkness at the moment. You're always shining.

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You are always shining. But the sun is, is only on this side of the planet, right?

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So if we start here, and I turn this around, what happens? Okay, now the person who was here 12 hours earlier, now comes around and can see you.

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I can't see you because you're in the sun. Okay. And then comes around and then can see them because they're in the, that they're in darkness, right?

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Have you moved? No. So here's the idea. Virgo, if Virgo, sunlight, we're looking at Virgo.

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We can't see her because she's in the sun. Right. Flip around. Can anybody here in the dark side see her?

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Yeah. How? Okay.

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Which direction are you facing on the globe? This way you're facing out. So if I'm facing out,

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I can see you guys, but I can't see her. And unless I can see through the planet.

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So flip it around and now I can see her flip it around. I can't see her right now.

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I'm Kareem Abdul -Jabbar spitting the globe on my finger.

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Okay. You get, you get the idea though. Okay. So although people over here in darkness and they can see these constellations when they come around, they can't see these constellations because they're in the sun, but they haven't moved.

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Okay. The only thing moving is this. Okay. We've lost it.

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Okay. In heaven.

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You made the statement. Could anybody see it because it was daylight? Nobody could see it.

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No, no. Yeah.

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No matter where you are. Yeah. Yeah.

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No matter where you are on the planet, you can't see Virgo period. No matter where you are. Yeah. Yeah.

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Virgo right now is only visible in the horizon during the middle of the day. In order for you to see

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Virgo, the sun would have to turn off. It doesn't matter where you are on the planet. That's the case.

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So how is this a sign? If nobody saw it, it can't be using just plain old logic and just a little bit of grammar, elbow grease, verb tenses, paying attention to details.

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You can know right off the bat that this is not the case. Remember the whole four blood moons thing? They were quoting a passage of scripture talking about blood moons.

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Does the Bible describe the moon as turning to blood? Yes or no?

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Yes. Of course it does. No, no, no, no. It talks about the moon turning to blood.

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What predicates that according to the text? Does the moon have a battery?

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Where does moonlight come from? Sun. It's reflective. So according to the biblical text, like if you were to look at revelation six or you were to look at Matthew 24, which talks about the moon turning to blood, both passages do.

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What causes the moon to turn to blood? Yeah.

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What does the text say? I'm encouraging you to open these things called Bibles. See if you could find it.

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Revelation six is one of the passages. What causes the moon to turn to blood?

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Not an earthquake. Start at revelation six, verse 12.

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Keep reading until you find it. Uh -huh.

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Uh -huh. What causes the real blood moon that we should be paying attention to, to turn to turn that way?

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The sun goes dark. All right. So when people were talking about the four blood moons having some big eschatological significance, they were putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable.

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Is it a big deal that the moon turns to blood? Well, yes. If the reason for it is because the sun no longer is shining, the sun goes and the sun is not giving off its normal light, which means the moon would look like blood.

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And do you think everybody on planet earth would take note of that and go,

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Oh, Nelly. Oh, my Atlanta. We've got a problem.

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This would be all over the news. Would anybody on planet earth think that everything was hunky -dunky and okay in business as usual?

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Nope. Would that be a sign that got everyone's attention? So it can't be a lunar eclipse that is an eschatological event because those happen like all the time.

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That's a regular occurrence. The moon travels into earth's shadow and then pops out the other side.

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Is it the end of the world? No, because there's going to be a lot of those over the next few years. I just went, traveled to Missouri and I saw the moon pass in front of the sun.

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It was spectacular. Even got to see the sun's Corona. Is that eschatologically significant?

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I mean, the sun turned to sackcloth. I mean, it was dark. No, it was just something in front of the sun.

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And that happens all the time. So when we talk about rightly understanding God's word, you pay attention to details in context, grammar matters, and you don't focus on one thing to the exclusion of another.

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And I'll be blunt. Christianity, literally since I was a kid, has people who've made a lot of money getting everybody worked up about the end times.

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Now, I believe we have been in the end times since Jesus ascended. This is most certainly true.

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He's coming again to judge the living and the dead. But I mean, y 'all remember the late great planet earth?

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How Lindsay, when was that written? It was in the seventies. How'd that work out?

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We're still around. And after a while, after everyone kind of got like over that hangover and that's the best way to put an eschatological hangover, everyone's sobered up for a little bit.

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And how Lindsay served up another one. What was the name of the next book? 1980s countdown to Armageddon.

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1980s countdown to Armageddon. Have we made it out of the 1980s? Okay. Now I may not have, because my musical tastes seem to orbit, you know, have a center of gravity in the eighties.

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Love me some Journey and Duran Duran and, you know, things like that, but a little sting and yeah, anyway.

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But if you look at the calendar, it's 2017. So would you be buying 1980s countdown to Armageddon today thinking, oh my goodness, we're, we're at the end.

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We're doomed. No, probably buy it for a nickel at a used paperback bookstore.

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Use it for bird lining on your cage. But see what, I mean, how many millions of books did

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Hal Lindsey sell? And there are people who are literally jumping on that bandwagon today and their books are crack pot, weird claiming the ability to crack

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Bible prophecy code nonsense. For instance, the Harbinger, the mystery of the

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Shemitah, the four blood moons. There was no major book accompanying that September 23rd sign, but those

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YouTube channels, I mean, many of those videos, they went viral and they make money off the advertising.

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And what ends up happening on the one hand, you've got all these Christians going, oh my goodness, the rapture is on Saturday.

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What am I going to do? Honey, we better have our last date night. You know, it's Friday night. What do you want to do?

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Well, my last meal, I would like, you know, and there are people who get so scared. They end up cashing out their savings accounts.

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Remember the Harold camping thing a few years back, whole group of people sold all their property and liquidated all of their assets, bought motor homes and traveled the country handing out pamphlets, letting everybody know that the rapture was going to be

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May something, whatever. And then guess who didn't show up? Jesus.

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We forgot to send invitations to Jesus, but Jesus is the one who said, no one knows the day or the hour.

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I was called arrogant by people on my own Facebook wall yesterday for saying, nothing's going to happen.

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How do you know it's going to, nothing's going to happen. Who do you think you are? You're so arrogant. This is just pride. And I said, no.

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Yeah. Yeah. And I said, listen, this is real simple. This isn't about me being right. This is about Jesus being right.

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It's like, who are you to say, you know, better than Jesus. And Janet, you said you heard it on the radio, people mocking

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Christianity and these people who were thinking that Jesus is coming back on Saturday. Yeah.

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Okay. So you're an unbeliever. You're already dead in trespasses and sins, which is not a good state to be in, by the way.

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And now you, the good people of Kongsvinger are going to go and share the gospel with somebody.

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And they listened to that radio program that Janet was listening to. And so you strike up a conversation with him. It steers into religion.

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Let me tell you about Jesus. And they go, yeah, I know they got rattling around in their head.

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You know, those Christians, they're just a bunch of doofuses, total doofus. If you're a non -believer, if you're a non -believer, who do you think spreading this?

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Christians. Non -believers think Christians are spreading this. Okay. Let me ask you this.

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Okay. When we talk about Islam, we talk about Islam. How many different major groups are there within Islam?

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They're almost like denominations. Yeah. The two major groups are the Sunni and Shia.

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And there's some other groups too. Do you know which group is most affiliated with terrorism?

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Okay. Did you know that? But if you see somebody who's talking about Islam, are you thinking, wait a second, are you

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Shia or Sunni? You're just thinking Islam. So some Muslims calling for the head of Donald Trump on a pike.

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Are you sitting there going, whoa, whoa, whoa, those Shia are out of control. No, you're thinking it's the

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Muslims. Yeah.

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No, no, no, no, no, no. It's Christians who are spreading this. It was Christians who were saying this. And the unbelieving world looks at this and goes, those

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Christians, they don't sit there and go, oh, it's the

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Lutherans or it's the dispensationalists. They just say, those Christians, they are so gullible. Oh no.

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The media always jumps on these things. No, no.

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I mean, seriously, it's kind of the state of affairs at the moment. So this stuff actually matters.

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And here's the issue is that scripture makes it clear it is the job of the church to silence those who are teaching false doctrine.

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It is the most non -Norwegian behavior ever, because God's name is being blasphemed by people who claim to be following Christ, who are saying things that they should not be saying.

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There is nobody who calls himself a Christian who has the right or authority to contradict

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Jesus. Jesus said, nobody knows the day or the hour.

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So as soon as somebody comes up, it's next Saturday. What should we be doing with that fellow?

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Saying, you need to sit down and you need to be quiet. You do not know better than Jesus. Who do you think you are?

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He said, nobody knows the day or the hour. What you're doing is twisting God's word and you're giving

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Christianity a bad name. It's already tough enough being Christians, let alone having people like you running around the landscape, claiming that you know that he's coming back next

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Saturday, because when he doesn't show up, we're all going to look like a bunch of morons. Matthew 24, 36.

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It has a cross -reference in the gospel of Luke. Yeah, yeah.

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So there are cross -references. Nobody knows the day or the hour, period.

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So that means when Jesus shows up, number one, everyone's going to recognize that's what's taking place.

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And it's going to happen when nobody expects it, which makes me believe it could be a Thursday. I'm just saying, okay, because like everybody's busy.

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It's not Friday. You know, you see what I'm saying? You think it's going to be a

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Sunday? Yeah, well, we can pray for that. You know, pray that your flight is not on a

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Sunday, so that you don't have to go to work on Monday. Yes. Yeah, but you kind of get the idea. He's going to show it when no one's expecting it.

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So, and it's like, whoa, there's Jesus. There he is, right? That's going to be how this goes. Now, another thing

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I want to talk about. All right, I'm off on a tangent, but I think it's an important tangent. Over the past few weeks, we have seen major hurricanes.

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We've seen Hurricane Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Have any of you seen the media coverage about very well -known

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Christian televangelists and Christian leaders who have been on television claiming that Christians have authority over these hurricanes?

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And no joke, I have video. Well, I am not making this up. I have video of major Christian leaders decreeing and declaring and speaking to these hurricanes and sending them back out to sea with their authority.

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I'm not making this up. I'll give you an example. Ken Copeland did it.

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Lance Wallnau did it. Lance Wallnau literally is like, you're making

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Christianity look stupid. Lance Wallnau, major figure within evangelicalism in the New Apostolic Reformation.

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On his Facebook live feed from a few days ago, he literally on his video said he commanded

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Hurricane Maria to steer back out into the Atlantic and to go away from Puerto Rico.

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Guess where Maria went? It leveled Puerto Rico. Two weeks before, a week and a half before, he was speaking to Hurricane Irma and sending her back into the

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Atlantic. She went straight up the center of Florida. I don't know.

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I don't know. All right. And the Copelands of the

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Believer's Voice of Victory, they had a special program where they were taking authority over Harvey to send

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Harvey back into the Gulf Coast. How'd that work out? Yeah, South Texas got destroyed.

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It's gotten so bad that on my radio program, I literally said, if any of these people are saying, are talking to hurricanes and telling it to go away from where you are, run for your life.

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That is a sure sign your house is going to get leveled. Okay. So if a hurricane's heading to your house and Ken Copeland says,

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I command that hurricane to head back out to sea, you are dead. Run.

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We are literally living in a day where absurd doctrines, I mean, you have to sit there and go, what kind of a delusion has overcome you to make you think you have authority over a weather event?

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Oh yeah. Yeah. And here's the scary thing. One of the things I've told you before, and I'll make the point again, is that the devil wants us to not pray.

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Prayer, prosuche, it is a humble asking of God.

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And I made this point a couple of weeks ago. I gave example after example of people who were claiming they were praying.

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And here's how they prayed. Hurricane Irma, I take authority over you in the name of Jesus.

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And I send you back out into the Atlantic. Is that prayer? Yeah, exactly.

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You're saying you're God and art. Does who talks to hurricanes?

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Do hurricanes have ears, but they do have an eye that one eye they're one eye.

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Okay. So that was the problem. They should have written it out. Hurricane Irma. I know you can see me.

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You have an eye, you know, hold up the poster board, right? That was a problem.

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Now, when they do this, they're not praying. They're speaking to a hurricane. They can't even hear them.

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Disasters fall upon us with weird, strange intervals. And all of this is because of our sin.

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We've messed up our planet by our evil. And so things are a little bit out of whack.

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And so if there's a natural disaster heading your way and you have a heads up about it.

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If you're going to pray, it looks like, Lord Jesus, please have mercy on us.

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You speak to Christ. You speak to the father. You speak to the Holy Spirit. You have nothing to say to the storm.

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You're asking him to speak to the storm. You're not God. Good point.

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When Jesus was in the boat and he was asleep, disciples freaking out.

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They're sitting there bailing and the storm's doing its thing. And there's water coming into the boat. Jesus is sleeping.

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And they wake him up. And what do they say? Don't you care that we're about to die? Jesus gets up, looks at the storm, goes.

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Shh. And then he rebukes them for their lack of faith. And they ask the question, who is this guy?

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Even the winds and the waves obey him. Has Christ given us authority over weather?

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No. Do you remember in the book of Acts, tail end of the book of Acts, the apostle

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Paul, he's on a ship heading to Rome. What happened?

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Well, it ended up wrecking. But before the wreck, what happened? How does the narrative read?

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Let's see if I can find this real quick because it's actually quite fascinating. Okay, here it is. Acts 27 .1.

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Watch what happens. So when it was decided that we should sail for Italy, they delivered Paul and some of the prisoners to a centurion of the

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Augustan cohort named Julius. And embarking in a ship of Adramitium, which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of Asia, we put to sea accompanied by Aristarchus.

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Okay, note a little bit of a detail here. This is a we section of the book of Acts. Why is it a we section?

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Because the author is there at the time. He's actually recording the events that he also participated in.

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Dr. Luke was on the ship. We put out to sea accompanied by Aristarchus, a

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Macedonian from Thessalonica. The next day we put in at Sidon.

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Julius treated Paul kindly, gave him leave to go to his friends to be cared for. And putting out to sea from there, we sailed under the

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Lee of Cyprus because the winds were against us. And when we had sailed across the open sea along the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra and Lycia.

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There the centurion found a ship of Alexandria sailing for Italy and put us on board. We sailed slowly for a number of days and arrived with difficulty off Sinaitis.

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And the wind did not allow us to go farther. We sailed under the Lee of Crete off Salmon.

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Coasting along it with difficulty, we came to a place called the Fair Havens near which was the city of Lacia.

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Since much time had passed and the voyage was now dangerous because even the fast was already over,

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Paul advised them saying, Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo of the ship, but also of our lives.

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But the centurion paid no attention to the pilot and the owner of the ship. He paid more attention to the pilot and the owner of the ship than what

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Paul said. And because the harbor was not suitable to spend the winter in, the majority decided to put out to sea from there on the chance that somehow they could reach

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Phoenix, a harbor of Crete, facing both southwest and northwest and spend the winter there.

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Now when the south wind blew gently, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor, sailed along Crete, close to shore, but soon a tempestuous wind called the nor 'easter struck down from the land and when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along.

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Running under the lee of a small island called Cauda, we managed with difficulty to secure the ship's boat.

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After hoisting it up, they used supports to undergird the ship, then fearing that they would run aground on Cirtus, they lowered the gear and thus they were driven along.

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Since we were violently storm -tossed, they began the next day to jettison the cargo and on the third day they threw the ship's tackle overboard with their own hands.

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When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, no small tempest lay on us.

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All hope of our being saved was at last abandoned." Now note here, this is going on for days.

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Did the Apostle Paul say, come on, let me up, let me up on deck, get up on deck and say, you listen to me, you nor 'easter.

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I take command and control over you and I tell you to be quiet. Nothing of the sort.

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Don't you think if Christianity taught that Christians have authority over the weather, that this would have been the perfect point for the

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Apostle Paul to stand up and take authority over the nor 'easter. We know its name. It was named nor 'easter.

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Notice he never speaks to the nor 'easter. Since they had been without food for a long time,

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Paul stood up among them and said, men, you should have listened to me. Oh, there's nothing worse than the I told you so fellow.

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I mean, this tells you that Paul was not only probably ugly, but socially awkward. Okay. He didn't speak good.

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That's by his own admission. And now he's socially awkward and he gives the I told you so speech, which is always so fun in the middle of the storm, right?

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You should have listened to me and not sailed from Crete and incurred this injury and loss.

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Yet now I urge you to take heart for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship.

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For this very night, there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong, whom

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I worship. And he said, do not be afraid, Paul, you must stand before Caesar. And behold,

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God has granted you all that those who sail with you. So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told, but we must run aground on some island.

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So Paul gets a direct revelation from God via an angel. Angel says it's going to be a shipwreck.

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And in the midst of his, I told you so speech, he lets them know, God told me this. We're all going to be just fine, but we're about to wreck.

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And it turns out just the way he says, but notice no taking authority over weather.

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So here's the idea. There is a lot of really crazy stuff being said right now from people who are

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Christians. And if you find yourself in the awkward position of actually having a conversation with somebody who is believing these bad doctrines, you actually have a biblical responsibility and a duty to them to say, listen, that's not what

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God's word says. That's not what it teaches. And we also have an obligation to stand up.

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And when public nonsense is going on like this, I mean, may

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I suggest this? If you're listening to a radio program and they're making fun of people who are believing that Jesus is showing up on Saturday, get on the phone, call the radio station and say, that's actually not what the

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Bible says. These people who are saying that, they think they know better than Jesus and they're wrong.

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Jesus will not be coming on Saturday. And it's sad that there are people who believe these crackpot kinds of theories, but that's not what the

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Bible says. We actually have an obligation to speak up and say, nah, that's not at all

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Christian doctrine or biblical doctrine. Unfortunately, these people are deceived. So I wanted to kind of be in my bonnet on this thing because for the past few weeks,

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Christianity has really been given some really bad black eyes by people who call themselves

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Christians. And right now we're kind of the laughingstock of the world. And it's time for us as Christians to say enough is enough.

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We've got to challenge and we've got to silence these false teachers. They are teaching wackerdoodle stuff that is just obviously absurd.

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And people think that's what Christianity teaches and it doesn't. So, all right, that's our lesson for today.