(Revelation - Part 12): Who Are the 144,000 — A.W. Tozer

The Four Angels and the Four Corners of the Earth

In the seventh chapter of the book of Revelation, after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor in any tree.

And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God, and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the tree, for we have sealed the servants of our God in their forests.

The Sealing of the 144,000 from Israel

And I heard the number of them which were sealed, and there were sealed a hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel. The tribe of Joseph, twelve thousand were sealed.

The tribe of Reuben, Gad, Asher, Naphthalim, Manasseh, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin. All of these were sealed, a thousand, all of these tribes. Verse 9,. After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands.

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb. And all the angels stood round about the throne and about the elders and the four beasts, and they fell before the throne on their faces and worshipped God, saying, Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be unto our God forever and ever.

Amen. One of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these that are arrayed in white robes, and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple. He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them nor any heat.

For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. Now our Lord is opening the seals, and as we tried to point out, of war and famine and plagues.

We saw last Sunday night the souls of the martyrs in the hand of God, underneath the altar, and the shaking of heaven and earth. And affected were the earth and the sun and the moon and the stars and the mountains and the islands and all mankind.

Now comes a breathing spell in between the 6th and the 7th seal. John said, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth. I'd like to begin a way out and say that when you read such an expression as, four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, I'd like to put a little word in here to help you Christians who may be attacked by persons who do not believe the Bible.

They say there, it's obvious, that the person who wrote this book believed the earth was square, or at least it was flat and that it was in such a shape that there were corners to it, and there were four of them.

These angels were standing on the four corners. Now I'd like to say to you that if you will give the Bible the benefit of the doubt and wait for a little further light, that is, if you will look for a little further light and pray for a little further light, you will always find that the Bible is right.

The critic who says that this Bible couldn't have been written by a knowledgeable man, this book of the Bible couldn't have been, because he talked about the four corners of the earth. Well, anybody knows what he means.

He means the four cardinal points, north, south, east and west. And we have talked about the four quarters of the globe so long and so often and so much, altogether apart from the scripture. Even now we talk about it such.

The four winds of heaven. There are only four winds, the north wind, the south wind, the east wind and the west wind. And then of course they whirl all around and come at you from an angle, but those are the major winds, and that's all that it means here, because it says that they stood on the four corners of the earth holding the four winds of heaven.

Angels in Revelation and the Supernatural World

Nothing mysterious about that. There are the four winds of heaven, and there were four angels holding these four winds of heaven. Now, when I was preaching in Hebrews, I am preaching in Hebrews Sunday mornings now, but when I came to that passage about the angels, that the angels of God worship him, I took time out to preach a whole sermon on angels.

As our brother Greg goes on Wednesday night, he will come to Angelology after a while and talk about the angels. But I can't skip over what is here and point out to you that we've got to face up to the fact of angels.

We have to face up to it. We are going to be believers in the Bible. We have to face up to angels. In the book of Revelation they are mentioned 75 times, and anything that is mentioned 75 times in one book of the Bible ought not to be skipped over by me, because I am so very learned and modern and know all about nuclear fission, and therefore don't believe in angels.

If I believe in the Bible and the Bible 75 times in one book talks about angels, I ought to get my eyes open a little bit and say to myself, Now, wait a minute here, boys, maybe you are skipping something.

Maybe you have skipped lightly over something that you ought to take seriously. And the Bible talks about angels and mentions them 297 times by actual count. Now, a few times the word in our English Bible refers to human messengers, for the word means messenger.

But in the vast majority of times that the word is used, it is used of a being from heaven, and that being is said usually to be large and powerful and immortal and holy and wise. Jesus our Lord said about the angels that they would do not marry or give in marriage, said people in heaven wouldn't, because they were like the angels of God.

Neither could they die anymore, so they are immortal and they are holy and they are wise, not always, but wise, and they are always closely associated with God, running and going back and forth doing the errands of the Almighty.

Now, a few more facts about these angels, and I'm skipping the fallen angels. I don't know much about them. I probably know as much as I want to know, but there is something in there about them too. But we are talking about the holy angels, and I notice these angels are always on the side of righteousness and God, always, never find them on any other side except, of course, the fallen angels.

But the holy angels of God are always on the side of righteousness, and they are almost always on the side of man. Now, I say almost always because there have been occasions where they couldn't go along with man because of his sin and rebellion, but when God sends them to be ministers to men, they are naturally on the side of man.

I have noticed also in the scripture that the angels are more active in times of crisis and less apparent in quieter times. It was when the morning stars sang together and the angels of God shouted for joy, God created the heaven and the earth.

And it was when God was giving the law that he gave it through the mediation of angels. Angels were active then. When our Lord came to the world and was born of a woman, the angels were seen in a great multitude of the heavenly halls, praising God and saying, Glory to God in on high.

And then, later on, when our Lord had risen from the dead, the angels were there again. And when you get to the book of Revelation again and the crisis begins to churn and get tighter and fiercer, then we find angels appearing 75 times in that one book.

But they are less apparent in quieter times, I say. Now, why have we no place for angels in our thinking in modern Christianity? Because of one reason, the veil of materialism is on the modern religious American and Canadian and English and French and German Western mind.

The veil of materialism is over our minds, and Christ has been linked with earthly prosperity. I suppose that my good compatriots and friends down south of the border didn't like to hear me say it, but I have said it, that you cannot equate Christianity with Americanism.

They are not the same, neither can you equate Christianity with Canadianism. I believe in nationalism, I think it's nice to hear Canadians talk up for Canada, I think it's nice to hear Americans talk up for the United States.

But I don't think that we ought to make the mistake of thinking that a fat, well-lined, tooth-picking, story-telling, Christian American businessman with his Cadillac parked out in front, and his summer home and his winter home, and a few things like that, that's Christianity, brother.

A man could be a Christian and be that, but then he wouldn't be a very good one, but then he could be one. So we equate that with Christianity, and that we don't have any place for angels, you can't buy an angel and they're selling, and he won't bring you anything, and it's too silly, this angel business.

But God talks about them here, but we've got a materialistic mind, and so if a man is making money, amen, praise the Lord, he's a Christian, and the Lord is his co-partner. But if he isn't making any money, then he's a suspect, something's wrong with the fellow.

Now, if I read my Bible right, that's exactly upside down to the scripture, because in the scripture it was the rich man that was having a tough time getting to heaven, and the poor man who went sailing through quite easily.

So I think we'd better rethink this whole deal, for I think that we're badly off-center. The popular teaching now has denied or muted the supernatural, really. We're not a very supernatural people here at Avenue Road.

You know, friends, I think I can say this to you, I'd say it anyhow, whether you like me or not, but I think that you understand me enough that I could say it, that it's my conviction that the Lord could leave Avenue Road Church and be gone on a 6-month holiday.

And when he came back, we wouldn't have missed him much, because we got everything nicely fixed up. When we'd just turn the crank and away she rolls, everybody knows what to do, and we'd do it. The idea of the immediacy of God and the necessity for God, we don't have it here, and I haven't been very many places where it's found.

In fact, we get very much worried when God becomes necessary to us. They tell the story of the preacher who got up before his congregation and said, I have an announcement to make, my friends. On my way from my house to the church, my notes blew away and blew over the cliff, so I have no notes to preach from, and I come badly unprepared.

I'll have to trust God this morning, but next Sunday I hope to do better. Now, that's a joke they tell on the preacher, but you know that there's more truth than poetry in that story, because as soon as a church gets into a tight spot where it has to trust God, the board sweats, and the pastors walk around in circles.

Did you notice this? We all walk around in circles. As soon as the supernatural becomes necessary to us, we're miserable. We want to know the supernatural is out there somewhere, further than the farthest rock that has gone, waiting for us when we're plenty done with this world.

But we want to wring all of the goody out of this world that we can. We want to squeeze every hive of honey possible and wring every sweetness out of it, and then when we're through with it and we're so old and battered and lined up and calcified that we couldn't enjoy ourselves anyhow, well, we want to go to that supernatural place.

But in the meantime, we'd rather God wouldn't bother us, because trusting the supernatural is an edgy, sensitive thing, and we don't want to do it. And a preacher has that same temptation to fight. Don't think I'm standing up here flapping my wax wings.

I'm not. I'm one of you, and we're all alike. But it's a sad thing, my friends, when we have denied or muted the supernatural to a point where we've confined every miracle to another generation. They talk about healing in the Christian Missionary Alliance an awful lot, or at least they used to, and I've been criticized a little because I don't talk more about it.

But I find out the people who talk about it run for a pill just as soon as they feel the first twinge of a headache. I've found that we preach about healing and anoint people and then go take pills. So I'm not sure we're believing in the supernatural any too strongly.

We're believing in our belief in the supernatural rather than in the supernatural. Well, I don't know why the Lord ever didn't button up my mouth and not let me say some of the things that I say, but I've said it now, and I've said it in an Alliance church, the day when everybody from 260 to 490 will all begin to trust the Lord for their bodies, then I'll begin to preach more about healing.

But in the meantime, I like to be practical and preach in line with what I see as well as what I hear. So I believe in divine healing, and I pray for the sick. I have seen a few people healed in answer to prayer.

I've seen some of them die, but I've seen some of them healed and will be walking around yet in answer to prayer. So I believe in it all right, but I don't want anybody to stampede me or rush me and say, Now, hold on there, closer, what's the matter with you?

God’s Sovereignty Over the Earth

Why don't you go home and get rid of your pills and then come back and talk to me? Now, the mighty scene here in Heaven, I think this is one of the most wonderful scenes that I've ever possibly read about or seen with my mind's eye.

These four angels are holding the four winds of Heaven as though God is dramatically waiting. You know what God is doing? I've been telling you now since the 5th chapter what God is doing. God is jarring man and the earth loose from mankind's control.

Man has his roots in, you know, he's driven his stakes in. Man belongs to the earth, or the earth belongs to man. And God says the earth doesn't belong to man, the earth belongs to the man, the man Christ Jesus, the man that is worthy, who has earned his right to hold the earth.

So he's shaking the earth loose. I'm glad for this, very happily glad for this. I'll be glad for the time when all these border crises will be over with. One fellow says, I own this. Another fellow says, I own this.

And it's been a standing joke through the centuries that one farmer puts the line fence over four inches on the other farmer's ground, and he goes to the expense of having it surveyed to prove he's over four inches.

And so they have a feud on and shoot across the fence at each other for 40 years, never speak to each other because one fellow's got four inches that belongs to the other fellow and won't change the fence.

Well, our trouble is we think we own something. Brother, you don't own anything at all, I'd like to tell you that. Naked came you into the world, and naked you're going out again. And you ought to thank God he let you borrow an outfit so you wouldn't have to run around naked.

And you ought to thank God he allowed you to borrow a house so you wouldn't have to sleep out on the lot. You ought to thank God he let you borrow a car so you can drive to your work or drive wherever you go.

You ought to thank God. You don't own a thing, not a thing. And if Russia thinks they own Russia, or the United States thinks they own the United States, or Canada thinks they own this great sprawling half a continent here, we don't own a thing, brother, we just think we do.

There's only one that owns it, and he's the one that bled for it and gave himself, and he, it all belongs to him, and God's going to shake it loose so that nobody can say, this is mine, this is mine. He's going to turn it back over to the one to whom it belongs, the one who carried around with him the form of a man and whose body was made of the very elements that the earth gave him.

And so these four angels are holding the four winds of heaven. God's waiting now for the four winds of heaven to begin their destructive work on the earth. They help jar the earth loose from mankind's control.

Angelic Hierarchy and Divine Sealing

And the angel has, an angel comes out with the seal of God, and he cries out now with a loud voice, and he says to these four angels, he's evidently capable of giving orders to these four angels, there are gradations of angels.

The idea of a cookie-cutter uniformity in heaven is one of the greatest errors and heresies that I know about, why the Bible says that in heaven men shall differ from each other as star differs from star in glory.

And the Bible talks about angels and archangels and principalities and powers and mights and dominions, why those are gradations having greater authority, this idea that everybody's put in a sack and shaken up and that we all come out exactly alike.

It's all wrong, my brother, it's all wrong. There are going to be degrees, there are going to be rewards, some big, some little, some not at all. There are going to be people who have earned a right by their sufferings and tears to rule over five cities.

There are going to be others who get in by the skin of their teeth, so as by fire. This idea that everybody that's born again is equal to everybody else that is born again is just as silly as it's possible to be.

You might as well tell me that the little black boy born in the bayous of Mississippi and never heard of out of his own parish, county, parish, they call it in Louisiana at least, out of his own little county, never heard of, you might as well tell me that he has just as much authority as Prime Minister Diefenbaker.

No, my brother, there's difference of degrees because there's difference in abilities and difference in size. So here is one angel who has authority over these four angels, and he says, Don't hurt the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.

Now, this sealing is not an unusual thing, at least it's not unprecedented. For back in Ezekiel 9, he cried also in mine ears with a loud voice, saying, The plague and famine caused them that have charge over the city to draw near, even every man with his destroying weapon in his hand.

And behold, as six men came from the way of the higher gate, which lies toward the north, and every man with a slaughter weapon in his hand, and one man among them was clothed with linen with a writer's inkhorn by his side.

And they went in and stood beside the brazen altar, and the glory of God of Israel was gone up from the cherub whereon he was. And he called to the man clothed with linen, and he said, The Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all abomination that be done in the midst thereof.

Not unusual, I say, for God to mark out certain men. So this man will I look, says God, who trembles and weeps at my word. Well, so they sealed the hundred and forty and four thousand. Now, who are the hundred and forty and four thousand?

Rejecting Cultic Speculation About the 144,000

Well, the cults all have the answer. And if everybody was a hundred and forty-four thousand, and it said he was a hundred and forty-four thousand, you'd have to multiply that by about twenty in order to get enough people to go around.

The cults have the answer. Always remember that there are some people that are cult-minded. That is, they have a mind, well, if they're not Christians, they're superstitious. And if they are Christians, they're cultists, usually.

Some people run toward a cult just as smoothly as my old German grandmother ran toward superstition. She had a dream book, and every morning that she'd get up, she'd go read to try to find out what the dream meant.

She believed that if a dog howled outside your window, that somebody near to you was going to die. When our first boy was born, Lowell, forty years ago, last April 26th, I think, or 3rd or something, some of the dear old ladies told my wife in order to comfort her, they said, Now, if a baby is born with a blue mark over its nose, it'll die before it's a year old.

And she ran and looked, and sure enough, Lowell had a little blue mark on his nose. And thank God we were Christians, and so we didn't pay any attention to the blue mark. Forty years ago, he had his blue mark.

He's still got his blue mark. I haven't looked lately. I haven't seen him for eight years. But I guess he's still got it, and as far as I know, he's going strong, getting healthier as he gets older. But, you know, these comforting old sisters that tell us those things.

Well, now, when they get religion, they run to cults, just with all, just as natural as it can be, because something queer and funny and offbeat, they have to find that or they're not happy. They're the ones that'll come to you seriously and say, Who was Melchizedek?

And where else they'll say, Could you tell me who are the 144 ,000? Or they'll say, Was Moses' wife a colored woman? They have the one-ass questions and all. They're cultists. I've run and been among them.

I've never joined them, and I never believed with them. I believe, in spite of what I said a while ago, that we are materialistic-minded and that we ought to get spiritually minded and begin to think spiritually.

But I also believe that a good, fresh, clean little squirt of skepticism won't hurt you a bit if it's turned in the right direction. I've got lots of letters. Boy, if I joined everything I've been invited to join, I'd just be all over this continent joining this and joining that.

I grew up, that is, I came up through that long stretch when we had little boy preachers and little girl preachers. I used to see them, pity them, stand them on a box, you know, little chaps as small as Mrs. Morrison's little fellow down here, 5 or 6 years old, stand them on a box.

They'd stand up there with a Bible in their little high treble voice. They'd preach the gospel, poor little fellows. And they'd get a little girl and they'd stand her on a box and she'd preach. They got to preaching about the gospel in the stars.

And they said that there was a gospel in the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Well, I prayed to God when he filled me with the Holy Ghost to give me a spirit of discernment, so I never fell into any of those traps.

I always was able to see a cultist and smell a cultist. Now, literally, quite literally, I can smell a cultist when he comes toward me. I sniff and I know. I don't mean with my olfactory muscles. It isn't your muscles, it's your nerves, that's right.

It's my olfactory nerves, but it's with something in my heart that says, Watch him, because he's a cultist. They write me letters and try to get me to come over on their side. I have a fellow who's very faithful in sending me literature, and he's of the Order of Aaron.

He's of the Latter-day Saints, a Mormon. Look at me, I'm no Mormon, he just sends me his stuff. But if you have read the scriptures until you've gotten used to them and got the feel of them, you know as soon as it doesn't feel right, you know it.

It's like your hat. You reach up carelessly talking to your friend and grab a hat off the rack and put it on, and immediately you'll know it isn't your hat because it doesn't feel. It hasn't taken the heat, you know, it hasn't got the bumps.

And it's not your hat. You don't have to examine it, it just isn't your hat. And so you'll get to know your friend, for instance. You see Jim Johnson coming down. You grew up with him in school and fought with him and played with him and studied with him in the grades and on up into high school, and he's your friend, you know him.

And you see somebody coming down the street and your wife says, There comes Jim Jones. You say, That's not Jim Jones. You know better. Still for the man, you know. Well, you can do the same thing. You can go to the scriptures and learn it and love it, and you don't understand it all, but the sense of it and the spirit of it and the flavor of it and the texture of it and the shine of it and the color of it, it becomes second nature with you.

And when the cultist comes along, you just know he's a cultist. You don't have to know why. I've had the experience many a time, I think I told you before, of knowing something was wrong and not knowing why for a long time afterwards.

The Holy Ghost lets you know why. Well, I said all this because I know that this 144 ,000 thing has caused a lot of people to dip a lot of ink horns in a lot of ink wells and smear up a lot of otherwise clean, white, virgin paper that should have been left alone.

And they tell us about who these are. Well, the cults can't, they can't. One cult says, we're the 144 ,000. Another cult says, we're the 144 ,000. That makes 288 ,000. And another cult comes along and says, no, we're the 144 ,000.

Multiply that by three. And another cult says, we are multiplied by four, and pretty soon you're running into the millions. And it says 144 ,000. Now, I'd like to know why we fool around with anything as clear as this is.

This is one of the few times in the scriptures where the Lord gave us a long list of names. He said, I heard the number of them that were sealed. And there were sealed 144 ,000 of all the tribes of the children of Israel.

Unless you get the notion that that means the spiritual tribes. Why, the Holy Ghost says, now wait a minute. Of the tribe of Judah, 12 ,000. Of the tribe of Reuben, 12 ,000. Of the tribe of Gad, 12 ,000.

And so as somebody says to you, I'm going to have five men at my house tomorrow night for a little supper, dinner. I'm going to have Mr. Jones, Mr. Robertson, Mr. Robertson, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Brown. And I'll say, well, I don't know any of those men.

Explain, who are they? Well, they tell me who they are, where they live, and all about their marital state and their financial situation, and I get quite a rundown on them. They even show me their pictures.

And then the next day the man says, I'm having a party at my place tonight. I think I told you. And I says, yes. Who are the five? Well, he says, I thought I told you. Smith, Brown, Robertson, Robertson, and who else was it?

And I say, well, now, just a minute. Am I to understand that spiritually or poetically or literally or figuratively? Well, he said, I thought I told you who my five friends are from Detroit, and they're coming up to see me.

I used to know their Aunt Mabel out in Alberta, and they're coming up to see me. And he pins it down, names them, and then I stand bug-eyed and say, who are they? Who are they? And that's what we're doing here.

We're writing books on who the 144 ,000 are, and God told us who they are. He says, they're people saved out of the twelve tribes of Israel. And then in case we might think he meant somebody else, he names the tribes, substituting Joseph for Ephraim.

And we have it, twelve tribes of Israel. These, then, are the Jews who will be converted yet. Now, I believe that. I understand that isn't popular doctrine in the city of Toronto, that some of the leading preachers and good, godly men, too, find no future for Israel.

I find a future for Israel. I couldn't read my Bible at all and not believe there is a future for Israel. I could not read Romans 9 and not believe there was a future for Israel. And 10, I believe it.

And 11, read them and see. Yes, there is. So I think we've identified them, and it's a very disappointing thing, because I know that you wanted me to say abracadabra, spin around three times, look very spiritual and come up with a weird answer.

But I don't want to do it, because why should I when God has named them for us and told us about them, and said the judgments of God coming upon the earth are going to spare the people? Don't ask me whether I believe and know whether.

Israeli, the Israel, over there is the Israel that is to be restored. I don't know for sure about that, but I do know that Israel will come from the north and the south and the east and the west, and they will be restored again to the land which God gave to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

God never lied to Abraham, and when God said Abraham could have the land from the river to the sea and to the cedars of Lebanon down to the borders of Egypt and Arabia, he meant exactly what he said. You know the story of their sins and their idolatry and their unbelief and their judgments, and you know it as I know it.

One judgment after another. Back in the book of Deuteronomy, it tells us there about the Jews, that the day will come when they will plead, O God, send the morning, and when the night comes and when the day comes, they will say, O God, send the night.

And they will plead, Read the terrible stories of Eichmann, the terrible stories of the Spanish Jews in their day, read the suffering of Israel down the centuries, and you will see it fulfilled as clear as a photographic plate.

The Great Multitude from Every Nation

Now, that takes care of 144 ,000, but after this I beheld and lo, a great multitude which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues, here we have now not Jews, understand, he has specifically set these apart and said, Here are the Christians out of the tribes of Israel at a specific time.

But he says, Now here is another multitude, I want you to see a bigger multitude, a great multitude. You can number these, but you can't number this multitude, all nations and kindreds and people and tongues.

I say once again to you that the Bible has 150 ,000 miles ahead of the NAPC, 150 ,000 miles ahead of those who are telling us now that we ought to have a united nation because all men are one. Didn't the Bible tell us that, that all men were created of one blood to dwell upon the face of the earth?

If we had listened to our Bible, we would have known that all the time. And so God has these people out of all nations and kindreds and tongues and people, and they stand before the throne. Now the Jews, the 144 ,000 sealed ones, are on the earth, but this great multitude is before the throne and before the land, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands.

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sits upon the throne and unto the land. And all the angels stood around the throne, and the elders and the four beasts fell before the throne on their faces, and they worshiped God and said, Amen, and blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might unto our God forever and ever.

Humility Before the Mysteries of Prophecy

I'd like to stop right here and quit preaching prophecy and intersperse a bracket of truth here that I want to leave with you and you ought to get a hold of. If you think you can untangle things so that you'll understand them in the world today and know whose side to be on and who is right and who is wrong, you're going to have to think again.

You can't do it. And if you think that you're going to be able to explain why one man is rich and atheistic and another man is poor and holy, why one person lives to be 97 years old and a woman dies of cancer in her 30s, if you think you can figure it all out, and if you think you can figure it all out, brother, you can never figure it all out, I'm telling you that.

But there's one thing you can do. When you reach a place where you can't get the answer, you can look up and say, Blessing and glory and wisdom and thank-giving and honor and power and might be unto our God forever and ever, Amen!

And if you keep on saying that long enough, your heart will leap up and you'll be on top of the thing, even if you can't explain the thing. We'll never be able to explain things, but we can praise God for things.