Revelation 6 (Con't)

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Well, good morning. Oh, wow, we got a packed house. Dan, will you open us up with a word of prayer?
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Heavenly Master, Lord, I just thank you for another opportunity to be found in the house this morning.
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We thank you for your tender mercies upon our lives on a daily basis, Lord, in which we sometimes don't even think about.
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We thank you for safe travels this week. We ask that as Brother Mike comes before us, that you would bless him to bring about those things that you've placed on his heart.
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And bless us, Lord, that we may hear and understand those things and learn more about you. We thank you and love you for everything you do for us.
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In Jesus' name, amen. Revelation, chapter 6.
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Has everybody found it? I got rebuked last week for moving too fast and nobody could find when
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I was... Is everybody there? Thank you, love. Has everybody found verse 1 of chapter 6?
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You're really going slow. You're going backwards. No, on a serious note.
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Then I saw when the lamb broke one of the seven seals, I heard one of the four living creatures saying as the voice of thunder, come.
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And I looked, and behold, a white horse. And he who sat on it had a bow, and a crown was given to him.
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And he went out conquering and to conquer. And when he broke the second seal,
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I heard the second living creature saying, come. And another red horse went out.
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And to him who sat on it was granted to take peace from the earth. And that men would slay one another.
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And a great sword was given to him. And when he broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, come.
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And I looked, and behold, a black horse. And he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hands.
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And I heard something like the voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, a quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius.
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And do not damage the oil and the wine. And when the lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard a voice of the fourth living creature saying, come.
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And I looked, and behold, an ashen horse. And he who sat on it had a name. Death and Hades was following with him.
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Authority was given to him for the fourth of the earth to kill with the sword, and with famine, and with the pestilence, and by the beast of the earth.
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And when the lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and because of the testimony which they had maintained.
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And they cried out with a loud voice saying, how long, O Lord, holy and true, will you refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?
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And there was given to each of them a white robe. And they were told that they should rest for a little while longer until the number of their fellow servants, their brethren, who were to be killed, even as they were, would be completed also.
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And I looked. And when he broke the sixth seal, there was a great earthquake. And the sun became black as sackcloth of hair.
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And the whole moon became like blood. And the stars of the sky fell to the earth as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.
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And the sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up. And every mountain and island were moved out of its places.
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And when the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks and the mountains.
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And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us, hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the
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Lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come. And who was able to stand? You don't ever get over reading that and go, man, that's tough stuff.
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So last week we went through. Let's make sure we got one that writes before we get started.
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Hey. The first seal was what? Help me out.
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What were our conclusions? Or what was your conclusion?
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That I was wrong? I'm fine with that, by the way, if we come to another conclusion. We narrowed it down to either
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Christ or the armies of heaven. Okay, I'm sorry? We narrowed it down to either Christ or the armies of heaven. False Christs.
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False. False Christs. Yeah. Okay. I think they fit. And as we get towards the, when we get, because when you see the paradigm, let's just for a minute.
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Let's say you say, Mike, I think you're bogus. Okay. On your interpretation of the first one.
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But once we get to the second, the third, and the fourth,
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I think you'll see this one, if this is in question of what this is, I think these will set the paradigm of what this is.
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Okay? So just follow my train of thought for a minute. The white horse is either false
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Christs, and I'm going to put armies of Rome because that too would surround it.
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What about the second? It was a red horse. Is that right? Ooh, let me be fancy.
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Yeah, let's be fancy. Red horse. What was he doing?
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Civil unrest. Civil unrest. How would we see the civil unrest around this time?
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It was actually all over the empire. We're localizing it into, obviously, the structure of Jerusalem, but civil unrest, as the
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Jewish wars begin to make their way to the final holdup in Jerusalem. But it's right before the final fall of Jerusalem, and civil war was everywhere.
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It was breaking out in the Roman Empire. Anybody remember what happened in 68 with Nero?
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He what? 64. I'm sorry. He burned Rome in the 60s.
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In 68, he killed himself. And when he killed himself, the empire, there were civil wars everywhere, so bad that when they first set up the first siege of Jerusalem, that when
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Nero killed himself, they dispatched all the armies back to Rome because civil war broke out in the city of Rome.
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And what's more important, Jerusalem or Rome? And from the Roman Empire.
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The Roman Empire, because if the Roman Empire capital falls, what happens to the empire? It falls.
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They could care less about Jews killing one another at that point. All right. And the third was what?
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And we did say that was famine. And he had scales, meaning those, what are scales in ancient time?
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They were used for measuring. Yeah, they were a form for commerce. Yeah, they were used for commerce, so if I was going to go buy
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Jack's piece of property and I showed up and Jack said, well, you're going to have to give me 17 talents of gold.
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I didn't pull out some bills. Oh, you want 18 talents? I'm sorry.
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So you don't pull out bills and hand somebody or write them a check.
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You know, they actually pulled out coins of gold or however they did it, and it was measured.
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It was also something in the Old Testament we need to remember. There was always a condemnation against false weights and balances, remember?
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And what did some of the Jewish leaders do? They clipped on that kind of thing.
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Oh, yeah, they did a lot of false weights and balances, which ultimately brought the judgment of God on the
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Jewish nation again, well, before. So this is kind of where we left off.
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We didn't finish. Famine was always a judgment of God when it was concerning the people of God.
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We read in, I think, Leviticus 26, what God would use to punish His people if they broke
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His law and how He would dry up the land. He wouldn't send them rain, and not sending rain would mean famine, and any time they broke the covenant, famine would come.
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And I think it was probably about three years ago, Andy was teaching on, he taught the
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Book of Ruth. You may remember what happened right at the beginning of the Book of Ruth. Why did they leave and run to the land of the
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Moabites and the two men, Chilion, what was Chilion? What was the other dude's name? Anyway, whatever them dudes were, their names, they were from Bethlehem.
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They were Ephreathites. They left. They were running because there was a famine in the land during the time of the judges.
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And what was the theme that we know at the time of the judges? Every man was doing what was right in his own eyes.
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So what did God do in the time of judges to scourge His people? He sent famine.
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And what did they do in order to try to leave the famine, the judgment of God, those men, those three men, the husband and the sons, they went to the land of Moab with Naomi and then they met their wives and all that.
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Do you remember what happened to the three men when they got there? They died. They were struck dead. So anyway, and if you continue to read on in that, probably
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I think it's in the first chapter about halfway down in Ruth, it says, and then the Lord visited
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His people. And they came back. The famine had ended. It said the Lord visited His people and gave them food. So whenever God was done scourging them with famine,
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He raised up food in the land and they were able to come back. Now, other times there's famine in the land, we can say maybe not the judgment of God because it did affect the people of God.
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In the New Testament, you remember in Jerusalem, Paul had to get a collection because the
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Jewish brethren, Christians, were struggling with famine in Jerusalem.
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And they gathered a collection of money and food and they sent it. But it wasn't widespread. Not like it was in the time of the judges or in the time of here.
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This was widespread in Israel and in Jerusalem.
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Hey, just think about how this took place. If the armies of Rome surround and set up a siege wall, they're cutting anything in and out.
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We would agree, right? That's what siege walls do, right? The civil war, whoever is the strongest, then begins to gather in all of the cereal crops, okay?
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Remember, they restored houses in the temple complex. The civil war that broke out within Jerusalem, the insurgents then controlled those cereal crops, meaning the grain and the barley and all of that.
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Well, once they controlled that, then what begins to happen to the people? Famine.
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They begin to starve. Hey, and if you can't get anything out and only a small group of people control what's in that area and they sell it, that's why we can say right here, we can agree in history when it says a pair of scales was in his hand.
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It goes on and talks about a quart of wheat for a denarius or three quarts of barley for a denarius.
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You see what they're charging an exorbitant amount of money for a quart of wheat.
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You know what a quart of wheat would make you? A sandwich. You got a family, you're going to be breaking it up in just little enough pieces to put the taste on your palate.
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Now, like I said last week at the end, I don't do exe Josephus, but we do need to understand that Josephus has a very detailed account of what took place.
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Does everybody know who Josephus is? Yes, no. Huh? No?
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Do I need to explain who he is? He was a Jewish historian that had, he was a general when the insurgent war broke out in 66.
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He was also a priest, Jewish priest. He then led an army.
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They got held up in the city of Utopita, and Utopita is where the Titus came.
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They surrounded the city. They weren't going to let any out. Those men were considered zealots, those fighters, and they took what they would draw on the last 40 held up.
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Everybody was killed. They went to this dungeon or cave, and they would pass out lots.
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And if I was to give yours and it had my name on it, that means you're to kill me. And that's how they distinguished of one another until you get the last one.
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The last one would then kill himself. That's actually what happened in Masada and the last that was held up in 73
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A .D. So when it got down to Josephus and his last buddy,
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Josephus was like, I got a better idea. Why don't we just turn ourself in?
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And he did. They took him. He got, that's when Vespasian was the general. He told
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Vespasian this. He said, I'm giving you a prophecy. You will be the emperor of Rome.
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He said, wrap that guy up and stick him in jail. So he did. They didn't kill him.
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Well, then when Nero dies, Vespasian is in Alexandria, and where is
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Alexandria? Not Virginia. It's in Egypt. He is then made, by the
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Senate, he is made emperor. That's into 68, 69. He's like, ding, ding, ding, ding.
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Hey, I remember that little Jewish dude told me that I was going to be emperor.
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He's a prophet. Pull him out of jail. Put clothes on him. I'm going to adopt him.
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That's how he got the last name Flavus. Flavus is a Roman name.
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So that's how we have detailed accounts of what took place, not only inside Jerusalem, but inside the temple, because he was a
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Jew, and they could send him in. I think I said this last week. They could send him in onto the temple complex without desecrating it by a
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Gentile so that it wouldn't cause any more uproar. He could go in, offer whatever peace offering they were, not peace offering as in grain or anything, but an olive branch to them saying, look, we'll quit.
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Do it through Josephus as the liaison. So we have detailed accounts of what was going on within the city.
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Well, Josephus tells us, and you can look this up. This is all from memory. I think it's in Book 5,
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Chapter 10, probably second, halfway through the second paragraph. He says, those that were in the city sold whatever they had for one quart of wheat.
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If you were the poor, you would sell all that you had for barley. Now, that sounds an awful lot like what we just read.
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Hey, Josephus had no idea about the Book of Revelation. Matter of fact, he didn't care about the
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Book of Revelation. He was a Jewish person that thought Jesus was a good teacher, thought he was a real man, but he didn't think he was the
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Messiah. But as we continue to go through the book, and I'll quote
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Josephus quite a bit more because of his detailed accounts, he does notice this, that what is taking place on the
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Jewish nation is the judgment of God. He does say that. And he says that because he knows his
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Old Testament, and he knows that when famine was going to come, when sword would come, when disease would come, that would only come from Yahweh because of their disobedience.
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Look, he knew the corruption that was in the city of Jerusalem. He knew all of that.
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Matter of fact, to a certain degree, he was probably part of that because he was a priest at one time. So, Josephus makes it very clear that the prophecy of what would take place at the siege was a quart of wheat for a denarius, not just three quarts of barley for a denarius.
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Now, because the book of Revelation is heavily rooted in the
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Old Testament, I know you all read
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Lamentations a lot, but turn over to Lamentations. Remember last week we were reading in Leviticus.
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Normally I'm not a flipper, but we're going to flip a little bit today. In Leviticus 26, we read where God said, hey, you're going to eat your sons and your daughters.
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You disobey my covenant. You're going to eat your sons and your daughters. Well, that's exactly what would take place.
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Lamentations is written probably right after, like within days, or the memory of the days right after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 when the
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Babylonians came in. Okay? And the whole book of Lamentations is about as Jeremiah walks through the city where they had broken the covenant of God, he is saying this is what
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God said he was going to do, and he has done it. So, if you were to just, if you were to, let's see, chapter 2.
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Talks about the anger of God on the city. And listen to what he says. He says in verse, end of verse 2.
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It says, he has brought them to the ground. He has profaned the kingdom of priests. He had, verse 3, he has drawn his hand back, his right hand back.
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He has burned the city of Jacob like with flaming fire. He has bent his bow like an enemy.
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He has set his right hand against him like an adversary. He has slain all of them who used to be pleasant in his eyes.
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He has poured out his wrath like fire. He has swallowed up all of Israel. He has swallowed up all the holy places.
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He has destroyed it. He has destroyed his appointed meeting place. God has forgotten, the
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Lord has caused to be forgotten, meaning the place of God. He has despised the king and the priest, the indignation of his anger.
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The Lord has now rejected his altar. He has abandoned his sanctuary, and he has delivered them into the enemy's hands.
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This is what Jeremiah was saying God did to his people. So when we read
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Revelation, and we see the judgment of God coming on the city of Jerusalem, look, we shouldn't have any problem saying, man,
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God is doing almost to the T what he did to the nation of Israel in 586.
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From 586 to 70 AD was 656 years to the day, to the destruction, to the day.
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God ain't playing. You keep his covenant, or he's going to punish you.
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Then when Jesus Christ came in his fullness, which was the fullness of the old covenant, the embodiment of the new, and you reject that full revelation, hey, the judgment's going to be worse.
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The judgment's going to be worse. And you can go on, and you can keep reading through the book of Lamentations if you want to be depressed.
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And he says about midway through the chapter, he continues to make observations within the city.
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Verse 11, my eyes fall with tears, my spirit's greatly troubled, my heart's poured out on the earth because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.
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When little ones and infants faint in the streets, and they say to their mother, listen what God, because God sent the famine to the city then as well.
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He said, look, in the cities, they would say to their mother or mom, where is grain and wine as they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city, and their life is poured out on the mother's bosom.
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Famine. That's why he sent it in 586. That's why he's going to send famine in 67 to 70
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AD. You can go on, and you can continue to read through the book as well, and you can get to other places where he talks about the mothers not caring for their children anymore, like ostrich steps on eggs.
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You know, ostriches will crush all over their eggs. That's what he calls them. And then you can go on, he talks about the famine.
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He talks about the famine in chapter 4. He says, better of those would have been slain for the sword than to be slain with hunger.
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And actually, Josephus, he says the same thing in book 6,
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I think it's chapter 7, paragraph 4 or 5. He says the same thing.
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He says, it would have been better for someone to have been struck dead by the sword than to die the death of famine.
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What does he say here? It would have been better for those to have been slain with the sword than to be slain with hunger. For they pine away being stricken like the fruits of the field.
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And it says, in the hands of compassionate women. Listen to this. This is what Jeremiah saw. Boiled their own children, and they became food for them because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.
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And then he goes on to say in chapter 5, speaking of the famine, our skin has become black like an oven because of the burning heat of the famine, the ravished women of Zion and the virgins in the city of Judah princes have been hung by their hand, and elders were not respected.
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The exact same thing that happened in 586. These descriptions are the same things that happened in 70
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AD. I just wanted to show you that God has been consistent. He was consistent in the old covenant where he was patient with them for 490 years.
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You understand that? God was extremely patient with them. 490 years, long suffering with them, seeing them prophet after prophet, after preacher after preacher, to call them to repentance, and what did they do?
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They held their fist up to God and said, we're going to do it our way. And God finally says, I'll have no more of it.
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And he hauled them off into captivity for 70 years. Well, this time when Christ comes, he gives them about 40 years to repent before he wipes out the city of Jerusalem.
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Now, back to Revelation, and then he says at the end of verse 6,
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Do not damage the oil or the wine. And I know some of you women like that. Don't touch the wine. Don't touch the wine.
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Now, I have my way of understanding what's being said here.
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There are multiple ways that you can understand that. Was the voice that was coming out of the four living creatures saying, hey, don't touch the oil and the wine.
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That was sacred within the temple. Okay? Inside the temple complex when it was being ravaged by the insurgents in the
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Civil War, the wine was made for offering.
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And the oil as well. So that was considered holy. And it was told not to touch it.
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But what we do know that the insurgents did do was they plundered the wine. They become drunken monkeys on the temple complex.
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They had open blatant homosexual acts on the temple complex.
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Okay? And they adorned themselves with the oil and put on makeup. Hey, this is all.
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You can read this in Josephus. I'm just letting you know. You don't take my word for it. I'm just a painter with a big beard.
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Okay? Read the person that was there. Open blatant homosexual.
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Painted their eyes up. Acted like women. Dude, you had trannies on the temple complex in 67 to 70.
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Now. It doesn't sound much different than today. Well, it wasn't any different than it was in the time of Jeremiah.
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Anybody remember what Josiah did in the time of Jeremiah? He went in there. Remember, he was the youngest king.
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I think he got converted, how we understand it. He became king around eight. But about 16 years old.
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It talks about him beginning to walk with the Lord. That's how it talks about. First thing he does, he gets the book of the law.
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He reads it. He goes right to the temple. And he kills all of the temple prostitutes.
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Male. That's what was on the complex. So, just when that nut job from First Baptist Church in Dallas.
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He says, hey, you know, homosexuality within the people of God. Being acceptable in the people of God is unprecedented.
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The mob needs to read his Bible. Homosexuality has infiltrated the people of God from the time of the
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Old Testament. Even to now. And the problem is the people of God accept it instead of dealing with it.
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Now, I'm not saying we should kill them. Okay, I'm not saying that. But it needs to be dealt with instead of bringing them in as an alternative lifestyle.
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It began to be accepted in the time of the kings. God dealt with it. It's being accepted within the church now.
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And if the church doesn't stand up and do something about it, we're going to see the judgment of God come on the church.
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This is the bottom line. Now, that's not how I understand do not touch the oil and the wine.
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Like I said, if you disagree with my assessment, I'm fine with that. I understand when he says don't touch the oil and the wine is you have seen a person would have to work all day, all right, to get how much?
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Wheat? Enough for a sandwich. But if you don't touch the oil and the wine, who normally has oil and wine?
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Wealthy. Wealthy. Man, look here. Look at the divide that causes within the civil unrest.
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Rich are not affected by usually famine.
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Why? Because they've got enough cash to buy it. What about the poor? Look, man, when you ain't got no money, so he makes if the oil and the wine are left alone, you make this divide that's already there, make what?
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Further apart, which causes what? More civil unrest. More civil unrest.
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Now you're going to have, hey, man, people will do some crazy stuff to food. We don't look.
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Milk prices going up, Pop -Tarts costing a dollar more a box, that ain't famine, okay?
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Because the eggs, and I look, and I think eggs were too high. But hey, when eggs were eight dollars, what were they?
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Well, yours were free to us. Whatever the eggs were, okay, $8, $12, whatever, if they were $30, okay, that's not famine.
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Famine means nothing. And people will do some crazy stuff. You begin to hallucinate.
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You begin to lose your mind. You begin to eat your own kids. That's pretty rough.
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So if you make this class warfare worse, civil unrest becomes worse, people begin to lose their mind, and then you have more killing, more fighting, and more social separation instead of, hey, just from a human standpoint, if the
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Jews would have just stuck together instead of killing one another, they probably could have pushed
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Rome off of Jerusalem for a little bit longer, but they'd be too busy killing each other. I mean, they were going through there, anybody that would not join the insurgency, it says they would slit their throat in the street.
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They would gather them up during the day, at night, and slay them during the day.
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That civil unrest would then scare the people to do what? It would scare them to either give these people that are
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Simon Eliezer and John Giscola, give these people their money or follow them or join forces with them or we're going to die.
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That was the only options that those people had. Now, if you disagree with me on how
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I see it being a separation causing more civil unrest, I'm fine with that. It's hard for me to believe, do not touch the oil and the wine, and then it to be them going in and plundering the insurgents, plundering the oil and the wine because it says don't damage it.
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That's why. Now, that gives us to the next one. Let me read it here.
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And when the lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature come out, and I looked, and behold, an ashen horse.
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Does anybody else say other than ashen? Pale. Pale. Who's the pale horse rider? Clint Eastwood.
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The pale horse, ashen horse, and he who sat on it had the name
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Death and Hades was following with him. Hey, anybody here remember the movie
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Tombstone? Remember what happened at the beginning? Ringo quoted something from Revelation, and he said,
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Revelations, somebody should have shot him right then. It's Revelation. You should have shot him right then.
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When you get towards the end, because that set the trajectory of the movie supposedly, and who at the end says
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Death and Hell's coming with him, anybody remember who said that? It was Wyatt Earp. He was coming after them because they had killed his family.
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That's what he says. That was the quote that both of them used in the movie. So it says here that Death and Hades was following with him.
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All right. The pale or ashen is actually not really the best understanding of it because the word in Greek is chloros.
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Anybody know what chloros? Chlorophyll. Green. Green. That would be a better way of understanding it because chloros.
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And because it's pale, I made these connections.
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I'll use pale, greenish. Matter of fact, our word chlorox comes from chloros, and you ever look at chloros?
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It's kind of got that greenish, yellow, pale color. All right. So the pale horse comes, and he actually has a name.
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Death. Hades. Before we walk through it, why
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Hades? Is that like the Christian cuss word? Get the
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Hades out of here. What is it? What is it? It's the place of the eternal state of the dead.
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It is actually, and I agree, remember shio.
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That's the Hebrew word for it. Hades is the
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Greek. Both of these was the place of the dead.
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Remember, if you like this better. Hades and shio was just the place of the dead.
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That's all it was. Now, you do have the separation of whether it was the place of the inferno, where he talks about Abraham's bosom being on one side, and then across the gulf.
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So if you wanted to say there was a gulf here, we could do that. But technically speaking,
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Hades and shio was the same. It's just the place of the dead. But because we know what the book is talking about, at the end of the book, what gets thrown into the lake of fire, along with every unclean thing?
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The serpent. The serpent, and what else? Death and Hades. So once you have the resurrection, who's left in Hades?
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The unconverted. The unconverted. That's why it's going to be thrown into the lake of fire, because the resurrection, the redeemed, have been raised from the grave to newness of life and been given a new body.
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So that's what Hades is talking about. Now, it says that when he broke that, that death and Hades was following with him.
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That horse was coming to bring death, and the authority was given over him to kill a fourth of the earth.
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We need to understand that as we go through these, as we go through these, it's going to escalate.
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It's going to escalate. So with the seals, it says one -fourth.
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When we get to the trumpets, it's going to be a third.
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When you get to the bowls, it's going to be the whole.
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So you see the escalation as we get to these. This one, this is going to be a fourth of the land, earth, however you understand that word, because it can be the same.
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It says he was given a fourth to kill those by famine, pestilence, with the beast of the earth, on the earth.
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Remember, a few weeks ago, I said that the Greek word is ge, gamma eta.
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It means earth or land. And the Hebrew is ares, which means land or earth, depending on how you, hey, both of them are equally good, okay?
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So if you're, I don't know if anybody says land or if anybody says earth, they're equally as good, okay?
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Equally as fine. I prefer land because of who this is directed to.
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This is directed to the people of God, the covenant -breaking people of God within Jerusalem.
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And he says that he's going to seal them with famine, the pestilence, beast of the field, and sword.
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Four things. Four things that God's going to send to them. Turn your
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Bible over to Ezekiel. I've got to hurry up.
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This is where Ezekiel does something a little crazy, cuts his hair, takes a third of it here, a third of it there, throws it here, throws it there, okay?
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He's talking about the destruction of Jerusalem. Remember, Ezekiel was taken off in the second deportation, 597 -ish, okay?
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Listen to what he says. I'll begin in verse 12. Five. One third of you will die by plague or be consumed by famine.
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Another third of you will fall by the sword around you. And the other third will be scattered to every wind and an unsheathed sword will go behind you.
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In other words, I'm going to run you to other lands, and you know what I'm going to do when you get there? I'm going to kill you there, too.
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Thus, my anger will be spent, and I will be satisfied my wrath on them, and I will be appeased when they will know that I am the
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Lord and have spoken of my zeal when I have spent my wrath upon them. Moreover, I will make a desolation and a reproach among the nations which surround you in the sight of all who pass by.
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So it will be a reproach and a reviling and a warning and an object of horror to the nations.
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What was the reason for punishing the nation of Israel under the old covenant? It was so when the nations around them saw what
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God would do to his own people for them breaking the covenant. Excuse me. They should beware.
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If this is what God will do to his own people who break his covenant, what will he do to the unconverted, uncircumcised
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Gentile? That's what it was supposed to do. And he says that I will execute my judgment and my anger against you and wrath and raging rebukes.
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I am the Lord. I have spoken. And when I send against them the deadly arrows of famine, which were the destruction of those whom
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I will send to destroy you, then I will also intensify the famine upon you, break the staff of bread.
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In other words, you ain't going to have no food, no bread. Moreover, I will send on you famine, wild beasts, and they will bereave you of children.
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Plague and bloodshed also will pass through you, and I will bring the sword on you.
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I, the Lord, have spoken. This is what God told Jeremiah to tell the people he was going to do to his people because they broke the covenant.
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Now, you say, well, Mike, there was one -third and one -third, one -third, not four. Okay, if that's not good enough for you, turn over to chapter 14, verse 21.
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For thus says the Lord God, how much more when I send my four severe judgments against Jerusalem, the sword, famine, wild beasts, and pestilence, to cut off man and beast from it.
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Yet behold, survivors will be left in it who will be brought out, both sons and daughters.
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And behold, they are going to come forth to you, and you will see their conduct and their actions, and you will be comforted from the calamity which
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I have brought against Jerusalem. Now, there's the four. I think King James says sword judgment.
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Is that what it says, Mike? Verse 21? Sword, yeah. Four severe sword judgments.
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The word plague and the word pestilence can be translated in the
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Greek to the word death, which is thanatos. That's the Greek word. So when I'm reading in the
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Septuagint, I look at the Septuagint, how did the Greek translation of the Old Testament, how did they understand what was being said in the
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Old Testament from the Greek perspective? This word thanatos is used for pestilence.
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And as we get into the trumpets, you're going to see those are heavily connected to the plagues that go on in Egypt.
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And I think it's in chapter 5 of Exodus. I think it's verse 3. He says, and I will send pestilence among the land.
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The word pestilence in Greek. The Hebrew word for pestilence is debere.
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The Greek word is thanatos. They translated that thanatos. So they understood that pestilence meant what?
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Death. Not lice. It meant death. Death.
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Over 50 times he uses the word pestilence in the Old Testament.
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It was translated in the Greek as thanatos, which is death. And I was in that class over there, and Andy was here.
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I was doing 2 Samuel. In 2 Samuel chapter 24, a real obscure thing that says that, you know,
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Satan incited David to make a census. And you're reading Chronicles. God did it.
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And you're reading the other passages. David did it. Okay. Whatever it is. He took a census, and what he did was wrong.
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We can talk about why it was wrong another day. Could that take up 3 hours? What he did was wrong.
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He knew it was wrong because as soon as he did it, David said, I have sinned against God. He did it, and God said, all right, check it out.
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I'm going to let you choose your medicine. I'm going to let you run from your enemies for 3 years, famine for 3 years, or for 3 weeks, and in 3 years, a famine, or 3 days, pestilence.
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And he says, God's merciful. I will let you do it. God sent 3 days of pestilence.
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And if you go back and you read what that pestilence was, what was it? Thousands of dead. Death. Pestilence meant death.
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So in however long that was, it said from the morning to that appointed time, and we really don't know how long it was.
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God said he was going to do it for 3 days, but we really don't know because it says from morning until the appointed time, because that angel was going out slaying, and then
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God finally says, they've had enough. So I think it was before the actual 3 days.
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God said, okay, they've had enough. I've already killed 70 ,000 people. They've had enough.
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And that word pestilence there that God sent is the word for death. Now, John, the writer of the
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Revelation, you don't think he knew what these passages said? Of course he did.
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You don't think that when the Holy Spirit was inspiring him to write this and that he was seeing this vision that these things weren't coming to mind?
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You better believe it. Because John knew that the judgment of God was coming on those who had rejected the final revelation of who his
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Messiah was. So, back to Revelation. We ain't going to finish.
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Revelation chapter 6. A kill with a sword, pestilence.
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I'm sorry. They would kill with a sword, with famine, with pestilence, and with wild beasts of the earth. Hey, God was going to not only send the sword.
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He was not only going to send famine. He was not only going to just cause them to drop dead. You see what he was going to cause them to do?
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What was the other one? You'd use one part of his creation to kill another part of the creation. Hey, buddy. Matter of fact, he's going to use the very creation that's not culpable of being sinful in any degree to go out and be a judgment on the image bearer.
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Hey, in ancient times... We've got to go. In ancient times, and even in today, in countries in the
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Middle East, and in places where there's tigers and lions in the jungles, you know what the most terrifying thing is?
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Other than being caught by a hippo in the water? Is a lion sneaking into the camp, or a leopard, or something, and grabbing that person, and then dragging them away and eating them?
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You don't hear, Hey, man, we all got... Who in here got cats? Cats are quiet.
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Cats are sneaky. I love to watch the National Geographic. You see them llamas hopping, trying to get away, and then leopard just swat one of them's leg, grabbing it, just...
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Start chewing on it. It's awesome. Well, then that leopard will then drag that beast that's four times its weight, drag it up into a tree.
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Hey, man, if God sends wild beasts to go eat people, He's just in doing it. If He sends the armies of Rome to judge those people,
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He's just doing it. If He makes civil unrest to where people kill one another,
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God is just in doing it. And we don't have time to get into compatibilistic determinism, but we will do that next week.
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Gary, will you pray for us? We thank
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You that You're a merciful Father. We thank You that You have great mercy on us. In our history,
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Lord, God, so we just... Anyway, we ask You to be with us today as we go into the sanctuary, and we pray for our pastor as he brings forth