Revelation Class (July 12)

Well, good morning. Andy, will you open us up with a word of prayer?

Father, again, we are thankful that you have come to study the Word of God and pray the Lord that you would help us in our lives to follow your Word, to love your Word, to trust your Word. We need Brother Mike now as he leads us.

In Christ's name, Amen.

Revelation 18 and the Fall of Babylon as the Fall of Jerusalem

Revelation chapter 18, beginning in verse 1. For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the passion of her immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed acts of immorality with her. And the merchants of the earth have become rich by the wealth of her sensuality.

And I heard another angel from heaven saying, Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive her plagues. For her sins have piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities to pay her back even as she has paid, and give back to her double according to her deeds.

In the cup which she has mixed, mix twice as much for her, to the degree that she glorify herself and live sensuously, to the same degree give her torment and mourning. For she says in her heart, I sit as a queen and I am not a widow and I will never see mourning.

And for this reason in one day her plagues will come, pestilence, mourning, famine, and she will be burned up with fire for the Lord God who judges her is strong. And the kings of the earth have committed acts of immorality, live sensuously with her.

They will weep and will lament over her when they see the smoke of her burning standing at a distance because of the fear of her torment. Saying, whoa, whoa, the great city, Babylon, the strong city, for one hour your judgment has come.

And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore, cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones, pearls, fine linen, purple and silk and scarlet and every kind of citron wood, every article of ivory, every article made from very costly wood, bronze, iron, marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, perfume, frankincense, wine, olive oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle, sheep, cargoes of horses, chariots, slaves, and human lives.

And the fruit of you, the fruit you long for has gone from you. And all these things that were luxurious and splendid have passed away from you and men will no longer find them. The merchants of these things who became rich from her will stand at a distance because of the fear of her torment.

And they will be weeping and they will be saying, whoa, whoa, the great city. She who was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls for in one hour such great wealth has been laid waste.

And every ship master and every passenger and sailor and as many as make their living at the sea stood at a distance and were crying out as they saw the smoke of her burning saying, what city is like the great city?

And they threw dust on their heads and they were crying and weeping and mourning. And whoa, whoa, the great city in which all who had ships at the sea became rich by her wealth for in one hour she had been laid waste.

Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her. Then a strong angel took up a stone like a great millstone. He threw it into the sea saying, so will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down with violence and will no longer be found.

And the sounds of the harvest and the musicians and the flute players and the trumpeters will no longer be heard in you any longer. And the craftsmen and any craft will be no longer found in you. And the sound of the mill will not be heard in you any longer.

And the light of the lamp will not shine in you any longer. And the voice of the bridegroom and the bride will not be heard with you any longer. For your merchants were great men of the earth, and because of the nations were deceived by your sorcery.

And in her was found the blood of the prophets, the saints, and all who had been slain. Okay, last week we've got to, where it says rejoice over her. And oh heaven, oh saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her.

Prophetic Patterns, Double Fulfillment, and the Souls Under the Altar

So this is specific, spit it out. Specifically speaking of, there we go, of the fall of Jerusalem. So when we back in, we had the one and the seals. You had the four horsemen. And the main thrust of the book has been heading to these two chapters, 17 and 18.

It is the only subject in all of Revelation that takes up two chapters. We had souls under the altar. And six, we had tear of the lamb.

And seven, we had silence.

So, does anybody remember what the souls were saying under the altar? Good morning. How long? How long? And maybe Janet or Miss Deb will probably have a transcript. I'm just a shot in the dark. I believe it was almost a year ago I taught on the souls under, almost a year ago, I think.

Somebody could do a fact check. And I said then that the souls under the altar had, I don't believe in what's called the double fulfillment. Okay? I think double fulfillment is confusing. When you say you have something get fulfilled twice, you're saying the same thing happened the same way, identical, and nowhere in Scripture does that happen.

I understand what people are trying to say when they say it's a double fulfillment. But what I said here was there would be a pattern that would set a trajectory that would not exhaust the fulfillment of this.

If y 'all remember that. Just like you say, well, you're saying that something happens again, so that prophecy's not exhausted. I could take you countless messianic prophecies about Jesus that we could say, and it's immediate fulfillment.

You would go, well, wait a minute. That's talking about Jesus. That's how we understand that now. But that's not how they understood that in the Old Testament. How many of y 'all read Isaiah 7? Or 14?

Remember? It's a messianic prophecy. But does anybody know actually what that was about? It was not originally in its context about a... When it was originally given, it was about Ahaziah told that he was going to be given a sign.

And that sign would be that a maiden or virgin would have a child. Y 'all remember what I'm talking about, right? Anybody read chapter 8 of Isaiah? Anybody remember who actually had the child? Anybody?

It was Isaiah. Isaiah goes. You get to chapter 8. You go to the beginning. It says, and Isaiah goes home, and he goes into the prophetess, and she has a child. And then they give him a name, and he gives her some crazy name.

I can't even pronounce it. Megalagagagagagaga or something. Look it up. And then it says, you keep following it down. It says, and this was to show that God was with us. Which is the word for what? Emmanuel.

Move forward. Matthew 2. What's it about Christ? For unto you. Thank you. So, you see how that set a pattern? Did they understand that when Isaiah said that this was going to be about the coming Messiah?

Did he? No, he did not. It was to Ahaziah. It was going to be a sign was given to him. What was the sign going to be? That a maiden or a virgin was going to have a child. That child was the prophetess of the prophet Isaiah had a child.

I'll meet you with another one. Hosea. I mean, who read Hosea this week? Probably nobody. How many people read the book of Hosea? It is a depressing book. Okay? But you get to chapter 11, and he's recounting what took place.

And he says, hey, out of Egypt I called my son Jacob. Everybody remember that? It's in chapter 11. And you know what happens when you get to Matthew? What does Matthew say? What does he say? He uses that about Jesus.

Remember when Jesus bolted and had to go to Egypt? Joseph took him to Egypt, and then he says, hey, so-and-so's dead. You can come back now. Archelaus, Herod, all those men had died. He says, now you can go back.

And he goes, Jesus was coming back with his family to go back to Nazareth. What was the quotation used? This was in fulfillment of? Out of Egypt I will call my son. So you understand that those were not double fulfillment.

It was a prophecy that was not exhausted because it had a future reference. That is what I said about this. You see the souls around the altar, okay? And I said those souls that were around the altar were crying out how long?

How long before God was going to avenge their death? If these are the souls that are under the altar, and he was asking them to avenge their death, what had happened to them? Certainly dead. They were disembodied souls.

But if they're saying to avenge our death, did these people die of a heart attack? Did these people die of tuberculosis? Did these people die just walking down the road and their bodies, their organs just came out?

No, this was specifically speaking of men and women that are saints that had been put to death for the cause of Christ or even back up under the Old Testament, those who had been put to death by leadership of Israel or connected to Israel, because I do believe in that because it goes from Abel to Zechariah, the son of Berechiah.

Imagine all of those people and prophets that had been put to death. Let's just think about under Ahab and Jezebel. How many of those men got put to death? She sent an edict out to kill how many? All of them.

All the prophets of God. And you remember, Elijah then goes, and he says, Oh, woe is me, and God says, Hold on. Quit wallowing in your own tears. I got, what did he say, 7 ,000 more just like you? I mean, I had to make him go, I'm really not that special after all.

I can call a fire down from heaven, but there's 7 ,000 more people just like me. So it was specifically in its original context. He was like, Look, we're wanting to be avenged. Wanting to be avenged. And Jesus said that he would do that.

So the original fulfillment would be in 70 AD. But does that set a pattern forward that, Hey, God's not going to avenge those who have been put to death by Stalin, Hitler? Do we believe it that way? No, it does set a pattern, and you can even go that, because when we got to the trumpets, what was at the trumpets at the beginning?

At the beginning of the trumpets, it says, Remember, progressive parallels. You're going to get more information that wasn't here. We got here. And what did it say when you got to the altar, and he filled up the censer, and he threw it?

It says, All the saints were crying out for joy. All of them. So now you take the ones that had been beheaded, or not yet beheaded, but the ones that had been put to death, and you take those who were maybe just like you and I, who were going, Hey, we want to see God avenge those who had been murdered.

I've said this before. I'll say it again. When ISIS was going across the Middle East, 2014, 15, until Trump blasted and killed all of them at 16, I prayed every day that God would wipe them off the face of the planet.

I prayed every day that God would dry them up like a noonday slug on the pavement, and I have every right to do that because of the imprecatory psalms. As a matter of fact, I got stopped at the door. I wasn't even an elder at the time.

I prayed, and I was like, God, kill them. How can you pray to God to kill them? Because they're killing my brothers and sisters in Christ. They're raping their children. They're enslaving the women, and they're killing the men.

Because of what reason? Do you all remember? It's because they were Christians. If they came in as Islam would come through, if they could not force them into some type of apostasy, what did they do? Dude, they were sticking their heads up on pikes outside Mosul, and if that was your child, that was your son, that was your daughter, that was your wife, they had raped your wife in front of your eyes, what would you want done?

That's right. And that should be a natural response. The thing is is you and I aren't supposed to take that vengeance. Ooh, that'd be hard. Look, if that had been me and I'd have had the finger to the button, buddy, it'd look like I blew up a laundry basket over there.

Boom, rags flying everywhere. Like, no, look, camels and togas everywhere. All right. That's why I don't have the key to that button. But that's how we feel. But God says he's going to take care of it, and what were these disembodied souls under the altar saying?

Please, avenge us. Avenge us, avenge us. That would be fulfilled in 70 AD when he destroyed Jerusalem. And how do we know that? Because Jesus said it time and time again. He said, because of what you've done, your house is left desolate.

Desolate. And if you remember, you go back earlier in the week. He came in. He fashions a whip. He runs all the money changers out, runs all the animals out. And just to let you know, when that takes place, we have no indication they ever set back up again that week, just to let you know.

No indication. Matter of fact, we know this, the next day when he comes back in to Jerusalem, they come to him on that Tuesday because he comes in on a triumphal Sunday. He comes in, makes his way in.

They bow, Hosanna, Hosanna. If you read all of the accounts together in chronological order, and if you all don't have them, I made a chronological account of everything that took place from the time he came in, in order.

And he comes in. He goes into the temple complex. He looks around that night when he comes in. He just looks around, and then he leaves. But what's the first thing he does on his way back? He curses the fig tree in a picture of apostate Israel.

He then goes into Jerusalem. He fashions a whip. He cleans out the place. And you may remember what he said as he was swinging that whip around. It was a quotation of Jeremiah. He says, my father's house, one translation says my father's house, and then all of a sudden I think another, one account, and it says my house will be a house of prayer.

So he's making the connection of my father, meaning God, and my house of himself making a connection that what is he? God, okay, will be a house of prayer for all nations, for all nations. Then he says later that week after he goes to the continual shadow boxing and sparring all week from Tuesday to Thursday, arguing with those people, he finally gets fed up with them, and in Matthew 23 he throws out the seven woes against the religious leaders, and he says, your house, you want it?

Your house is now left desolate and out. Jesus does the mic drop, and he's gone. Never to return, and the glory of God goes to the Mount of Olives, where he then gives the discourse of he's going to just knock everything down.

So fulfillment here, this is a fulfillment of that. Now, you say, well, is there another fulfillment that will exhaust this and what was said at the beginning of the trumpets? Of course, there's coming a day, and it'll be the final judgment, when the nations of the earth are gathered against God and his people, and they're going to fight.

We're fixing to come to that in Revelation 19. What's going to happen at the end of the age? When Satan is loosed, and I'm going to make a, for chart lovers, I'm going to write on the board, in order, how I understand what happened, you're going to see Satan's going to be loosed, and once Satan's loosed, what does he go and do?

He gathers the nations of the world as numerous as the sand of the seashore, it says, and then they gather against God and his people, but then who comes down and speaks a word? It's over. It's over. The fastest MMA fight in the world lasted five seconds.

This ain't going to be close. It's over. He's going to speak. You know, it talks about Jesus having a sword coming out of his mouth. It doesn't mean that Jesus is walking around with a sword really hung out of his mouth, okay?

It's speaking of the judgment that's going to come out of his mouth when he speaks, and it is going to be over. There's going to be no survivors except for those who are with the Lamb, and what has been the whole point of the book.

Those who are followers of the Lamb will be preserved. Those who are followers of the Lamb will make it to the end. Those who are followers of the Lamb will what? Will be inheritors, and we'll get there.

Rejoicing in God's Judgment and the Vindication of His Name

New heavens, new earth, where no more evil will be. So, it says here, rejoice over her. Because, O heaven, you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her.

Should these people now be happy? Ah, you better believe they should. Better believe it, because God's righteous, and because God's righteous, he must deal with his creatures in such a way that he maintains the glory of his own name, and in destroying those men and women that were apostate, and they persecuted God's people.

They wanted their religious system more than they wanted Jesus Christ. God was fully vindicated in doing so. Should we be happy today that God destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD? Should we? We should. First and foremost, we should be thankful that it was done to the T, the way Jesus said it was done, because no man, no woman, no egg-headed liberal can ever say that Jesus' words were not true.

He said it would happen this way, and it happened to the T. Therefore, Jesus' words are tenacious, they're real, and he was not a liar. What he said would come to pass, and it came in the way that he said it would.

We should be thankful for that. Hey, even when you read, Josephus was not a Christian, okay? Josephus was a priest. He had turned to a general and later captured, was adopted by Vespasian to then, that's how he got the name Flavus.

He was captured, later adopted, and he became the historian of the Jewish wars. But he knew enough about Old Testament Scripture that what was happening to Jerusalem was because they had abandoned God.

That's his quotation. This is a judgment of God on this nation of Jerusalem because of their abandonment of the covenant. I mean, that's his own words, and it's almost unbelievable that he would say that.

He's not a Christian, just letting you know. He had no skin in the game at all. Matter of fact, he even talked about a schism of Christ. So he never claimed the name of Christ, but he obviously knew who he was because, I mean, Jesus was the most famous man in all of Judea, and by the time he began to write the Jewish wars, 30, 40 years later, as a recollection, they knew that parts of that was because of the slaying of the Christians through the Jews.

Remember, who persecuted the Christians the most in the first century? Was it Rome? No, it was the Jews. So, rejoice, O heaven, saints and apostles and prophets, because God did what he said he was going to do.

He was going to punish her. Hey, just like in the Old Testament, when God said, hey, I'm going to punish the harlot in the Old Testament, meaning Samaria or apostate Jerusalem in 586. Hey, should they have been happy?

Yes, the faithful people should have been happy. Should they have been grieved in the sense that they have seen their countrymen murder, well, I shouldn't say executed, yes. I mean, look, any time we see someone die, we should not get pleasure in the death of the wicked, but we should be happy that God has used the sword of the government to then execute the wicked.

I mean, honestly, when my dad called me when Osama bin Laden was killed, thankful, okay, thankful, and you all should have been too. I'm not saying you're in sin if you're not, but I'm just saying you should have been thankful.

They killed our countrymen. One, they killed our brother. He killed our brothers and sisters in Christ. The only thing that bothered me was that man never again would have the opportunity to hear the gospel and repent, and that's what I told dad.

It thrills my soul that justice has been served in this life, but that just opened up eternal justice where he'll never be able to repent or never be able to hear the gospel, never be able to hear the saving power of Jesus Christ, ever, because of his execution in this life.

The Millstone Judgment, Babylon, and the Destruction of Jerusalem

And then when you get to verse 21, then a strong angel, it tickles me because it's like, okay, is there anything, is there a weak angel? You know, it's like we got these majestic angels that have rainbows behind their head.

Not the LGBT stuff. It's just if you remember back in 10, he had these glowing lights behind his head, and some people thought that was Christ, but Christ has never looked as an angel. And he's in these majestic robes, and he's glowing, and his feet are like burnished bronze.

His eyes are glowing. It's like, man, this is a majestic angel, you know, and then you get to this one. He's a strong angel. Well, I'm looking for the weak guy. I relate to the weak guy. And in this one, it's a strong angel.

And it says, he took up a stone like a great millstone, and he threw it in the sea saying, so will battle on the great city be thrown down with violence and will no longer, I'm sorry, and will not be found any longer.

All right. This goes back to, so y 'all should probably read Jeremiah 50, 51, and then the appendix of 52 of the Book of Jeremiah. You may remember what it said in chapter 50 and 51 of Jeremiah. If you went back and read, it says that God told the prophet to go out there.

I want you to take a scroll. I want you to roll it up, a Babylon. They represent a Babylon, and it tells us that. I want you to take it. I want you to wrap it around a stone, and I want you to throw it into the river Euphrates.

He said, such it will be when Babylon falls, it will never rise again. That's what he's saying here about Jerusalem because we know Babylon fell. So Babylon has to be speaking of something else. Babylon fell, 539, through Cyrus the Great, Darius the Mede, and then now we know that this Babylon has to be talking about something else and everything we have pointed out through points to Jerusalem from an early date.

From an early date. I would even say for those late-date guys, if this is talking about Rome, Rome didn't fall like that. Rome didn't fall like that. Matter of fact, some of those late-date men would say if this is about Rome, this would have to happen at the end of the age because there has to be a revived Roman Empire that will come up at the end of the age, and at the end of the age it will be a ten-nation conglomerate because of the seven heads and the ten horns and all that.

Okay? That's not what this is saying. This is saying that when Jerusalem falls in 70 A .D., it will never rise again. Now, do we have Israel as a geopolitical nation on the other side of the Atlantic that is thriving as a quasi-democracy?

Okay? You would agree with me. All right. Yes! Yeah. Is Jerusalem a real city over there? Yeah. Is it the same city that it was? I'll even say, is it the same city it was in 67 A .D.? No. Certainly. Let's even back it up a little further.

Was it the same city in 26 A .D.? No. But in 26 A .D., Christ had not yet been crucified. So that city was still something that pointed to who? Christ. That's right. Look, the whole city of Jerusalem pointed to who?

What's that? Christ! Yeah. Mount Zion pointed to what? Pointed to Christ. What did the brazen altar point to? Yeah. What did the butcher tables point to? What did the showbread point to? Christ. All right.

What did the menorah inside the holy place point to? What did the Ark of the Covenant inside the most holy place point to? Every one of those pointed to Christ. Every one of them. And when Jesus Christ came and fulfilled all of those things, that's why the temple veil was torn top to bottom.

We can say, hey, was the veil a point of Christ? Yeah. Hebrews says it was the veil of his flesh that was offered up. And now once he was offered up, that veil was torn in two, making way for everybody.

Sure, they mended up that and made another veil so they could do their oblations that were every sacrifice, every turtle dove's neck that was wrung, every time they cut a lamb's throat or chopped up a bullet.

Every time they did that from the time that Jesus Christ said, it is finished, was a blasphemous act against a holy God. But God was gracious for all of those, for those, what, 30 years, depending on when you believe Jesus actually was crucified, 30 to 40 years, God was gracious.

And those men went to the temple, and what did they do? They shared the gospel. What was Paul doing there? What was Peter and James doing there when they got the breaks beat off of them? Proclaiming when they went to Caiaphas and they were going to kill them, and they said, no, we better not do that.

We better not do that. And even Gamal said, I think it's in the Book of Acts, they were wanting to squash it by killing all of them. And Gamal said, hey, if this is an uprising like it's happened in the past, he was a rabbi, by the way, he said if this is an uprising that's happened in the past, you know what's going to happen?

The leader is dead. It will fizzle out. But if this is the real deal, that's not actually what he said, he said if this is for real, then this is going to flourish. If you remember, he says, let God work this out.

Let God work this out. I don't know if Gamal wound up being converted. We don't know any much about him. But that certainly pointed that he saw that this certainly could be legit. Obviously, we know.

The Call to Rejoice, the Warning to Repent, and the Spread of Persecution

Go ahead. You were talking about rejoice, and the people who don't want to rejoice in the destruction of earth, they can rejoice, too, in the fact that God's long-suffering, he was so long-suffering to give them the gospel he proclaimed sufficiently throughout Jerusalem before there was a destruction.

They had a chance to repent of those evil deeds before the destruction came.

Plenty of times to repent. Plenty of times. And because they stayed inside when Andy and Bert did, they taught through Acts in the academy, you just see why did persecution happen in Jerusalem? Why did it happen?

Anybody know? Andy, tell us. Why did it happen? Because they wouldn't leave. They were staying within Jerusalem, so they persecuted inside Jerusalem. God did. God allowed that to take place. And what happened?

It made them move from out of Jerusalem to Judea. Then what happened in Judea? Persecuted. Then they went from Judea to where? Samaria. And then when they got to Samaria, they kind of stopped there, and they were getting, and God said, all right, I told you to go to the uttermost parts of the earth, so what's going to happen?

He sends the scourge of persecution, and where did they go after that? Boom! Yeah. Then when Jerusalem falls, you just get out. You get out. You run. Yeah, because of any association with the Jewish people, you're in big trouble.

Even when you go, I mean, you could choose your poison. It would either be Nero or Domitian. Domitian hated everybody. He hated Christians. He hated anybody that had any threat against him, but he hated the Jews so much that, and I believe I've said this before, that he, in 90, he came to power.

Titus died in 81 A .D. He came to power in 81, ruled to 96. Around 90, he then imposed the temple tax again. This would be logical. Was the temple erect? So he's imposing something that's not erect so that he could recoup some of the coffers, money that they spent to squash the Jewish wars.

He's like, but you know what? We're going to make sure that the Jews pay this fee. The Jews. How did they know if a man was a Jew or not? That's exactly what he did. Pull your toga up from city to city.

And he paid a temple tax. And if he didn't, they were persecuted. Did Domitian persecute Christians? Yes, he did. Did he persecute Jews? Yep. Did he persecute anybody that did not like Domitian? Yeah.

He was an equal opportunity murderer. Yeah. He's like, hey, look, you don't like me? No problem. I'll kill you. If you're a Jew, I don't like you. I'll kill you. If you're a Christian, no problem. When you get to court, I'll kill you when you get there.

Why the Temple and Jerusalem Pointed to Christ

So the falling of Jerusalem. It says here, be thrown into the sea, and so it will be with great Babylon. So the city that's there today, although it is a city, it's not the city that was intended to be, and it will never be.

For our dispensational premillennial brothers who swear there has to be another temple on the Temple Mount is absolutely silly. Let's just give them the benefit of the doubt. Let's say they did put a structure up over there.

Let's say they could figure out how to do something with Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is on there, and the Dome of the Rock. Let's say they could figure out some way to weld those two together or blow them up, whatever they got to do.

And they put up another temple. Would it ever represent what the first one did? No. They got, I mean, when I was over there, they already got an altar built, a brazing altar ready. I asked the guy, like, you really think that's representative and going to function the way the first one did?

Well, no. Okay, so you know what you're doing is fairy tale. It's fairy tale. So instead of going out there, and this is what I told the guy, you know, curly Q thing, instead of going out there and putting little notes into a wall that's a reminder of the destruction of your apostasy, how about look to Golgotha where your penalty was paid and where the empty tomb is.

That's where you should look. Quit praying to a wall and pray to God. I get fired up about that. I better quit. So is there a city over there today? Yes, that city will never represent what it did. It's only a reminder.

Remember how it said three times in this chapter, the smoke of its torment will rise. Okay, we can look over there today, and the reminder that God was just is what? A flattened 35-acre temple mound that has no temple on it.

That is a picture and a reminder that God was just. That's the imagery of the reminder that the smoke is rising. Look at the Dead Sea. What's that a reminder of? Judgment. A reminder that, hey, God rained down hail from heaven and He destroyed an immoral and perverse generation.

That's what it's a reminder of. Same thing. Babylon thrown into the Euphrates. It would never rise again. Jerusalem would never be what it was intended to be again because it served its purpose. It failed to do what it was supposed to do, and when it would not repent, God crushed it, and it will never be what it was before.

And it says, and the sound of the harpist and the musician and the flute players and the trumpeteers will not be heard in you any longer, and no craftsman or any craftsman will be found in you any longer, and the sound of the mill will no longer be heard in you any longer, and the light of the lamp will be no longer found in you any longer.

All of those things is just saying, hey, the normal things of life that were going on in Jerusalem and the normal everyday affairs are not going to happen anymore. Why? Because God has removed that. Go to Jeremiah.

I think it's in Jeremiah 25, I believe. He even goes and he says the same thing. Almost the same quotation where he talks about the destruction of Jerusalem, the fall of Babylon, the connection. Look, there's not going to be any brides being given away anymore in the city.

There's not going to be any bridegrooms in the city anymore. Why? One, there's only going to be a remnant of a city that's burning. There's not going to be any joy in the city. It will be nothing but mourning.

And why was it going to be nothing but mourning? Because God's justice had been served from Abel to Zechariah, son of Berechiah. It says here in verse 23, and the light of the lamp will no longer be found in you any longer.

The voice of the bridegroom and the bride will not be heard in you any longer. For your merchants were the great men of the earth because of all the nations were deceived by your sorcery. How were they deceived?

How did she, how did apostate Jerusalem deceive the nations around her? Well, we know one, because if you back up, it says that they buying and selling of human souls. We talked about it last week. What did they do?

They made it more about their system, about Judaism, than they did about Christ. So what did they do? They enslaved people. They enslaved them with a religious system that could not save.

They also marched as well.

They made an economic system where they actually made money. They charged their, if you remember in the Old Testament, what were you not supposed to do to your brethren? Usury. May you usury us? Interest.

Interest or extorting them. Because I can fall into the same thing. They didn't use the word extortion then, but you're right. So, yeah, so what were they doing when they came into the Temple Mount because they moved the Walmart version of animals to the core of the Gentiles.

They moved it there, and once they moved it there, what money could you not use on the Temple Complex? Roman money. Roman money, which always tickles me, though. Because when Jesus is having those conversations with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the priests on that day, they ask him, hey, should we pay taxes?

Come on, Jesus, tell us. Should we pay taxes? Jesus says, give me a coin. Anybody know what coin they gave him? Roman on the Temple Complex. David's turn. Whose face would have been on that coin? Tiberius Caesar Augustus.

Tiberius. It would have said Maximus Pontificus, high priest. And he said what they were supposed to do was to exchange that money for Jewish money, and then the exchange rate went up, the exchange rate went up, and then when they could use the qualified money on the Temple Complex to buy money, they then took that sheet that would have cost you $30 out on the Mount of Olives.

Now that costs you $60 on the Temple Complex. That's usury, extortion, however you want to do it. And that's what they were doing to their own people. And then they caused the nations, because they had to remember, who was allowed on the court of the Gentiles?