The Valley of Weeping (Baca) — Keith Malcomson

The Valley of Weeping in Psalm 84

I want you to turn in your Bibles to Psalm 84, Psalm 84 in the Old Testament and we're continuing with our series on the valleys. We've been working our way through looking at valleys. This is more than teachings.

This is more than just expounding a series. We're looking for the mind of God, the will of God, the word of God, the heart of God. We're looking that God speaks to us. Church, I hope you realize by now, I hope you understand enough of what we're doing.

We're not just teaching messages. This pulpit ministry is an avenue for God to speak into lives, for revealing of His will. I believe that with all my heart. I don't just teach messages. This is more than teaching.

This is a ministry of the heart of God. I am so aware of that, even for myself. And so we come to part seven here tonight. I believe it's part seven. And this is my message tonight as we turn to Psalm 84, the valley of weeping, or we could call this the valley of Bacchus.

The Three Movements of Psalm 84

Reading from Psalm 84, to the chief musician upon Griffith, as Sam for the sons of Korah,. How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, ye, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord.

My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. Ye, the sparrow, have found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young. Even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.

Blessed are they that dwell in thy house. They will be still praising thee, Selah. Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, and whose heart are the ways of them, who passing through the valley of Bacchus maketh it a well.

The rain also filleth the pools. They go from strength to strength. With every one of them in Zion appeareth before God. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob, Selah. Behold, O God, our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed.

For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and a shield. The Lord will give grace and glory.

No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee. Let's pray together. Father, we ask that you open up our hearts, you prepare our hearts to hear the word of God.

We believe in a God who speaketh now through Jesus Christ, your Son. Lord God, you're a God that's involved, caught up in our personal, individual lives. Whether we're unsaved or saved, we know the reality of your mighty dealings that you speak.

Lord God, that you put yourself in the message to make yourself known. Lord God, that an individual can know that you're concerned about them, that you're speaking to them. Lord God, that you're directing them in those issues.

Father, we know that you're not a far off. We are longing for your courts. We long for your house. We're so desiring you. My God, this world can never satisfy our heart. Lord God, the things of this world, the things of mere religion, could never satisfy the deep longing we have tonight.

My God, we long for you. We desire for you. Lord God, our hearts pant after you as the water breaks. My God, as the deer longs after the water. Lord God, so our hearts pant after you. Lord God, we desire to dwell in the house all the days of our life.

Lord God, we want to experience the blessing of those that trust you, the blessing of those that dwell in your house, the blessing of those who carry the very ways of God in our hearts. And Lord God, we do pray when we find ourself in the Valley of Abaqa, Lord God, will you lead us through.

Lord God, when our eyes run down with tears, when our heart is broken, when we despond either because of tragedy, or pressure, or persecution, or confusion, or disillusion. My God, I pray our hearts will be turned towards you.

Lord God, I pray that our wilderness, that our Valley of Abaqa, can be turned into a place of great blessing, that you would receive all the glory, and the honor, and the praise. Will you bless us right now, as we open and expound your word.

In Jesus' mighty name. Amen. Amen. My message, the Valley of Weeping. The Valley of Abaqa. Abaqa means weeping. And so we come to this valley. And this has been very much in my mind from we began this series.

This has been uppermost in my mind. The Valley of Abaqa. The Valley of Weeping. And we're going to deal with it here. Spurgeon, that great preacher, said this about Psalm 84. He says, you could call this Psalm, the pearl of all Psalms.

He said, if the 23rd is the most popular, and the 103rd is the most joyful, the 119th the most experiential, and the 53rd the most plaintive, then this Psalm 84 is the most sweet of all Psalms. The sweetest.

We're dealing with what the greatest preacher maybe in history, or recent history, called the sweetest of all the Psalms. There is a sweetness with it. And I hope you taste just a little bit. We're not going to expound the whole Psalm here tonight.

We're barely touching on it. But I hope you experience something of the sweetness of it. But it won't be sweet to you if its message is not real in your heart. It cannot be. But there is a great sweetness.

I want you to see before we really get into the core of this message about the Valley of Weeping, before we get to that valley, let me just show you what this Psalm is about. It is about those who have a desire for God's house.

Those who long to dwell in God's house. Look how verse one starts. How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts. That actually means lovable. The tabernacles are where God's people gather together in God's house.

In ancient Israel and Jerusalem, there was only one tabernacle. This is before the temple was built. The tabernacle was there before the temple. The temple replaced it. The tabernacle is actually the dwelling place of God's presence, where they meet with him, where they worship, where they unite together.

What does he say at the very beginning of this Psalm? How lovable are thy tabernacles. Can I ask you tonight, do you love God's house? Do you love meeting together? Can you say that God's church is lovable?

You not only bear with it, you not only begrudgingly gather, but you actually love the gathering of God's people together. Or what about verse two? My soul longeth. Ye even fainteth for thy courts, O Lord.

Here he is talking about the tabernacle, the courts of the tabernacle or the rooms of the tabernacle. And he's saying, my heart actually longs after these courts. Or what about verse three? He says, thine altars.

Verse four, he talks about thine house. Verse 10, he talks about, thy courts and thy house again. In other words, this entire Psalm is all about God's house. It's all about a deep desire and longing for God's house.

You see, those who understand a pursuit of God, those who are truly longing after God in a very deep way, they understand the place of the church or the place of the tabernacle, the courts or God's house.

You understand this. You can't separate them. Any Christian you find who says, I pursue God, I'm spiritual, I'm after God, but has a low view of the church. I tell you, there's something fundamentally wrong in that person's heart, something tragically wrong.

They don't understand why God even has a church. You see, the church is the place where God ought to be sought. And if God is not uppermost in our gathering, if He is not the focus of our praying and our worship and our preaching, if the pursuit of God, this seeking after God with all of your heart or to cultivate a heart that says, I long for you, I am fainting for you, I am desiring, I desire you more than life itself.

If that isn't central to the gathering of God's people, then our meetings are a curse. They are tradition. They are mere religion. If we can have gatherings without Christ being uppermost, there's something terribly wrong.

If He is not the focus of it all, then we've missed what it's all about. And so He says, my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God, but never separate that from saying, my heart fainteth for thy courts, O Lord.

I am fainting. Have you ever been there at home and your heart is literally going, I feel like I'm gonna faint if I don't get to God's house? You see, I'm worried about Christians today because we've lost our spiritual appetite.

We've lost our fervor. We've lost our hunger. We've lost our thirst to meet together. And it's because apostasy comes in and coldness and deadness and tradition and dryness and barrenness, and we lose spiritual desire.

And you know what? Church becomes formality. No wonder we lose our children. No wonder we lose our young people. When even the kids know, you don't even desire to be here. You would actually rather be somewhere else on the Lord's day.

I wanna tell you from a child, I've never wanted to be anywhere else than in God's house. This is God's day, not your day. There's nothing else in this that you couldn't drag me anywhere else. You all know it is extremely rare on a Saturday for me to do anything with anyone because I'm preparing for God's house on a Sunday.

On Saturday night, it's unbelievably rare in 30 years that I'm with anyone on a Saturday night, even if I'm not preaching because I'm preparing for God's house. That's how precious it is. You see, my older sister died in a cot death and my mom was backslidden and hard.

She was making excuses why she couldn't be in God's house and wouldn't be in God's house and said, Lord, when the baby grows up a bit, then I'll be in God's house. And that Sunday night, as my dad preached seven miles down the road in a church, she went to the cot and little Ann lay dead and lifeless, three months old in that cot.

That night, as she cried by that bedside, by that cot, she says, if you ever give me a child, another child, that child's gonna be in God's house from the earliest point. I wanna tell you, I've lived in God's house from a baby.

I slept on seats, under seats, over seats. I've done it all, I wanna tell you, but it was in God's house. And so you see, this entire psalm is remarkably about this passionate desire for God's house. See, we could try and sound more spiritual by saying, no, it's only about a passionate desire for God, but then I'd have to, I couldn't teach or preach this psalm because it talks also about a passionate, burning desire for the house of God and the gathering of God's people.

Both go together, both are healthy. You don't have one without the other. If you lack one, then you don't have the other. They go hand in hand and they compliment each other. Surprisingly, with this psalm, this valley of bakka, this valley of weeping is on the way to Jerusalem, on the way to worship.

This psalm is all about gathering together in unity in the same place to do the same thing. And amazingly, this is where you find the valley of weeping in this psalm, the most beautiful psalm, the most amazing psalm.

Where do we find the valley of weeping in this psalm? You can miss it easily. And yet we see that it's while God's people are gathering, going up to Jerusalem, going up to the house, the tabernacle of God, the dwelling place of God, that's where they encounter this valley of weeping.

It is on the way to God's house, Jerusalem, to Mount Zion. And this psalm was written as a song for those traveling up to God's house to sing so they could learn how to go on their way in fellowship together.

Psalm 84's Three Sections and Four Main Points

I want you to notice this psalm is broken down into three parts because we're only gonna deal with the middle part here. You have verse one to verse four. Verse four finishes with the word sela, S-E-L-A-A.

It's a Hebrew word, selah. Then you have verse five to eight. Verse eight finishes with the word selah. And then you have verse nine to verse 12. This word selah means in the midst of this song, stop.

Stop at this point. Stop after these few verses. Stop. Begin to think what you're singing. Begin to consider what you're reading. It's so important what you've just read here or just sang. Stop everything.

Stop what you're doing. Stop getting distracted. Begin to think on it. Begin to understand what you have just read here. And we're not gonna deal with the first part or the third part. We're gonna deal with the middle part, three verses, verse five to verse eight.

As we begin to look at this, there's so much in all this psalm. But I wanna home in here on the Valley of Weeping. Why would God put the Valley of Weeping, the Valley of Baka? Why do we find it in one of the sweetest psalms or the pearl of all psalms?

Why do we find this Valley of Weeping right here? I've got four points for you here tonight in this message. Number one, the blessed man who walks into the Valley of Weeping. I want you to stop and consider it.

The Blessed Person Who Enters the Valley

The blessed man or the blessed woman who actually walks into this valley. They don't abide, stay in this valley. They walk into it. And I want you to see this man or woman. I've called them the blessed man because the Bible calls them that.

The blessed man or woman who walks into this valley. When you find yourself in the Valley of Weeping, you could say there's nothing blessed about this. How can I be blessed if I'm in the Valley of Weeping?

But I wanna tell you, this valley, it's only those who are blessed walk into it. Not sinners. In fact, it states clearly, sinners are excluded from this valley. Oh yeah, I know sinners weep. I know that.

But there's a kind of weeping and a fruit of weeping that sinners do not have. Only a real Christian has. And so the blessed man who walks into the Valley of Weeping, look what it says here in verse five.

Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, whose heart are the ways of them. And so you see in verse six, it talks about passing through the Valley of Becca. But in the previous verse, verse five, it speaks about the person who passes through this valley.

Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee. Blessed, see that word blessed. It can be translated happy. It's a word in the Old Testament used 45 times, blessed. 18 of those times, it's translated as happy.

You and I understand happy in this world as being because your circumstance are good, you're happy. That's what happiness means to us. If everything's going well, you're happy. If it's all going bad, you're sad.

You don't have happiness when everything's going bad. That's our thinking. But this word blessed is very unique in the Bible. It's not a word based on circumstance. It's a divine blessedness. It's what God calls blessed.

There are always reasons given for why someone is blessed. Every time you read this word blessed, 45 times in the Old Testament, it tells you why they're blessed. It gives a reason for the man or woman who's blessed.

If it calls you, you're blessed, then it gives you the reason. And you know here, it gives you two reasons why you're blessed. This man who's going to walk into the Valley of Baca very shortly, he's very blessed because of these two reasons.

And it gives two clear reasons for being blessed. This word blessed is used in Job 5, verse 17. Of Job. Do you think Job was blessed? Do you think he was happy? Do you think he was laughing and rejoicing and singing?

Listen to what it says in Job 5, 17. Behold, or look. Look at him. Happy is the man whom God correcteth. Not many people get happy over that, do they? But the Bible says blessed is the man. You're in trouble if God doesn't correct you.

You're not blessed. If God brings a rod of correction on you, you are very blessed of God. You're a very happy person. Therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty. You know what it says in the New Testament?

If God doesn't correct you or take you out to the shed at the end of the garden and chastise you, if he doesn't deal with your sin, you are a bastard. You are illegitimate. You don't belong to him. You're nothing to do with him if he doesn't chasten you.

If you can continue in sin and God never deals with you, you're not born again. Do you hear me tonight? Who hasn't sinned here? Who hasn't failed God? But if you can carry on your sin and you begin to justify it and say, sure, I'm okay, you are not a child of God.

Don't deceive yourself. You can't be. And so it says blessed. There's many reasons for being blessed. And in verse 5, it gives two. Notice what they are. It gives two statements. Blessed is the man in whose strength, whose strength is in thee.

That's the first thing. What's he saying? His strength is in God, not himself. The church is ruined because there's so many strong people in it. They go, I'm strong. I can do that. They can volunteer.

They step into things they should never touch. They say, I'm able to do this. They say, I've got strength and ability and stamina and skill. You know what? I'd hate for someone to be in an instrument in this church who thinks they're gifted or to sing who thinks they're able.

You know what? If your strength isn't in God, you could be a very dangerous person. I'd hate for you to preach or do the Lord's table. If you go, I can do this, I'm able to do this. If you're not in awe that your strength comes from the God, that you don't have any ability or any gifting, if he withheld it for one second, you're in serious trouble.

I would rather someone trembling here who stuttered over their words, who sat down crying because they think they made a disaster of it. Man, I'm going to ask you to preach again. No, I made a disaster of it.

You really think so? I'm a preacher with experience. I know what I'm saying. I've seen the skilled, eloquent preachers of our day and they don't impress me. I'm alarmed at so many preachers. They're dangerous because they're not trembling.

They don't come to the sacred desk trembling, speaking for God, representing God. Don't you realize you can't do that without his grace and his mercy? And so this blessed man, it says their strength, their stamina, their boldness, ability to stand, the ability to go forth.

This is talking about a journey to God's house. It's talking about a mission, the pursuit of God. Do you know this person is blessed? Do you know why? Because as they're making this journey to seek after God and to seek after the real church of God, you know what, their strength isn't in themselves or their knowledge.

They actually know they can only move forward in this journey if the source is in God. Their strength has to be from God. Can I ask you, are you powerless, helpless, useless, hopeless without God? Is he really your strength?

Have you made him so your strength that you have no confidence in your flesh? You know, it says in the New Testament, the mark of a genuine Christian is they have no confidence in themselves or in their flesh.

That's basic biblical Christianity. And yet we have a mega church. We have a kind of Christianity today. It says we can do it. We're able. We'll do it. What apart from God? You ought to be helpless, hopeless unless you draw your strength from God.

Where is your strength? You see this blessed man, he's blessed for this reason. My strength is in God. I have no strength, no resource. No, I can't even make this journey. I can't even seek after God.

I can't even approach the house of God without God being my strength. I draw on him. I draw on him. I need him. I've got nothing to preach. Do you realize if I, I'd be like Peter sinking in the water.

If I stop to think what I'm going to preach in the days ahead, I'm in serious trouble. If he doesn't keep giving, I've got absolutely nothing to say. There's the second thing here. It says as well on verse 5, in whose heart are the ways of them.

It's a strange term. It's actually saying, in whose heart are thy ways, God's ways. So who's this blessed man? Not only is his strength in the Lord, but the ways of God are in his heart. Not his ways.

You know, the Bible speaks about people who are filled with their own ways. Filled with their own ways. You do not want to be around someone filled with their own ways. But this is a man whose heart is filled to capacity with the ways of God.

And you know what? He's blessed. See, if your heart is filled with God's ways, I mean filled. I don't mean the odd little trickle or some little bits of information, but your heart is filled with God's ways.

You're an extremely blessed man or woman. You may not have much in this world, but if you have God's ways in your heart, you're a rich man. You're a rich person. You're someone I want to sit with and need to talk to tonight.

The word ways there, God's ways in their heart, what does that mean? The word ways here means a highway, a public road, or a well-traveled path. But this is God's ways. It's God's ways of working, operating, thinking, His character, His nature.

It's how God always works. You see, I've met Christians. They know nothing about the ways of God, the character of God, the way God walks, the way God constantly walks all the time in every generation.

How He walked with Enoch is how He walks with men today. He has not changed. That's why it says in Psalm 103 and 7, concerning God, He made His ways known unto Moses. His acts He made known to the children of Israel.

And I hope you realize, Israel and Moses were rather different. See, God made His ways known to Moses. His acts, deeds, miracles, pillar of fire, nana in the wilderness, your shoes don't wear out for 40 years.

Those are His acts. But they didn't know God's ways. That generation perished in the wilderness. But look at Moses. God says, I revealed my ways unto him, how I walk, my well-trodden usual path, the only way I work, walk, my character, my nature.

So look at this blessed person. God is their strength. He is the source of all their strength. In their heart, they carry His ways. Are you someone who just knows the acts of God? Or do you know the ways of God?

Do you know the way God thinks? You know, we take Christianity. Thank you very much for salvation. Then we change all this. We flip it. We begin to manipulate it. Our ideas of God's house, our ideas of how mixing together, or of marriage, or some other issue.

And we begin to mold it. Are the ways of God in your heart? Do they dominate what you are and who you are? So I've just revealed to you, the man who walks into the valley of weeping. This isn't a casual, compromised Christian.

This is a man of weightiness, who's relying on the strength of the Lord, who has these ways in his heart. This is the man that walks into the valley of weeping. Do you see what I'm saying here? This kind of man is going to walk into a valley of weeping.

Passing Through the Valley of Weeping

Point two, the man who walks through the valley of weeping. I've just showed you the kind of man that walks into it. Do you think because you're spiritual, God's going to save you from a broken heart?

No way. No way. In fact, that may qualify you, that God lets you walk into the valley of Becca. Valley of Becca is not just for anyone. He doesn't even let every Christian walk into any valley of weeping.

You know why? You couldn't sustain it. And so he wants you to be in a certain place to walk into the valley of Becca. The valley of Becca is so important. He doesn't just lead anyone in there. But you know what?

You're going to have to face this valley if you're pursuing after God. The man who walks through the valley of weeping. Look at verse six. Still speaking about the same man. Who passing through the valley of Becca makes it a well.

The rain also filleth the pools. The valley of Becca. This word for valley, remember we said there's about five Hebrew words for valley. Sometimes they mean a wide place or a very narrow place. It can mean different things, but it's still a valley.

Valleys can look very different, but they're still valleys. This word for valley means a wide open plain and veil. The valley of weeping is very broad, very long, very deep. It's extensive. It's not a narrow ravine.

It's not a trickling pool. It is very broad, very barren, very dry. And that's what this valley is. And look what he calls it, valley of Becca. The word Becca here, if you look it up, it's only used this particular Hebrew word is only used once in the entire Bible in the Old Testament as it's written here.

Becca is only used once. It's not mentioned anywhere else. Some people try to find out where it is. It's impossible to find out where it is in relation to Jerusalem. Some of them think it's associated with some other place.

They can't prove that. It's utterly unique, this valley of weeping. Only mentioned once, but there's two Hebrew words that are closely connected to it. So tight that these three words go together. So the valley of Becca has two words connected to it.

And they only are missing. They're spelled the same, but they have little strokes and little bits that are missing that just make them slightly different. Let me explain what those words are. The next one next to it means weeping, to shed tears, to weep bitterly.

So this valley of weeping is not a casual cry. It's not a one-off cry. It's not just a night of weeping over feeling sorry for yourself. It's not that kind of weeping. It's where tears roll down your cheeks.

The word weeping here or Becca means to make loud lamentation. It means to bemoan, bewail, mourn. It means to be in pain, to be in deep agony, perpetually to experience a pain that almost puts you in the grave.

That's how deep this weeping is. It is where you're in a state of weeping. You know, the next Hebrew word is a word used for the mulberry tree four times. It's connected to weeping. Four times it's used and it's closely connected to the word Becca and the word weeping or deep lamentation.

Imagine calling the tree that. And so this tree is used four times and appears in the valley of Rephian. Do you know what it is, this mulberry tree? It's a gum distilling tree. In other words, it drips.

You can go on YouTube and see some of these. It drips balsam, this tree, or sap. Sap begins to drip and those little drips look like tears and they're the size of tears. And what they do with that balsam or that balm, they gather it from the trees.

Those trees weeping, it's the word for deep lamentation, weeping, groaning. And you know what you do? You gather those tears and it's used for many things in the land of Israel. It is a good thing. You want to gather these tears.

Remember how it says in the Psalms that the Lord gathers the tears of his saints. Don't you realize you've never, as a Christian, cried a tear that God doesn't remember? You can forget. God never forgets.

He stores. Every single tear is so precious to him. He gathers it, collects it, and he'll remember it. You know why those tears affect something? They affect the heart of God. God cares about tears. The deeper the groaning, the more he remembers it.

He looks out after it. You see, I believe this Valley of Abaqa is a remarkable thing. I believe those who, remember it's the man who walks through the Valley of Abaqa. It doesn't stay there. It says he walks through.

I believe those who visit this valley are going to have a great impact on the body of Christ. I believe when you're a certain kind of Christian that walks into this valley, in that valley, when you meet weeping, I know you may not understand it.

You may be confused. You may be hurting bad. You may want to die at that time. If you haven't been there, keep walking. You're going to visit this valley one of these days. If you've been there, keep walking.

You are going to walk out of this. I assure you, if you're there in the will of God, those tears are not wasted. That's impossible. There is a valley. You remember in a valley, you can't see anything.

You've got mountains around you. You're hemmed in. You're having to walk straight ahead to get out of this thing. You don't want to walk up these mountains. You're just trying to get out. The mountains hem you in.

You might see others on the mountains having glorious experiences, but you're in the valley of weeping. You're broken. You can hardly even lift your head. You're there, isolated. But I want to tell you, keep walking.

There's God's will in it. I'm in the valley of Baca. I have been for several months. I have never wept like I've wept in the past several months. Never. Again, it's hit me the past three weeks. I'm in agony of soul that I cannot even explain to you.

And it's getting worse every single day. It's like Candace died yesterday. And I can't tell you how intolerable that is. But I want to tell you, none of that is lost. The valley of Baca, it's a pursuit after God.

I'm not here in vain. I don't understand it. I don't like it. I am broken. I am undone. I'm telling you, I know what the valley of Baca is. And do you know who came to me many times over these months?

When I was in danger of feeling sorry for myself, do you know who came to me? And all you ladies ought to know her, Isabel Weir. And not one of yous know her. Isabel Weir. John Brown of Priesthill was a Covenanter, one of my heroes.

I've mentioned him before. He was a farmer, not a preacher. And he married Isabel Weir in 1682, 1682 in Scotland. He wasn't a preacher. He wasn't a miracle worker. He was a farmer with only a few fields.

He worked hard, but he was a spiritual man of God. I believe he was a blessed man of God who had the ways of God in his heart. He actually organized the field preachers. See, this was a time of terrible persecution.

People were dying for their faith. Persecution was in the land. And in fact, in that hour, laws were brought in by the authorities that you had to go to the local church. They put the ministers in each of the churches, Episcopal ministers.

And now you didn't have your pastors, 400 of them were put out of their churches in Scotland, removed, not allowed to preach in the church, made illegal because they didn't submit to the governments of the day.

They didn't yield themselves and say, we'll only preach what you tell us. So 400 ministers were put out of the churches. And a law came in on the land. Every person in the land, you had to go to these official churches with official ministers who are going to represent the king.

You've got to do this. It was tyranny. Well, you know what John Brown, a priest, tell? He refused to go and listen to the Episcopalian minister. He refused to take the oath of allegiance to the king. He said, there's only one head of the church.

And unlike the Church of England that says, God help us, King Charlie's going to be head of the Church of England. If you didn't think it was over for the Church of England before, I tell you in a few weeks, it is finished.

You're going to watch its burial ceremony as this wicked, vile man stands there, coronated, saying, you're the head of the Church of England. Unbelievable. Well, even back in those days, John Brown said, only Christ is the king, the head of the church in Scotland.

We can never yield. You see, you're under danger. Do you know when he proposed to Isabel in 1682? And I'm sure Ethan didn't do this. I'm going to quiz him afterwards. I want to know what he said. Do you know what John Brown done?

He went to Isabel and says, before I propose to you, I want to tell you there's a strong likelihood that the authorities are going to come for me. I could be put in prison. Did he share this with you?

I hope he did. I could die. And says, whatever this pathway means, I'm standing by your side. I've counted the cost. So he proposed to her. They got engaged, then married. On their wedding day, Pede and the prophet, one of the greatest preachers of that hour, a truly gifted prophet, who moved in the gifts of prophecy and in the ministry of a prophet, he married them.

You see old paintings of him marrying them, preaching at the wedding. And as they're joined together in holy matrimony, they become husband and wife, and he's blessed them, and he's joined them together before the Lord.

Then at the end, he said, Isabel, this marriage is going to be short and bloody. Keep your burial garments very close to you and love your husband because you're only going to have him a short time. Short time.

Three years later, Graham Claverhouse, a captain in the Scottish Army, a Judas. I've got a covenant on my wall in my study back home. None of yous are getting it. And see on it, it's a photocopy of one of the old originals.

And Claverhouse's name is signed there in his own blood, saying we're going to uphold the covenant. The church in Scotland is going to be free. I bear witness. I'll always protect the church. He was a Judas.

He betrayed them, and he become a soldier that hunted down Christian men like John Brown. Well, here he is. He comes to the house of John Brown. John Brown was out working the fields. He picks him up, brings him down to the house.

And as Isabel looks out the window, she sees the horsemen, and she goes out to meet them boldly. You know what? She's heavily pregnant with her next child. She's got a baby in her arms, and she stands at the door to meet Claverhouse and his soldiers, all armed up with their weapons, ready to take her husband.