Book of Obadiah - Vs. 15 (10/23/2022) | NOTE: Audio malfunction until minute 8:49

Don't believe this So We made some parts

We're gonna be over 915 and this is a big world this is gonna be you know

I I don't have any other problems for sure, getting married.

So I'll try to, again, we're going back with some of the ones we don't want to die of.

But what we're going to be talking about today and what's going to be covered in the first 15 here is something that is covered in almost all, if not all, of the writing projects talking about it in reference of what we're going to be talking about today.

And so what my hope is is we want to, obviously, go through this in the context of what we've got and set a reference point for future studies that you may be able to do with your study school for reference back to some of the past that we've talked about today.

So that's kind of the plan, and we'll see how that plays out. But for anyone that hasn't seen it, if you want to mark that, you can also turn over to text chat, too, which is going to be kind of the start of there.

And we'll read the first part of it. We're not going to be bouncing around and doing a little bit of it.

So that's kind of the plan. Just really brief, you know, last week, or a week before, let's just say, we finished that version 10 through 14 of the diet, and we kind of went through the sequence of things that even my assistant had done against God's will to make the approach to do that.

And, you know, it started with, you guys remember that. I don't know if we continued that for quite a while.

So the first one, of course, all of that is trying to underline the fact that we let their cynical attitudes toward God's people, and those attitudes turn into actions.

And then last week, or maybe before last week, we kind of went through the sequence of that, of how the actions,

I'm sorry, the attitudes to the actions, and the type of things they actually do. So God really kind of looted them, so they were in total despair while other pollinators couldn't even identify themselves.

They were attacked and refugees that were trying to escape because they were afraid of these other pollinators coming in.

Attacked them for a reason. They were cut off, attacked them, and turned right back into enemy servants of terror.

They get invites for doing anything and everything they could to make life miserable for the

Israelites. And we talked a little bit about how the animosity between the

Israelis and their poor, you know, the way that literally the time they were eating their mother's food, they were struggling to get their mother's food.

And so, so anyway, that animosity was there forever. So I hope that I really laid out how they were treated there.

So there are a few things that I was saying to you last week covering their simple actions, attitudes, actions.

Today, for verses 15 and beginning with 16, I'm not sure if we have 16 made or not, but these couple verses are talking specifically about God on the left.

I guess we're proud. That's better. And so we now kind of arrive at this emergency,

God's final answer to the world we live in and then we go back all the way to the beginning of the crowd reverse.

And at this point, we've seen how a proud spirit can kind of spiral into the outright evil actions that the

Israelites find themselves doing to other people. We talked a little bit about what are some of those comparisons to today.

The disciple that we see is so different in where our disciples have to be.

The simple attitudes, the hatred and harm in the hearts of the people around us, the demands for what we stand for, for our morals, for what we've kind of been, and the explicit nature of how they're going about their lives today are so different from the

Israelites. The difference is, the Israelites in the Son of God community may turn to violence. Obviously, we have emergencies around the world that are perpetrated in the community.

No doubt. We're not quite there yet in our specific area. And we can talk a little bit about the values because we're like, okay, what can we learn from God's people before, what can we learn from the acts against God's people because that's not going to change because the

Spirit of the Lord is going to change. That being, of course, the devil and all of his demons. But we can learn from it.

We can kind of get an idea of the possibilities of what's to come. But ultimately, the best part is how

God is going to lead us. He's going to lead us. So, that spirit, that proud spirit, is going to spiral into outright activism.

The Edomites were reverently proud. They committed violence against God for centuries.

As we talked about a couple weeks ago, they held hostages. They had joy in their calamity. They were spared in their distress.

They eventually spoiled Jerusalem and all of God's people. They prevented their escape and killed their enemies.

In the end, there were less than a couple of years ago, Edomites were spoiled from the commentary of the Reformation. Charles Feinberg wrote a commentary and said in reverence to Pope Pius V, he said, should not the

Lord take account of this? His wrath has ended. Edom has merited no punishment.

Now, let's move into exactly how the Lord will punish Edom. But for the human, even those who are guilty of sin.

So now, I'm going to see what the reading looks like. Even some, also everybody that all of you have been deliberately moving against the words of these people.

So, over 915 here, there's going to read the first part of the first. It says, For the day of reward is here upon all of you.

Okay, so right there in that first grade, then you can start getting glimpses of what we're going to do here.

In terms of the magnitude of that, how big of a deal this is, and I said a minute ago, there's a common theme that a lot of, if not all, minor projects have at some point, that is this day of reward.

So, the impact of this is going to be candidate so that it becomes a reference point for a few things as well, but also it's going to be something close to that here.

So, the day of reward is here. Now, there's a couple things we need to focus on in this first page of the first routine, but let's start with that phrase, the day of reward.

So, who both can we use the day of reward? What do you guys think, when you hear that phrase?

So, specifically, who knows that? Pretty good.

There's something I think that we're going to have to do in the first page, but is there a specific event in prayer itself?

There are a couple of places in the Testament where that phrase is for kind of intending good for the wrath of God, even being in reference to God's people.

You know, they are living in the great sin of doing things deliberately that the Lord has made them not do.

That phrase is viewed in that context when it is.

But most of the time, this great day of the Lord is actually referencing a far prophecy, way far out into the future from when these prophets referred to it.

And that is the second coming of the Lord. So, something that hasn't even happened for us yet, which is why this is so significant, because the

Lord is bringing in this ancient nation that spent centuries, millennium, persecuting

His children, and He says, this is what's going to happen to you. But, while He's saying that,

He goes ahead and He wraps in all other heathen into the picture and lets them know what's coming as well.

He says, the day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen. We're going to focus on that phrase a little bit later, but for now, we're talking about the day of the

Lord. So, what is the day of the Lord exactly? Well, now you can go over to Acts 2, starting at verse 16, and let's see if we can just flesh out what this day is using some other passages to help us out a little bit.

So, what did Peter have to say about this specific day? Starting in Acts, it's chapter 2, starting at verse 16, he says, but this is that which was spoken by the prophet

Joel. So, right off the bat, we know that there's at least one other minor prophet that talked about this day and what was coming.

And, Peter's about to reference this specific passage in Joel specifically. Verse 17 says,

And it shall come to pass in the last days, sayeth God, I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

And on My servants, and on My handmaids, I will pour out in those days of My Spirit, and they shall prophesy.

And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke.

The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the

Lord come. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Really cool that it ends with that. And this is, by the way, this is the first sermon that Peter ever gave right out of Pentecost.

And go figure, he begins with a little sermonette about the second coming, and the great tribulation that will precede it, and all these things.

Very first sermon he ever preached at the beginning of the church age. He talks about that great and notable day of the

Lord. Well, let's look at the word notable for a second in the Greek. See if I can pronounce this.

Epiph... Let's see, epiphane... I can't, I can't even do it. Several syllables long, the Greek word.

But basically the Greek word there, epiphanous, I think, that's how you pronounce it. That's the

Greek word for notable. And it means conspicuous, or manifest, or illustrious. In other words, when he says that notable day, it's going to be something that every person on the planet is going to see.

It's going to be right out in the middle of the open. It's going to be so big and so epic that not a single person can avoid it, regardless of how hard they try.

And that goes for either those of us who are excited and anticipating it, because there's going to be, there's two sides of that coin for sure.

One side is going to be the most wonderful day in all of history for God's people.

The other side of it is going to be the worst day in all of history for those who have hated, persecuted the

Lord's people and hate the Lord in His name as well. And so the day is going to be notable.

It's going to be conspicuous. It's going to manifest itself in such an epic fashion that it's not going to be well hidden.

It's going to be illustrious. Now, we get a great summation from Peter here on some of the kind of awesome components of the day of the

Lord. But since he's quoting Joel, he's quoting a very specific passage, now that we understand that this, that that prophecy that we're about to read is extrapolated all the way into the future to the point of Peter, and now we know he's talking about something to come as well.

Let's go ahead and go to Joel and again, see what we can glean from what

Peter is quoting. Yes, sir. Acts chapter 2, and I read from verse 16 through verse 21.

And now we're going to the book of Joel. Chapter 2 as well. And we'll start at verse 1, but we're going to kind of skip a few verses as we go.

So, this is the specific passage that Peter was just referencing during his sermon on the day of Pentecost.

Verse 1 says, Blow ye the trumpet in Zion and sound an alarm in my holy mountain. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the

Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand. A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains, a great people and a strong there have not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.

So, again, this is going to be, I can't even think of a word, a good adjective for it.

Epic is the word that keeps coming to mind. It's going to be so crazy on both sides.

Again, both for the Lord's children as well as for not His children, those that have persecuted

His children. For all of human history, all of the heathen that are around at that point, obviously, but there will be judgment for those who passed prior to this as well.

And it's going to be a dark day. It's going to be a day of gloominess. Thick darkness is going to be coming. Now, skip down to verse 10 in that same chapter.

It says, The earth shall quake before them, the heaven shall tremble, the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining, and the

Lord shall utter His voice before His army, for His camp is very great, for He is strong that executeth

His word. For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible, and who can abide it?

That word terrible there in Hebrew is yah -ray, and it's really strange because if you read it in English, it says the day of the

Lord is great and very terrible, but that word terrible, that or to revere, to be afraid of something, and there's a whole bunch of, you know, it kind of continues in this long definition, but it all wraps into the same idea of just being in awe of something, being afraid of something, something that is dreadful, to cause astonishment and awe.

That's what that Hebrew word means. And it also means to inspire reverence or godly fear, so that when it says this day is going to be very terrible, it means it.

This is going to be a dreadful day for the large majority of people. It's going to be horrifying.

It's going to be scary. Now, so again, we have already established that this is something that Peter talked about as being very significant, a very notable day that is to come, and he was referencing this passage that we just read.

Let's see how Jesus described this same day in Matthew 24. Now, I could read the entire chapter of Matthew 24 because Jesus lays out in crystal clear terms the exact chronology of the tribulation period, what transpires during the tribulation period, eventually his second coming, what it looks like when he arrives, what he does when he arrives.

The entire chapter is mind -blowing. Again, I'm not going to do the whole chapter today because we're going to have plenty of opportunities to revisit this topic in some future studies, and what

I want to do is I just want to focus on a couple of verses here that talk specifically about the day, which that can mean there could be a number of things that come into that, but how does

Jesus describe the same aspect of the day of the Lord that Joel just talked about and that Peter talked about?

Matthew 24, starting in verse 29, it says immediately after the tribulation of those days, so all the great tribulation has already occurred, and the day of the

Lord is still yet to come. It's crazy how much is going to happen. Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn.

Remember in Obadiah, it says the great day of the Lord will come to all the heathen.

It's a prophecy of what's happening right now that now Jesus is talking about and also prophesying about.

Then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn. They are going to be absolutely devastated when they see

Messiah coming in the clouds, which is crazy the contrast that you get from that.

Because when we think about it, we get chills. We think, I cannot even imagine what that's going to be like to think that one day we will look up and we'll see

Him descending to take all of our troubles away and to usher us into His kingdom with Him as our

King. There couldn't be anything better than that. And yet, the large majority of the human race that is on earth at that time is going to be mourning.

It's beyond comprehension. Parts of it. For me, it's hard for me to comprehend it.

We're told clearly how it's going to play out. It's still mind -boggling. They shall mourn and they shall see the

Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. He shall send

His angels with the great sound of a trumpet and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other.

And so, from what we gather from Jesus when He comes, when He arrives, when His second coming is taking place, it's going to be a great day of mourning for all the tribes of the earth and, as we'll get to, whatever is left of the lineage of Esau, the

Edomites will be a part of that. Now, let's see if we can glean just a bit more on how this day of the

Lord is going to play out for nations like Edom because, again, we're reading all this in the context of Obadiah here. So, what

God, through Obadiah, is warning the

Edomites specifically of what is to come, but not just for them, for all heathen. There's a common rule.

Dad and I had a little discussion about this throughout the week because I really wanted like, when

I went to this passage and I saw this, I was like, that's just nuts.

And so I texted Dad. I was like, Dad, you know, there's this thing that you've talked about before. There's this thing that Brother Myron talks about pretty frequently when he comes and preaches here.

And it's the law of first mention, the law of first mention, where if there's a specific word or doctrine talked about throughout the whole

Bible, if you go back and find where that word or doctrine is used for the first time, you can glean some information on how important it is.

Or you can learn more about that specific doctrine or that word by going to the context of when it's first mentioned.

So I texted Dad. I was like, Dad, does that law apply, can that law of first mention apply to a phrase, such as the day of the

Lord? In other words, can I say, like, can I go back and find the first place that phrase is used, and can the law be applied there?

And at first we were a little bit unsure because typically it's applied to, again, a major Bible doctrine or perhaps a specific word.

But then Dad found a kind of a definition of this law of first mention from one of the old church fathers that,

I'm right, Dad, like he kind of, the way he worded it was a lot more eloquent, but he grouped in certain phrases into this law as well.

In other words, where you can learn, you can get some important information from perhaps a phrase like the day of the Lord by going and finding where it's used for the first time.

So Dad and I kind of were like, okay, I think we can do that here. So there's this common rule of Bible interpretation known as the law of first mention, and, like I said a second ago, it's typically applied to a single word or perhaps a major Bible doctrine, but we're going to apply it here for this phrase the day of the

Lord and see where it's used for the first time ever in the Bible and what we could perhaps gather from it.

So go to Isaiah, again, chapter 2, and we're going to get the first mention of this phrase, and this is the first mention not only in the books of the

Bible, like obviously the books are laid out in a specific order, but sometimes the history can be jumping around.

This is the first mention not only for the first time in our order of books, but also historically. Isaiah chapter 2, verse 10, it says,

Enter into the rock and hide thee in the dust for fear of the Lord and for the glory of His majesty.

It sounds very similar to that passage in Revelation where they try to hide themselves under the rock when they see

Him coming, and they eventually start praying that the rocks just fall on them because they don't want anything to do with what's about to happen, and here in Isaiah it prophesies and says,

Enter into the rock, hide yourself in the dust for your fear of the Lord for His glory and for His majesty.

Verse 11, this is where it gets really interesting that this is the first time this phrase is ever used.

Listen closely for the context that it's in. Knowing that we're in Obadiah here and everything we've talked about so far, it says verse 11,

The lofty looks of man shall be humbled and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the

Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the Lord, there's the first time that phrase is ever used, for the day of the

Lord of hosts shall be upon everyone that is proud and lofty and upon everyone that is lifted up, and he shall be brought low.

That was the whole first couple of sections of Obadiah, was specifically talking about how terrible their level of pride was and how disgusting that is to the

Lord, and when they asked themselves, when they exalted themselves to such a degree that they asked, Who will bring us down?

The Lord answered in Obadiah and said, I will bring thee down. And here we are in Isaiah, the first context to which this phrase is ever used.

He shall be brought low. Yes, sir. Go figure.

It must be a coincidence, right? That they just just happens to be so closely aligned.

It's certainly not. To John's point, it is scripture backing itself up. But again, it's highlighting the degree to which the

Lord hates the proud spirit, the spirit of pride.

And we talked about this several weeks ago, but the first sin that we learn about in Genesis obviously was disobedience, but the first mention of sin was disobedience, but the first sin ever was when iniquity was found in Lucifer.

And what was that first sin? It was pride. The Lord hates this characteristic.

And he says they shall be brought low. The proud and lofty, one that is lifted up.

So there it is, the first mention of the day of the Lord, and it's no coincidence that it's specifically pointing out this day will be a day of reckoning for the lofty, for the haughty, for the proud, for the lifted up, and they will be brought low, including the final vestiges that remain of the

Edomites. Now, as we'll learn in a little bit, there's not many of them left, but given that this prophecy in Obadiah is aimed in that specific context primarily to them, but also the rest of the heathen as well, we can kind of figure that there will be some left in that day of the lineage of Esau that are still doing everything they can to persecute and to take part in the persecution of God's people, but it's not going to be such a great day for them, ultimately, the day of the

Lord, that is. If there's any additional information that we can glean from this law I first mentioned in how it relates to this phrase, it's just how much

God despises a proud spirit, and as we'll continue to see here, the degree to which He'll go to stomp it out.

Go ahead and go down to verse 17 of that Isaiah passage. It just reaffirms what we just read.

It says, In the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, the haughtiness of men shall be made low, and the

Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. So it just brings it all back full circle there.

How do we know that this is the day of the Lord that Obadiah is talking about, rather than perhaps a near prophecy that has already taken place centuries ago?

Because remember, there are some cases in the Old Testament where the phrase day of the

Lord may be used, speaking of a near prophecy where the Lord is about to bring judgment, maybe even on His own people for their gross sin and the things that they have been doing.

And you can usually tell in the context pretty quickly if that's in reference to. So how do we know that just to be sure that Obadiah here is talking about the second coming and not something that is going to perhaps already happened way back, centuries ago.

So now let's focus on that second phrase, going back to Obadiah verse 15. It started with,

For the day of the Lord is near, and then that second part, upon all the heathen. So just reading it right off the bat, we kind of can take that well, perhaps it's not just the

Edomites we're talking about here. Perhaps it's all the enemies of the Lord, the collective heathen.

And sure enough, that Hebrew word for all, because we know that in the Greek sometimes the English translation in the word all could be translated and perhaps be talking about a specific group.

So how do we know that that's not the case here? Well, the Hebrew word for all here is kol, and it means all.

It means the totality of something. So, the day of the Lord is near upon the totality of the heathen.

Now, what about the word heathen? Now this is interesting. So the word heathen here is the

Hebrew word goi, and what that means is it's specifically talking about a nation or a people of non -Hebrew descent.

So, this can't be a near prophecy for maybe judgment coming upon the Lord's children.

We know that it's not talking about the Lord's children anyway here. It's talking about a non -Hebrew people in the totality of heathen of non -Hebrew descent.

So typically, if a prophet was speaking of a near prophecy referring to it as the day of the Lord, he was speaking of, again, a specific time in which another nation would descend on the

Israelites as a form of punishment for their sins against God, and then that nation that descended upon them would be punished too.

So there was wrath from God for both the Israelites and for the people that attack the Israelites, which is really interesting in and of itself.

However, in this context, it's speaking of a time when non -Hebrew people will be brought to judgment as in when they are gathered together in the place called

Armageddon. So now, let's jump over to Revelation for just a second. Revelation 16, because, again, it's talking about all the heathen, the totality of the heathen.

Well, okay, let's learn a little bit more about this group of people, this very large, significant group of people that is being prophesied against in the book of Obadiah.

Again, the Edomites are wrapped into it, but they're not alone. They don't stand alone in this specific prophecy.

So Revelation 16, starting at verse 13, it says, And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.

For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth.

There's your heathen right there. All of the kings of the earth, the totality of the heathen that are persecuting

God's people and doing everything they can to stomp them out. It says,

Unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

That is another part of this great day of the Lord. He's coming, but he's coming to battle, and he's going to gather the totality of the heathen for this great battle.

He's going to send Let's see here. I'm sorry. This is really crazy. Let me read verse 14 all over again, because these demonic spirits, the ones that look like frogs that literally came out of the mouth of the beast, those spirits, the spirits of devils, they work miracles, and it says in verse 14, they go forth unto the kings of the earth.

They are literally indwelling the most powerful people in the earth at this time, and of the whole world to gather them to the battle of that great day of the

Lord Almighty. So it's these evil spirits that's trying to gather up this vast army, the largest army perhaps that will ever be put together in number.

And I believe that in Obadiah 15, when it says, the day of the

Lord is near upon all the heathen, it is talking about this specific event right here, and these heathen, the unclean spirits, the spirits of devils are influencing to gather to this battle.

And then if you skip down to verse 16, it says, and he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue

Armageddon. Super epic. The fact that this ancient enemy of God's children, talking about the

Edomites again, will be included in this great day of the Lord is more than interesting for a lot of reasons, especially though because it shows just how significant

Esau's lineage has been and will be again all throughout the dispensations of time.

And I'm talking about the dispensations as we know it, from Genesis all the way through Revelation.

From the time that they were in their mother's womb, Jacob and Esau, there has been a struggle there. And it will continue all the way to the end,

I believe, based on the fact that the Lord, again through Obadiah, is prophesying against them and talking about his second coming.

I have just a little bit more time here. I'm going to see if I can start getting to a good stopping point.

So, we know how important, how significant Esau's lineage has been, and it will continue all the way up to the end there.

Obadiah at this point has prophesied that Edom will be brought low, that they will be humbled by God himself.

Now what's interesting about it, if you guys recall, in verses

I would say about four through nine.

In verses four through nine of Obadiah, the Lord is talking about a lot of bad things that he's going to cause, or he's going to bring upon these people.

And then, he gets to the very end of it, so what he does is, this is all stuff we already covered, but he talks about some bad things that he's going to bring upon the

Edomites. Then, he explains why, he reminds us why he's bringing them upon them again, and that's what we covered a couple weeks ago, their sinful attitudes and actions against God's people.

And then he sums it all up with talking about the Day of the Lord. Interestingly enough, those passages that we already covered,

I believe those were talking about historical events that have already taken place, and I'm going to get to that, and I'm going to explain why in just a second.

So, he does talk about, he does prophesy various events that will take place, because where are the

Edomites today? We know they've already been punished, to some degree. They haven't been around as a full -out nation since the days of Herod, or prior to the days of Herod, the king, when

Jesus was born. A couple thousand years, where are these people? So, obviously, God has already punished them in many ways.

And so, how has he done that? Well, we're going to look at a little bit of history, mixed with the

Scripture we've already read here, to see how this has played out, how God has meticulously punished this specific group of people, and how he has humbled them, how he has brought them low, with the great kind of period to the story, which is the

Day of the Lord, the great end of the whole story. But again, that's why he specifically mentions all the heathen as well, because that's going to be the great day, the great end to all the heathen, not just the

Edomites. About 300 years after Obadiah was presumably written, we think, again, we talked about this when we started this study, there's not a clear -cut date given in the

Scripture, so scholars, of course, throw a lot of different things out there. Schofield believed it was

B .C. 887 when Obadiah was written, and he gives very good reason for that.

I mean, it lines up really well with the prophecy of Joel, which was written around that time. Amos, same story.

So there's some good reason to believe that Schofield may have been right there, even though it's not clearly given in the

Obadiah passage. So if you take that around the time Obadiah may have been written, fast forward about 300 years, there was a group of people called the

Nabataeans from northern Arabia that came in, and they drove out the

Edomites. Now, in verse 7 of Obadiah, it says, all the men of thy confederacy have brought thee even to the border.

The men that were at peace with thee have deceived thee, and prevailed against thee. They that eat thy bread have laid a wound under thee.

There is none understanding in him. So what God is telling, is prophesying here in verse 7 is that your allies are going to come, and they're going to come defeat you.

You had peace with them. You had bread with them. They're going to come. Well, the Nabataean Arabs were one of the

Edomites' ancient allies that according to Josephus, the ancient

Jewish historian, fleshed out in his works, they came in and from historical records, it appears that they came and kind of conquered the

Edomites. They came within their border as allies, and then started to kill their major leaders, major military leaders, and eventually absorbed them as a nation.

And the Nabataeans then took ownership of the area. And this is according to secular history as well.

And so they came in. There were, Edomites remained in the area, a few of them, but most of them were killed off.

Get this, Dad. The Edomites lived in Mount Seir. They lived there for years.

They took great pride. That was one of the reasons why they were so proud was that their geographical location. The Nabataeans come in, they conquer them, and guess who it was that carved out what is now known as the city of Petra?

The Nabataeans. And they carved it out of the same mountain that the Edomites lived in for years.

And Petra will eventually be a place where the Lord protects his own, a remnant of them, if I'm stating that correctly,

Dad. Is it that ironic, though, that one of the greatest enemies of the

Lord that prided themselves on their geographical location, being Mount Seir, they were taken out of there, and then this great city of Petra was carved out, which is impenetrable, and that is where a lot of God's people will someday be protected during the

Great Tribulation. Super crazy. So the Nabataeans were actually the great stone carvers that created that city originally, and then some

Romans came in and did some additional work to it, but they were the original stone carvers of Petra. So they came in around 300 years after Obadiah was written, presumably, and they kind of absorbed

Edom. So at that point, their allies came in, they conquered them, and that was one part of the punishment of God that he prophesied, possibly in verse 7 of Obadiah there, where he said, they ate bread with you, but now they're going to come in and they're going to take you over.

Now, what's interesting is some portion of the Edomites were expelled. Those Edomites settled in a place called

Edomia, which is the Greek name for southern Judea, and so now you go, fast forward again, to about 120

BC, a little bit of the Edomites were left there. They were then called

Edomians at that point, because that's where they were living, and they were subdued and conquered by a guy named

John Heracanus, who was a Maccabean, a Jewish fighter.

He goes in and conquers them. He forced them all to get circumcised in the fall of Judaism. So he proselyted what was the small remnants of the

Edomites that were left, forced them all to get circumcised after obliterating whatever little military they had left, and conquered them there.

All of this, by the way, is from the Josephus work, the Antiquities of the

Jews, and so it's interesting because you take in Obadiah, the verses we read, and it's talking about all these things, and we know some of them have transpired because Edom is no more.

Edom's not around today, and so we're trying to fill in the gaps here. Well, not fill in the gaps, but kind of flesh out how this all transpired through some of this history.

It gets more and more interesting. We're almost done. I've got about four or five minutes left. Herod the

Great, the king, when Jesus was born, the same king that ordered all of the children to be killed, all of the male children to be killed, because he was absolutely insane, absolutely evil, and was scared because the king had just been born, that was going to take his throne from him, is what he was concerned about.

So what he does, he just kills all the babies. That same king was an

Edomite. He was an Edomian. He was one of the proselyted. He was a...

What is the word I'm looking for? He was a child of several generations later.

I don't know why I can't think of that word, but the Edomites that were left, the

Maccabean guy, John Hercanus, proselyted, he was of that lineage. So he was by default a

Jew now, through what transpired in about 120

B .C., but his blood was still Esau. He was an

Edomite. Isn't that quote -unquote ironic that it was an Edomite that ordered the killing of all of those babies trying to kill the

Messiah? I don't know. It's just crazy stuff. So, Herod was an

Edomian who was, again, proselyted. His ancestors were, anyway, about 100 years prior.

So then, fast forward a little bit more. And the Edomians then joined the

Jews in their rebellion against Rome around 70 A .D. So at this point, Jesus has lived his life.

He has been crucified, risen again. Fast forward to the year that the temple is about to be destroyed, and the

Jews go for one more, go for one great revolt against the

Romans, presumably to keep that from happening. Well, the Edomians, who, again, were the Edomites, really, but they were proselyted, they join in on that rebellion, and they start fighting.

So the Edomians join in, and they start fighting alongside the

Jews against the Romans in 70 A .D., but were almost totally obliterated by Titus, who was, of course, the

Roman general at that time, and only a few Edomian refugees escaped. And from that point,

Edom has faded from history. So a couple of things there.

Number one is we can kind of see through those events how the Lord punished the

Edomites in a lot of the verses we had read prior to where we are today, in verse 15, where it's talking about the great day of the

Lord. And a few escaped. As a nation, they were as good as done. However, again, presumably so, there remained a few to kind of keep the bloodline alive, because they weren't totally obliterated, but they almost were, to keep the bloodline alive so that there will be some alive, so that there will be some

Edomites in the great day of the Lord when all the rest of the heathen are gathered together and destroyed. So it's really crazy, because the

Lord already fulfilled a number of the prophecies that he prophesied against them in the first half of Obadiah.

And they were almost totally obliterated around 70 AD, was kind of the last kind of gavel to their head.

And yet in verse 15, still prophesying against the Edomites, he says, for the day of the

Lord is near upon all the heathen. He wraps them into the collective, the totality of all the heathen.

And so they're not quite done just yet. The downfall mentioned in verse 7 probably occurred again during the

Nabataean invasion that we already talked about. They came in, they killed their guards, they were welcomed in because they were an ally, and then they killed all their significant military people and just took them over.

That was prophesied possibly in verse 7 there. When we got to this point in Obadiah, in verse 15, and we're finishing up here, there's a transition that takes place which moves us beyond the historical reality of the

Edomites as an ancient people, as an ancient nation. That part is done. And what they specifically did to God's children to now, it's shifting in verse 15 to looking at the totality of all the heathen from times past all the way into the future.

And God's punishment of the Edomites for what they did extends to the same heathen that persecute us today, which of course is the big grand finale for us in this study.

Because we can be brought down, we can get a little bit down when we see the gross level of heresy, of blasphemy, whatever you want to call it, that the heathen around us today engage in.

They are very openly, verbally hostile toward us already.

It may not have transitioned to violent action just yet, depending on what geographical part of the world you're looking at, including some cases here in the

United States, maybe. But they have certainly already turned to being verbally hostile. And that can bring us down.

We can get depressed when we think about that. But the great day of the Lord that was prophesied against Edom extends to the same heathen that persecute us today.

And so we know the victory is already won. The Lord will come back. He'll take care of all of it for us. We'll have some times we get down for sure, but there's going to be, again,

I'll say it one more time, a very epic ending to this story. And right here in Obadiah, the Lord is reminding us what he's promised since the days of Moses, which is vengeance is mine.

And so we'll end there today, and we'll pick it back up. We haven't even finished the second part of verse 15 yet.

There's a whole lot in this one verse. Once we get past this verse, we'll be able to go through the final verse of Obadiah pretty quickly.

But I wanted to really, really hone in on a number of things here, because again, this will be a good reference point for perhaps some future studies as well.

And it's just so much intriguing, so many intriguing variables that come into play here.

So I'll go ahead and pray. We'll be dismissed, and then I appreciate you guys so much for joining us this morning. Dear Holy Father, Lord, thank you so much for this great day.

Thanks for bringing us all together once again, that we may fellowship together, edify each other, and just be lifted up in the sense that we live in such a dark world, and yet you promised us that together you are there with us, and we can again just be comforted in that, and kind of recharge, so to speak, and get ready to continue to face the battles that are before us, and that you have ordained to be before us, so that we may continue to grow and become stronger and stronger, and ultimately become the people that we will be when we meet you for the first time, and we're thankful for that.

So thankful for this church family. We ask you to continue to be with Dad as we transition to main services here.

Thank you so much for bringing JD and Adam safely to us to visit with us today, and we ask that you continue to protect all of our church family that is currently on the road traveling as well.

protect them and bring them all safely back to us, and we ask all these things in your name. Amen.