To Pergamum

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Stephen Berry, would you open us up with a word of prayer? Heavenly Father, thank you for this time that we can come before you this morning to be taught your word.
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Lord, I ask that you would just make our hearts receptive, make them open to hear the word you have that's to be taught to us.
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Give Brother Mike the words to speak, give him wisdom as he expounds your word, and just help make our hearts receptive.
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In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. All right. Revelation chapter 2, and this is a, historically, this is a fascinating city.
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So let me read verses 12 through 17. To the angel of the church of Pergamum write, the one who has the sharp two -edged sword says this,
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I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, and you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith, even in the days of Antipas, my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.
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But I have a few things against you, because you have, there are some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept
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Balak, to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things that sacrifice to idols, to commit acts of immorality.
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So you have some who, in the same way, hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Therefore repent, or else
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I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of my mouth.
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He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, and to him who overcomes, to him
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I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone and a new name written on that stone, which no one knows but he who receives it."
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I would have liked to have actually started with this church, but God didn't ask me that when he wrote the book.
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Is this your opinion? Yeah, and the reason being is Pergamum, Pergamos, depending on what translation you have, is very significant for this reason.
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Historically, you know that when Alexander the Great, he died, you remember, it splintered into four empires.
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Anybody remember what those four generals were, by chance? One of them was Lysimachus.
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Lysimachus is the one who took Asia Minor and Thrace, which is where Pergamum is.
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That began, which would be, which was called the Atiliad dynasty.
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I know this is, just to kind of let you know what happened. So now, Pergamum is the, it is the capital of the
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Atiliad empire, okay, that's Lysimachus. Well, the king of Pergamum, when he died, and we'll get further into that, this is how
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Asia Minor became part of the Roman Republic, not the empire, remember
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Rome was a republic before it ever became an empire, in,
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I think it was 133 BC, hey baby, come join us, grand entrance.
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See, now I can't even think when you're like this, yeah, see,
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Revelation 2, oh yeah, see, my,
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I repent, so what happened was in 133,
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Attalus II, I think it was II, he died, and he willed his kingdom to the
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Roman Republic. So that's how Asia Minor became a province of the
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Roman Republic later on, and we'll talk about this, it becomes part of the Roman Empire. So that's why
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Pergamum's important, and it is the provincial capital of Asia Minor. So not only was it very important, like Ephesus and Smyrna, which, y 'all remember, what made
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Ephesus and Smyrna very important? Port, which gave them lots of what?
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Money. Cash. Well, being a provincial capital with Pergamum, that gives it a lot of status, a lot of cash, and obviously the population is very high.
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So you're probably, in this time when the book was written, if you take the early date or late date, you're still looking at somewhere around 100 ,000 to 150 ,000 people.
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So another thing what's important about Pergamum is the word
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Pergamum actually in its etymology comes to where we get the word parchment.
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And how that came about is Ptolemy, and you remember who
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Ptolemy was, of the Ptolemies? Which empire were they? I guess I didn't teach
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Daniel good enough. It was Egyptian. Well, if you had an empire, you had to have, to show that your status of smartness, you would have to have a library.
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And Alexandria was the largest library in the ancient world, but Pergamum had the second largest.
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So now you have the competing on who's got the biggest brains. You know, over 200 ,000 manuscripts would have been in Alexandria, and it was close to that in the library of Pergamum.
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So Ptolemy II is the one that authorized,
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I'm sorry, Ptolemy II Philadelphus is the one that authorized the writing or the translation of the
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Septuagint, okay? His was done on papyrus. Well, as Eumenes II, his of Pergamum, his empire, as his library began to grow,
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Ptolemy says, I'm going to cut off sending this dude anymore papyrus or he's going to actually overrun my library.
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So what happens in Pergamum is then Eumenes says, hey, we're going to have to make something close to equivalent.
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So what they did is they made what was called pergaminums.
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And what it is, is they would take lamb skins, they would slice them in very small thin sheets.
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They would spread them out, dry them, wipe them with lime, scrape them to make them thin like paper, and that's where we get the word parchment.
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Just to let you know, it's amazing. And that is where the Asia Minor stuff, writings, would have been on parchment paper.
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And the stuff in the Alexandrian and the Egyptian area, that stuff would have been on papyrus.
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And if you even look at your, and Burke probably attested this, if you do anything on textual criticism and manuscripts, you can just about tell which areas and where they came based on what they were wrote on at that time, because you wouldn't have found a lot of papyrus over in Asia Minor, but you would have found plenty of it in Egypt.
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And if you remember what Paul told Timothy when he was writing his last, writing to him before he was executed by Nero, he says at the end of the book or close there to the end, he says, hey, send me the cloak, basically
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I'm cold, and bring the parchments. So, parchments would later become the leaflets by which we have a codex, codices, a book.
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So we can thank the King of Pergamum for that, that's how parchments came about, vellum is also a type of parchment, it's just a higher quality.
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So all that being said, that's the history of the city itself. It was willed to the
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Roman Republic, well, as it was willed to the Roman Republic, and the Roman Republic then becomes a
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Roman Empire under who, they remember, in 27 BC, Augustus, Caesar Augustus, first emperor of Rome, not
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Julius Caesar, he was still part of the triumvirate, it was Caesar Augustus.
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So, it being the provincial capital of Asia Minor, and in 24
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BC, Caesar Augustus gives them the status of, you can now build a temple in honor to worship me.
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So now, we're seeing, now Pergamum not only has it been historically been a great city for knowledge, but now we're seeing it's a city now that's, it's going to raise the emperor up in such a way to be worshiped.
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So not only did you have emperor worship going on there, which would have been the first center of worship, because remember,
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Caesar Augustus is the first emperor, and we wind up seeing emperor worship develop into a compulsory thing in 249
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AD, it begins with Caesar Augustus. But not only that, but you had other temples there, huge.
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You had the temple to Zeus, temple to Zeus, not only was it an altar there, but it was supposedly where his throne was at.
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Zeus, if you know anything about Greco -Roman mythology, Zeus was the god of all gods. He was the one that they all burst out of, either he slept with something else, burst a woman out of himself and slept with her, and then they raised up another like Athena and all that.
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There was a temple to Athena there, and the temple of Athena would have been for wisdom and skill, and actually specifically in wisdom and skill of war fighting, which is significant for the
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Roman Empire. That's why if you did not engage yourself in the idolatry of that time, you were considered to be unpatriotic.
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Hey, if you didn't go and make oblation to Athena, based on what the
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Romans believed, were they getting the skill, wisdom that they needed to go and conquer more lands?
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The answer is no, because who had that under their thinking, Athena? So you had the temple of Athena, you had the temple to Zeus and the altar of Zeus.
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You had the temple to Dionysus, which is, if you ever looked at any of his statues, he is an effeminate man.
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They engaged in every type of sexual perversion. He was the god of pleasure, ecstasy, and wine.
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Interesting that wine is in there. You know, you drink enough liquor, it'll lower your inhibitions, do whatever you want.
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And so you had the large temple there. The main temple there was for the sinner of Asclepius, and anybody remember me saying this a couple weeks ago?
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There was other places that had temples to Asclepius, anybody remember who Asclepius was? Asclepius was the god of medicine, and it was the staff that had two serpents on there, and it has been wrongly said about the staff that Moses held up that had the brazen serpent put around it, that that's where the pharmaceuticals get it from.
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That is just an outright lie. There's not even any historical evidence to back that up, and the reason being is because Asclepius was the god of medicine and healing, and you had the
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Hippocratic Oath, which actually says in the Hippocratic Oath, which has been changed by Western doctors when they take that oath today, the
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Hippocratic Oath is, I swear by allegiance to Apollos and Asclepius. So that's the brazen altar that Moses held up.
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You look at it, you'll be healed. Utter nonsense. It has to do with the two serpents that Asclepius carried on the staff that offered healing.
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At that temple, there was snakes everywhere on the ground.
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They would be just slithering everywhere on the temple steps, and what people would do, they would come in thinking that those snakes had the ability to give life, and how they came to that conclusion is what did they do?
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They shed their skin. As they shed their skin, they saw that as a newness of life. You let them slither all over you, whatever maladies you have or infirmity, you will be healed.
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Crazy. Crazy. I mean, it's just insane the idolatry that would go on, but that was the major things that were going on in that city, known for that all the way through the first and part of the second century.
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Pergamum also had a small Jewish community there, very small.
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There's never been any evidence of a, or found yet, historically, was there a synagogue there, but they knew there was some
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Jewish communities there, and we'll talk about part of that as we get towards the end, if I get that far today.
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But there was a Jewish community there. They did, obviously, remember, they had a religious freedom.
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They did not have to engage in the perversions of Rome because of their help to Julius Caesar many, many years ago.
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We're talking at this time, this would have been, if this took place in 65, 66, 67
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A .D., they got their religious freedom and exemption in around 44
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B .C. So look out at the time frame, we're talking 125 years, 125 years difference for this time.
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So let's walk through the text. I've already addressed chapter 2, verse 12, about the church, where Pergamum was.
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It was in Asia Minor, and it was about anywhere between 55 and 60 miles north of Smyrna.
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And it says here in the second part of verse 12, it says, And the one who has a sharp two -edged sword says this,
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Once again, we're seeing Christ being identified as the one speaking. Just as we saw when he came to Ephesus, it says,
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The one who is holding the lampstand in his hand, or the one, I'm sorry, the one who walks among the lampstands, that is going back to chapter 1, speaking of Christ.
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This is Christ speaking. And in the church to Smyrna, he says, I'm the first and the last and the one who was dead and has come to life again.
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That's also referring back to something that Jesus said about himself in chapter 1. In chapter 2, verse 12, he refers back to himself again, so there's no confusion as to who is speaking.
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It says, The one who has the sharp two -edged sword says this. What was the significance of Jesus' having a two -edged sword coming out of his mouth?
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I mean, honestly, we know that it was a vision. Do we think that Jesus had an actual two and a half foot rhema hung out of his mouth?
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What's the significance of a sword in his mouth? The word. How the word can cut.
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It can, not only can it cut, yeah, but it can, it has the word, the ability to do two things. It's a double -edged sword.
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It has the ability to cut to heal, and it has the ability to kill to judge. And we're going to see that as we get in, because he says at the end, hey, if you don't repent, what am
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I going to do? I'm going to come and make war with you. To me, that is one of the most terrifying passages in all scripture.
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Imagine the son of the living God, resurrected, the one who conquered death, hell, and the grave. He said, if you don't change your ways,
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I'm going to make war with you. Not, hey, I'm just going to come and I'm going to tell you, you need to get your act together.
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No, no, no, no. He says, I'm going to make war. Who does Jesus make war with? His enemies.
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What is that saying about those who don't repent? In this church, specifically, you're his enemy. And I mean, if you're his enemy, you're not part of him.
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That is, that should be terrifying. That falls in line with one of the most terrifying statements in all of scripture.
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Actually, the top for me, which is Matthew 7, verses 21 through 23, where he says, there'll be many on that day say to me,
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Lord, Lord, and I will say, depart from me, I never knew you. Those are the most terrifying words in all of scripture.
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Imagine hearing those words from the risen son of God on that day, depart from me.
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I don't know who you are, you worker of iniquity. So the two -edged sword has the ability to heal.
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It's sharper than a two -edged sword, dividing between the bone and the marrow and the soul and the spirit.
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But what is the difference between the soul and the spirit? Can you make that distinction? I can't.
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But the spirit of God through this preaching of the word of God can. And he says this in verse 13, he says, and I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is.
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This is kind of a strange statement. When he says
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I know, one, this is not just Jesus has just cognitive awareness.
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Remember, he says this seven times, I know. This is, Jesus has intimate knowledge of who you are, what you are, what's going on, he has inside knowledge.
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He's not looking from the outside, going, well, I can kind of have an idea what's going on. No, he specifically knows what's going on.
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He knows the issues within the church, and he says, I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is.
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Satan's throne. First of all, who is Satan? He's the adversary.
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What does Satan mean? It means adversary.
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We see Satan when Andy talked through the book of Job. It's brought up. It's the adversary, the one, the accuser.
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Satan is not his, was not the name given him when he was created by the
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Lord. Okay? That was not his name. That becomes his name when he usurps the authority that God had given
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Adam and Eve in the garden when he was the serpent, and then what does he become? Once he does that, he becomes the adversary of all humanity and the adversary of God and his image bearers.
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Therefore, now he is the accuser of the brother. He is a fallen angelic being.
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How many angels do we have in Scripture spoken of? Anybody know? By name.
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What are they? Ding, ding. Go ahead.
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Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer. Lucifer's not it. There's actually four.
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But who said it? You said four? No, that's intertestamental.
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Yeah, that's intertestamental. What does Scripture say? Scripture says there's Gabriel, there's
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Michael, there's Legion. Remember who he was? Jesus comes across the
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Sea of Galilee. These two men are cutting themselves, acting like fools, possessed by demons. And Jesus asked him specifically, what is your name?
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He says, Legion, but we are many, meaning speaking of. So you have that one, and then you have spoken of, we'll get to it towards the end or middle of the book.
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You have Abaddon is the Hebrew name, and Apollyon is the
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Greek. That's it, okay? The one you're talking about is a
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King James textual variant. Lucifer is not the devil's name, just to let you know that.
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Lucifer's not his name. Lucifer was never his name. Lucifer actually comes from the
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Latin Vulgate, where they could not carry over in the King James, where they could not carry over an actual translation from the
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Latin Vulgate into the English, and they carried over Jerome's word,
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Luciferia, which just means lightbearer, morning star. That's all it means. The King James translators capitalized that to make it a proper name, and that's just not it.
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That's just, I mean, historically, that's just not, it's not right, okay? The capitalization of that led to all kinds of rabbit trails, okay?
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Lucifer is not his name. Was he a being that was majestic and fell?
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Yes, he did, but his name is not Lucifer. It was given the adversary.
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He is the adversary of God and his people. It says, and I know where Satan's throne is.
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Is the Lord Jesus saying that the Pergamum city was the place of the satanic temple?
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No. But he is saying that this place, which has all these polytheistic, all these religions that worship everything other than him have a satanic connotation, which means this is where the prince of darkness can rule and reign.
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Now, is Satan omnipotent?
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Is he omnipresent? No. He does not have the ability to be in multiple places at multiple times.
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He does not have exhaustive knowledge of all things. Matter of fact, I think what knowledge he does have is perverted by his own pride and is perverted by his own ability to think that he actually can destroy
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God and his people and he will win. I do believe that Satan believes that. Now, is
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Satan a very strong and powerful being? Yes, but let's don't give him more credit than he deserves.
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There is no dualistic power in the sense of you got
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Jesus here and you got Satan here and they're equal and they're doing this some type of duel to see who's going to win.
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Look, Satan, Christ is going to speak the word on that day and he'll be cast into the lake of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth forever and ever.
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He'll be forever punished with him and his angels that are in the abyss and it will happen. And it will happen in a split second.
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There is no dualism here. As Luther said, the devil is
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God's devil. Therefore, he is on a leash and he can only do what he allows him to do. And that is so true.
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It's true. Think about when they came across to the
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Gadarenes and the demons that were in that, those two men says, oh, hey, are you going to punish us before the time?
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And what did they do? They asked the son of God in his incarnation, will you grant us?
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They even asked him in his incarnation, give us permission to go into the swine.
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Don't send us to the abyss where the punishment is. So Satan is no rival in that sense to the omnipotent power of Christ.
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But Pergamum was a place where idolatry was, where satanic influences were based on idolatry.
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It says, and you hold fast my name and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas.
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Hold fast. What does it mean to hold fast? That is one of my favorite words in all the scripture when it comes to speaking of the
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Christian faith. It's used several times in the book of Hebrews. They're told to hold fast, hold fast, hold fast.
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In the Andy Montora translation, it would be to press on. It would mean to continue.
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Hold fast would be as we, excuse me, get to the end of every letter where it says to overcome.
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Hold fast is overcoming. Overcoming is holding fast. Overcoming and holding fast is continuing to believe, continuing to trust, continuing to believe in the name of the
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Lord Jesus Christ and trusting him and him alone for salvation. Persevering. Persevering, yeah.
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Does anybody's translation say persevere? No. To hold fast to my name and they did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas.
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The actual rendering in the Mines of the New American Standard 1995 edition,
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I think the 2000 or 2020 says the same thing.
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That's actually the literal translation of the construction of it in the Greek. But it actually should be, it's read better this way.
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They did not deny faith in me even in the days of Antipas. That sounds better. But the reason why the translators translated that way is because that's actually how it is in the vernacular of the
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Greek. There's a reference in the ESV that sends you down that says that. What does it say? There's a reference like number two in the
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ESV that sends you down to the bottom that says your faith in me. Yeah, it reads better that way. Yeah, it reads better that way.
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Even in the days of Antipas, if I was ever to be put in scripture in that day and time, this is how
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I would want to be looked at. My witness and my faithful one, this is all we know about Antipas.
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Anybody know anything about Antipas? Anybody? Anybody ever heard anything about this guy?
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You know, we know nothing about this dude. I mean, in all of scripture, the only time he's mentioned, and he's mentioned in the same way that Christ is mentioned.
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You go back in the beginning of the book, I think it's a chapter, yeah, well, obviously, it'd have to be chapter one. It says,
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Jesus was a faithful, he was the faithful one and a faithful witness. What does Jesus say about Antipas right here?
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He is faithful and he's my witness. The same character and nature in that sense of being a follower of Christ.
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What a way to be looked at. I would much rather be looked at as Antipas, the only time he's mentioned, than be one like Demas where it says,
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Demas went the way of the world and chased it and now I've turned him over to the destruction of the flesh.
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How would you want to be mentioned of in scripture? Or would you like to be like Alexander the coppersmith who did
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Paul great harm and he will get his due from God? I don't want to be that guy.
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I want to be this guy. He was my faithful witness and he was killed among you where Satan dwells.
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We don't know exactly what happened with Antipas. I think
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Fox's Book of Martyrs has a, and somebody could go out there and look at it because Andy's got them on the book out there,
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I mean on the table in the book table. You can pick one up. Antipas I think is in there. A couple of the church fathers have mentioned that what happened to him, is that Antipas calling?
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Maybe he was going to tell us what happened. So, history, legend, tradition, however you want to say that, tells us that Antipas was put into a brazen belly of a bull and was put over an open flame and cooked alive inside that brazen bull.
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But we don't know. Matter of fact, not only do we not know exactly how he died, we don't know where he was at when he died.
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We don't know what he was doing when he died. You know, was he standing outside the temple of Athena saying, hey,
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God can destroy Athena with all of her wisdom, God is the beginning of all wisdom, the fear of God is the beginning of all knowledge.
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Was he standing out there preaching that? Was he standing outside the altar of Zeus saying these are blasphemous sacrifices to a dead
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God that is no God, for there is only one God and his name is Yahweh and he has revealed himself in the person and work of his son
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Jesus Christ. Is that what happened? We don't know. Was he standing outside the temple of Dionysus saying homosexuality and effeminacy is wrong, it's an abomination to God?
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We don't know. Was he standing outside the temple of Asclepius, as he stood outside preaching on the front steps of the temple of Asclepius and as he would be preaching, this is how my mind works, when a little snake slithers by him and he stomps on his head and he says that's what
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Jesus did to the head of the serpent. Maybe they've gotten mobbed violently and killed him.
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We don't know. Maybe the Roman authorities came and got him and hauled him off. It does appear that this was an isolated incident though and here's why
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I say that. He doesn't say they were hauling Christians off, does he? He specifically says you have held my name, you have been faithful even in the time when they killed
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Antipas. That means Antipas was, maybe he was the one, hey we'll execute this guy and see if we can get some of these
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Christians to simmer down. We have no indication that people were being hauled off.
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But that's all we know about him. And it says where Satan dwells. Once again we've got
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Satan's throne and where Satan dwells, his satanic power, his satanic influences within this place of idolatry.
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He says but I have a few things against you. What did he say about Ephesus?
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He said you do all these things. You're faithful, you test the apostles, you haven't followed the teachings of the
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Nicolaitans, you test everybody to see if they're doctrinally pure. He says but I have this one thing against you, one.
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That's it. Hey man, when you get smart enough, there's nothing, now you get to Pergamum and what happens?
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Man, I've got a few. The list is getting longer. That's it, that's it.
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And he says but I have these few things against you that some of you here who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching
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Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel. We'll stop right there.
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Anybody remember who Balaam was? What's that? He was a prophet.
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What was he notoriously known for? Talk to a donkey.
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That's right. Remember how we got to him talking to the donkey. Balak was the king of Moab.
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He saw the children of Israel coming across the plain. He wanted Balaam, you can read all of this in Numbers 22 through 24.
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Yeah, 22 through 24. He sees them out, Balak is concerned,
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I mean obviously they had laid waste to some of those people that came up from behind already and killed them, so he knew that there was many of them.
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So he says, he calls for Balaam, which is interesting because he calls for Balaam and he says
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I want you to implore their God and curse them.
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If you go back and you read, Balaam actually calls
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God Yahweh. What was Yahweh? He was the covenant name of God. But he addresses Yahweh as his covenant
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God and God talks back to him. He doesn't address him as Elohim, which is the generic creator
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God, he as Yahweh. And he says you can't do it.
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Remember, they had sent dignitaries in there with tons of cash. Tons of cash. You let
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Balaam, if you curse these people by their God, he'll curse them. I'm going to give you a bunch of money.
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He sent people in there and he also sent some Midians in there, Midian men with him. Well Balaam says, hey dude, stay the night, we'll see what happens and I'll let you know in the morning.
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Well God says whatever I tell you to say, you got to say. So he can't say anything bad.
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So they send more cash. Hey man, let's do it again. He implores
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God again. He says, can't do it. You can only do what
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I tell you to do. For the free will people, this has got to be a problem because he can't make the curses come out of his mouth.
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Balaam says that in the day. Look, I can't do it. I want to do it. Look at all this money.
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I got all this money, all this status and you're going to give me, I want the money, but I can't. Well he asks
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God one more time, hey, they want me to go, Balak wants me to go and meet him on this mountain.
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God says, okay, go. Well while he's on his way, the angel of the
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Lord gets in his way. The donkey tries to go one way and it pins him against the wall and then the donkey, that's when he talks to the donkey, okay?
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The donkey talks to him, hey look, I'm pinning you against this wall. You don't see that majestic thing standing there with a sword about to strike us dead?
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And then what does Balak do? He talks back to the donkey. Do y 'all ever wonder if he ever tried to talk to his donkey again?
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That's what I think of like, okay, the donkey never talked, like maybe was he on his way back from Balak's incursion this time and he's getting bored and he decides he wants to strike up a conversation with the donkey again.
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Hey, hey, and the donkey's not talking back. So the donkey pins him against the wall, you see that, the angel of the
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Lord's gonna strike you dead. And it's interesting, if you read that narrative, it's God told him to go, okay,
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God said go. And then the angel of the Lord stops him, he's gonna strike him dead and he says this, but I told you when you go, you only say what
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I tell you to say. What was Balak fixing to do? He was gonna try to collect his money by cursing.
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So the angel of the Lord warned him again, you're gonna do what I tell you to do. So they get to where they're at, they build these altars, seven altars, one here, he can't seem to get him to curse him, can't do it, can't do it, can't do it, move to another place, let's go further, can't do it, can't do it, can't do it, he gets mad.
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You think that's the end of the story. He can't do it. As a matter of fact, there's a messianic prophecy in that,
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I think it's in chapter 24, being about the scepter of Christ, basically, of Christ is going to be raised up through the seed of Israel and all that, it's absolutely amazing.
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And nothing that Balaam says is false, do you know that, nothing, nothing.
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He says everything that's true and prophetic. He gets on his donkey, goes back, goes wherever he is, you think that's the end of the story.
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You get to chapter 31, I'm sorry, 25 or 26, and we all remember the story where Phineas runs the spear through the two, the man and the woman having sex, remember?
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The Midian woman comes into the camp, she's having sex with the guy outside the tent of meeting,
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Phineas, the plague starts, Phineas says, you're not gonna do that here, he runs and gets his, that's Aaron's son, he gets his spear and pins both of them to the ground, stops the plague, 24 ,000 people died because of that, okay, you think that's the end of the story, it's not.
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You go on, what caused that plague, what caused the Midian women to go in there and entice the men to sleep with them?
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It was because of the counsel of Bala. If you go and you read chapter 31,
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Moses says, now we're gonna go into this land and when we go in there, I want you to kill everybody in there, enslave, this is actually a really hard to deal with passage, but I want you to kill all the men,
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I want you to enslave all the women and children, I want you to bring all the women and children out, the women that have known a man, kill them, the ones that haven't known a man, the women, you men can have them for yourself, whatever that means, okay, that's weird, he says y 'all can have them, but you gotta kill them and here's why, because Balaam said to Balak, hey, check this out,
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I can't curse them, God won't let me, but I tell you what you can do, you know the
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Moabite women and those Midian, they're hot and those Israelite dudes can't keep their hands off of them, so if you send them on in the camp,
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I can't curse them, but their God will curse them for breaking the covenant by sleeping with them and committing fornication and then following after their idolatry, that's what
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Balaam did, that was his teaching, that's what he encouraged them to do and if you go to Jude, I think it's verse 11 or 12, it also talks about him and he did that, why did he do that, because he wanted the money, what do false teachers do, they do things for money and they encourage people to do what, commit sexual immorality, look, you can look at any false teaching, okay, any false teaching, health, wealth, prosperity, there's gonna be money involved and sexual immorality, just go check it out, there ain't a health, wealth, prosperity preacher that hasn't been a scandal in their ministry over money and over sexual immorality, and sometimes it's the head person that has the sexual immorality, whether it is divorcing their wife to marry someone younger or actually getting caught sleeping with younger women or boys, just to let you know, so.
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Wasn't Babylon, yes, yes, he's not a man, yeah, he's not gonna back up from what he has already done, correct, yeah, you can go, you can read the whole thing, go to chapter 22 through 24, and then you can read in chapter 31, where he actually,
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Moses gives him to go in there and kill them all, and then it's recounted again in Joshua 13, where they parceled out the land,
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Balaam again is mentioned, this is in that land where, hey, he went in there, this is where we slayed
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Balaam, but Balaam was a false prophet because of taking money for sordid gain, that's what it was, his words actually were true and faithful about God and about his people.
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That was the stumbling block that he put in front of Israel to sacrifice to idols and to commit acts of immorality, the sacrifice to idols was following off the idols of the
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Moabite Midian women and the sexual immorality that was involved in it, it said so, and then let's square up here, so you have also some who in the same way hold to the teaching of the
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Nicolaitans, we don't know much, remember, what do we know about the
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Nicolaitans? That's all we know, yeah, now we can draw some inferences, certainly from here, this helps us understand kind of what the teaching was in the same way, so in the same way, it means that the
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Nicolaitans in the same way were encouraging people to commit idolatry, not just eat food offered to idols because there was nothing in and of itself wrong with eating the food as long as it was sold in the market, remember, there was nothing wrong if you get to the temple,
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I mean where were the best steaks? They were in the temples, okay, but what did Paul say?
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You don't go in there and eat the steak there, if it ends up in the market out the back door and ends up being sold in the marketplace, then fine, eat it, but if it causes your brother to stumble, then don't, but there's nothing in and of itself wrong with that food once it leaves the temple, but if you go inside the temple of Zeus and you're going to eat food offered to idols, what often was associated with eating the best steak and being in Zeus's steakhouse?
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Immorality, immorality, we get into Thytyra, I think that plays a major role because that's where commerce would take place, guys would go in there, make nefarious deals, they would, because that's the working class when we get to Thytyra, you got them guys in there, we're going to make nefarious deals, hey, you're a plumber, hey,
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I'm a builder, you do work with me, hey, you know what, let's offer a sacrifice to Dionysus and hey, eat some steak and get a prostitute, we'll wrap this thing up tonight, that was how things went and it was common practice, this is not,
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I mean, just go read the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the history of the Roman Empire, the idolatry,
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I mean, it was common and all we know about Nicolaitans is that they had some type of false teaching that had infiltrated the church, we don't know who it is, me and Cindy were talking a little bit this morning, we have
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Irenaeus' writings about who this person is,
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I don't want to say that's who it was, that it was Nicholas, one of the servers in Acts 6,
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I don't want to say that, they say it is, hey, that's historically, that's what the church fathers believed,
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I have a hard time saying that and here's the reason, although it has some merit to it based on the amount of church fathers,
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I don't want to say that's who it is because that's a terrible thing to say about a man who's dead and can't defend himself, okay,
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I don't know about any of y 'all, but I wouldn't want to be dead and then a couple of years later, y 'all say, oh yeah, Mike was sleeping around on his wife or something, no,
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I can't even defend myself, this guy's dead, we don't know, we don't have any imperial evidence that this is who it was, but we do know this, that the
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Nicolaitans had a teaching that had infiltrated not only Ephesus, had infiltrated the church in Pergamos and was causing men and women to leave fidelity to Christ and then to be taken apart at some time for synchronistic teaching, you know what syncretism is, where you take two types of religions and worship and you put them together, well, that's what the
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Nicolaitans looked like what they were doing, they were taking, hey, you can have Christ, but you can have a prostitute too, remember
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Paul had to deal with that in Corinth, he says, look, you can't be joined to a harlot and be joined to Christ, the two don't mix, well, that's the same problem it looks like is taking place here, we got to close it up,
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I got two minutes for questions, clarifications, rebukes, yeah, it's interesting how the
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Jerusalem council, that was the whole, you know, outcome of the Jerusalem council was to not eat the food offered to the idols, or strangled, or strangled, don't drink the blood, yeah, and sexual immorality, yeah, it's interesting how that, that theme kind of coming up again and again throughout the
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New Testament, yeah, because I mean, what is one of the most blinding sins?
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Sexual immorality, sexual immorality, hey, you can take believers, you take two believers that are dating, say they love one another, really,
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I believe that's true, hey, we're going to get married, you know, we'll just, we'll go ahead and sleep together now, dude, that's blinding, and in their mind they can convince themselves what they're doing is right and it's wrong, it's fornication, it's not, it's not approved by God, but because sexual sin is so blinding, because it does feel so right and appeals to the pleasure and the sensualness of our flesh, it feels right, so yeah, you're right, that was a constant thing that they had to deal with, and because the culture was, the
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Roman culture was sexual in nature, dude, it was everywhere, it was everywhere. How about it's interesting that what was happening in those days,
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I mean, it ain't nothing made much change. Dude, read, you gotta read, you can get it cheap now,
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I'm sure, get Edward Givens, Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, and you can say, wow, that's us, that's us.
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Greed. Yeah. Immorality. Yeah, and you think that homosexuality, being in the churches and all that stuff and all that was like, oh, that's odd now, no, it's not, that stuff was happening then, you know, you had men being castrated so they could be women,
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Nero had one castrated so that he could have it as his boy, so, you'll pray us out,
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Mac? Father, come to you this morning, and once again, Father, I appreciate
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Brother Mike and his studying of your word that he brings and teaches us,
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Father, and that we can understand the churches, and Father, maybe we examine ourselves and see which church we may fall in, and Father, repent from it.
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We just ask that we go into the main auditorium, Father, that you be with Pastor Keith and the word that he brings, and just keep a heart pricked and receptive to your word this morning, for these things