Revelation 11-13 (Con't)

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But that was nothing compared to stuff in Costa Rica. And he took a two week trip to Costa Rica to go surfing.
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First day, wiped out, it was like a 40 foot wave. He thought he was gonna go do something, just tore his shoulder all up.
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That's rough. Well, good morning, John Connery. Will you open us up with a word of prayer?
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All right. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we just thank you that you brought us here today.
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And we thank Brother Mike as he's prepared this week to bring your word, that you would give us ears to hear, open our hearts to receive, bless this time, and we'll thank you for it.
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In Christ's name we pray, amen. Amen. Revelation chapter 11, beginning of verse one.
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It was given to me a measuring rod like a staff. And someone said, get up, measure the temple of God, the altar and those who worship in it.
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Leave out the court which is outside the temple and do not measure it for it has been given to the nations and they will tread underfoot the holy city for 42 months.
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And I will grant authority to my two witnesses and they will prophesy for 1 ,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.
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These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.
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And if anyone wants to harm them, fire flows out of their mouth and devours their enemies.
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So if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this way. These have the power to shut up the sky so that rain will not fall during the days of their prophesying.
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And they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every plague as often as they desire.
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And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them that overcome them and kill them.
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And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which mystically is called Sodom in Egypt, where also their
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Lord was crucified. Those from the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations will look at their dead bodies for three and a half days and will not permit their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb.
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And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and celebrate and they will send gifts to one another because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth.
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But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God came into them and they stood up on their feet and a great fear fell upon those who were watching them.
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And they heard a loud voice from heaven saying, come up here. Then they went up into heaven in the cloud and their enemies watched them.
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And in that hour, there was a great earthquake and a 10th of the city fell. 7 ,000 people were killed in the earthquake and the rest were terrified and they gave glory to the
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God of heaven. The second woe is passed. Behold, the third woe is coming quickly.
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Then the seventh angel sounded and there was a loud voice in heaven saying, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our
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Lord and of his Christ and he will reign forever and ever. And the 24 elders who sat on their thrones before the
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God fell on their face and worshiped God saying, we give thanks, oh Lord God, the almighty, who are and were because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign.
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And the nations were enraged and your wrath came at the time, and the time came for the dead to be judged and the time for the reward for your bond servants, the prophets and the saints and those who fear your name, the small and the great to destroy those who destroy the earth.
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And the temple of God which is in heaven was opened and the ark of his covenant appeared in the temple and there were flashes of lightning, sounds and peals of thunder and earthquake and a great hailstorm.
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And a great sign appeared in heaven and a woman clothed with sun and the moon under her feet and under her head,
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I'm sorry, and on her head, a crown of 12 stars and she was with child and she cried out being in labor and in pain to give birth.
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Then another sign appeared in heaven and behold a great red dragon having seven heads, 10 horns and on the heads were seven diadems and his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth and the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she gave birth, he might devour her child.
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And she gave birth to a son, a male child who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron and her child was called up to God and to his throne and then the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God so that she would be nourished for 1 ,260 days.
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And a war, there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon and the dragon and his angels waged war and they were not strong enough and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven and the great dragon was thrown down and the serpent of old who was called the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world, he was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him.
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Then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our
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God and the authority of his Christ have come for the accuser of the brethren has been thrown down.
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He who accuses them before our God day and night and they overcame him because of the blood of the lamb and because of the word of their testimony and they did not love their life even faced with death.
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For this reason rejoice oh heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea because the devil has come down to you having great wrath knowing that he has only a short time.
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And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child.
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But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman so that she could fly into the wilderness to her place where she would be nourished for a time, times and half a time from the presence of the serpent.
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And the serpent poured out water like a river out of his mouth to the woman so that he might be swept away with the flood but the earth helped the woman and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon poured out of its mouth.
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So the dragon was enraged with the woman went off to make war with the rest of her children those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.
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So last week we got to verse seven. We didn't get into verse seven but just a little bit but we need to remember the two witnesses
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I said was the church. We saw the purpose. What was the purpose of the two witnesses?
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We'll just say the church because that's my conclusion. If y 'all think it's something different, then that's fine. Those two witnesses, what was the purpose of the two witnesses?
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Proclaim God's word. To be a witness. That's actually what the word is. Two witnesses, martorian which later would be ones that would we would use the word as a martyr.
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With the purpose of the two witnesses collectively the church their purpose was to proclaim.
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Proclaim and prophesy for this period of time 1260 days time, time, half of times three and a half years.
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What did we see about the power that they had? And I did get a question about their power.
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So what was their power? One, they had the ability to do miracles.
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I was asked. So do you not believe in miracles? Of course
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I believe in miracles. I don't believe that this text is talking about faith healers.
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Now, if I was a faith if I was a healer if I had the ability to heal people or to do miracles
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I can tell you just right in this room and she's not here today one I'd send bags of knight in shining armor coming through the door on a horse and scoop her up.
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Miss Linda, you wouldn't need that walker no more. You'd be throwing it like on TV when the faith healers, right? Okay.
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And I mean, I heal Andy's eye. If that is what that was talking about then there would never be any sickness.
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There would never be any, any adversity. There would never be any struggle.
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And that's not what that's talking about. The explicitly is using two people.
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And maybe I didn't make this clear enough. It is pointed back to the prophetic work of Moses and Elijah.
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Meaning that one, Moses had the ability to call down judgment as he was preaching. Look, Moses gave them a bill that the opportunity to let the people go before God put judgment on them.
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And what did, what did Pharaoh do? He held up his fist to God and says, who is this guy? I'm going to tell me what
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I'm going to do. And what did God do? Okay. You'll see. For that is judgment. What did Elijah do? Elijah had the ability, not only to stop the windows of heaven from pouring down blessing.
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What was rain in the Old Testament? Was that not a blessing from God? So for, hey, you may, and I do think this is, there is a correlation with this.
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You may remember, I think it's in, first, I can't remember, second Kings, first Kings?
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Where Elijah held back the rain. How long he held back the rain? Three and a half years. Well, look here, what we have here.
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Three and a half years, he had the ability, and this is, these two witnesses working together had the ability to stop the blessings of God coming down.
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You understand that as the church, we have ecclesiastical authority. You know what that means?
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That we have the ability to petition God that He would bless, even though He's just this nation, bless where you are at.
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What did He tell them when they took Him into Babylon? Bless that you pray for the nation that's taking you into bondage, because if you pray for them and they prosper, you'll prosper.
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So we have the ability as the church and application to do what Elijah did, which was pray for blessing on the people and on the leadership that was apostate, turning away from God.
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What was he supposed to do to them? Did he call down judgment on them? I mean, look at Ahab. Remember what he did to Ahab?
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He called down Ahab, all of his sons. How many do I remember? 70 of them were decapitated.
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Because of his rejection of God and following after Jezebel. Remember what happened to Jezebel? Dog's ate her.
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Dog's ate her, licked up her blood. Yep, remember what Jehu said? Came up there, she was all painted up. Ahab's already dead.
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Things that she's gonna be able to have him come alongside of her, because he was the new king. And she said, are you coming to peace?
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He said, hey, if you're with me, and what did the two guys do? The two eunuchs threw her off of the balcony, splattered on the ground, blood went on the wall, the dog's ate her up.
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Only thing that was left, I think it was the palms of her hands and her skull, the rest of it was defecated all over Israel, just as the prophecy said that she would not have a burial, she would be spread among the nations.
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And then Jehu, which is weird, Jehu then goes up there, and what does he do? He just sits down and has a meal.
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Y 'all remember that story? He was like, you know what? After that, I think I need a steak and some wine.
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So, we have the prophetic power that God has given us to do miracles.
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Are miracles real? Yes. Do people really get healed? Yes. Are faith healers real?
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No. No. Faith healers, by and large, are fake.
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I think you may have heard me tell this story before, Mike. I, in the largest paint store in Jacksonville, you used to go there in the morning, and it was almost like picking out a basketball squad.
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If you needed workers, there'd be 30 or 40 people there, and if you needed somebody, you could pick up when you're picking up your paint. And there was a guy in there, and he was talking about, he could drink, you know, walk on serpents and scorpions, and he could do all these things.
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And then he held up his hands like this, and he says, I'm over there at this point, you know, it's building.
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And he holds up his hands, and he says, I have the ability to heal in these hands. And he said he could drink poison.
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Out of all I could take him. So, I just walked over there, I grabbed a little small quart of lacquer, thinner, off the shelf, and I walked over, and I said, hey man, why don't you put your faith where your mouth is?
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Drink it. I'm not gonna do that. I said, wait a minute, you've been standing here, going on and on and on about how you have all these powers,
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God's given you all of this, then drink it. He said, well, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna tempt the
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Lord, God. Okay, well, you said you had the power to heal, why don't you and me go down to Wolfson's right now? I like to preach.
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I'll preach the gospel, you heal all the kids. Oh, we'll go to jail. That would be awesome.
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Setting all those little kids free. He said, I'm just not gonna do that. And I said, you know why you won't do that?
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Because you're a fake. That's why. So, but do I believe that miracles are real?
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Yes, but miracles are not the norm. Now, when the proclamation of the word, and I think
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I did say this last week, I believe this is by and large talking about the greatest miracle of all, which is the resurrection of the dead spirit through the proclamation of the word,
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God did giving that person the gift of faith and repentance and then giving that person the gift of justification and then granting them adoption into the body of Christ.
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That's the greatest miracle. Now, so we've seen their purpose, we've seen their power. What about their protection?
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How should we understand the protection? Does that mean that they're protected from all, let's just, from every harm?
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No. Go ahead. They were protected from death for a period. And protected from final judgment, like they're gonna protect you from the wrath of God.
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All through church history, all through church history, there has been martyrs. Some more than others at times, some it waned.
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And just to let you know, in this country, we are an anomaly in world history compared to Christianity.
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We are not the norm. This is not normal for Christians to not be put to death for their belief.
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This is just odd in church history. Just study church history. You'll see. Even in the time of the
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Jewish people in Israel, they were being put to death by parts of the Greek empire even before the coming of Christ.
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Okay, so we're in an anomaly. So let's don't interpret church history based on the last 200 years here, okay?
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But we are protected by God until our purpose is done. And we're fixing to actually see that.
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We're gonna be able to do whatever God's called us to do. And when we're done, whatever that is,
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God's gonna call our number and then we're gone. Whether it be a car crash, sickness, bullet, whatever it is, when
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God's done with us, doing whatever His purposes are with us as His purpose of preaching, the power of calling men and women to repentance, offering the offer of salvation to everyone.
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When that protection from doing those, that thing, it's over.
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That doesn't mean that the church is dead. It just means that the next people are gonna pick up the torch and go.
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And we'll see that as we get into verse seven as well and the succeeding verses.
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So verse seven says, and when they have finished their testimony, okay, when the church finishes their purpose of proclaiming, it says, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them.
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Now, I meet with two different men early in the morning.
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One of them says that, man, Mike, sometimes you get too deep into it.
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I said, well, dude, we don't wanna, sometimes we need to look at the trees in light of the forest.
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And his immediate response is, Mike, you're just a tree hugger. Meaning I like to look at the details of everything.
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And this is, we're gonna have to look at some details. We're gonna have to, because this is the first time that the beast is ever mentioned.
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Does anybody know who the beast is at this point? It's the first time that, if you were just reading the book of Revelation, you'd go, oh, the beast that comes up out of the abyss, your immediate thought would be, what?
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We don't know who that is. We don't know what that is. So when it says here, when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them.
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And one, make war with them. Well, if the beast is gonna make war with them, you don't make war with just two people.
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Look, if me and Mike were downtown preaching the word of God, they wanted to do something to us.
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They wouldn't send an army to make war with us. What would they do? And if I just scoop us up, take us to jail, and you could book us.
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Or whatever. They don't send an army. That once again, the church is an army.
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The church is an army of God's people. And you say, well, Mike, if that's what you're saying, do you have anything in the
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Old Testament that could point to that? Yes, we can. If you wanna take your Bibles and turn over to Ezekiel chapter 37,
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I want you to see something. And this is the famous passage in the Valley of Dry Bones.
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And it's only 10 verses, so we'll read the whole thing so you can see how some of this comes together.
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Ezekiel 37, beginning in verse one. It says, and the hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the
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Lord, and he set me down in the middle of the valley, and it was full of bones. He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and lo, they were very dry.
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And he said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered,
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O Lord, you know. That was a good answer. O Lord, you know. And again he said to me, prophesy over these bones, and say to them,
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O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, behold,
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I will cause breath to enter you, that you may come to life, and I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you will come alive, and you will know that I am the
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Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied, there was noise, and behold, rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone, and I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, and the flesh grew, and the skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
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Then he said to me, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the
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Lord, come from the four winds, O breath, breathe on these slain, that they may come to life.
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So I prophesied as he commanded, and the breath came into them, they came to life, and stood on their feet, and what does it say?
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An exceedingly great army arose. Now, this is a, this is a prophetic picture of the new covenant, and under the new covenant, the church becomes an army, becomes an army in which they're going out, their purpose is to preach, to proclaim the miracle of God, and they're going to be protected until that time is over.
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So the people of God are an army, and we are not, technically speaking,
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I said this last week, we're not wrestling against flesh and blood. Look, when we fight, when we have governmental powers coming against the
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Christians, or in other nations where the state is persecuting the Christian, the state is only an extension of the principalities of the powers and the rulers of the darkness of this age.
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That's all it is. They're just a tool. Just like you say, when we say we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, well, we're not to use our instruments, it says, as instruments of unrighteousness.
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Well, what does Satan use as an instrument of unrighteousness? He uses the government, its structure, and its armies, and all of those things to persecute
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God's people, leading to, what does it say here? That beast which comes up out of the abyss will make war with them.
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So if we want to know who the beast is, and we want to have any indication of how we should have understood this beast, we need to understand what does
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Daniel say the beast was. Who was in Daniel's study with me? Okay, Daniel, there was four beasts.
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Anybody remember what those four beasts were? Four empires.
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That's what it represented. Hey, if you want to go read it in chapter seven of Daniel, you'll see it. It gives the beast, and then as he's written,
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God doesn't tell Daniel, figure it out. The good thing about Daniel is most every time in Daniel, he tells him what it is.
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It's like, dude, why couldn't we get that when we read Revelation? Okay, when we hear things like that, man, it'd be nice to have
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John say, oh, well, this is what that is. Well, in Daniel, that happens a lot. So when you have the beast, you go, oh, wow, it says it's these successive empires.
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And what did the successive empires represent? It represented the rise and fall of kingdoms, and that if you remember, there was the final, the fourth empire would be very ruthless.
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As a matter of fact, that was the one that had the teeth like iron. It was like this hybrid thing of all the others before, and it was a picture of what the
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Roman Empire would because it would come, it would take the lion, it would take the bear, it would take the goat, it would take all of those things that would come together.
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The Roman Empire would become that one thing, that hybrid, and it would eventually persecute the people of God.
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So that beast that's coming out of the abyss will be a world empire, okay?
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Now, when does this beast come up out of the abyss? That means now we've got to move forward and take a little bit of thunder from next few lectures as to understanding.
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Everybody following me? Okay, I just wanna make sure because there's only one, we've seen in the vision of the hordes of the demons coming up out of the abyss.
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Remember, y 'all remember that, the cavalry that came out? Okay, they came out. Now, now we're seeing the beast, which is always representative of governmental structure and power.
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So this beast that's gonna come up out of the abyss is going to make war with the saints when their prophesying is over.
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Hey, turn over to chapter 17 real quick of Revelation.
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He has, he makes verse, we'll get more into this when we get to dealing with the whore of Babylon and all of that.
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Let me begin in verse eight, and I'm gonna read eight through 13, and then we'll just kind of focus on the center section.
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17, eight. The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss.
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So here's what it said. Is that not a parallel to what we have already heard? There's a beast that's coming up out of the abyss.
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Is anything that comes out of the abyss good? No, anything that comes up out of the abyss is bad.
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And it will go to destruction. What's interesting about this is it says that beast which you saw was, meaning in the past, right, is not, which means it hasn't happened yet, and is about to go into destruction.
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He gives three aspects in time of this beast.
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And those who dwell on the earth whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the worlds will wonder when they see the beast that he was, and is not, and will come.
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So each one of, remember, even in Daniel's prophetic, each one of those beasts wound up taking on part of the form of the next.
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Well, this beast here that's gonna come up out of the abyss, it's taking on the forms of the previous.
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And he's actually gonna give a better understanding of it right here in verse nine.
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Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains in which the woman sits.
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And they are seven kings. Five have fallen. One is.
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Other has not yet come. And when he comes, he will remain for a while. The beast which was and is not is himself also an eighth, and is one of the seven.
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And he goes to destruction. The 10 horns which you saw were 10 kings have not yet received a kingdom, but have received authority as kings with the beast for one hour.
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These have one purpose, to give their power and authority to the beast. Just right off rip, what does it say that these kings, kingdoms are going to do?
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They're gonna give their authority to the beast. They're gonna give, they're just gonna relinquish their authority and power to the beast.
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You know what happens when they do that? What does it say back in chapter 11, verse seven?
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That beast is gonna make war with the saints. Now, here's what we have to try to understand is this beast that's coming up out of the abyss, the final manifestation of the governmental structure at the end of the age that will persecute and try to wipe out the people of God.
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I say yes, okay? And I say yes based on the analogy of Scripture, letting
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Scripture interpret Scripture, by what this is saying in chapter 17. You're gonna have to follow me for a second because I want you to see this so you, hey, have
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I lost anybody yet? Please let me know if I have. It says five, kings can mean kingdoms, do we all agree?
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Remember, anybody remember in Daniel what it was? It says, remember when we were at the end of the book, chapters 10 through 12?
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It was when the king of the north would come against the king of the south and that king actually was talking about the kingdom of the
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Ptolemies and the kingdom of the Seleucids, remember? So king didn't actually mean one man with a crown, it meant government structure.
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So it says five, somebody read that for me. Here, let's see, chapter 17, verse 10.
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There were seven kings, five have come, right? There are five governmental, quote, beasts that have persecuted and oppressed the people of God at this point you say.
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Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Persia, Greece, one, two, three, four, five.
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Five have come, right? It says what? One now is, who's the one that now is when this book is written?
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Hey, even whatever, hey, I don't care what date you hold, okay, whether it's the early day which I hold or the late date, no matter what, when the book was written, who was ruling the world?
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Five have come and are not, okay? One now is.
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It says seven. Hang on, there's a total of seven. Right.
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But five have come, right, five have come, Egypt, you're right, there is, five are fallen, one, two, three, four, five, right?
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Right. One now is, that's six. Then there's a seven that's coming, hang on, there's a seven, you're right,
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I'm glad, she's listening, she's like, I'm gonna catch him, I'm gonna catch him, I'm gonna catch him. You're right, there's seven, but then there's an eighth that ain't come yet.
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That eighth will be the one that comes up out of the abyss. So, the one that now is, when this book is written, was
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Rome, right? Anybody know when Rome fell? Fell twice.
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Yeah, Rome fell twice. 476, this is when
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Constantinople fell, and this is when actual Rome fell.
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Fell twice, east and west, okay? Eastern Empire, eastern fell, western fell, and anybody know the song?
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Constantinople turned into what? Istanbul, yeah, Istanbul. All right, so Rome fell.
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So once Rome falls, there is a, we often think, well, at that point, then
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I guess there's gonna be another world structure that comes along that'll rule the world, but it's actually, when
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Rome falls, everybody in every country after that, with the exception of the
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United States, okay, when it comes along, what do they do? They first keep people at guard. So, and it goes, this is the seventh.
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This is that seventh. My understanding, okay, you don't have to agree with me.
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These are issues that we don't have to agree on, okay? I understand that seventh is the time of the fall of Rome until the beast comes up out of the abyss, and I make that by based on what the text says.
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Five have come, one now is, seventh will come, and it will be, and then the eighth will be part of the seventh.
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That's the one, it says right here, that will come up out of the abyss, and it will wage war, okay?
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What does it say? And the beast, which was and is not. Okay, what does it mean, which was? It means it engulfs every, all of this again, just like Rome did, and Daniel's, it engulfs everything that these people did to oppress the people of God, okay?
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It says, and is not, but is one of the seventh, meaning, okay, when that eighth comes, it's gonna be just like this one, and what was this one?
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It's just like these. It's all it does is persecute the people of God.
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That's all it does, persecute the people of God, except that eighth one, it's gonna come up out of the abyss.
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It is going to be the final manifestation manifestation of the last governmental structure that will persecute the people of God, and I believe that that is, and we'll get to it when we get to chapter 13,
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Antichrist, the final man that will raise himself up to be worshiped as God and to persecute the people of God.
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Now, I don't particularly like using the word Antichrist in speaking with Revelation, because Revelation doesn't use that, but that is kind of a generic term that we use to speak of that final man that raises himself up at the end of the age.
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There are some people that have asked me, Mike, do you believe, you don't believe that there's going to be a single man at the end of the age that will raise himself up to be worshiped as God?
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Yes, I do. Do I believe there will be a manifestation of the Antichrist at the end of the age?
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Yes, I do. But he will work in concert with the government, which will then persecute the people of God, and that has happened all through the ages.
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When we get to chapter 13, it says that he, the dragon calls up the beast out of the ocean.
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What is, anybody know what that one is? The one that comes up out of the ocean is the governmental structure.
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Then he says he's going to call up another one out of the land, so you have two beasts, okay?
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The second beast that he calls up out of the land ends up being an individual. That individual is then called in chapter 16 the false prophet.
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The Antichrist is basically the false prophet that points himself to the government to punish and persecute the people of God, and his intention is to persecute and punish the people of God almost into oblivion.
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And I don't see how anyone cannot see that when it says right here, back to chapter 11, verse seven at the end, and he will wage war with them and overcome them and kill them.
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Does that not look like the beast wins? Let's just be honest. If it says he overcomes them, what does that mean?
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They're losers, and that's what it's going to look like. That's why
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I understand this as a Cliff Notes version at the end of the millennium.
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The millennium, we have to remember our purpose and power and protection in the millennia age.
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That all -millennial perspective is we are the church militant going out, doing God's purpose with his power under his protection.
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But there is coming a day when that millennium will come to an end, and who does he release for a short period of time?
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And Satan. And what does Satan do? He empowers the beast to do his bidding.
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And what does he want to do? He wants to crush the people of God. Satan's purpose has always been to crush the image -bearers of God.
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Go back to the garden. What did he do? He deceived Eve. And instead of Adam being what
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God told him to be, which is a cultivator and protector and priest to not only his wife, but as vice -regent in the garden, when the serpent came to crush the image -bearer of God, what should
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Adam have done? He should have crushed the head of the serpent then. But he failed.
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So then we have the promise when that happened that God would send the serpent crusher, although we didn't think it was gonna take 7 ,000 years, or 5 ,000 years to do that, okay?
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So here it is. They will overcome them and kill them. Verse eight.
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We got five minutes. And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which mystically is called
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Sodom in Egypt where their Lord was crucified. Remember how we were talking earlier in that we started this chapter.
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This was in the Greek New Testament. And I don't think that I believe that everybody should learn
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Greek or no Greek, but I'm gonna tell you the biggest help, because there's never been a commentary, the biggest help for me in understanding the book of Revelation has been my
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Greek New Testament. This right here, where it says and their dead bodies, bodies is in,
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I think I said this a few weeks ago. Their dead bodies, bodies is actually, if we were gonna read it, their dead body lies in the street.
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But that wouldn't read right when you're talking about two individuals. So what do we do? We read it. They make it to where it reads better in English.
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It actually should be read, the word soma, that's a Greek word, and it means their singular body.
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Is the church not a singular body? What does it say in Ephesians? You're gonna be made up of one body, one baptism, one faith.
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What does Peter say in 1 Peter 2, verses four and five? You are made up of one body, the living stones, the temple of Jesus Christ.
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One, one body. That one body is actually the bride of Christ. So their dead body will lie in mystically in the city,
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Sodom and Egypt. Once again, we don't have to try to figure this out, who
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Sodom and Egypt is. What does it tell us it is? It's where Jesus was crucified.
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So what is he saying? He's saying, look, they're gonna do to you the same thing they did to your
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Savior. They're gonna murder you, and they're gonna leave you in the street. And what did Jesus say when he was telling his disciples?
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He says, hey, look, if they're gonna do it to me, you think you're better than your teacher? They're gonna do to me, they're gonna do to you.
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And even at the Isle of Discourse, he even said, they're gonna haul you off into synagogues.
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They're gonna whip you, they're gonna beat you. Some of them, they're going to burn. Some of them, you're going to be put to death.
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Some of you will be scourged. They're doing the exact same thing they did to Christ.
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They're going to do. And the picture of it is here, they're gonna treat you no different than they did the
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Savior. And then in verse nine, it says, and for those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations will look at their dead bodies for three and a half days, and they will not permit their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb.
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Once again, you see, what's the promise of the gospel? Well, it's that it will go out to every people's tribes, tongues, and nations.
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Now, we're seeing the opposite of that. These very nation, tribes, and tongues, that they've gone out to preach the gospel, what have they done?
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They've killed the very ones that God sent. They've killed the messengers by the peoples of every nation, tribes, and tongues.
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They look at them. After they murder them, they leave the church lying dead in the street.
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And it says here that they look at their bodies for three and a half days and won't permit their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb.
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Under Old Testament theology, well, how many times did we hear some of those kings not get buried correctly?
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How were they supposed to be buried? And they were supposed to be put in a tomb.
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It was a certain way it was to be done. Look, if you just leave somebody out there to be, even when
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Jesus is giving you all of the discourse and he's calling down judgment on them, he says the birds and the vultures of the air are going to eat their flesh.
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That's the desecration of the body because it's disgraced. So what does it mean?
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They don't even get the rightful honor of a good burial.
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We just said a minute ago about Jezebel. What was the curse on Jezebel? Hey, she was the daughter of the king.
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And remember in that story, we need to go bury her because she was the daughter of a king and she was the wife of a king.
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We need to give her an honorable burial. And what happened? Too late. The dogs ate her up and defecated her at that point.
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But she didn't get the honorable burial. Every time we get into the book of Revelation, he says,
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I'm gonna feed you, I'm gonna give you over to the beast of the field and to the birds of the air, meaning you're not going to get a proper burial.
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You're gonna be desecrated. You're going to not even have the luxury of your families coming and taking up your body, putting you in a tomb and grieving over you.
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They're gonna treat them with utter disdain. It says they do this for three and a half days.
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They won't allow their bodies to be laid in a tomb. Oh, well, I probably shouldn't get into verse 10. So we'll wrap it up there.
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The beast is going to wage war against the people of God at the end of the age. And he's gonna do it in such a way, it's going to look like he's overcoming.
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He is winning. And I'm just gonna be honest with you, it is going to look like he's winning. It's going to look like Satan is winning.
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And that is in God's purposes to do so. For whatever his purposes are, he's working that out for his glory and he's fulfilling his word.
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And the purpose for leaving them laid to not even give them a proper burial is to once again, just desecrate and to defile and to show that the people of God are hated with disdain.
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Barry, you can close us with a word of prayer. I pray that you would give us strength, proper witnesses who would share your truth.
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As we go, I ask that you would be with us as we head into worship. Lord, that you would prepare our hearts, that you would know your hearts.
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We would pray to worship you, the spirit and truth. We ask all these things in Jesus' name, amen.