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You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You Hark the herald angels sing song number 429 Song 429 hark the herald angels sing On the first Hark the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn King Peace on earth and mercy mild God and sinners beckon style Joyful all ye nations cry Join the triumphs of the Lord Hark the herald angels sing On the first Hark the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn King Peace on earth and mercy mild God and sinners beckon style Joyful all ye nations cry Join the triumphs of the Lord Hark the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn King Peace on earth and mercy mild God and sinners beckon style Joyful all ye nations cry Join the triumphs of the Lord Hark the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn King Hark the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn King Christ by highest and adored Christ the everlasting Lord Christ by highest and adored Christ the everlasting Lord Late in time behold Him come Late in time behold Him come Offspring of a virgin's womb Offspring of a virgin's womb Veiled in flesh the God has seen Veiled in flesh the God has seen Hail the God has seen Hail the incarnate deity Hail the incarnate deity Please let's live with men to dwell Please let's live with men to dwell Jesus our Emmanuel Jesus our Emmanuel Hark the herald angels sing Hark the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn King Glory to the newborn King Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God Hail the Son of God O little town of Bethlehem 434 O little town of Bethlehem 434 O little town of Bethlehem O little town of Bethlehem As still we see thee rise Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by Yet in thy dark streets shine in The everlasting light The hopes and fears of all the years Are bled in thee tonight For Christ is born of Mary And gathered all above Our mortal sleep and angels keep Their watch of wandering love O morning stars together Proclaim the holy birth And praise this thing to God the King And peace to men on earth How silently, how silently The wondrous gift is given So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of his hand No ear may hear his coming But in this world of sin Where these souls will receive him still The dear Christ enters in O holy child of Bethlehem He sent to us we pray Cast out our sin and enter in Be born in us today We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell O come to us, abide with us Our Lord Emmanuel Good evening. Thank you so much for coming to Steadfast Baptist Church. If you didn't already get a bulletin, you can lift up your hand nice and high and our ushers will come by and get you a bulletin. On the front we have our Bible memory passage. We're on verse 12. And then on the inside we have our service, soul winning times. Make sure you're turning in your stats to your soul winning captains and lieutenants. Also on the right we have a list of expecting ladies. Still several ladies there to be in prayer for. And we have our prayer list. We'll go over that quickly. We have Brother Hall. We've been praying for his leg healing. And we got another update recently and it's actually going really, really well. So just keep praying for them that it'll be a full recovery should God willing be not too long from now. Also we're praying for the Wallach's daughter, Miss Haley, and her pregnancy. We've been praying for his niece, Hattie, and her cancer treatments. We've been praying for Miss Cooley's stepdad. And we've also been praying for Brother Oz, his brother. We've been praying for the name's grandmother, Brother Capito, and Mr. Minow's niece. We've been praying for the Spurgeon's grandfather who also needs healing. So lots of prayer requests. I'll say a quick word of prayer for the people that are mentioned in our bulletin. Thank you Heavenly Father so much for our church family and these ladies who are expecting. I pray that you'd be with them. Please just help them during their pregnancy and also give them a smooth delivery. Please also help their children to be healthy and to have a timely birth. I pray that you'd also bless these church members that have a lot of health issues, especially these chronic ones. I pray that you'd please give them full recovery. Please give them grace. Our church family members and friends that are either not saved or just need health, I pray that you would please bless them and grant them that. Please also help us to come alongside them and to remind them of your grace and to give them the gospel if that's the case. I pray that you'd also help our church family that needs favor with a job or with cars or anything that you would just please help them during this time. I pray that you would just help us to all have the right attitude and mind this season to be thinking about Christ and that you would help us to just give honor and glory to your son. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. On the back we have the note about the upcoming events. We have our Children's Christmas Music Recital this Saturday. It's two from four. Everyone's welcome to attend. We actually had more people sign up this year than last year, so we got a full roster and a lot of great music. I'm excited about this. Also we have the cookie bake-off on the 24th, so this is where you're going to bring me lots of cookies. I was thinking about dieting this month somewhat, and then I was like, I'm definitely going to cheat on that day, though. You don't disappoint me. If I'm going to cheat, it better be some good cookies, all right? And then on the 31st, also we have our New Year's Eve party, so that's exciting. And then we have the congratulations to the Weathers on the birth of Emma Grace. She was born on the 8th at 542 A.M., weighing 7 pounds, 6.2 ounces, measuring 18 inches long. Congratulations to them. And to even things out, congratulations to the Connors on the birth of Micah Lee. He was born on the 10th at 1108 A.M., weighing 10 pounds, 4 ounces, and 21.5 inches long. Congratulations to them. It's great to see our church family grow. I did have the ushers kind of handing out a little paper that's kind of like an end-time sequence of events I made a long time ago, but I'm going to try and use that a little bit during the sermon. So if you didn't get one, just lift up your hand real quick, and our ushers will come by and get you one. Otherwise, we're going to sing our third song, Psalm 149. All right, in your white handouts, let's go ahead and turn to Psalm 149. Psalm 149. Psalm 149. Singing the Lord, sing to the Lord our new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints. Let Israel rejoice in him that made him. Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King. Let them praise his name in the dance. Let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp. For the Lord taken pleasure in his people. He will beautify the weak with salvation. Let the saints be joyful in their glory. Let them sing aloud upon their beds. Let the praises of God be in their mouth, and of two edges stored in their hand. To execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people. To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with letters of ire. To execute the pomp and the judgment written, this hour hath all the saints praising the Lord. Good singing as the offering plates are being passed around. Please turn your Bibles to Revelation 6. Revelation chapter number 6. Revelation 6. Revelation 6. Revelation 6. Revelation 6. Revelation chapter number 6. And the Bible reads, And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw and behold a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow, and a crown was given unto him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer. And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another horse that was red, and power was given to him that sat there on to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another, and there was given unto him a great sword. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld and lo, a black horse, and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny, and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and hell followed with him, and power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth to kill with sword and with hunger and with death and with the beasts of the earth. And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them, and it was said unto them that they should rest yet for a little season until their fellow servants also and their brethren that should be killed as they were should be fulfilled. And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood, and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together, and every mountain and island were cast out of their places. And the kings of the earth and the great men and the rich men and the chief captains and the mighty men and every bondman and every free man hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand? Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for Revelation chapter 6 and for this opportunity that we have to hear the man of God expound on this portion of scripture. I pray that you help him to do so. And, Lord, I also pray that you would just help us to pay close attention to the Bible study tonight and glean as much as possible from it. We love you, and in Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. So we're in Revelation chapter 6, and it's important to remember that in chapter number 4, when we were introduced to kind of this new subject, that the author here, John, is making it clear that these are things that he's seeing, and from a timeline perspective, they're hereafter. So if you look at chapter 4, verse 1, at the last phrase, it said, I will show you things which must be hereafter. So we know that it's not going to necessarily happen at that time that John's writing this. It's going to happen hereafter. And that's important because some people hold to a doctrine called preterism, and the idea of preterism is simply that everything we're reading in Revelation has already happened and that it happened around the timeline of 70 A.D., approximately, which would be approximately around the time that this epistle is potentially even being written. Now, I'm not going to give you the exact timeline of when this was written, because no one knows for sure, but you could even argue this epistle was written post-70 A.D. I don't know. I think there's a couple different theories on that. But just generally speaking, it would be around that timeline, and yet what chapter 4 is telling us is these are things that are going to happen hereafter. Now, in chapter 4, we see God the Father when we talk about that throne and one sitting on the throne. Chapter number 5, we talk about there's a lamb, and the lamb takes a scroll out of the hand of the one that's sitting on the throne, and this particular scroll has seven seals on it, and that's where we pick up in chapter 6, verse 1. And I saw when the lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw him behold a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow, and a crown was given unto him, and sent forth conquering and to conquer. So we see in chapter 6 the lamb opening the seals, which is, of course, talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. So the Lord Jesus Christ is apparently the one who kicks off this end period, this end times period, and I think that's something to note, that it's not like God is out of control of the world or the end times. In fact, according to the Bible, Jesus is the one that starts the end times, because notice, as the Bible describes, the lamb that's opening the seals, he's the one that kicks it off. He's the one that starts it. He's the one that's allowing these things to transpire. So don't let someone convince you otherwise. Obviously, God's still on his throne. He's still in control. Jesus Christ is in control. In fact, he's the one opening the seals and starting off this end times phenomenon. Now, I have a chart that I had made a long time ago, and I still think it's a helpful chart when kind of talking about these subjects. And one thing to note about this chart, and maybe in the future I might try to make it a little different, but it's not an exact timeline in the sense of when you look at the spacing, it's not equally distributed based on time. Essentially, the chart is just a sequence of events. So the timeline's a little bit squashed at the beginning. In fact, where you see abomination of desolation written on the top of that line, that's the midpoint. Obviously, that's not the middle of this particular chart, right? You kind of get that idea. It's because the second half has so many things that I just kind of, for spacing reasons, it's spaced the way it is. But what is significant is just the sequence of events and basically how we see these things unfolding in the book of Revelation, as well as comparing them to other passages in Scripture and noticing the same sequence of events and how everything is kind of laid out. What is the first event? It is the white seal, or the white horse, this first seal, and it says in verse 2 that there's someone sitting on this white horse, and he has a bow. And then it says, And he went forth conquering and to conquer. Now, understanding other passages of Scripture, it seems very likely that this is just picturing or foreshadowing the coming Antichrist and how the Antichrist is going to be someone who ends up conquering. Now, a couple things that are interesting to note about this individual. Number one is that he's given a crown. Notice a crown was given unto him. Whom receives crowns? Kings do. Kings receive crowns. You know, not presidents. You know, the President of the United States does not have a crown. And, in fact, virtually most nations in this world today, the leaders aren't even technically kings or monarchs right now. They're presidents or they're other type of ruling heads. And so they might have other names that they use for them, but, like, the Prime Minister, you know, that's, I guess, if you go to UK or something. But we call him the President over here, okay? And yet they still in some ways resemble a king. They're still kind of the head of that nation. They're still the leader, albeit maybe they don't have as much power or authority as a traditional monarch would have. But one thing to note is it may be that when we actually get into the end times, the Antichrist is not just like a president or something, but rather he's a king. And that would be interesting considering our current climate, how we don't really have that type of a figure, but perhaps through certain events or through certain unfoldings that someone ends up becoming a dictator again. Now, frankly speaking, you know, it makes me think of a little bit like Hitler. And Hitler was the Chancellor, which is kind of another fancy term for Prime Minister, President, something that we would kind of think of in our style of government. But eventually he ends up just becoming the Fuhrer, dictator, and it's really similar to, like, being a king. And he was worshipped and everything like that. Now, I don't remember... I don't think he really ever wore a crown. Maybe I'm wrong on that. I don't think he ever wore a crown at all. But I think it's possible, and this could be alluding to the fact, that the Antichrist is going to be set up as an actual king of that final kingdom, that it's not even just necessarily metaphorical, that it even could be literal where you have a king. And, you know, the America that we live in is crumbling fast. I've heard lots of people saying, you know, we need a dictator, or we need a king, or we need a monarch again. Or, you know, some people... We could have it two ways. We could have it one way where the whole United States rallies behind someone, makes them a monarch, and kind of gets rid of our current governmental system. Or we could have potentially an unwanted dictator that just says nuts to the Constitution in our form of government. I'm now your king. What are you going to do about it? So, both of those are very possible actual realities that could happen in our country. And we could be that, you know, beast kingdom that's talked about in Indian times. Or it could be someone else. But I think it's interesting that a crown is given unto him. That metaphor, to me, at least signifies that people have recognized him as the leader. So this is not just a regular layperson. He's either, at I would say bare minimum, the president of a major nation. Or, more likely, he's actually the dictator, leader, king of a particular nation. He's given a lot of authority. So when we talk about the Antichrist, it can't be... Like, if some homeless person comes up and says, I'm the Antichrist, it's not true, okay? The Antichrist is going to be a world leader. He's going to be a powerful man, and he's going to be given a lot of power. In fact, if you think about it, that is what kicks off the end times, right? Isn't the first seal being opened? Is someone being crowned? Is someone being given authority? Is someone basically being put in a position of authority? And you could even argue that it's at the beginning of their reign, at the beginning of their kingdom, because it's saying he's given a crown. So it's not like he had it. It's now he's given it. So I'm just saying this could be kind of a warning signal out there that when someone comes into a lot of power and is given some kind of a crown or some kind of political authority like this, that that could be that beginning stages of the end times. So we see that someone is crowned. Notice he also had a bow. I think this is also significant because most battles, especially from the Bible's perspective, fought with a sword, fought on horses or chariots or things like that, but the bow signifies someone fighting from afar. And it's not an invention that's always existed in warfare in the sense that we see throughout the Book of the Kings and the Chronicles certain instruments of war are kind of introduced, and not everybody always has them, not always everybody used them. I believe that there's a foreshadowing of this with Hagar that essentially her son is to learn how to use the bow. And why use the bow? It's because you can defeat enemies from afar. You don't have to come into a close combat. You can go and you can fight them afar. Think about it this way. You don't bring a knife to a gunfight. Why? Because someone that's way less powerful than you, not able to defeat you physically, could still overpower you with the usage of a gun. And the same can be said with a bow, that someone that's physically weaker, maybe not as intimidating, not as strong as you, but standing afar off can shoot at you with a bow and can take their adversaries from afar. And I think when you look at modern technology and modern warfare today, that the United States probably in many cases doesn't even have to send in troops to conquer a particular nation, but rather could use missiles and could use other types of form of technology where they're basically shooting from afar and not even necessarily using helicopters or using warships or even using things in the sky, potentially drones or using satellites or all kinds. I mean, there's all kinds of ways to now do warfare. I've heard Russians in the Ukrainian war, they're pretty much just doing this, where they use satellites to identify a target from far away, and then essentially they use drones and other technology to lock in a target and just shoot missiles or drones or whatever from afar and they just go and take out their target. So in fact, you pretty much have no chance on a ground combat anymore because with satellite technology you can't even hide. They can see you coming from a mile away. And that changes warfare dramatically. When you know exactly where troops are and they're walking and you can see them in real time, well, then all they have to do is just shoot a missile or shoot some kind of shells or artillery because in times past a lot of artillery was shot in the dark. You know, even arrows, right? They know that troops are advancing and an archer just kind of stands back and shoots an arrow. He's not aiming at a specific person. They're just throwing all kinds of arrows in that direction, just hoping to hit something. Or, you know, Russia did this with the World War II a lot where they're just shelling. So they're just sending in shells, artillery shells in, and they're just landing and they're just hoping that they're going to hit a particular target. Now, of course, they still use some levels of intelligence and reconnaissance to try and aim those shells in the right spot, but they weren't nearly as accurate as satellite technology is today, drones and everything else, where they're going to hit the target a lot more regularly with today's technology. And in fact, being good on the ground might not even have that much of an impact anymore. Even the number of soldiers you have may not even matter as much anymore because simply from the fact of technology, you can do a lot of damage with the right kinds of technology as opposed to just having tons of army or tons of men. Whereas in times past, sometimes you just needed a lot of people in order to conquer or to win. And so this guy conquering with a bow kind of signifies in my mind that he's not someone that's going to win a lot of battles through just sheer force or through brute strength, but rather through military advancement, through technology from afar. They're not even necessarily having to engage directly in battle, but rather they can basically shoot from a longer distance. And that makes sense with how America or some of the more modern countries would fight militarily today. So I think that that's also significant. Also, he, notice, went forth to conquering and to conquer. It's important, it's not that he just went to conquer, he succeeds. So it's saying, yeah, he went forth to conquer and to conquer. So he's not only going to do this, he's going to be successful. I think another thing that's interesting about this is he has to have an enemy, right? I mean, you know, it's not like the Antichrist is fighting thin air. He's fighting someone. And so sometimes people don't realize this, but there is going to be an enemy that's destroyed and defeated by the Antichrist, and it's not Christians as a collective. It's just someone else. And so there's a lot of theories on, well, who is this, you know, war, this hypothetical war between, you know, the Antichrist because he's going to be defeating someone. He's going to be conquering someone, right? Well, I want you to keep your finger. Go to Proverbs chapter 3. Some people recently have been theorizing this, and I kind of think that they might be right, but the idea that this Antichrist system is going to basically rise up against communism, leftists, and this, like, global elite cabal, and that essentially their warfare is going to be kind of in that vein. I think that's actually possible. It's also possible. It could be Islam is the bad guy that everybody's rallied around and going to fight against. It could be China and Russia alliance. There could be a lot of different things in play here. If you look at the end times, it's not real certain. But I certainly would not want to be the communist leftist transgender freaks of the day because everybody's starting to wake up and hate on them. And if you know anything about history itself, you know, I believe that Hitler himself was probably a very clear predecessor to the Antichrist and how an Antichrist would come into power. And if you understand what really transpired is there was an enemy for Hitler to defeat. And you know what that enemy was? It was communism, and it was the leftists, and it was basically the worst drudges of the Jewish society. And it would not shock me if we have a repeat of history where those people are the ones destroyed again. Because think about it. You kind of have to have a rallying point of all humanity agreeing to fight someone. Well, who does all of humanity basically hate? Islam is one option. Okay, that works. Here's another one, though. How about just leftism and this transgender nonsense and sodomites? I mean, nobody likes them. And nobody likes communists. Nobody likes communism. The only person who likes communism is the one at the top of the communist pyramid. Everyone else is a loser in that game. Even his second and third in command hate communism. Okay, if you read anything about communism or you study, everyone's a loser in that system. It's terrible. Everybody hates it, and people realize it's bad. Well, you know who was the boogeyman at the time of Hitler? Communism. And they were going around destroying the communists, and that's where you got this rise of social nationalism, and he basically come into political power. Now, who was he destroying? Who was Hitler's enemies? He's destroying communists and the most wicked people of society, just desecrating them. And, you know, it kind of makes sense, because we keep sitting here thinking, like, why is God not dealing with these people? But you know what? God may deal with them. God may use the Antichrist to wipe them out and to destroy them before he comes into power, okay? And you would think that that seems counterintuitive, but that's what Hitler did. Hitler ended up bringing in a regime that destroyed a lot of wicked people. That doesn't mean that Hitler was good. Hitler was super wicked, too. It's just like how God used Nebuchadnezzar, who was super evil and wicked, to march through and destroy who? All the other super wicked people. And then he gets judged, right? So it wouldn't be much different to have the Antichrist kind of sweep through the world and just wipe out all the wickedness, and then he's the one left to pay the piper with the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, you know, the Bible kind of brings up a lot of things about how when this first gets kicked off and we're kind of in the beginning stages of this, how we're not supposed to be that worried about it. We're not supposed to fear or be that afraid, and it's like, that's just gonna happen. But think about it. Us as being Bible-eating Christians and loving the Lord or whatever, if some national socialist comes to power in America saying he's gonna destroy leftism and communism, we're good. You know, like, okay, great. I know where they're at. They're right outside the door protesting. I got a list for you, you know? I know who to line up, right? And this is what I think's funny. Think about Proverbs 3, verse 25. The Bible says this. Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked when it cometh. You know, the Bible promises and God promises, hey, those super wicked people, God will destroy them. But notice when God destroys them, what type of a destruction is? Sudden fear. And it's almost always when God destroys wicked people, it's just like, bam, it's fast. It's like Noah's Ark. One day it's not raining. The next day they're drowning, right? I mean, it's just like Sodom and Gomorrah. One day they're buying and selling. The next day they're being burnt alive with fire from heaven. Okay, so usually when God judges the wicked, it's over in 24 hours. I mean, it's just basically like, bam. It's just like super, super quick. So that's why sometimes it seems like a long time because when God deals with it, it's just gonna be like, bam. It's just gonna be kind of over. And then you have to deal with other situations. Go back to Revelation chapter number six. But I bring that up just because, you know, if there is some kind of a rise to power and this antichrist, you know, even though I'm not like pro-antichrist or anything like that, it still could work to our benefit in some ways, right? God could use them to clean up some of this world a little bit initially, which would be, you know, I'm not gonna shed a tear over, right? I mean, if sodomites kill each other, I'm not sad about it, okay? Never been sad about it, never will be sad about it, and I know that makes them sad, but I don't really care what they think, so... Look at verse number three. Now it says this. And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another horse that was red, and power was given to him that sat there on to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another, and there was given unto him a great sword. Now, when we talk about the four, sometimes it's referred to as the four horses of the apocalypse, okay? I think that this is really just symbolic. It's not necessarily super literal. I could be wrong. Maybe there really is these, like, four spirits embodied with these horses. I don't know. But again, I think that the white horses is kind of picturing the antichrist, maybe not so much as a literal antichrist, and I think that this red horse and this man, or the one sitting on the red horse, is again symbolic, not necessarily another person that's responsible for this particular activity. Now, when we talk about this red horse, notice that what the Bible says with this person, it says that he's going to take peace from the earth. And specifically, what? That they should kill one another. That makes me feel like this is more like a spirit thing than it is a literal thing. Because it's going to be difficult for a person to cause everybody to hate each other, but you can see kind of like maybe just a spirit that's unleashed onto the earth that's causing a lot of people to have a lot more hatred and there be much more anger and be a lot of infighting and a lot of conflict. And notice that there's just not going to be peace on the earth. People are going to be killing each other, and it says he was given a great sword. So this is a lot of, like, physical combat. Think about what we talked about earlier. The bow is kind of talking about the Antichrist destruction. This one's talking about the sword, which is more of a close combat. So it seems like there's just going to be a lot of physical violence where there's a lot of people just confronting each other, you know, one-on-one, lots of just, you know, evil. And it's even happening today a little bit. Like, it seems like it's just getting more and more escalated violence. People just, in the middle of the street, just get mad at each other and then just beat each other to death or shoot each other or stab each other. I mean, there's so much more stabbings and just shootings and just beatings and violence in our country than there has been for a while now. And it just seems like it keeps escalating. It's even more so in other countries where you have even more extreme demographic conflicts, conflicts with large Muslim populations and then just the national population. And that doesn't matter what we're talking about. France, Germany, UK, Ireland. I mean, a lot of these countries are really dealing with major conflicts now and it's extremely dangerous in these parts of the world. Extremely. Young women going out at night are very likely to be taken advantage of, killed, stabbed, stolen, and just all kinds of horrible things are happening in these parts of the world. It's very extreme. In Australia, it's also not necessarily as dangerous, but in some of these parts of the world, they don't even have a gun. You can't even have a firearm. And just think about this. You know, when you do this, you really destabilize the country and what happens is you just have roaming gangs and these roaming gangs, because the police won't enforce the law, literally just do whatever they want. And if they find a person by themselves, they find a young woman by themselves, they are just going to do whatever they want and it's happening and it's increasing and a lot of foreign countries even happens here in parts of Chicago, in parts of other countries, Detroit. And you know what? We need to be vigilant and be careful and you probably shouldn't allow your wife to go places at night by herself. And you say, why? Just get in that habit. You know, it's pretty safe here, honestly. Like, I feel like we live in one of the most, probably one of the safest places in the entire world. And you know, it's really nice here and there's some neighborhoods here that are just really safe and really nice. But you know, you don't want to get in a bad habit of just being too trustworthy and allowing people that you care about just to do whatever they want because our world's getting darker and more dangerous and more scary and we need to be vigilant, we need to be careful with our wives, with our children, even ourselves. You know, and look, I'm going to keep going so-and-ing wherever, but at the end of the day, like, we still need to be careful, stay with your partner, be vigilant, making sure because what is the Bible saying? It's going to get to a point where people are just constantly hurting each other, killing each other, and you know, what some people don't realize is there's not that many police officers in general and if everybody just started escalating the violence, there's nothing they could do. And in fact, there's certain parts of America today where police, their response time's 20, 30 minutes, there's places where they just won't even go and so, you know, you have to just realize and recognize, like, our world's getting scarier by the moment and you know, you need to be careful, you know, stay with other people, be around other people, you know, it's best to not be alone anywhere, especially at night, especially in areas that, you know, are more dangerous than others and we just need to recognize that as we get closer to the end, it's just going to get worse. It's not going to get any better. Look at verse 5. It says, And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see, and I beheld and lo, a black horse, and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny, and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. Now, I want you to go to a couple places. Keep your finger and go to Matthew 20 for a second. Go to Matthew chapter 20. What is the balances? Well, in times past, whenever someone would buy something, they didn't necessarily have a cash register, they didn't have a tablet to scan your card, and money actually had intrinsic value back then, so everything I'm saying is completely foreign to you, okay? Sorry. The Jews have ruined your mind. But it used to be that money had intrinsic value, and it was based on its weight, so the amount that the money, like your gold coins, your silver coins weighed is how much money it was worth, which just makes logical sense, right? If you have a small amount of gold, it's worth less than if you had a lot more of that gold, right? Now it's all paper money and it's a monopoly, so we don't know how it works. But they would basically take a balance and they would put some kind of a rock that's supposed to weigh a certain amount, and then they would essentially just put the gold on the other side, and then once they were balanced, that's how they knew how much you were supposed to be paid. And that's why the Bible constantly talks about having unjust weights as being evil, meaning that they were lying about how much was the weight on the other side so they could steal. Because, let's be honest, you and I don't know what's exactly a pound. I mean, if someone said, hey, I need a pound of gold from you, and they were one ounce off in either direction, it'd be hard for you to know that without some kind of device, okay? And so these people are cheating with their balances. But the balances are just basically talking about money and transactions, or more broadly, the economy. So the Bible is saying this third one, the black horse, is talking about issues in the economy. It talks about wheat and barley being sold for a penny. Now, it's hard because in America a penny is worthless to us. And in fact, they want to get rid of pennies. It takes a penny, it's like 1.8 pennies to make a single penny, okay? So they actually lose money by making pennies. And so our country is kind of weird. But, you know, it used to be when they manufactured pennies originally, they actually had value, okay? That's because our country has this thing called inflation, which is, again, a monopoly game invented by Jews to rip everybody off. But pennies were originally minted in 1787 in America. That was a long time ago. They were the size of a half dollar. So they were actually much larger than they are today. And not only that, they were 100% copper. So they actually had intrinsic value. Today, pennies only have 2.5% copper, okay? So that's a major change. I also looked up wages. So in about the 1780s, you can look this up. There's actually a lot of resources on this. What were people being paid? And I looked at what they were being paid on a daily basis, okay? So a daily wage for a penny in that period of time was about 40 to 50 cents a day. And it really didn't even matter what job. Like, it was interesting. It was just like whether you were a blacksmith, carpenter, some kind of an agriculturalist, you know, working on the farm, farmhand. It really didn't matter what job you had. Seemed like all the pay was between about 30 cents at the worst and like 50, 60 cents at the most. But most of it was like about 40, 50 cents a day was the average day's pay, okay? This is in the 1780s. Now, I was trying to think about what about today? And, you know, I don't know. I just kind of threw out some numbers. But today, I was thinking like maybe $75,000 is about the average salary for a man. And you can look this up in our area that's more or less. $75,000, $80,000 is kind of considered the average. Obviously, some people make less than that. Some people make more than that. That's just kind of an average. And, you know, that's also taking, you know, some of the low-level positions out of it. But at $75,000 a year, that would mean that you would make about $37.50 an hour. So that's about like how much that translates to, is 37 an hour. Per day, if you're working about 2,000 hours a year, which is like eight hours a day, 50 weeks of the year, then that would mean about $300 a day. So someone that's making about $300 a day, and this is only working day, so about, you know, 2,000 hours for the year, this is not, you know, necessarily equivalent to every day of the year, but just kind of that's how many hours you have to calculate a normal salary. $300 a day would be what someone would make. So if you make more than $300 a day, that's more than that kind of an average. If you make less, that's a little bit less. That just gives you some kind of idea. When you ladies spend more than $300 a day on clothing or something, you spend more than your husband's whole day at work, you know? That was just a tidbit for you. All right. That wasn't a popular opinion, apparently. Now, this is what I recognize, though, is that's a big difference in inflation. It used to be you're getting paid 40 cents, now you're getting $300. Something happened, right? It's called inflation, right? Now, if you look at Matthew chapter 20 and look at verse number 2, the reason why I bring this up about day wages is the Bible brings up pennies in this context. Look at what it says in verse number 2. And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. So the penny is referenced in the Bible as being kind of a day's wage. So if we were to put that in our modern vernacular, what would be a day's wage? About $300. Now, they were saying a measure of wheat, right? If you go to the store and you just buy a bag of flour, how much does that cost? It's about $2.50 to $5, depending on quality. If you want the fine flour, like the organic, really good, or if you just want the, like, cheap stuff, it's like two bucks, $2.50 a bag. So that would mean that if we take that same measurement and we apply it, a penny is a day's wage, then that would mean that flour would cost a day's wage. That would mean anywhere from a 60 to 100 times the amount that it costs today. That would mean that food prices would go up 100 times what they are today. So if you go to McDonald's and you get a $12 meal, that is saying it's going to be a hundred times more expensive than that. A hundred times. $1,200 for McDonald's. $1,200 for McDonald's. Did you hear what I said? That's what it's trying to say. It's trying to say that you go to McDonald's, it's a thousand bucks. That's going to change things pretty fast, isn't it? You know, I'm definitely not eating McDonald's when it's $1,200, okay? All right? It's already sketchy enough, you know. I do like the fries, they taste good, but who knows what's in them. Bill Gates does, but, you know. And, you know, that's kind of a scary thing. Go to, if you would, to Proverbs 21 now. Go to Proverbs chapter 21. That's some crazy inflation. And it's not like, oh, well, once I get to a point where I can afford $1,200 a meal, I'll be good. No, it keeps scaling. That's just saying today. As soon as the prices go up again, that goes up too. It's just saying it's a hundred times whatever the price of stuff is today. So just saying, like, man, all of a sudden, just some flour is how much you would have to spend on an entire day's wage worth, and that's just astronomical in comparison to what it used to be. Now, people that have $100 billion, that doesn't matter. They could eat a $10,000 meal for the rest of their life, and it wouldn't affect them. You know what it affects? It affects everyone else, okay? It affects all of us, and it makes it to where everyone's starving, and people are dying in the droves because they can't eat. Now, I looked this up today too. I was just researching. I was like, can a fat person die of starvation? You know, this is a question. And you know what? The answer was yes, I'm sorry, okay? So if you're trying to store up for this particular period of time, it's not going to work, okay? Now, here's the thing. You might get a couple extra weeks, though. I was looking, I mean, basically, it was saying if you're, you know, really overweight, you could last, like, eight to 12 weeks, okay? But you can't even necessarily stay, you know, alive without some food. Now, here's the thing. If you're really overweight and you still get squirrels, possips, whatever, you know, you can really last a really long time. So, you know, I'm just putting that out there. But obviously, most people that don't live in America, they can't do this at all, right? I mean, these people are going to be dying in the droves. I mean, Africa, they can't be skipping meals over there, okay? They're going to be dying pretty fast. But notice it said that the oil and the wine, they weren't going to get hurt, okay? Look at Proverbs 21, verse 17. He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man. He that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich. Now, go to verse 20. There is treasure to be desired, and oil in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man spendeth it up. So somehow it says that the oil and the wine aren't going to be hurt, but then flour is basically going to be just astronomical in price. And I think what it's trying to say is it's just trying to say that luxury is not going to disappear. The people that have money and the people that are living luxurious lives, they're going to keep living luxurious lives all the way to the bitter end. But those of us that can't afford this ridiculous price for flour, we're going to be suffering, okay? So luxury, because again, oil and wine are often symbols of luxury. They're a symbol of just all the exuberance and everything that's going on in the world, whereas flour and barley are pictured of just your regular food, your daily food, the things that you would normally have. And it's basically saying that's going to be so unaffordable. But you know what? Even though there's famine, somehow the rich people are still going to be having a great time. And boy, doesn't that sound about right, that they can figure out a way to manipulate the economy and the system to where they're still living high on the hog, but the rest of the world is starving and dying. You can think of this with the aristocrats, the French aristocrats, or certain kings and queens, they didn't get this concept. And it was even told them, you know, hey, the people are starving. And the famous line from the queen is, well, let them eat cake. You know, and it's like, because she's eating delicacies and cake and whatever every single day of her life, but the French people are starving to death, you know, and they're kept out from the gates. And this is the picture that the Bible is painting of what the end times are going to be like. People are going to be starving, people are going to be dying of hunger all over the world, yet the rich are going to be living it up and having lots of fun. Go back, if you would, to Revelation, chapter number six. So they're not going to go without. You know, you would think like, oh, it's a famine, whatever, they're not going to get their special drinks and their special wine and their special parties and they're not going to have their special restaurants. Nope, they're going to still have all of it. While everybody else is starving and not getting anything and not having any kind of food or luxury whatsoever, the oil and the wine are somehow not going to be hurt in this process and they're going to still have their luxury, still have their delicacies, as it were. Look at verse number seven. And when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked and behold, a pale horse and his name that sat on him was Death and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth to kill with sword and with hunger and with death and with the beasts of the earth. Now, again, it's kind of symbolic, right? I don't think there's like a man that's death, right? But it says his name's Death. So it's just kind of trying to picture this symbolism of death coming. And it's the grim reaper, right? I think it's interesting that in this chapter, it talks about Hell following right with him. Why? Because there's always a connection with Death and Hell. Because when someone dies and they're not saved, it's immediately Hell. Many times in the Bible, you use the word death, it's meaning Hell. For the wages of sin is death. That's meaning Hell is what that's really alluding to. Obviously, there's a slight distinction between these two words, but they're kind of used synonymously in a lot of ways as well because they're just so tightly coupled they just have such that close relationship. Because as soon as people die, guess where they go? Hell. And that's what it even means to be dead is to be in Hell. And so death is often the state of being. Hell is its location. And that's why we see these things tightly coupled one with another. Notice these methods of death. One is sword. This is talking about similarly to the second horse where people are just killing each other. Also the war and the issues that are happening. Hunger. Hunger is tied to what we just talked about. How the price of food is going to get astronomical so people can't afford any food and there's going to be great famines, people aren't going to be able to eat, lots of people are going to be dying, and then the beasts of the Earth. Now this is kind of interesting because in today's society we don't really worry too much about the beasts of the Earth. But let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. Any kid that's ever had a dog that accidentally forgot to feed their dog for a while or their dog's really hungry and they put the food down and they try to pick the food back up, they realize that that beast could kill them. I remember I had a lab and my brother like forgot to feed it for like a few days or something like that. And then I was like five and I went out there to feed it and I accidentally put the food like right by the door and I meant to put it like further out or I was supposed to put it further out. So I went to try and pick the bowl up just to move it and that dog almost killed me because it was just like so angry. And think about it. When you're starving you're not going to go down to the store and buy dog food for little foo-foo, okay? For your little precious little doggy. But you know what? That dog's going to get hungry and then that dog's going to get hangry and then he's going to get violent. And you know what? A lot of people are going to be killed by animals, literally. I mean think about it. If you're starving to death and then you just have all of these animals that are starving and hungry they're going to attack a lot of people. You go to places like where the Indian reservation I mean there's literally packs of dogs roaming around. They're going to become violent. They're going to become angry and they're going to attack a lot of people. Not only that, I mean there's tons of people that still live in areas where there's bears, lions, jaguars, snakes, birds. You know those movies about birds. I mean think about it. When birds are hungry and you don't know what's going to happen. Plus the Bible just said that God's going to take peace from the earth. So I don't know what's going to happen but it can get really gnarly fast. You know at the end of this book you have the marriage supper of the lamb. You know what the marriage supper of the lamb is? When all the fowls of the air come and feast on all the king's bodies and just basically gnaw them to pieces. So you know it's kind of weird but it's also a reality that a lot of people are going to even just die from just animals when animals attack. And I hope they start with all the PETA people first. That's what I hope. But I mean it's a reality. That's what the Bible says and I believe it. You know another thing that could happen and I don't know how sci-fi we want to get but because we have a lot of these weird things that are happening where people are experimenting with like making super bugs and like super mosquitoes and all this other stuff. Who knows if they put some kind of weird chemicals or do something to the animal population and it literally causes some of the animals to start becoming more aggressive or having some kind of diseases. And it could be something simple. Like squirrels just all start getting rabies or something. And just if a squirrel bites you then you die from that squirrel bite. And it's not like the squirrel overpowered you or something but it's just the sheer fact that you got bit by this rabid animal. You know and that's very likely you know with birds or with squirrels or with possums or with any of these things. I mean rats in the time of the black and the bluebonnet plague were spreading disease everywhere and because no one's really cleaning up. I mean things you don't understand. They keep talking about these cyber attacks. They could totally do that to America tomorrow and as soon as you stop having a power and water oh boy society gets different fast. Your toilet doesn't start working the same way anymore. And then when there's feces everywhere and when there's sewage everywhere and when there's not any power and things are rotting and being destroyed you know what happens? Lots of rats and lots of mice and lots of crazy animals. And you know when you have an explosion of rats and mice and all these other animals you know what also happens? An explosion of the animals that eat those animals because now they have nothing stopping them from just populating as fast as they can and you could literally see an explosion of animals and beasts all over this world and all over this planet and you don't have animal control plus you're saving those bullets for leftists that come to your house so you don't necessarily you know can't afford to necessarily destroy all of the animal population the way that you'd normally do. So you never know like what's gonna really happen but I believe it full heartedly that there's gonna literally be animals are gonna become dangerous. Animals are gonna become a real threat and to other parts of the world it's already more so than it would be in America but you never know what could really happen. Now it says in verse number nine and when he had opened the fifth seal I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held and they cried with a loud voice saying how long oh Lord, holy and true dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? Now this perplexes me and I apologize for not understanding this but it seems like and this is my opinion it seems like these people are impatient. Who also gets that vibe, okay? They're in heaven, they can't sin but in some way they seem a little bit you know and maybe that's not the right word but they seem a little bit dissatisfied or impatient or just like Lord like what's going on? Like how long do we have to wait, right? And so apparently you know even in heaven you have different kinds of emotions. The soul still feels that desire for revenge I mean think about it. They're hoping for revenge and judgment and you know what I love about these people in heaven? They love judgment. They're not like oh you know don't judge I don't judge. They're like judge! God judge them, get them, go! You know that is their attitude and you know what that is the attitude of Christians it's like judge them, you know. Christians love judgment because God loves judgment. You know who doesn't like judgment? Wicked people. You know who likes judgment? Righteous people. They want things to be judged. It's like when you go to work and they're like we're just gonna give out bonuses randomly the guy that works really hard is like no I want it to be on merit and the guy that's lazy and never shows up he's like sweet you know this is great, right? This is the same way that the world works. The people that hate judgment when someone says oh I don't judge anyone they're a wicked person. Oh that's because you're wicked, right? That's because you don't want anybody to judge you. That's the reason why. You know what? People that do right and love the things that are true they love judgment, okay? And these people love judgment and they're kind of asking God like give us some judgment. Verse 11 And white robes were given unto every one of them and it was said unto them that they should rest yet for a little season until their fellow servants also and their brethren that should be killed as they were should be fulfilled. Now I think this is also really significant if you can pay attention because this few verses proves that the pre-trib rapture is false. Because if you think about it this is when the fifth seal was opened. So these people were already killed prior to that fifth seal being opened, okay? And when you understand the timing of the fifth seal the fifth seal is kind of around the timeline of the abomination of desolation albeit it's kind of leading up to or right before. And if it's right before the abomination of desolation that means it's happening in the first four seals timeline. Now this is actually consistent and congruent with what Matthew chapter 24 says. I want you to keep your finger and go to Matthew 24 for a second. And we're going to kind of thumb through Matthew 24 a few different times here just to compare a few different things. But I want to show you Matthew 24 look at verse number 9. Matthew 24 look at verse number 9. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall kill you and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. So this is talking about Christians being killed and hated. Now if we keep reading though and you go to verse 15 look at what it says. When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place whoso readeth let him understand. The abomination of desolation hasn't even happened and in verse 9 they're already being killed and hated and all kinds of tribulation and persecutions happening to them, okay? And then notice when you get a little bit further down in this particular chapter verse 21 for then shall be great tribulation. So the great tribulation is not even is not only when Christians are persecuted or killed. Now I would argue that the fifth seal is probably right right at the same kind of time that abomination of desolation event is going to happen. But what's significant is the fact that there's all these people that were recently killed or killed before that that are upset, okay? That sounds like the people that were killed in the seal 1, 2, 3, and 4. The people that are killed in seal 5 are going to be post that abomination of desolation in the great tribulation. And God's saying like I'm not going to judge yet I'm not going to avenge yet because there's still some of your brethren that need to be killed like you guys were killed. So you kind of see that they're upset but God's going to still allow there to be a small space of time for there to be this great tribulation event where a lot more Christians are going to be killed and persecuted. But that to me goes to then show even more evidence and proof of the idea that the preacher of rapture is a lie. Because here's the question where are these people when did they get killed for the cause of Christ in the 5th seal with this pre-trib rapture doctrine? They can't really explain that. You know when tribulation started it started as soon as Jesus Christ went up into heaven and Peter and John were drug before the council and were beaten for preaching the word of God. Pre-trib is the dumbest thing ever. Go to John chapter number 16 for a moment. Go to John chapter number 16. Pre-trib, when was there pre-trib? This is like the Garden of Eden. That was the only time it was pre-trib. Because you know what? Cain killed Abel. Cain killed Abel and that was tribulation. And you know what? Ever since then there's just been tribulation. As long as we're not in that perfected state there will be tribulation. Look what Jesus said in John 16 verse 33. Last verse here. These things I have spoken unto you that in me you might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. Notice Jesus Christ didn't say, Hey, no one gets tribulation. It's pre-trib, bro. No, what did Jesus say? Hey, as long as you're in the world, guess what you experience? Tribulation. Those who follow Christ and those who love the Lord and do right are going to experience tribulation in this life. And yet there is a period of time called the Great Tribulation that's what was signified. We read it in verse 21. There's going to be Great Tribulation. That's a time period. But even before that people are still experiencing tribulation. People are still dying for the cause of Christ. And when we talk about Great Tribulation we're not saying that people are going to be suffering individually different than times past. We're saying that more people are going to be suffering at the same time. Because individually speaking the apostles died in some of the most gruesome ways imaginable. Not only that, when you read Fox's books of martyrs when you look at people in times past when you look at great men of God like William Tyndale who was burned at the stake individually speaking these people aren't going to really experience a worse punishment. But what it's saying is instead of just having one person burned at the stake we're going to be having lots and lots and lots of people being massacred in giant numbers. It's going to be a real holocaust. Where a lot of people are just massacred on scale. Christians are being killed in mass number like never before. But it's not like before that period in time Christians aren't going to be killed. There's never going to be a time when Christians aren't being killed for the cause of Christ. That's just a fact of life. But the good thing is it's only some. It's not necessarily everybody. It's just going to be some here and there. We don't know who that's going to be but we're supposed to be faithful and to death. Amen? Now go back to Revelation chapter number 6. Go back to Revelation chapter number 6. So I think that that's a tidbit of another reason why pre-trib is not true. Beyond the fact that it's just not in the Bible anywhere. But look at verse 12. The Bible says And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal and lo there was a great earthquake and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair and the moon became his blood and the stars of heaven fell into the earth even as a fig tree cast their untimely figs when she was shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it was rolled together and every mountain and island were moved out of their places and the kings of the earth and the great men and the rich men and the chief captains and the mighty men and every bondman and every free men hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains and said to the mountains and rocks fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb for the great day of his wrath is come and who shall be able to stand. It's interesting that even every unsaved person realizes that God has a face. Okay. They're like, hey hide us from the face of the one sitting on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. Now go back to Matthew 24 and I just want to kind of compare a few things here. This is very clearly an event that is described in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21 and it matches perfectly with 1 Thessalonians chapter number 4. And 1 Thessalonians chapter number 4 is always agreed upon by pretty much everyone that that's the rapture. Unless it's maybe a Preterist or maybe an Amillennialist I mean and they're kind of weirdos most of Christianity agrees that 1 Thessalonians 4 is the rapture but when you look at that event and then you look at Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21 and Revelation chapter number 6 they all fit like hand in glove, french fries and ketchup it's not mayonnaise you French weirdos, okay? It's ketchup. And so, you know, it's just it's obvious that it's talking about the same event. Okay, now let's just point out a few things that Matthew 24 says and that we just read in Revelation chapter number 6. Look at verse 29. The Bible says, Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened and the moon shall not give her light and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory and he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. Now learn a parable of the fig tree when his branch is yet tender and putteth forth leaves ye know that summer is nigh. So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things know that it is near even at the doors. So we don't really have to worry about knowing when the end times is going to happen because we will know. And frankly speaking, until we see that Antichrist being crowned I don't think you could even say that we've entered in and I don't see that figure at all. I don't see the Antichrist figure being crowned. We don't see that he's not going forth to conquer. These events are not being kicked off. We're not at the end times in that regard. Now we're obviously getting closer every day. I don't know if it's ten years, fifty years, five thousand years. It doesn't really matter. We're still supposed to do the same thing. I'm going to go to church on Sunday. I'm going to celebrate Christmas with my family. I'm going to save for the future. I'm going to invest in my children. I'm going to read books. I'm going to cut my grass. Well, albeit some Hispanic guy is going to, but I'm going to have my grass cut, okay? You know, whatever, right? I mean, that's just how life is. I'm not going to sit here and get worried. Now, at the point that we have an Antichrist crowned, we have a third temple in Jerusalem, and all of this other stuff, now we might alter our plans at least a little. I'm not even saying I'm going to quit church, though. I'm not going to stop going to church. I'm not going to start up soul winning. Yeah, I may not buy, like, a fifty-year bond or something like that, okay? I'm not going to necessarily try to do something crazy, but we shouldn't be concerned with the cares of this world or, you know, the deceitfulness of riches at that point in time. But we notice that there is a direct corrallel to that passage when it brings up, in Revelation, it brought up an earthquake, which, albeit it doesn't say earthquake, but it does talk about the heavens being shaken. But then here it's just clear. Sun's black, here it's sun dark. In Revelation, moon's the blood, here the moon's not going to give its light. It's going to say the stars fell, here it says the stars fall. It says that every man was hiding, and then it says here that all the tribes of the earth mourn. So it's just, like, every single event. And then, in Revelation chapter 6, it brought up the fig tree. And then what do we have in Matthew? We have the fig tree again. Learn the parable of the fig tree. So, to say that these aren't the same event would just be to basically just close your eyes and just say the earth's flat and to just do nothing with your life. I mean, it's that clear, it's that obvious. That's why most churches that are pre-trib will just not even read this section of Scripture. Or they'll start out by saying, now it's dangerous if you start, you know, trying to read this text and apply it to yourself. You've got to realize this is to the Jew. Well, you know what, I'm a Jew, so there you go. I'm that Jew you're talking about. Yeah, it is written for me, right? But it's just silly when you start denying these type of things. Now, I want to point out a few other things about this chapter. Look at verse number, the very beginning. I want to look at verse number three. Now, Christ had said that there wasn't going to be one stone left upon another. Notice it also says in verse one, it showed him the buildings of the temple. Notice it doesn't say a building, it says the buildings. And notice when it says of the buildings, they will not be left here, one stone upon another. So whatever they're doing in Israel, where they're wailing at a wall, guess what, that is not any of the buildings of the temple. Because it didn't just say one building was going to be thrown down, it says the buildings. There's not going to be a single stone of any of the buildings. So everything was thrown down. Whatever they're doing over in Israel is not at the real temple. Even if it was, it's weird. It's not biblical. It has nothing to do with the Bible, Christianity, Jesus Christ. In fact, it's blasphemous, because you know who you should be worshipping? The temple which is Jesus Christ. Because he said the temple that he was going to destroy and raise up in three days was his body. That's the Jesus in the temple you're supposed to be worshipping is the Lord Jesus Christ, and they're going and worshipping literal dirt. It's literal dirt that's been hardened into stone just to show the reflection of their heart, which is hard as a stone, and they reject the Lord Jesus Christ, and they hate the Lord Jesus Christ. No Christian should ever go over there and worship that stupid thing. If you want to take footage to mock them, I'm all for it, but you should not go over there and do their little seance at that stupid wall that's blasphemous. It's wicked. But one thing I will say is this passage for sure has a lot of dual fulfillment or doublespeak because of the fact that when Christ is answering this, it's not one question. Did you notice that? When shall these things be? When were the stones actually thrown down? That was 70 AD. So for sure part of this passage is applying to 70 AD, but then also it's not only that. It's talking about Christ coming and the end of the world, and so Christ in a really interesting mosaic is able to answer all of those questions in one passage. That's incredible. That's really cool that he's able to weave that together, but we have to be careful that we're not unpacking things in the wrong timeline, and of course those of 70 AD want to say, oh, this is only about that. Oh, so Christ came back? Oh, so the end of the world's already happened? What? And then when we read books of Revelation when we talk about locusts from hell, when did that happen? When did the locusts... How about this? If 70 AD is that event, when did Titus have a deadly wound and then come back from the dead? When did that happen? Oh, yeah, it didn't, because you're a liar, and you know what? Preterism is false, okay? But then we also have to understand that some of these things may only apply to that time period or some of the language may be directly speaking to that 70 AD event. I want to look at a couple verses with that thinking about it. Look at verse number five. Now, let's just think about this. When do you think that verse applies? Do you think that a verse applies to the Gentiles at that time when they don't even know what Christianity is? Do you think that a lot of people are walking around identifying themselves as Jesus Christ when the Gentiles literally don't even know what Christianity is at all? Probably not. So it's pretty clear that verse five is foreshadowing the end times. So for all of you Preterists, answer to me how there was tons and tons of people walking around as a false Christ in 70 AD or any time around then. It didn't happen. They didn't even know what Christianity was for a while, okay? It took a while for Paul to even go and to spread the gospel and to preach the gospel and for church to get planted and for Christianity to even start forming to let alone have someone start walking around declaring that they're a Christ, okay? That's a little bizarre. Now, am I saying that there hasn't been people declaring themselves Christ at that time or even in the first century? There probably was a small remnant, but it's pretty clear from this context that if you're going to have somebody walking around describing their Christ and deceiving many, that didn't happen. That's talking about an end times deception where you have people walking around like Tyler Doka. And look, he didn't deceive many. But just think about the mental state of our world when many people are deceived by Tyler Doka. Wow. Wow. But you know what? That's going to happen. That's going to happen where there's going to be literally people walking around claiming that they're Christ and lots of people following them. I mean, look at how many people follow. People like John Hagee, Kenneth Copeland, TD Jakes. They follow all these weirdos. It's not going to be a stretch. I believe somebody in the Philippines, Apollo Quibiboy is his name? Quibiboy? I don't know what to say. Yeah, something weird. I can't say it. False prophet. He said that he's Jesus. You know, he's basically gone around acting like he's the Messiah and persecutes people that call him out on that particular issue. He has a big following. So there are parts of the world where there's false Christs rising. That's kind of a precursor. It says, Notice verse 6. Be not troubled. So we, right now, should not be troubled. Be not troubled. And think about it. I have no idea what's going to happen. But let's just play out a hypothetical scenario. If the Antichrist comes to power and wipes out all the communists and leftists, I didn't need to be worried about that. If he goes and conquers a whole bunch of random Islamic nations or European nations and gets Islam out of them, still doesn't affect me that much. Okay? Now, albeit, it seems like at some point it's going to escalate, where we talked about this in verse 9, that eventually people are going to start hating Christians. Probably because of what? This is what I, again, this is just a hypothesis. You can have your own opinions, okay? And I'll finish very soon. But let's imagine someone rises to power in America, very popular, starts destroying all the leftists and the communists, and restores the economy. And America's doing good. And then he's going and he's conquering other nations. Everybody would be like, this guy's great. This guy's awesome. Everybody loves him. You know who's not going to love him? The new IFB. Because he's going to be the man of sin. Because he's going to be full of iniquity. He's going to be called out on all of his garbage on the fact that he's the Antichrist. And you know what? People are going to be like, all these pesky Christians keep talking bad about our superhero, our leader, our man that's doing all, and look at all the good. He's made our country better and he's brought in prosperity. It's kind of similar to how when Hitler came into power, you could not say a crossword about Hitler. And so it kind of makes sense that as he's coming to power, rolling steam, conquering lots of different things that a lot of Christians are still criticizing him. That's why everybody's just like, why are you hating on this guy? He's so great. He's bringing in so many good things. Nuts to you guys. And that's where you see a lot of people getting killed. And then eventually when he comes into power where he's at the crux of things, he calls himself God and he's asking everybody to worship him. Well, everybody's already on team Antichrist. They're all gonna be like, yeah, let's worship the guy. But who is still not on his side? Oh, yeah, all of us again. And then it's just gonna be a full campaign like let's eliminate all those people now. Now that I've eliminated all the communists and leftists and weirdos, now it's great tribulation. Now I'm going full steam on the Christians like harder than I've ever gone before. And if Christ didn't intervene, there would no flesh be saved, right? No one would survive that because it's basically the world versus Christians. It's just everyone. The Bible says that even your brother and your sister and your mom and your dad will literally betray you. And I know a lot of people in this room that would say, I already think that that could be true. Like I could already think of a family member that would do it now, let alone under that much pressure, that much coercion, that much evil. And look, I could, I mean, I'm not exempt from that either. Even right now, okay? Think about even some of the young people in your family, some of your extended family, cousins, nieces, nephews, younger siblings that are being raised in this psycho weird world, how much they would be willing to turn on you, come after you. That is a reality. Look at verse 15. When he therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Dan of the prophets, Dan of the holy place, whoso readeth, let him understand. Now I believe that this has to also attribute to the 70 AD timeline. Because this is Daniel chapter 11 foreshadowing the Titus and them coming in, knocking down the temple. But it's not the perfect fulfillment because I don't think that Titus necessarily embodied everything that the Antichrist will. So this is a dual fulfillment. Now go if you would to Luke 21. I wanted to go to one more place and I just want to read just a few more verses here. Because when we talk about the end times, I know that the ladies just love it so much. It's just like their favorite subject. It's like, can we talk about how everything's going to get horrible and terrible? Because they're always like, this is what they're thinking, like what am I going to do about my kids and what am I going to do about, you know, I don't want my husband to die and I don't want to like, you know, have to eat our cat or whatever, you know. My wife was always, she would ask me this question when we were younger or dating, I don't remember. She's just like, what's going to happen to my dog if we get raptured? I'm like, it's going to die. It's like sad and it's like, look, it was going to die anyways. Maybe it'll kill a leftist before it croaks, okay. You know, I mean, that's just an extra blessing there, okay. But you know what, you're not going to care, okay. And there's all these questions and everybody gets all worried and everybody gets all nervous and whatever. But I want to give you some hope and I want to give you something to think about. And you know, it's important not to ignore this subject because when Jesus said, what I say unto you, I say unto all, watch. So every man, woman, child needs to pay attention. But this is what I want to explain to you. Look at verse 29. And he spake to them a parable, behold the fig tree and all the trees, when they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand. So likewise ye, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled. So what he's trying to say is when you see it happen, it's going to happen. It's not like this is some allegory for thousands of years or hundreds of years. Like this is going to all happen in a short period of time, okay. And when you see those things happen, it's just going to be, you know, we see, you see a one, two, three, four, five. I mean, we're just going to be like, oh wow, it's here. It says in verse 33, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away. And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life. And so that day come upon you unawares. So many Christians and so many people are just going to just not care about the end times and just live it up to the bitter end. Verse 35, for as the snare shall it come all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth, watch ye therefore and pray always that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man. Now again, I don't know what's going to happen, but I want to make a couple things clear. When you think about Babylon, if we are Babylon, according to the text, Babylon has not suffered until they receive a horrible judgment. Babylon has not suffered. Now the Bible says when we talk about people being killed with death and sword and the beast, it was a fourth of the world. That would be about two billion people. But considering the fact that the Antichrist is conquering with a bow, it could be that America as a country pretty much sails unscathed throughout all of this time period. And what I'm saying is that we're watching on the news and Europe is just decimated. The Middle East is just horrible. There's all kinds of crazy conflict and they're suffering all kinds of famine and death and beasts and just the whole world just destroying itself. Imagine World War II. I mean, how much were people suffering in America while Hitler was killing everyone in Europe and the Russians? It was like we were just fine. Albeit, there were some hardships and I know a lot of men went to war and they died. And I'm not saying that America wouldn't still send a lot of soldiers over there, but God willing, a lot of Christians would decide not to go in the military. If there's any time not to go in the military, it's now. I would never, ever recommend my son to go in the military for Babylon, okay? Just don't do it. Everybody I know that's been in the military has told me they regretted it, and that was even from times past. There's some benefits to going in the military and I get why people do it, but I'm saying I wouldn't do it. It's looking very grim. And so it's very likely that a lot of people that are Christian in America can just continue to live their fancy life and live and do whatever they want all the way through all this. But we as God's people need to be serving God because notice what he says in verse 36. And pray always that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things. What did it say? All these things. All these things. When you read these passages, what happens? The famine, the disease, the death, the war, the persecution. There's going to be some Christians that don't experience any of it. Who are those people? The ones that are watching and the ones that are praying and the ones that are counted worthy. So I'm telling you ladies, oh, I'm worried. Okay, well, I know what you need to do. You need to pay attention, you need to pray, and you need to be counted worthy. Boy, I would want to be a soul winner. Boy, I would want to be someone that loves God and is serving Him and doing right. Boy, I would not want to be someone that's just drinking and partying and waking up and caring for myself. Because you know what? When you try to save your life, you're going to lose it. And when you lose your life for Christ's sake, you're going to find it. And so I'm trying to give you some hope. And boy, just think about it. Christians are literally sometimes peeing themselves. They're so scared of all this stuff and they're so nervous about everything. But imagine if literally Christ came up to you and said, you're not going to suffer any of these things. He'd be like, pfft, cool. If Christ showed up before and said, hey, that fire won't hurt you, they're doing cannonballs in there. They're like, I'm going to jump in here. What's the point of being nervous? That's what I'm talking about. Daniel going to the lion's den, I don't know what his attitude was. But think about this. David, when he faced off with Goliath, you know what he did? He ran. And I always wondered, that's crazy. He's fighting someone that's going to easily kill him, humanly speaking, but you know what, he ran at him. And you know what, we need to be fearless. We need to be steadfast. He said for us to not be troubled. He said, even if we're going to die, be faithful in the death anyways. And frankly speaking, some of us could even be kind of worthy to escape all of those things. That would be epic. You don't have to go through any of the suffering, any of the famine, any of the war, any of the pestilence. And you don't even have to die, you literally get raptured. And he that endureth unto the end, same shall be saved. Wouldn't that be cool? I mean, you're not even saved, you're not just saved spiritually, you're saved physically. Somebody's going to get raptured, folks. That's just a fact. Someone's getting raptured. And you know, why can't it be me? Why can't it be you? You know what? And I think God wants to rapture some of the greatest Christians, not all the lame ones that were hiding with Alex Jones' storeable food or something, okay? Like, maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. You know, if I have to be the first one martyred, then go for it. But if not, why not aim for the rapture, okay? And I gave you this chart, you can kind of look at it, we'll probably use it for the next few chapters as we go through it. But, you know, this is an important subject. Don't just gloss it over. He tells us many times to watch, pay attention, and you know what, but we shouldn't be afraid. Let us not be fearful, but yet believing, all right? Let's go with some prayer. Thank you, Heavenly Father, so much for giving us this information and giving us this knowledge and giving us wisdom through the scripture. Thank you for also giving us a way to escape, for providing Christians an opportunity to be saved physically, not just spiritually. I pray that if any of us have to be faithful unto death, that you would give us a heart of courage, that you would strengthen us in our minds and our hearts and our desires, and that we would be willing to do such a task. But I also pray that many of us would be accounted worthy to escape the evils that are going to come on this world. I pray that you would give us grace and that you would give us favor and that we would continue to be faithful with the works you've given us, that we wouldn't care selfishly for ourselves, but rather we would give our lives to the gospel. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. All right, for our last song, we're going to go to... A little feedback there. We're going to go for our last song, song number 427. We three kings of Orient are... Song number 427. Song 427. We three kings of Orient are Wearing gifts we travel so far Fielding fountains, mooring mountains Following yonder sky Star of wonders, star of night Star of royal beauty bright Westward leading, still proceeding Guide us to thy perfect light Born a King on Bethlehem plain Roll thy brains and crown him again King forever ceasing Never over us all to reign Roll, roll, roll Star of wonders, star of night Star of royal beauty bright Westward leading, still proceeding Guide us to thy perfect light Frankincense or offer have I Instant zones a deity nigh Prayer and praising, common raising Worship him, God on high Oh, star of wonders, star of night Star of royal beauty bright Westward leading, still proceeding Guide us to thy perfect light Murder is mine, it's bitter perfume Praise the life of gathering gloom Star of wonders, star of night Star of royal beauty bright Westward leading, still proceeding Guide us to thy perfect light Oh, star of wonders, star of night King, guide us to thy perfect light Glorious cow, behold him arise King and God and sacrifice Hallelujah, hallelujah To the earth and sky Oh, star of wonders, star of night Star of royal beauty bright Westward leading, still proceeding Guide us to thy perfect light Great singing everybody. You are dismissed. Thank you for watching.