God Gives People What They Really, Really Want

WOLFL-2024-16

Transcript

God gives everybody what they really want. Now remember the outline of the book, the context. One of the most important things whenever anybody’s teaching on anything, figure out what’s the context of what they’re doing. You’re looking at the last book of the Bible, the final revelation of God. You’re looking at a unique type of literature. This book is called apocalyptic literature. Now do you remember for your test and your quiz, or I guess it’s only a test That this is the only book of the Bible that the first word is the actual theme of the book and the first word is in Greek, apokalypsis. The unveiling or the revealing of Jesus Christ. And it’s revealing, Jesus Christ is in His Church. He’s taking His Church to Heaven. His wrath is going to be poured out in the Tribulation. He’s coming and returning as the real king. He is the one who’s going to rule on Earth just like He promised. Every Christmas all those Christmas carols, I know it’s a long time from Christmas, but do you remember some of them are really interesting. And it talks about, and He shall rule on the throne of His father David. We sing that every Christmas. That’s one of those old Christmas songs right there it is, Christ’s thousand year rule. That’s what was promised that Jesus is going to come, Psalm 2 says, and rule the Earth with a rod of iron.

Now tomorrow we’re going to talk about that. He really does. It’s an agrarian society in the Millennium. Everybody has farms. All the people on Earth are going to be farmers. Vine tenders. They’re, it’s going to be a very, it’s going to be like living in Hawaii, where everything grows really well, it’s green and nice. And no snakes. All that stuff. That’s the Millennium. But you know what the Lord does? He says, you must come and visit Me every year in Jerusalem, all of you have to come, and if you don’t come, it won’t rain on your farm. He actually runs the sprinkler system of the Earth. And it really says in Isaiah, if they do not come to Jerusalem, it will not rain. That’s a disaster if you raise crops.

So, that’s ruling with a rod of iron. It’s not like giving a rule and nobody checking up on it. He checks up on everyone. In fact, He says, you only have a hundred years to get with the program. And if you don’t get with the program, you die at a hundred years. Now that’s…, wouldn’t we say, wow, that’s great. Most people only live to be 78 years old. Yeah, but in the Millennium, everybody lives the whole thousand years. So, it’s a disaster to be cut off at a [hundred] years. So, that’s the green box. Then they rebel. That’s the rebels and the global rebellion. And the throne is the great white throne. We’ll cover that tomorrow. And then dwelling in the house of the Lord forever.

Why did Jesus give this? He gave it to the second generation Church to give them hope, they knew what was happening.

So, let’s look at chapter 16 verse 1 and just see what God tells us. And I heard a loud voice from the temple. Remember, the picture keeps going from Heaven to Earth, Heaven, Earth, Heaven, Earth. It’s like a split screen kind of thing. So, I is John. He hears a loud voice from the temple. That’s the temple is where all these angels keep walking out with their trumpets, with their bowls, and with the censors and all that stuff. So, this is seeing around the throne of God in Heaven. Saying to the seven angels, go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the Earth. Chapter 16 is the attribute of God, of the 25, called the wrath of God. That’s what chapter 16 is.

Number one, He shows what life without Jesus is like. He finally lets everybody get what they want. You want to make it in life without Jesus? It says verse 2, so the first went and poured out the bowl on the Earth and a foul and loathsome sore. That, those are two unusual English words. Fowl, not foul ball, fowl you can just see it’s rotting, loathsome sore, came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshipped his image. Have you ever thought what this means? God knows everybody. He knows what they want, what they love, what they think about, and He gives them what they want. If they want Satan as their god, what that produces is foul and loathsome death, sores, disease, dying.

Now if you step back, remember, if you step back, you can just give a narration of the whole book of Revelation. And I keep giving you little pieces of this. Here’s chapter 16. Lost humanity believes in evolution, reveres the Earth. By the way, evolution is not new. The Greeks had a form of evolution. It wasn’t as sophisticated as what we’ve come to now with Stephen Hawking and Darwin’s voyage around trying to piece it together. But they’ve always believed in the spontaneous, from nothing, coming something, but without God. The Greek one is very interesting how they describe it. By the way, it’s showing up in all of our science fiction movies. Even the names of the Greek gods are in all these American Hollywood, Prime movies. But lost humanity believes this lie of Satan, evolution, reveres the Earth, that means worships the creation, the Earth, rather than the what? Creator. See the difference?

Religion is about, totally about getting the focus off God and getting it on us. And so that’s the revering of the Earth, denying biblical creationism. So, what does God send? The final divine environmental destructions. God the Son, who is the creator, systematically, with these bowls, destroys the atmosphere, the ocean, the land, with earthquakes, smoke, fire, I read this yesterday, red tides, global warming, volcanoes, tsunamis, asteroids, comets, and meteors. And the final crescendo, Armageddon. That’s where we’re getting.

So basically, Armageddon is this. What happens when people get what they really want? Earth becomes a living Hell. You know what this means? Everybody on Earth, except those that have trusted the Creator God, gets these sores. It’s universal. Everybody that is not bowing to the Lord is covered with these sores. Now look at the sequence of what we’re going to see. Sores on all those who have the mark of the beast. That’s verse 2. The sea of blood, then the rivers of waters, the sun scorching. This is very close together stuff because how long can you live without water? Four days. See, we’re not talking about… Now God is making what has stretched across three and a half years. He’s coming down to the last act, the crescendo, we would call it. And I told you yesterday, it parallels those trumpet judgments.

And chapter 16 ends there with the seventh bowl, poured into the air when he said it is done. And that’s the finale.

Verse 3 says, then the second angel. So, the first one, remember these bowls are shallow temple objects. We read about the construction of them out of gold and everything in Exodus. These angels walk out to the edge because Heaven is portrayed in Revelation that God is up here and down there you can see everything going on Earth, and there’s like an edge, like our nice little stage here. So, these angels are coming up to the edge and pouring them down on Earth. It’s like God is seated looking.

Now for me, when I was a little boy reading this, I don’t know who told me this, but it got my attention. I had an ant farm. Do you know what an ant farm is? It’s about this big. It’s like my Bible. It’s about as thick as my Bible. It’s made of plastic, clear plastic, had a top, had a bottom, had in this little space this wide, it was all dirt, and you collected ants and put them in there, and it was so thin that I could look at my ant farm and no ant was out of sight. Because it was so thin I could see them running in all their tunnels in my little ant farm. And I would have it on my dresser, or table, or I carried it around actually, and I sat there, and I watched them. And you know what this effective Bible teacher said? He said, that’s the best way to understand God. The ants aren’t even aware you’re out there and they’re not aware you’re watching them. But you can see their little trails, their little tunnels. You could see them, you put the food up here and they would carry it down there. And nothing they did, and none of their stuff was hidden from me. The Bible says we live before the face of God. Here, I was looking at my ant farm. The ants were living before the face of me. You and I are living before the face of God. The Earth, during the Tribulation, can’t see all this stuff up there. They don’t see the temple. They don’t see the angels. All they see is the effect of this bowl being dumped.

So, this next bowl, the second angel pours out his bowl on to the sea. See, it’s right below them, right below the throne of God. All the humans in their little ant farm are right there, and he is pouring stuff into their little ant farm through His angels. And this next one goes on the sea. And the sea becomes blood like a dead person. And every living creature in the sea died. That’s a big event. The sea is so full of life. We don’t, they haven’t even mapped most of the oceans. They don’t even know. They’re always finding creatures. They just were over by off of Indonesia somewhere, the scientists with a big boat. And they found, just in one little survey, a thousand new creatures they didn’t even know existed. That was in 2024. Unbelievable. A thousand, just in one boat ride going down into the deep water.

Look what it says. Every living creature in the sea dies. That’s even the plankton. That’s trillions. And the third angel pours his bowl on the rivers and springs. God deals with the salt water, then he deals with the fresh water. And notice what it says, on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. Wow.

Now, I wrote this. This is the journal note. Everything decays but our living and true God. He’s the only one who is eternally self-sufficient, needing nothing. Have you really thought what Heaven is? Heaven is not all of a sudden God makes me a little god and I’m going to just be able to jet around in my Avenger body that I can fly anywhere. What’s that Marvel, Captain Marvel woman that can [travel] all over the universe and she’s stronger than all of them. No, we’re not all going to become Captain Marvels. You know what we’re going to become? Living in the presence of God who sustains us.

Did you know that there are two things? This is tomorrow, but tomorrow we’re going to see there’s a river of life and there are trees, 12 trees of life, bearing fruit one for every month. You say what’s all that? I thought we don’t have to eat in Heaven. We don’t have to eat like we eat here. We have to be sustained We are never self-sufficient, never will be. Only God doesn’t need anything. He doesn’t need food. He doesn’t need rest. He doesn’t need energy. He is the source of everything. And you know what Heaven is? We get to be by Him. What happened when Moses was near God for 40 days? Do you remember what happened to his face? Y’all remember that from Sunday school or Exodus or whatever you studied it in? He absorbed what we would call the radiation. Whatever it is that the infinite, eternal, all powerful being we know as God the Father and Son and Spirit, whatever they emanate, he absorbed it. And he glowed.

It’s amazing to think about what it’s going to be like to unbrokenly live in the presence of God. What is the biggest promise of Jesus coming? Call His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted as God with us. And Heaven is the God who’s with us now, we don’t see, is going to be the God we’re with and we see. And it’s amazing. Now what they need for life, water, is gone. Turns to blood.

Next, in verse 8 and 9, the fourth angel comes out, pours his bowl on the sun. So, it’s not just the Earth we’re seeing, the universe is out there. And it’s in the background of this platform of Heaven, the throne of God. And the angel pours out his bowl on the sun, and power is given to him to scorch men with fire. So, it’s like the sun goes into some…, we know the sun has an 11 year cycle, and we know that there are multiple overlays of that, that there’s this increase of solar activity and decrease.

In fact, a scientist called Maunder wrote about the cycles of the sun. And what he found is, in the 16th century, the 1600s in Europe, the sun went back in luminosity. It reduced around 1620 to 1640, And the canals, all the canals of the Netherlands froze, and winter lasted like nine months instead of only three or four months or five months. It doubled and it, this lasted for decades. It was really a bad time. It’s called the Maunder Minimum if you look it up. And from that time, oak trees grew very slowly and they grew so dense because their growing cycle was so short. That the oak wood was different than any other wood in history that they could find, and that’s what Stradivarius violins are built out of. That’s why you can’t build any more of those, because it’s out of a wood that is so dense and so unique, and the whole growing season changed. It’s the opposite here. Look what it is. Instead of going to the Maunder Minimum, it goes to the maximum, and it scorches people, the sun does. And men were scorched with great heat.

And the instant…, remember I told you that we’re like teabags, I have my teabag here. When we get dipped into hot water, whatever’s inside, comes out like a teabag. What comes out of humanity when they’re in hot water? They blaspheme the name of God who has power over these plagues. And look at the repeated phrase we’re going to see over and over. And they did not repent and give Him glory. Which is all He wanted. He wanted them to say no to their sin and say yes to Him.

Verse 10, then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast. And then, do you remember when we were doing Pergamos? The throne of Zeus? The throne of Satan? That’s where his headquarters was? The beast, the headquarters for Satan’s representative, is what they hit now. And his kingdom becomes full of darkness. Wait a minute, where is this? Do we know? Yes, Daniel tells us where it is. It’s the revived Roman Empire. This is something to do with what we would call Europe. The what did the Lord of the Rings call it? Middle Earth, Mediterranean. That’s what Mediterranean means, Middle Earth. The Middle Terra, Earth. And the Mediterranean world, which is what we would call Europe, Northern Africa, and just that slice of the Middle East, which we call the Levant, is what they call it geographically. That’s the headquarters of Satan, the beast.

How do we know that? Because it says it in Daniel 9. And so, this area, what we would call Western Europe, becomes full of darkness. And look, they gnaw their tongues because of the pain. They blasphemed the God of Heaven because of their pain. And look what they still have from the first bowl, their sores. This is all happening very close together. They’re getting these effects piled. And they wouldn’t repent.

Oh, back to the whole purpose of Revelation. What on Earth does someone living in the 2nd century need to know about something that’s happening at the end of the world? That’s what the Church has asked for years. Why even study Revelation if all this is going to happen in the future, what does it do for me? These people were going through so much similar to what they’re reading about in Revelation. They’re going through plagues. Do you know medicine in the Roman Empire was great, but it was only for those who could afford it? Labor, everybody was basically, about two thirds of the empire were slaves. And they had no rights, they were just oppressed horribly. What this book taught them is, Jesus is all you need to live for God in your dark world. If slaves did not perform their duties the different writers from the Roman time, Livy and Tacitus and Herodotus, the Greek writer about history, they said they used to, if their slave didn’t do what they wanted, if they burnt the toast, they would throw them into their pool. And the pools had conger eels. Do you know what conger eels are? They’re like toothed, carnivorous creatures. And they would eat them up. It was like a capital offense to bother your master in the Roman Empire. That’s a dark world to live in. And this book was written to say, Jesus is all you need.

But basically, the end of the world is going to be people with unsatisfied desires. Remember what chapter 9 verse 21 said? They want their drugs, they want their idols, they want their demon worship, they want the immorality, the thefts, the murder.

Think for a moment, because this came to me, what happens to someone who gets what they really want? Bonnie and I met, in fact this morning we were both talking about this fellow. I started pastoring in this New England town, and the first thing I saw when I went to work was the most sculptured bodybuilder person I’d ever met. This guy was wearing his shorts, walking around town with two 10 pound barbells. And all he did is he jogged around town like that, wearing his shorts, his little gym shoes, and sweat. And, he didn’t do this for a minute. He did it for hours. He just, it was not heavy to him. And he looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger used to look, like Mr. Universe. And so, he had his little track he followed around our little New England town. And everybody in town knew him. And he always wore the same outfit, sweat, and his shorts, and his dumbbells. He would even come through on Sunday morning as everybody was getting out of their car going to church. And Mothers would just hold their kids back didn’t want them to get run over and sweat on them by this guy. So, we all got to know him. Nobody ever met him, he never stopped. He just went through the parking lot.

So, I get into my office and I’m getting ready for Wednesday night service and I’m sitting in my office. I hear a commotion outside. I can hear sounds and then I heard kind of something bumping my door and I heard, No. No. No. You can’t. And so, I went to the door and opened the door, and there was my secretary who was 82 years old, Kay was her name, and she is short. And there is this green, or not green beret, he was whatever the Marines are. He was special forces? Seal? No, that’s, it’s Navy Seals, that’s naval. What are Marines, their special forces called? [MARSOC] That. He was one of those. And he was black belt in martial arts. And he had that physique. And he was coming into my office, and she didn’t want to touch him because he was all sweaty and she was going like this, no, you can’t go in there. And I said, Kay, it’s okay if he wants to come in. I’ve always wanted to meet Mr. Muscles.

Right in he came, set his barbells down, started dripping on my floor. He stood still and it just was running off him. And his first words were, Father. So, guess what he thought I was? A Roman Catholic priest. That’s his only context for Christianity. He said, Father. I said, Yes. He said, I walked through your parking lot. I said, we all know that. I said, you’re a sight. He said, I walked through your parking lot on Sundays. I said, yes, I know. He said, I have a question. I said, what? He said, when I walk through your parking lot, I feel something that I don’t know what it is, but it’s what I want. He says, I look at your kids. I look at the adults. I look at the parents. I look at the old people. He said, they all have this joy. You know what he wanted? He wanted the Gospel. I said, tell me about you. He said, oh, I’m military special forces. He says, I’m 10th degree or 8th degree or 5th degree. I don’t know how many degrees he had of his martial arts.

And he says, my favorite thing is, he said, I go to the bar every night. I said, the bar every night? Yeah, he says, and I look down the row of the bar at all the seats and tables and he said, I find the prettiest girl. Hope she has a guy next to her. And I slide in on his chair and push him off his chair. How do you like this? Sitting at the bar, Mr. Muscles slides the boyfriend off and sits there and starts talking to the pretty girl. Immediately the pushed off person says, that’s my girl. That’s all he wanted. Because in this state, if you didn’t start the fight, you didn’t get in trouble. The person that started it got it. He wanted to start the fight. He wanted them to make the first move, and he would deck them. And he said, I always get the pretty girl every night. He says, I get any girl I want. He said, I know… It was a city of about 800,000. He said I know all the bars and I get a different girl every night. I said, great.

Now look at the top, the man who got what he wanted and found it empty. He said, I’ve been doing that for years. He said, you know what? He said, I don’t even want to go tonight. He said, I’ve gotten every pretty girl I’ve ever wanted. He said, I’ve knocked out their boyfriends. He said, I want what I feel in your parking lot. I thought, what do people even know that what they act like in the parking lot, God can use as a tool? And so, I opened the Bible, start with the Romans Road. He’s dripping, and I’m holding my Bible up, just like I do here, and I’m reading, and I said first of all, it says for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I said, are you a sinner? He says, what sin? I said, going to bars and knocking out and getting the girl and you’re not married to her. Oh, yeah, he says, I sin. Oh, he says, a lot. And I was just going through the Romans Road with him, and I got to the end where it says, call in the name of the Lord, and I looked up after reading it, and he wasn’t there anymore. I thought, you took too long, he’s gone. I pulled my Bible back and I looked. While I was reading Romans 10, he was lying on the floor. It is like he just got down in his face on the floor and he said, I want to call in the name of the Lord. And he did. So, I had to get down, next to Mr. Sweaty and I got down on my knees next to him. And he prayed this the most simple sweet prayer of calling on the Lord. And he jumped up, said thank you, grabbed his barbells.

I said, whoa, before you go, there’s more. And I gave him a paperback Bible. We had these paperback New Testaments. I gave him one. I said, you should start reading this. And he said, I’ll look for you on Sunday. That was Wednesday. Sunday morning, he was dressed. I’d never seen him with clothes. He was amazing. He looked like a General or something. He was wearing clothes, and he came in holding his paperback Bible. He said, I found myself in the Bible. He said, I read it all. I read the whole New Testament. Took him 18 hours, like it’d take us. This is the verse he quoted to me. He said, I found myself, for we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy. He said, that was me. Hateful, hating one another, but then the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. Whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. Having been justified by grace, we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

He said, I found myself. The man who got what he wanted, he found it empty, wanted Christ. And you know what, about two, three weeks later, he was standing next to me in the baptistry, sharing that, wearing a white baptismal robe they all wore, next to me, with his little paperback Bible, and he read that verse to the congregation. And there was hardly a dry eye in the church because all of them, all they could see in their mind is Mr. Muscles with his shorts on dripping through the parking lot and thinking how they all tried to keep their kids away from him because they thought he’s weird. And it rebuked the entire congregation to think that just their love for Christ, his darkened empty heart wanted. And he just wanted someone to tell him about Christ.

So basically, the book of Revelation chapter 16, God giving us what we want, should motivate us to say, God grab my heart, I want to live the way You want me to live. When I was your age, I used to walk around our Bible college, it was like this, trees and everything, at night, and I would find some spot where nobody could see me, and I would look up at the stars, and I would quote 2 Chronicles 16:9. Have you guys learned that one yet? It says, for the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole Earth, looking for someone whose heart is completely toward Him, that He might show Himself strong through them. And I would just say, checking in, I want You to grab my heart. I want You to use me.

Revelation 16 goes on in verse 12. Now we have the sixth bowl poured out on the Euphrates. It’s water dried up so the way for the kings of the east might be prepared. This is what people merged together with what we already saw about the demon army of 200 million horsemen, and they push it together and think it’s the Chinese, but it is the Chinese but there’s not 200 million of them and they’re not demon horsemen. And the kings of the east are prepared. I saw three unclean spirits like frogs. Now here’s the unholy trinity. Look at this, one spirit out of the dragon, that’s Satan; one spirit out of the beast, that’s the Anti-christ; one spirit out of the false prophet, the Anti-christ’s right hand man. And these are, look at this, the spirits of demons performing signs. So obviously, Satan of course, has all these demons he’s using. The Anti-christ is alternating between being filled by the dragon and Satan, and by other demons. And he has so many demons in him, some can leave, and he’s still the Anti-christ/ power. But look what they do, they perform signs, and they get the kings of the Earth of the whole world together. And here it is, to the battle of the great day of God Almighty. And look at the end of verse 16, a place in Hebrew called Armageddon.

What is Armageddon about? God has staked his name on Israel. And Satan knows that. I have a long list in the notes section, but here’s just two of them. Jeremiah 31:1-10, is God saying, I’m going to bring Israel back to the land, and I’m going to raise them up from all the parts of the Earth where they’ve been scattered. And remember, the Romans scattered them everywhere. Did you know today in Israel they speak a hundred different languages? If you ever go over there to Israel, there are people from a hundred different countries. It’s almost like being at the UN, being in Israel. And you look at Israelis, and they’re every color you can think of. They’re just, it’s like they’re representing all the nations of the Earth, and they’re all Jews, ethnic Jews. It’s amazing. 2 Chronicles 6:6, God says, Jerusalem is My city. He claimed it. God has staked His name on Israel, the people, the ethnic Jews, and Jerusalem, the city. And Satan knows that. So that’s what the Tribulation is about.

The Tribulation is when Satan stirs up all the nations of the Earth to turn against the Jews, who God calls My people, and Jerusalem, that God calls it My city. And that’s what Zechariah 14 is about. On that day, His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives. Verse 3, He goes and fights against the world to protect Israel. Do you know what the Second Coming of Jesus is? Jesus coming to save the Jews from destruction, the final, ultimate Holocaust. Satan has them completely surrounded. There’s nowhere for them to go. Zechariah 14, 12 to 14, describes he’s killing them, and he’s killed two thirds of all the Jews left on Earth. They’re coming in and the one third that are left, this is what Zechariah says they do. They look up and they say, You’re my only hope. They want their Messiah. And at that instant, Jesus breaks through the clouds, and there He is, and He saves them, and His feet touch the Mount of Olives.

So basically, God fits together all these passages. World War III, what the world calls the end of the world, is like understanding Psalm 83, Ezekiel 38 and 39, Daniel 11, and of course 9, and Revelation 16.

If you get what Daniel says, that the battle has four fronts coming into Jerusalem. Armageddon is about the kings of the west, the kings of the north, the kings of the east, and the kings, what is now being called the global south, come up and converge on Jerusalem.

Now what’s interesting, if you just want to see pictures of these words, these, this would be the king of the north and the king of the east, current kings of the east. That’s Xi of China and Putin, who is amazingly in the news about every day.

When is Armageddon? If you look, it’s just at the Second Coming. The Battle of Armageddon, that’s on the right, the red box with the arrow, and the Second Coming are simultaneously. Jesus comes to Armageddon to stop the nations of the world marching down to finish off Jerusalem.

Now this is Bloomberg, if you know anything about business or your parents are in business, in stocks or investments and bonds and all that stuff, Bloomberg is interesting, their graphics. They said this is the new Cold War. And it’s shaping up so fast. The green are the people that are associated with Russia and Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Boy, are they in the news. The red are those associated with the United States and Israel. And of course, it’s the Sunni Arabian countries and Israel. What’s interesting is, if you notice right above Syria, below Russia and above Syria, it would be really nice if that gray part picked sides. You know what that gray part is that you can’t see very well, that’s Turkey.

Thankfully, Turkey has come out. Turkey aligns with Iran against Israel. And so you can color in that little section. So, we’re starting to see Ezekiel’s map of the End of Days.

And of course, the United States, the very first country on Earth that got our multi hundred million dollar super, super generation whatever, F-35, was Israel. They’re the first ones. We gave them squadrons of these, billions of dollars of aircraft. And of course, you know how the Israelis are. They’ve modified them. And they’re the only country America’s allowing to modify their top warplane. And Iran, if you read the news, this week could announce that they have assembled their first nuclear weapon. They’ve got the reactors, they’ve got the plutonium, they’ve got everything, it’s just putting it together. And Israel said they will never let them have nuclear weapons. Could that be what triggers this?

Because what’s interesting is, I personally don’t believe this, Ezekiel 38 war, is Armageddon. Because Ezekiel tells us specific countries where God says Armageddon is everyone. So, it’s very differently…

This is what Ezekiel says. He says there’s going to be this Magog and Gog, that’s from the north. There’s going to be Gomer and Togarmah, which is Turkey and Syria. They are certainly on board. Persia is going to be there. That’s Iran. Libya is going to be there. Ethiopia is going to be there. And then it talks about Sheba and Dedan. So basically, all of these. [Student has a question] (And I can’t stop when I’m talking, but I will come back to you Ben Tapp. Is that Ben Tapp? I can’t say the Tappakalakalas part, don’t quite get that.) So basically, the Armageddon coalition is named to the country, but Armageddon just says everybody from the east, everybody from the west, everybody from the north, everybody from the south.

And what happens right now, not at Armageddon, there are no atomic bombs. There, in fact, as far as we know, Armageddon, nobody fires a shot. If you read, you saw what it says in chapter 16, they come in chapter 19. Before Jesus touches the ground, they’re dying, they’re melting and everything. There’s not any shot fired.

But boy, are people getting excited about this. This was in the UK paper. This is a digitally animated AI version of what happens if Tehran, Damascus, and Jerusalem all exchange atomic weaponry. And they just they’re scaring the people to death. So that is what happens in chapter 16.

Look at verse 17. The seventh angel pours out his bowl, and in a loud voice comes out of the temple saying, it’s done, and there’s this earthquake that has not occurred since men came to Earth. Verse 20, every, this is the end of the world. Every island flees, flees away. All the mountains are taken away. changed. Hail falls from Heaven. Each hailstone weighs the weight of a talent. How much is that? Between 60 and 100 pounds. Now they just had a big storm across the Midwest and it said that there were apple sized hail that weighed five ounces. Five ounces. A pound is 16 ounces. These hailstones weigh between 60 pounds and 100 pounds. Just think, it’s five bowling balls together hitting. And in fact, South Carolina, it showed their golf courses were white from hail. They had, this was last week.

Okay. So now to Ben Tapp. And I only have two more slides. Yeah, it’s very interesting. He said, if things don’t cool down, does that mean that it’s going to happen, and the Rapture is close at hand? If it’s Armageddon, then we’ve missed the Rapture. See, that’s the problem. Armageddon is the Second Coming of Christ. Second Coming of Christ is not the Rapture, which we’ll see tomorrow when we go through chapter, or later today when we go through chapter 19. I personally believe that something has to happen to make the Muslims allow the temple to be in Jerusalem. And this event would happen. But what’s interesting is, in the Ezekiel 38 and 39, America doesn’t win it for them, and Europe doesn’t win it for the Israelis, God does.

See that’s, it’s going to, if it really is soon, what’s going to happen is Russia is going to mobilize and get all the old Soviet Union places, and they’re literally going to start an overland military campaign. Iran’s going to be right there with them cheering them on, the Syrians are going to add to it, and then all of the Houthis and everybody in the northern Africans are going to come toward Israel, and it’s going to be what it is in the Bible, an Islamic invasion. It’s not a global, it’s an Islamic invasion of Israel, and Ezekiel says God stops it. And five sixths, five out of six parts, one sixth is sixteen percent, five sixths, it’s 80 percent of all those who come against them are destroyed by God. Wouldn’t that send a little shockwave in the world? That would cause a lot of people to be very interested in the Bible and the Gospel.

But Israel is weakened, but Israel is still existing. And the world doesn’t know what to do if all, Russia and all these people are defeated. What do we do? And that’s when the Anti-christ rises up and says, I have a plan. And he starts his peace plan with Israel and everything else. To answer your question, I don’t know. I gave a long answer. I don’t know.

But I do know that this is the most precipitous time in the world that’s ever happened. This is worse than World War II or I because we’ve never had so many countries with their fingers on a launch button of atomic weaponry. And you saw what happened to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Why do we even study prophecy? Jesus gives us an example. How did Jesus apply prophecy? Now, let me show you. Go to, remember Matthew 24 where we started out? Let me just real quickly show you that the string of parables Jesus gives at the end of Matthew 24. I think it’s probably the best application of prophecy I’ve ever found in the Bible. It starts… Of course it’s Jesus. The first thing He says is, oh here, I’ll give it to you. Number one, verse 32. He says, now learn the parable from the fig tree. When its branches already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know summer is near. So, you also, when you see all of these things, know it is near at the doors. Assuredly, I say unto you, the generation will by no means pass away till these things take place. Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words won’t.

You know what that whole long five verse, four verse section is? Trust God’s Word. He’s doing this. He’s going to bring it to pass. Starting verse 36, He says, it should make you look for My coming, not build a bomb shelter, look for My coming. And if we’re looking for His coming, He wants us to be taking people with us to Heaven. Are you taking people with you to Heaven? Do you know people that you’ve personally shared the Gospel with, and you’ve led to Christ? Paul said, they’re your hope and joy and crown of rejoicing. You take them to Heaven. Do your job. Did you know we’re all called, that’s why I always ask you, what do you guys like? How, what do you love to do? Do your job. The Early Church was primarily made up of people that didn’t get to pick what they did. They were told what to do and they did their job for the Lord. And that’s what Jesus said in Matthew 24:45.

Then it’s the whole, the virgins, remember, the ones that have oil and the ones that don’t have oil. Do you know what that whole story’s about? Make sure you’re a Christian. Because Jesus said, many will say unto Me in that day, Lord, Lord, we were involved in church. And He’ll say, you were, but I didn’t know you. He said, I didn’t know, I didn’t live inside of you. I have not given you a new heart. I have not transformed you.

Then He talks about all the talents. Do you remember the talent story? That’s in 25:14-30. Don’t waste your life, because what you do will last forever, and what you don’t do will be gone forever, okay?

And then His final application is, live like your Christ.

Bonnie and I were just visiting a dear friend of ours, and his wife is seriously ill, and he got down in front of her on his knees, and he said to me, she can’t move from here. He says, I get on my knees, and I brush her teeth. And I said, wow. He could hire someone to do that. He said, I love my wife so much that I want to serve her with the same love that Christ has for His Church. Do you know what I think? I think he is earning such eternal rewards, not leaving his house, brushing his wife… who is stricken and ill, her teeth.

God gives people what they really, really want. This morning, what do you really, really want? That’s what you’re going to get. You want to live for yourself? You’re going to be like the power walker. You’re going to get to the end of the road and you’re going to find you got everything you wanted and you’re empty. The Lord says that we’re supposed to die to ourselves and live for Him.