[Steve Myers] We all need God's safety and protection. We need to pray for that daily. I was certainly reminded of this just the other day with the news that came out of Mexico, where nine people were brutally murdered. And it's come out that this was probably warring drug cartels that were responsible for that horrific tragedy.

And when you look at that, it also reminded not only do we need protection, but what a reminder of the kind of world that we live in. I was also thinking about how things will continue to be in our world and how much we really do need God's protection. I thought of the section of Scripture in Revelation, in Revelation 9. We have a section of Scripture here that's dealing with the end times and it's describing what's going to happen on the horizon. There are many plagues and many difficulties that God is pouring out on mankind, hoping that they'll change, hoping that they'll repent and turn to Him.

But one of the things that we find in verse 21, in Revelation 9, it says, "Even after these terrible plagues that had been poured out," it says, "They did not repent of their murders, or their sorceries, or their sexual immorality, or their thefts." And in some ways, yeah, that reflects exactly where we live today. People aren't even sorry for the terrible things that they're doing. But the one word that caught my attention here was the word sorcery. When you look at this word for sorcery, it's not just talking about witchcraft here. The actual word in the Greek for sorcery is the word pharmakeia. And you may notice something familiar here in the Greek, this pharmacy or pharmakeia is where we get our English word pharmacy.

It literally is talking about drugs. It's talking about drug use. And so there are a number of translations that actually bring that fact out. If you were to read this in the Amplified Bible, it says, "They didn't repent of their murders, or their drugs, or intoxications." Other translations, the common English Bible says, "They didn't turn away of their murders, their spells, and drugs, and sexual immorality."

You see, drug use today is just expanding and it's just exploding more, and more, and more, it's gonna be the downfall of our society. And yet, even in the future, as it expands more and more, they will not change.

We need God's protection. We need His guidance, society is gonna continue to degenerate. And it's such a reminder as we look at the news today, how much we need God. So continue to pray for protection. Continue to pray that God would protect His people. And pray for those innocents that are out there that can be affected by the horrible society that we live in. And so remember what God has in mind, one day, this will all be put away, and it will be all made new. And we can pray and look forward to that time as well.

That's BT Daily. We'll see you next time.