The Haggai Ultimatum

Well, as we turn the calendar year from 2016 into 2017, it's always a no matter how we look at the Roman year and God's calendar and how we observe certainly God's festivals and look to that springtime as our new year, no matter how much that is a part of our lives. We all are tied to certain things we have to note as the calendar year turns. We have to end the tax year, get ready for our new tax year, and make certain decisions there. And then we have to learn how to write a brand new year in 2017. I'm still learning how to write 2014. I'm that far behind, but here we have to start learning how to write 2017. So we do have to make note of these. But a good question for us to consider is, where is the Church of God today in the world today? Where is the Church of God in the world today? As we know, America has a new president-elect in just less than three weeks. That president, Mr. Donald Trump, will be sworn in as the new 45th President of the United States. It's been quite a year, politically. And it has shaken the nation in many different ways. We are living in very interesting times in the United States. We're living in very interesting times in the world. And certainly many people wait to see what will happen with a new president and a new administration given the rhetoric and all that has been said in the last year and a half during this period of time. And even the headlines that are being made as the current president and his administration leave. It is a very interesting time. It's also an interesting time as we look at the turmoil among the nations throughout the world and the events that are taking place there. When we look at our own country, America, we are still wracked by cultural changes that are reshaping the United States into a country. Quite frankly, those of us of a certain age in this room recognize that we don't recognize. The United States that we live in today is a much different country than the United States that I was born into and grew up in. As many of you can attest to as well. There have been a number of dramatic cultural shifts that still keep us wondering as we look at what is happening. But what does that mean for the church? That's the real important question for us to consider on any given moment, at any given date, where we consider ourselves, who we are, what we are doing, what God has called us to do.

There is a scripture that speaks to the church in Matthew 16 that we all know quite well. I'd like for you to turn there as we begin here today, Matthew 16, where Jesus talked about building the church and he said, I will build my church. He said to the disciples and specifically to the apostle Peter at this point, after Peter had affirmed who he was, his belief in Christ as the Son of God, the Son of the Living God, in verse 16 of Matthew 16. And Christ said to him a blessing in verse 17 because he said, most can't receive this, but my Father has revealed this to you.

And in verse 18, he said, I say to you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. Well-known statement to us about the church from Christ, he said, I will build my church and the gates of Hades or the grave or hell will not prevail against it. The forces, the powers of evil, the forces, the power of Satan will not prevail against the church of God. Often in the past, as we may have read this verse or had it expounded to us, we would take it as a promise that the church would always exist, which indeed it is.

But that's not the primary meaning of this verse. What Jesus is really saying here, when you understand the context and the way that it is actually put and the setting, Jesus was talking to his disciples in front of a cavern that was opening into a great underground hole or cave there in northern Israel today. That was a, actually at that moment, it was a pagan shrine. And it was looked upon as kind of a gateway into the underworld at that very spot in Caesarea Philippi. You can go there today and you can see the same cave, the same hole.

And it was looked upon as a opening into hell. So when Jesus said this, it was such a very dramatic setting for the disciples to be taught something and for us as well. Because Christ is not saying to the church that, hunker down, folks, you're going to be here, I'll be with you, and the storms and the wind and the tornadoes and the hurricanes are going to lash at you, and you'll survive. No, that's not what he's saying, primarily. He is saying the gates of the grave will not prevail against it. Which means that the gates that open into hell will be battered down by the church.

What Christ is really saying to the church is the church will take an offensive position, not a defensive position. The church plays offense in the world, not defense. Now we have to defend the faith. We have to defend against evil, and yes. But what Christ is really saying is, my church will prevail. My way will prevail. I will build my church, and it will prevail against the works of Satan and the evil of the world at any time. And it is not a message to the church to get into a foxhole. It is a message to be on the offensive.

In every way you can imagine, as a collective corporate entity called the church, or any of us as individuals, as Christians, as a part of the body of Christ, our role is offensive in our approach. And to be honest, the only way we're going to get out of this alive is to take an offensive approach. That's the only way we'll get out of this world alive and into the kingdom of God. Nobody gets out of it in any other way, those who are called by God.

This means that the church will take an offensive posture. As we consider this and where we are in 2016, where we'll be at the midpoint of 2017 or a year from today, as we should ask even the same question as we continue on in our journey and in the work God has given to us, there are certain principles that we must keep in mind and understand.

Recently, we have been going through, some of you keep up with us out of the office, the series of Bible studies and going through the minor prophets. I drew the straw called Haggai to go through the book of Haggai. And in doing so, it was very enlightening, refreshing, go back through that in the detail that you have to, to prepare a message.

After I gave it, I thought even more about it and have been thinking about it and actually continued to read in the book of Zechariah, which is a contemporary prophet to Haggai. Haggai and Zechariah were contemporary prophets at the same time.

You have to read both messages to get the understanding of what God was saying to His people at that time. And taken together, there is a message there for us to understand about our role, the work that we've been called to do, and what God is doing.

For the purposes of this message, I'm calling it the Haggai ultimatum.

It was God's ultimatum given through Haggai, but it has a message for us to understand.

Let's quickly review and go back and see what the setting was for the people that Haggai and Zechariah addressed at this particular point in time in the story of God working with His people.

It's the remnant of the Jews. And in fact, we won't turn to Haggai just yet. We will turn to the book of Ezra because those of you that saw the Bible study or know the story, you have to also bring in the historical setting to understand the message of Haggai and Zechariah that begins in the story told in the book of Ezra. Because the setting is the return in the sixth century BC, beginning in about the year 538 BC, the return of the Jews from Babylon to go back to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem through the decree and the permission of this great king called Cyrus the Great, who gives the opening message out of the book of Ezra in chapter 1 of the book of Ezra. It was in the first year of Cyrus, the king of Persia, that the word of the Lord was fulfilled by the word that had been given by the prophet Jeremiah, that after 70 years of captivity in Babylon, the people would be allowed to return. So an entire generation and more, actually, have gone by in time. Cyrus is the Persian king that defeats the city of Babylon, told in the book story of the book of Daniel. And Cyrus was a very interesting king foretold by the prophet Isaiah 150 years before his actual birth by name. And Cyrus, by relative accounts of the kings and the leaders of the gentile nations at this time, he was rather benevolent.

He could be cruel when he needed to, but he had a different policy, and he's the one that God used and becomes a very interesting figure in the Bible story. Verse 2 says the actual decree of Cyrus, where he says, Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth, the Lord of heavens, has given me, and He has commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is at Judah. Who is among you among all of His people? May his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Over 70,000 Jews returned to Jerusalem out of Babylon at this time. Cyrus says here that God has given me all the kingdoms of the heaven. That really didn't happen because he didn't have all the kingdoms. He had all he could handle at the time. But that's just the way kings wrote in those days. Now we can see how Mr. Trump is given to a lot of bombast and grand gigantic statements himself. But when you read things like what Nebuchadnezzar would say and what Cyrus says, that I'm the king of all the earth, they had outsized eagles. That's true. But that's just the way they wrote. Now Cyrus had a lot, as I said, but he had certainly the power to return the Jews, and he did, according to God's purpose and God's plan. And the purpose was to go back and to rebuild the temple. And as you read through chapter 2 shows the listing of people who returned. And in chapter 3 of Ezra, they actually begin the work as they are organized under two key individuals, Joshua, the high priest, the line of Aaron who returns with them, and another man named Zerubbabel, two key figures in this entire epic of time. Zerubbabel is the civil governor, leader of the people. Joshua is the religious leader of the people. And they begin to go back to begin the work of rebuilding the temple. And this is specifically what they were to do. Actually, Cyrus even helped pay for it.

That's how remarkable the whole story is when you see it. What actually, they began with great joy, they began with great zeal. Kind of like the calling and the feeling that we have when we come to a knowledge of the truth. And we begin to see the Bible for what it is, and we begin to learn what God's purpose and God's plan is. Remember that? Hopefully we still have a measure of that.

Time and events were at that, but they started with zeal. And almost instantly, they were hindered and hampered in that work. Chapter 4 shows the resistance that began to come. There's always resistance. Always resistance. You know, have good intentions of setting down to do a job, write that letter, maybe even write the great American novel.

Build that deck on the back of the house. Clean out the basement. Some big project that we get in our mind we're going to do, and then all of a sudden, resistance sets in. It's called excuses. It's called what's on Netflix. I've got something else to do, or someplace else to go. Let's go shopping. Something more pleasurable. And the hard work we find resistance beginning to build up, either in our mind and we procrastinate. We don't get it done. We've got to study for that test when we're a student. We really need to get that paper done on time. Resistance sets in. The Jews had a mission and they immediately met resistance. The resistance came in the form of the people in the land. You read it in the first few verses of chapter four.

It says in verse one, the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard the descendants of the captivity. We're building the temple of the Lord, God of Israel. And they came to Zerubbabel and the heads of the father's houses and they said, let us build with you, for we seek your God as you do. We've sacrificed to him since the days of the king of Assyria. What's wrong with that?

More hands than Mary, right? The more hands make hard work less hard. Why wouldn't they want them to join in? The response is, Zerubbabel says, and Joshua, say to them, you may do nothing with us. Verse three, you can't help us to build the house of our God. We alone will build to the Lord, God of Israel. As Cyrus, king of Persia, has commanded us. What a statement! Like turn down, help, free labor, assistance, will the job get done quicker? They're saying basically, this is our job. This is our calling, and it's not yours. Now, it's important to understand who these people were, these adversaries. They were Samaritans. You hear about the word, the class of people called Samaritans in the Bible. They show up in the time of Christ and the apostles.

They were the people who were transplanted into the northern area of Israel after the Assyrian captivity. Funny thing about the Samaritans, they were Gentiles that were placed in there, and what they did was they began to adopt some of the former customs of Israel. They began to look at themselves as kind of Israelites, and later they kind of looked at themselves as Jews, even to the keeping of the days, and they even built a temple there in the city of Samaria. That was kind of like what the Jews had.

They looked like Jews. They looked like Israelites. They looked like church members.

They talked like church members, but they weren't church members. They weren't Israelites. They weren't Jews. They didn't have the same calling. Stay with me. Don't think that that's something politically incorrect. It was what it was. Politically incorrect is a modern phrase, and they didn't know about that in Assyria, Persia, or Israel of the day.

Joshua and Zerubbabel are saying, this is our job. This is our calling. We are to be rebuilding the temple. But the Samaritans didn't just stop there. What they did in verse 4 says, the people of the land tried to discourage the people of Judah, and they troubled them in the building. They hired counselors against them to frustrate their purpose during those days.

That's what happened. They did. As you read on, they stopped. They essentially got an injunction against them by filing a complaint against the king of Persia. That injunction, unfortunately, caused the Jews to stop building, and they worked ground tall for about 15 years.

Now, it's interesting to think about this and kind of fit it and understand, well, how can that happen? You know, they were the people of God, the Jews, they had this money, they had the building, they had the permission. But realize something, these Jews had been slaves for many, many decades in Babylon. A slave takes on a certain mentality after a period of time. There's no responsibility.

There's no accountability if you're a slave. If your life is owned lock, stock, and barrel by someone else, which the Jews were in Babylon, you don't have the same responsibility. The initiative is not there. They had lost a bit of what we might just call gumption. That's what my dad used to say. Where's your gumption?

Lost your gumption. Your, you know, your zeal, your drive. And when the first bit of opposition came, they stopped. Now, again, resistance sets in. When one of the keys to our success, my success of anything that we take up, is to be able to overcome resistance. The Jews could have overcome this. They could have kept building while the appeal was made, but they didn't. What happened is 15 years went on, and they neglected the work of rebuilding the temple. It is always a fine challenge to keep the fine balance between the calling of God to do His work in this world and to then get about building our own life. What the Jews did there here is they stopped building the temple, and they began to build their own homes, and they planted their own gardens, and they took care of themselves.

But the building site of the temple was deserted. And, as I say, it's always a fine balance as we look at what we are doing in our life today with the calling God's given us, being faithful, understanding that our lives are called to a higher purpose, not just of morality and ethics and biblical teaching, but also there is a purpose that God is working out through His Church with His people that He calls at any given time. And what God's doing with us today is still in line with what He was doing through these Jews in their day. They were to be building a temple a building. Now, we're not in a process necessarily of building a building. We have certain buildings. Some of our congregations have their own building. We have an office facility in Cincinnati out of which we do our work. And, God willing, we're going to expand our media presence there with an additional room. Some of you, all of you would have received a letter recently from Mr. Kubik telling about that. So we are going to engage in another building project. But these are physical tools to help us do the work that we have. The real spiritual building that we're doing today is not a temple, but it's a spiritual building. It is a spiritual temple, which is what God tells us is being done when you turn back to 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Hold your place here in Ezra and go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 3.

Paul spends a bit of time here to explain what it is that is being built today.

Beginning in verse 9 of 1 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul says, We are God's fellow workers. You are God's field. You are God's building. The Jews of the time of Ezra were building a literal temple. They were rebuilding what would come to be called the second temple. The first had been destroyed by the Babylonians. We're not building a temple like that, but we are involved in a building that God is building. Paul says, You, you the church, we are the collective building. He goes on to talk about how that work is being done, but if you jump down to verse 16, Paul concludes this passage by saying, Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

We are that temple today. It's a spiritual temple, the church, God's building today.

And the same care and meticulous commitment must be involved in the work of building that spiritual temple today. These are phrases that we know. They're not foreign to most of us, but we do need to put it all into a proper context and lift it to a level to understand what that does mean for us as we go about our lives today. We are being built up into a spiritual building, a spiritual temple called the Body of Christ, the Church of God, a spiritual organism, if you will, as opposed to a physical organization. And that's what we are called to. And that's what we're devoted to. We in the Church of God today spend our lives dedicated to the Church. And believe me, the dedication of you and many others like you through the years is remarkable.

And we never want to take each other for granted in our collective fellowship, in our respect for one another. But the dedication to that calling is remarkable through the years. We've given our lives to God, and we are devoted to this calling. And the more and more I see and experience that myself, I see that the real deep dedication of God's people is to that spiritual mission, that spiritual calling, and transcends the organization. The organization has a place that is important, but the organization, in our case, called the United Church of God, is not the entire spiritual entity called the Church of God. Someone recently that I was talking to put it to me in a way that I think is very good. The body of Christ, the spiritual body, that's the spiritual church, that's the big C, capital C. The United Church of God, the organization, little C.

Think about it. It doesn't take anything away from who we are as the United Church of God and what we are to do. But when you understand the two, it opens up a whole world of understanding.

The big C is the Church of God, the body of Christ. The little C is a part of that, but only a part. It is far bigger than anything we can ever begin to imagine.

When you begin to understand that, then we will take very good care of that little C.

Speak well of it. Be faithful to what it is to do, but understand it within the total package, the total scriptural teaching that we have from the Bible, which is what we are talking about here. That's what Paul is talking about. God's building, a spiritual temple of which we have a part.

And the Church has a mission, a divine mission, and there is a purpose to it.

In Colossians chapter 1, parallel passage to Ephesians chapter 1, but in Colossians 1, beginning in verse 19, he speaks to this. Colossians chapter 1 verse 19, For it pleased the Father that in him all the fullness should dwell, and by him to reconcile all things to himself, by him, to him as Christ.

Whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of his cross, God intends, the Father intends, and will, draw all things to him, all things in heaven Follow along with Matthew 16.

Follow along with Matthew 16.

But what more can be done? What more can God accomplish through us as we yield ourselves to the vision that Christ has for the church and keep that uppermost in our mind and not let the resistance keep us from laying down our tools and not keeping our eyes firmly focused upon the kingdom and the calling to preach the gospel of the kingdom and the responsibilities that are upon us even as we go through the decades and the seasons of our lives and go about building our homes, tending to our gardens, adding to our retirement accounts and living a life in a godly fashion as if we would not see Christ's return in our life, living for the long term while at the same time keeping our eyes firmly fastened upon the horizons of life and recognize the calling that we have been given.

As I said, it's a fine balance between engaging in the building of that spiritual temple and while at the same time living a godly life and living a productive life and a righteous life and caring for ourselves, our families, laying up for our children and our grandchildren as a righteous man will do, and living a godly life in this world today, right on through the decades, right on through the experiences that happened to us. Let's go back to the opposition or the resistance that the people experienced in building the temple back in Ezra chapter 4 and again look at it verses 3 and 4.

They, at least in verse 3, by rebuffing the offer of assistance from the Samaritans and saying, you don't have a calling in this. This is our job. They did at that moment still feel and understand their commission. They did have a focus and they were able to distinguish between this group of people called the Samaritans. Now, I want you to think about this for a moment. I've thought a lot about looking at the resistance. You know, resistance today comes in different forms. When I look back over my years in the Church, more than five decades, and look at what we've lived through, so often the problems that we have encountered, the resistance comes from within and has come from within the ranks of the Church as well as the normal cares of life.

We can get ground down by jobs and by family issues, family disappointments, our own personal nature, many different forms of resistance. Christ spoke a parable in Matthew 13 where He said that the cares of this world can cause the seed of the gospel that is shown to be snatched away, cause us to lose a zeal and hinder us in doing the work that God has called us to do. Every one of us has the many different things that spring up in life that we have to deal with.

It's interesting in Matthew 13, if you go beyond the parable of the soul, the next parable is what is called the parable of the tares, the wheat. The seed is sown in the wheat, it grows, but then there are tares that grow up there and Christ is using that parable to show that there are tares that grow up among the wheat.

The disciples want to go out and cut the tares and Christ says, no, leave them alone until the harvest and the time of the harvest the angels will reap and the tares and the wheat will be separated out. You know what it is about a tare? A tare looks like the wheat. Which is why Christ said don't go out there and start jerking up plants, because you'll jerk up the wheat with the good.

Let God do the harvesting, let God do the winnowing. But a tare looks like the wheat. It's kind of like the Samaritans. The Samaritans wanted to be like the Jews. They looked like a Jew, they walked like a Jew, they talked like a Jew, but they weren't a Jew or an Israelite. I mean, you can go to Israel today, you can go to the city of Samaria and they still have a presence there. Go out on YouTube tonight, look up Samaritan Passover, and then hold your stomach.

Because they still kill the lambs in the Old Testament way. And you can find videos of this. They do this in their temple in Samaria today. I've been there, I hadn't seen the killing of the lambs, but they'll bring out the big Torah, the five books of Moses. They wanted to be a part of what Zerubbabel was doing, but Zerubbabel said, no, you don't have any part with us. Zerubbabel, before his time, was saying, you're a terror.

We're weak. So much of the resistance that we've had through the years has been internal. Look at what's hindered and divided the efforts in my own lifetime. False teaching? Where does false teaching rise? Well, Christ said, beware, it's going to come from within your midst. Heresies? Pride's been a problem. Sin? All this is internal, caused by, let's call it what it is, false brethren. Just use the term that's right there. They look like a church member, talk like a church member, even get wet, get baptized like a church member. Debbie and I just, on our way down here, we decided to stop off at Jekyll Island.

Spend a few days, try to get a little bit of R&R with cell phones and computers today and work that keeps going. You don't totally get a lot of that. Jekyll Island was her first feast. We stayed actually in the Holiday Inn, which is the Old Wanderer Hotel, any of you that may remember that. That was her first place that she stayed on the island. We were kind of walking around and looking at it, and she had memories, and she was walking the beach, and remembered people she used to walk the beach with.

People she swam in the pool with there as a young girl. And they're not there. They're not there. We can all think about that. And there's a lot of people that have come and gone.

Fine people, good people, sincere people. Some that were a part of the Church for many different reasons. They'll need to go into all the detail there. But as I look back, the resistance that we've often had, it's been more internal. There's only been one external attack by a government agency in my time in the Church. That was the state of California. That was 38, 39 years ago right now. It was very weekend. It was very period. And even that was instigated by disgruntled members. But we haven't had persecution from the world beyond individual, maybe where people lost a job or family is persecuted.

But nothing large and great that we might see in the Scriptures. And there's a lesson here for us. Look around. We get ourselves distracted so much with internal matters that sometimes have led to divisions. But that's what we've had to deal with. And we have to call it for what it is and understand it. Joshua and Zerubbabel looked at people who were sincere, but they were one of these.

And they said, you're not one of us. You can't work with us in this. Now, we might not necessarily say that today, but I will say this. For all of us who are still here and understand what we are to do and feel a dedication and a commitment to that, draw a line on the past, move forward, and don't let people, don't let issues be matters that create resistance in us to get us to the point where we would be like the people that, at the time here in the story, who let down on the building of the temple.

Draw a line over that and do what God had to eventually say through the prophet Haggai. If you turn back to Haggai, you will see what God said to the prophet, to the people through the prophet. Haggai chapter 1.

After 15 years, God sent this messenger named Haggai because he wanted the temple rebuilt.

He said to them, beginning in verse 5, consider your ways.

Which is another way of saying examine yourself, which is what we do every year before the Passover.

But he said, consider your ways. You've sown little, you've sown much and bring in little. You eat, but you don't have enough. You drink, but you're not filled with drink. We could comment a lot about that. But he said in verse 7 again, consider your ways. Get back out, bring wood down from the mountains, build the temple in verse 8, that I might take pleasure and be in it and be glorified. God takes pleasure in the building of the spiritual temple today, and He is glorified in that process as it continues to be knit together and brought together in a spiritual unity. God is glorified in that, and that's what we have to focus on as He goes along through this.

He tells the people to consider your ways, get back to the work. For them, they needed to reclaim their mission and purpose. We have a mission and purpose in front of us. And you know what the people did? They did return to work. That's what the story goes on. If you go back into Ezra, you'll see that they rebuilt. They got back onto the work site. But you know what happened? Resistance set in again. Chapter 5 of Ezra shows where the people came a second time to stop it.

But that time, the Jews kept right on going, and they finished the work. They continued on with it.

Resistance will always be there. What God says through Haggai, and He says through us, is consider your ways. He says, Be strong, I am with you. Back here in Haggai, again in Chapter 2, beginning in verse 2, through the prophet, God says, Speak to Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, and to Joshua. He's again the two leaders. Who's left among you, he says, that saw this temple in its former glory. And how do you see it now? Verse 4, He says, Yet now be strong, Zerubbabel.

Be strong, Joshua. Be strong, all you people of the land, says the Lord. For I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. The two ultimatums that God gives through Haggai, that I call here the Haggai ultimatum, are consider your ways, and I am with you. This is what God is saying to them. I'm with you. Consider your ways. Be strong. Don't fear. And they did. When the resistance came back on, they kept building. Now, here in Chapter 2, God goes on and He reveals something else. He says, verse 6, For thus says the Lord of hosts, Once more, it's a little while, and I will shake the heaven and earth, the sea and dry land. And I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the desire of all nations, and I will fill this temple with glory, says the Lord of hosts.

An interesting statement. As He points to Christ, the desire of all nations, His first coming, Christ did come to that building. The second temple, He did come and literally walked into His environments. He's going to come again to the greater spiritual temple, His church, that has made Himself ready, that He is the head of, and that He is building.

But what God says here is interesting. He says, Once more, I will shake the nations, in verse 6.

I will shake the nations. God is in charge of history. He directs what will happen, and He directs the work of the church within history at any given time. Because, as He said, the gates of the grave will not prevail against it. The church will go on, and the church will not be stopped. But the people must always have a heart for that work, and to continue on. And this is where Zechariah, the other prophet, the contemporary prophet, comes in. Zechariah is a very interesting book. It's rather long, 14 chapters.

And there's a lot of visions. There's a lot of really spooky-looking stories in the book of Zechariah. If you haven't read the book of Zechariah lately, it's always worth a read.

Nobody knows what these visions mean in the book of Zechariah.

I read some of the commentaries, and they're all over the place.

Have you ever seen a booklet in the church of God called the book of Zechariah, unveiled at last? I haven't.

Zechariah, in one sense, is harder to understand than Revelation. It's got weird stuff in there.

Even though some of the same elements that are in Revelation are in Zechariah. You've got horses and riders. You've got a woman in a basket that's flown off to Babylon. It's really weird.

As reading it, it kind of dawned on me, you know what it is? Zechariah had all the fun.

Haggai, his contemporary, gave a real short three-chapter message. Consider your ways.

Don't be afraid. I'm with you. Zechariah gets all the 3D, cinnorama, hologram, visions.

And it's a unique and it's a different book. And they're so interesting.

And they're so different in many ways. I was reading it recently after I'd done the study on the book of Haggai. And I was reading it and I said, this is better than the Lord of the Rings. It really is. It's better than anything like that.

If you look at it, look at Zechariah chapter 1, it's right here next to Haggai. The first chapter, verse 8, in a vision, during the night, I saw a man sitting on a red horse that was standing among some myrtle trees in a small valley. Behind him were riders on red, brown, and white horses. It sounds like this is better than the riders of Rohan.

Does anybody watch the Lord of the Rings around here? Nobody knows that.

All right. It's great fun. The kids have seen it. I've seen it, even.

But it's this fantastic fantasy and myth that has biblical elements within it. But here is a night vision of different horses. And I asked the angel who was talking with me, my Lord, what do you mean? What are these horses? And I'll show you. And the rider among the myrtle trees explained, they are the ones the Lord has sent out to patrol the earth. Then the other riders reported to the angel, the Lord, and reading from the New Living Translation, we have been patrolling the earth and the whole earth is at peace.

There's only one effort at cinema, movie making, that I've seen that can even come close to it. It is the Lord of the Rings today. And yet, this is telling us something even bigger and more significant than any human author can begin to put together. What this is showing is that God is in charge of history. That God, through his angelic agents, knows what's going on in the earth, in the world, among the nations. When God said, through Haggai, I'm going to shape the nations, he can do that. He is in charge of history. And this opening vision kind of shows that. Zechariah chapter 3 is maybe a little bit more well-known vision that we've referenced many, many times. Zechariah chapter 3, beginning in verse 3, then the angel showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord. The accuser, Satan, was there at the angel's right hand making accusations against Joshua. And the Lord said to Satan, I the Lord reject your accusations, Satan. Yes, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebukes you. This man is like a burning stick that has been snatched from the fire. Satan is revealed here and also in Revelation 12 as the accuser of the brethren. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, Paul will write in Ephesians 6, but against spiritual wickedness and powers in high places. The world is not what it seems.

There are events that are taking place beyond this world, behind the curtain, so to speak, that we don't see. At the spiritual level, at a dimension called the Spirit, and this is what Sankariah is showing us, God is in charge of history. And where Satan even attempts to intervene and thwart the plan of God, even to the point of accusing the very servants of God, God is made of provision, a sacrifice, his son. And he says, I don't accept your accusations. Satan is working. God is working. But God is in charge of history. And that's what the book of Sankariah shows us. You don't have to know all the details, the answers to all the details, if you understand it from that point of view. And the Church is being prepared as the bride of Christ.

And Jesus Christ lives his life in those who submit their will to his. Satan's plan is to destroy this work that is being done in God's elect. The seed of his enmity, the seed of Satan's envy and hatred of humanity, lies in the knowledge that the human creation will rise above the angelic created order as sons of God. And that has been at the heart of his evil, from the moment, from the time, from the instant, from the nanosecond that he is Lucifer realized what the plan of God was to be and enmity was found in his heart. And he has been on a hell-bent mission to thwart that and to stop it ever since. He could not deal with that, and it led to the rebellion within the created order of the spirit realm, and chaos ensued. This is what we are seeing. This is what we are showing. If you look at Zechariah 6, you see another edition beginning in verse 6. I looked again, and I saw four chariots coming from between two bronze mountains. Wow!

Two bronze mountains, four chariots. The first was pulled by red horses, the second by black horses, the third by white, and the fourth by powerful dappled gray horses.

What are these, my Lord? I asked the angel. The angel replied, These are the four spirits of heaven, who stand before the Lord of all the earth, and they are going out to do his work. The chariot with the black horses goes north, the chariot with white to the west, and the chariot with the dappled gray horses is going south.

And they are eager to set out to patrol the earth. God is in charge of history. He brings nations and empires together at the exact moment of his time. There was a moment when the Roman Empire became the Roman Empire and set the stage for the birth of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the Church in that period we read about. That was not by chance. That was not by human ingenuity, by the ability of a group of sturdy, hearty people called Romans, who somehow decided one day to gobble up the entire Mediterranean basin.

They woke up and said, let's create an empire. It happened by God's purpose and plan.

America, Great Britain, even the Soviet Empire of the past, have come and are according to God's purpose and plan. The nations that are with us today and in the world, the power structures that are there are thereby God's purpose and will. And when God decides to shake the nations, it will change. And an understanding of Bible prophecy helps us to appreciate that.

No matter how we like to sometimes know what the details will be, what everything means, we can't know all the details. We can know the broad trends. And most of all, we can know that God is in charge. That there are spiritual forces that work behind the scenes in history, behind the headlines of the tumultuous spiritual forces that are at work.

But God's power goes out from His throne. This is what these matters are telling us.

Satan's working overtime to prevent the building of the church and the planting of the remnant of Israel back into the land. That's what he was doing at the time of Haggai. And he had succeeded in stopping it. If the Jews had never replanted themselves at the time of Haggai and Joshua and Zerubbabel, if they had allowed themselves to just become so politically correct that they blended in with everybody and they abandoned their nationalism. Did you get the point? They'd open up all the borders, let everybody come in. Let's create one world. We're all in this together.

You've heard all the phrases today? I mean, all you had to do was listen to the political rhetoric of recent months. The candidate that lost, she was saying, essentially, we're going to open up the borders. I know the other one was saying we're going to build walls, but the other one was basically saying we're going to open up the borders.

Now, that really sounds nice if you're in high school and you're reading, you know, these and you're being indoctrinated and you're reading this history and you have a feel-good feeling about everybody else, no matter what their orientation or how they wake up and feel they are male, female, or whatever on that particular day or week. Because we're living in a world that wants to break down not just borders, but sexual identity. It's all one grand plan.

Don't be mistaken. Don't be fooled by it. Don't be taken in. I don't think most of you are, but I know some of us, it rubs off and it really rubs off on our kids, on our young people.

And some of the fuzzy thinking that I hear at times, even at Ambassador Bible College.

Don't run through the exit yet, some of you here folks.

Every year I try to work this into my teaching at least three times. Don't believe Disney.

Don't believe the myths and the fables that we've all been told about and by Disney, about Pocahontas or everything else. The deception comes in many different forms and guises.

And we don't see it. Now, I'm not saying that the winner of the United States presidential election is going to be the be-all and see-all and save-all. But I do think that we have been given a reprieve in where we are in today's world. God says here at Haggai, I'm going to shape the nations. And I look around today and I see a whole lot of shaking going on. And it is there in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia. Remember this line. U in Resolution 2334. You in Resolution 2334. You're going to hear a lot about that.

Now, I'm not going to give you a test next time I come, which will be in February, about that. But you're going to hear a lot about that. Because it was a resolution just a few days ago, passed in the United Nations, and passed because the United States did not abstain.

And essentially, it turns over, could potentially turn over relations between America and the state of Israel, and the actual status of the city of Jerusalem, and everything that we have known in our lifetime. It's big. Will the capital be? It really. U in Resolution 2334.

Sometimes you just have to realize that we forget about it because we've got to go to publics.

We've got to go here. And these things just, you know, the chatter goes over our heads.

And we've got to stop and understand what is happening. And there are things that are different.

But I do think that America has been given a reprieve. And that is what we are saying in our Beyond Today live appearances when we come here in a few weeks and go to Tampa and where else we are going. America, the time is now. It's not a gloom and doom message that speaks only to prophecy, but it is a compact, comprehensive message that helps, is endeavoring to help our audience, our readers and you and all of us to understand that we have, there is a time.

And America has a moment. And to me, the message is even more clear right now and perhaps more fortuitous that we've chosen that, that we have a moment of reprieve as a result of this election. I truly believe that. Not that America is ever going to repent. Not that the entire nation is going to do a Nineveh and come to a repentance. I don't believe that. And that's not what we're trying to do. But what we are trying to do is engage our readers with the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. And let God then call whom He will, because He will, and if we have a continued opportunity, a window of opportunity to let the truth be known, to teach people, to make disciples, then we should be doing it because that's what we are to do. That is our biblical mission. That's why we are, any of us are in this room and know to the depth of our being why we have been called. We understand that. And so we are then to share that with as many as we can.

And so we are taking a message to our entire media effort to do that. But as I said at the beginning, we can't do it all by ourselves. We need your help. We really do. We do need your help, ladies and gentlemen. We are very small. At another point in Zechariah, God said, not by my might, but by my spirit. Not by might or by power, but by my spirit.

Says the Lord. We don't have much power. We don't have much money.

We don't have much personalities. There's three of us that make the best effort that we can in terms of a media effort. But collectively, we can do more together when we are working together and we need your help. And we have a moment and we have an opportunity in the midst of a world right now that is seeking understanding. And as God has continued and has always been the one to make that call, to open that heart, that mind. There is also the work that the church has to do to preach the gospel. And in the process of doing its job, it is helping and is being built up together into a spiritual temple. We are God's building. The church is a work and the church has a work.

And as it does the work, each of us has an opportunity to share and to provide that which we can. Ephesians 4, verse 16, is our vision. That is the result of what we do in our mission.

Ephesians 4, verse 16, says, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. Every joint, you're one of the joints, not a bad joint, a good joint.

We all have our part within the body and we have something to supply. And every part of us has something to share. Each has a role in the building of the temple, the spiritual temple, that God has called us to. The Haggai ultimatum, consider your ways.

You know, when the people finally consider their ways, back in chapter 2 of Haggai, verse 19, I'll just refer to it. God basically said to them, from this day, the day they picked up their utensils and went back to work, he said, from this day I will bless you. And he did. And they finished the work and they had a moment and a time of unity, of accomplishment, a sense of fulfillment for their work had been done.

And they felt a sense of unity as a result of that. But what God was saying to them is, from this day I will bless you. From this day. Now for any and all of us, there is a moment when we come to ourselves, when we can recover a sense of zeal, when we can clarify a focus, and repent of inaction, repent of anger, repent of envy, repent of inaction, of whatever it is that we feel we have to repent of because we finally have considered our ways and God has opened our mind to it. We come to that moment and by the grace of God we can draw a line across it, draw a line across it, let the blood of Jesus Christ forgive us, be forgiven by that, and we can go forward and we can begin to experience a change in our lives. You know, for each of us, no matter where you are, whatever might be happening in your life, in your family, with your wife, your husband, your children, even yourself right now, wherever you may be.

Frankly, at any given time any of us could need a revival. We need to be revived.

And if there's one thing that, in my humble opinion, that the United Church of God needs, it is a revival. All we have to do is get back to the work. All we have to do is clarify that vision and recognize what we can do and consider our ways and then God will say, from this day, I will bless you. And we can rebuild a relationship with our families. We can rebuild a relationship with God. We can rebuild a sense of community and God will bless that.

We don't have to dwell on the past. We don't have to be shackled by the past. We don't have to let the resistance, the foggy memories, the bad memories, whatever it might be that has caused any of us to be a bit lethargic and hold back and not be all in. We can move away from that. It's our choice. It's yours. We can be revived. We can consider our ways. And God says, from this day, I will bless you because, as the second ultimatum says, I am with you. I am with you. Don't be afraid. And no matter what the world, no matter what Satan throws at us, no matter what even we might have thrown against us ourselves, we will prevail.

Because we have Christ in us, the hope of glory. And He will see us through.

So, the church today, in today's world, is at a pretty good place because Christ is still the head of the church. And He is preparing that church. That work is going on. And we have a part to play within that. Let's all be about that. Let's consider our ways and let's recognize that God is with us.