The Time Is Fulfilled

Welcome this morning to Part 2 of the Kingdom of God Bible Seminars. We're very appreciative to have you here today. And we welcome you. Even with the icy roads today, it's good to see the numbers that we do have today. If you'll please stand, we'll begin the seminars today with prayer. Bow your heads, please. Great God Almighty, we come before You on this Sabbath day, a day that You have given to mankind, set aside to rest, to come before You and to worship You, Father. We're very thankful for letting us be here together in fellowship. And we do ask for a blessing over this seminar today, over the Kingdom of God, that we can learn more and study of the Kingdom and what all it pertains, Father. So we do ask that You would please be with today's services, as well as Your protection over Your people as we travel home. So these things we pray through Your Son's name, just Christ in Him. Wednesday I got on the Internet and pulled off the Kingdom of God Bible Seminar e-mail. And as of Wednesday, there was just under 3,300 guests registered at the website for the Kingdom of God seminars this weekend. So that's very encouraging to hear. And we do have, as far as the layout of today, we have two seminars. We have a first seminar that will be given by Frank Dunkel, our pastor here at the Portsmouth Church. And then we'll take a 10-15 minute break, and we have refreshments and drinks downstairs. And then we'll come back for a second seminar given by our local elder, Mr. Kevin Call. But for the first part, Frank Dunkel pastors our Portsmouth Church here, as well as Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and Athens Church Congregations, the United Church of God. Frank holds degrees in theology from Ambassador College and in history from the University of Texas at Tyler and Texas A&M University. He is a contributing writer for Vertical Thought and World News and Prophecy, sister publications of the Church's Good News magazine.

Well, good morning. Thank you all for coming. I understand there was some apparent risk getting out on the roads today, but I think God showed favor on us in getting things cleared enough, so I do appreciate you coming. Thinking of the travel here reminds us that it's kind of a busy, crazy world we live in. We can spend most of our time just dealing with whatever is right in front of us at the moment and rarely have time to think of the larger picture. But sometimes we do stop and consider. We think, what is this all about? Why am I here? What are the most important things in life? And I hope that type of thinking is part of what brings us here today, because we want to talk about the Kingdom of God. Now, that's a subject that's out of the ordinary for most people. You don't hear a lot of discussion in the local coffee shop or schools and workplaces about the Kingdom of God, but it's of extreme importance. We want our lives to have meaning. We want them to have value, and that's what God's Kingdom is all about. Now, in the earlier, the first session on this series, we talked about a couple of things. First, we talked about just what is the Kingdom of God? That's a nice sounding phrase, but what is it? Some people in the world think that it's something that's set up in our hearts. It's a good feeling or a peace and love. And I'm not against good feelings, and we think having peace and love is very good. But when we say Kingdom of God, we want to understand that we're talking about the literal rule of Jesus Christ here on earth. The Bible says that Jesus is going to return and set up an actual government. And that'll be a good thing. He's going to bring peace. He's going to bring happiness to this earth. No more warring, no more suffering, no more competition, no more elections with debates and people making accusations at each other and such, as we see on the television and hear about on the radio. And that leads me to the other thing we discussed, which is why the Kingdom of God is so needed. Why do we need it in this world? Largely because this world is kind of a messed up place. I say kind of, it really is. There's wars, there's hunger, disease, suffering. And sadly, most people don't know why God put us on this planet. We can find answers in God's Word. In the Bible, there is an explanation of what this is all about, what our life means. Now, I can't summarize the entire Bible right here, but we do know that Jesus came and brought a message of hope. And there's a summary early in the Book of Mark. Mark 1, verses 14 and 15. Jesus came, this is, actually that's summarizing after that a confrontation with Satan the Devil. And he came to begin his earthly ministry, and it says he came preaching the Gospel. And he said, the time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is at hand, repent, and believe the Gospel.

That's a remarkable, good summary. The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at hand. That's two things, and then repent, very important subject, and believe in the Gospel. Now, today we want to tackle the first two of these subjects. I'm going to talk about the fact that the time is fulfilled, and what did Jesus mean when he said that? And after we have a break, we'll come back, and Mr. Call will discuss the Kingdom of God at hand. To understand what he meant, we'll consider that God has knowledge of and control of world events. But he also has knowledge of your personal affairs, yours and mine. He wants to bring understanding of his Kingdom and of his way of life to everyone at the time that is right for those people. So, to get moving on this, let's set a scriptural foundation.

Now, when God, as I said, we're going to focus on the fact that the time was fulfilled. What did Jesus mean at that point? Why was the time fulfilled then and not others? Well, let's set, as I said, a scriptural foundation. We'll consider Isaiah 46 and verse 10. Now, in our slides, we've used a variety of translations to try to bring the meaning out, but I'm very partial to the New King James. I quote from that a lot, so let me read there. It says there, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times, things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand. God made it clear, and this is an interesting part of the Scripture, where God is speaking in first person. This is written down where God is talking to you, or whoever is reading, and He says, I know the end from the beginning.

My counsel will stand. Now, you might wonder, how can this be? Well, it's partly because God has all power. He knows the condition of the world. He knows what's going on in people's minds, so when He says He knows the end from the beginning, it's partly because He's able to look at the way things are going and see where it's going. But He also has the power to work in world events and cause things to happen the way He wants them to. Let's consider another Scripture. During His work, Jesus said, My Father has been working until now, and so have I. Now, He said this in response to a group of religious leaders who were offended that He was doing some things on the Sabbath, but He spoke on a higher scale. He said, My Father's been working all the way up until now, and I'm working. What that means, we can say, is that God didn't just create the universe, whether it be by a big bang or whatever, He didn't just say, Boom, there it is. Now I'm going to sit back and see what happens. No, God has been working. He's been intervening in world events, bringing things about the way He wants them to. Now, He doesn't cause every single thing to happen, but He is there and He is active, bringing about what He wants to have happen. So, we'll come back to the fact that He has a master plan and purpose, that He had one all along. Well, let's consider the meaning of Jesus' words when He said, the time is fulfilled, what did He mean? This is a nifty little device. Glad we had some help preparing these, but consider this is God we're talking about. And when Jesus used the word time, He used the word kairos, or kairos. I'm not a Greek scholar, but I know this word. Now, the normal Greek word that's usually used is kronos. Like, if you'd say, what time is it, you'd say, what kronos is it? Jesus used a slightly different word because He didn't just mean the time of day or time passing on a clock, but He meant a special moment in time. Like, a special season. Matter of fact, let's look at a commentary. Ah. The season was, it was something that was planted towards a harvest.

What I want to do is...

Pardon me, I got a little confused on the slide. Well, let's go on to the next word, kairos. Kairos conveys a time... Yep, very well.

There we go. I always wanted to get to this quote from Linsky's commentary. You'll forgive me. But it talks about it being a season in time that's marked in a special way. It means things have been building up till now, and now things are set. Okay? He also, the word for fulfilled is plera'o. Plera'o. This means the fulfillment in the sense that things are complete, ready to set the stage for what God planned for humanity. Now, I wonder if you've ever been involved in some type of play... And I had a little bit of experience with that in college. And to get ready, you do a lot. You have to set or paint set backgrounds and put them in place. You have to choose the props. People have to get their costumes on, choose those carefully. And when everything is done, the lights are set and adjusted, then you say, the stage is set. That's sort of what Jesus meant when he said, the time is fulfilled. The stage is set. Things are ready. The time is right. Now, you might wonder, how long had God been planning on this?

I want to remind you again of Isaiah 46, verse 10. How long had God been planning? How long had he been working to set the stage? From the beginning. From the very beginning, he knew where he was going to make it work out. God has a plan and a purpose. And he indicates that he knew it all along. The kingdom of God wasn't some happenstance that he didn't think, well, now I've got to come up with something to fix this problem that developed.

No, he knew the problems would come along and he planned and prepared for them well in advance. Now, I want to set up here thinking of that a time-wise. Going from back to the beginning as far as we can, and say, what had come to fruition? What had come to fruition at the time when Jesus said, the time was fulfilled? Let's set up our timeline here. Isaiah 46, verse 10 says, I knew the end from the beginning. Let's take it to the beginning way over there and it's coming to what Jesus had planned, what God had planned.

I like it as a timeline because time is something that moves in one direction. Years ago, I read one of Stephen Hawking, if you're familiar, Stephen Hawking is a brilliant physicist who unfortunately his body is crippled with disease, so he sits in a wheelchair. One of his books, he describes the different dimensions and how the universe is put together, and it's mind-boggling. I think of myself as somewhat right, but that's a little above me. But I know he talked about time as an arrow. But all the other dimensions, you can go either direction, it doesn't matter.

But time goes one direction, and God was aware of that. So let's consider how far back Jesus and God the Father had planned. We go back to the beginning, and one of Jesus' proverbs, he made the statement, said, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. The foundation of the world is back when God created everything. We know Genesis 1, verse 1 says, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and when he did that, he planned for the kingdom of God. It's not something, as I said, that he came up with later on to fix mistakes.

He planned and prepared for it. Now, let's move a little forward. Earlier on, after creating everything, and who knows how much time passed between Genesis 1, 1 and the time of God establishing the Garden of Eden and putting Adam and Eve there. There are different theories. Some people say it had to be a literal seven days. Others say there might have been a vast amount of time in between. And I don't want to go into that discussion today, but I'm of the camp that believes there was quite a bit of time between when God created the heavens and the earth, and when he then renewed the face of the earth, preparing for man to rule on it.

But he planned for the kingdom of God from the beginning. And then, when he dealt with Adam and Eve, he made a prophecy. After Adam and Eve had had the choice of taking the tree of life, or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and we know Eve was deceived by the serpent. The serpent represented Satan the devil. We can see that if... we're not going to turn there, but Revelation 12 and verse 9 depicts Satan as that old serpent the devil. The serpent came to Eve and he told her a lie.

He said, Oh, if you take of that fruit, you won't surely die. Well, she took of the fruit, gave it to Adam, and he ate, and then God confronted them. And he let them know, well, you are surely going to die, and you're going to have to leave the garden. But, as he pronounced the sort of sentence on them, this is the punishment you're going to have for disobeying me, he also turned to the serpent, to Satan, and he said this. He said, I'll put enmity between your seed and her seed, between those who follow the devil and the descendants of Eve, and he said, He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

Bible scholars unanimously believe that this was a prophecy of Jesus Christ, the Messiah that would come years later, and He would destroy the works of Satan. And when I say years later, approximately 4,000 years later, Jesus would come on the scene. So, God had this plan well in advance, by bruising Satan's head, meaning destroying his works. Satan would harm Jesus by the physical crucifixion, but it would be a temporary thing, only accounting or analogous to bruising his heel.

Let's move ahead now, a couple thousand years in human history, when God called Abram to leave his home and his family and go to a new land. God was going to use this one man to found a new nation who would be known as the Children of Israel. And he, again, gave a prophecy. He told Abram, you'll be physically blessed and your children will become a nation.

But he also said, in you, all families of the earth will be blessed. Scholars also say that this was a prophecy of the coming Messiah, that all nations would be blessed by the one descendant of Abraham who was the sacrifice for sin, meaning Jesus Christ. So, once again, as I said, God's working so far in advance, he could prophesy Jesus Christ's coming thousands of years ahead. And he started moving events to make it ready. A few hundred years later than that, God spoke to Moses. He called the Children of Israel out from Egypt, set them up as a separate nation, and used Moses to reveal his law and his way of living to those people.

And towards the end of Moses' life, God gave him a prophecy to tell the children of Israel, One day God will raise up for you a prophet like me. Now, when he said, like me, he means someone who's going to be communicating a message from God. Once again, scholars are confident that this is a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah, that Jesus Christ would come to this earth, and that he would be a deliverer, a law-giver.

God planned in advance where Jesus would come. He would come to the nation of Israel. And he planned when he would come, so that finally, after thousands of years of prophecies and planning, Jesus Christ did come. And when he did, he said, the time is fulfilled. We've been letting you know for thousands of years this was coming. Now the time is fulfilled. The stage is set. The time is right. It's time for this to happen. Let's consider the Apostle Paul summed it up very well in the book of Galatians.

That print is too small. I'm going to turn to it in my own Bible. Galatians 4, Chapter 4. The Apostle Paul said, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, as had been prophesied, back in the Garden of Eden, as had been prophesied to Abram, and as had been prophesied to Moses. So when the time was fulfilled, when the stage was set, Jesus Christ came, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those that were under the law, so that we could become sons of God.

Everything was arranged well in advance before Jesus Christ came. That's why he said the time is fulfilled. He was letting them know. And keep in mind, the people living in Palestine or Judah at that time were waiting.

They'd known of these prophecies. And they were saying, when is it going to happen? When will the Messiah come? Jesus came and told them it has happened.

Now, of course, some people will ask, and I'm going to pose the question for you, why? Why did he have to come at all? Well, I'd like to list four major reasons that we can draw from Scripture, telling us why Jesus Christ came in the flesh. Because we'll see, of course, the Bible says that He'll come again, not in the flesh to be a sacrifice, but He'll come to be the King of Kings, to be the King that rules the Kingdom of God. Well, why did He come the first time? Well, first...

That's the slide that goes along with me asking them the question, Ken. What was Jesus' purpose for coming? He came to be our Savior. He came to pay for our sins. When John the Baptist first saw Him, he said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away sin.

Now, when He said takes away sin, He didn't mean that He would make it physically impossible for people to sin. But what He did was He paid the penalty, and He, by doing so, took away the permanent punishment for sin, so that we can die as all men do, but we have the hope of living again in the resurrection. Revelation 13, verse 8, and I apologize, somehow the slide didn't work out, but I can read that for you.

It says that, well, it calls Jesus the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world. Remember, we talked about the foundation of the world when we talked about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God was planned from the creation of the universe, and so was Jesus Christ's sacrifice. The world was created, and God knew that man having free will would reject His way and would sin, and that if there was any hope for man to have life beyond that, someone would have to pay the price.

And the one who became Jesus Christ voluntarily gave his life. He lived a life perfect, not deserving to die. And because He was our Creator, He was able to assume that punishment all of His own. Now, let's consider another reason. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. Remember, I mentioned that in the prophecy of the Garden of Eden, where it said He would bruise His head.

1 John 3, verse 8 tells us this. It says, For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. What are the works of the devil? Well, Satan's mission has been to lead mankind to destroy itself. Now, Satan is more powerful than us, but God has put limits on what He's allowed to do to us, but He influences people, and He leads them to sin, wanting us to destroy our own lives.

And He's been somewhat effective so far. But Jesus came to remove His influence. By paying the penalty incurred by our sins, Jesus has undone what the devil had been trying to do. And when Jesus returns to the earth the second time, He'll literally remove Satan from the scene. We won't turn there, but in Revelation, chapter 20, the first verses talk about a powerful angel coming and seizing Satan and binding Him and removing Him from the scene.

So, Jesus cleared the way to undo His work. Satan will literally be removed at the time when the Kingdom of God is established. But it's worth considering that Jesus' work was not only the one-time event that He accomplished during His life and during His sacrifice. He came to become a high priest. That would be a new role for Him.

Now, we'd had high priests that were men that served at the tabernacle and then at the temple, and they offered animal sacrifice, but that was just a symbol of what was to come. Those animals that were killed showed that sin required life, that blood would have to be spilled to pay the penalty of sin. Jesus' blood was valuable enough to pay for all sin, but He would continue that role of high priest after He was resurrected. And it says that He's at the Father's right hand even now. To quote in Hebrews 2 and verse 17, I'm going to go and read that from the New Team James. Hebrews 2 and 17, Jesus Christ understands what we're going through.

He knows what it's like to hurt, to be hungry, thirsty, tired, to be tempted to sin. He didn't sin, but He knew how tough it was to resist. And figuratively, every time we sin and then ask God's forgiveness, Jesus makes a sacrifice to the Father of His own blood so that our sins can be covered. So He not only forgives us, but He is willing and ready to help us change. Jesus' work involves not only paying for our sins, but helping us to learn to no longer sin. And that's, of course, what the Kingdom of God will be about, living God's way of life on this earth.

We look forward to that very much. Because Jesus Christ was a man like us, we can and should relate to Him. Let's talk about His fourth reason. Jesus came to establish a church. He came to establish a church, and He told His disciples.

He said, I'm going to build this church, and the power of death will not be able to defeat it. You might be more familiar with the translation that says, The gates of hell will not prevail against it. But I like this translation. The power of death can never defeat this church. He said, I'm going to start this church with this handful of men that I've picked and trained, and they're going to teach people and baptize them, and they'll go on to teach people, and the church will continue down through the ages.

Now, Jesus promised it would be a small and a scattered block. And so we are. God's worshippers are few in number. When you think of the, I believe it's close to six billion people on the earth, and there are many who call themselves Christians, but don't really follow Christ's way very carefully. They're a small number that strive to and have God's Holy Spirit available. And I should note, when Jesus said, my church, He didn't mean a building like the one we're in, He meant a body of people that He would invite to come out of the world and be devoted to Him.

The church is not the building, it's the people that are in it, that receive the Holy Spirit and worship God. Now, to go further, the Apostle Paul called the church Jesus' body. He didn't mean some type of Frankenstein thing, we're all stitched together to make a body with Jesus Christ at the head, but the church acts in a corporal sense on this world to continue the work that Jesus did.

Jesus came, as He said in Mark, to preach the gospel, and He called on people to understand what that gospel was and to repent and believe it, to live His way. And so the church is striving to serve as Christ means to do that work. We want to preach the gospel. And they said, what is the work that we're doing? Christ established His church partly to prepare a people. I want to turn to the book of Matthew, chapter 28. Matthew 28 and verse 19.

I want to look at two different versions of what Jesus told His disciples shortly before He rose and went to heaven and would remain there. He came, well, I'll begin in verse 18. Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, all authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I've commanded you.

Lo, I'm with you even to the end of the age. Remember, the gates of hell, the power of death would never prevail in the church. It would continue until the end of the age, and so would our responsibility to go and make disciples. When it says, prepare a people, it talks about it.

It means teaching people to live God's way, to understand His Word. And as a church, we want to strive to do that. But not everybody will respond to that. There's another aspect of that, of preaching the gospel. Preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God. The church is responsible to do that. To put the message out there, to be a witness, to proclaim the good news that Christ is going to return to this earth, that God is going to overcome the power of the devil, and He's going to bring peace and happiness and justice.

Now, we do that in the United Church of God, partly by publishing several magazines. We have websites that have a lot of information. We have a television program. And, of course, congregations across the country and around the world. And we're holding these meetings as part of this responsibility to preach the gospel of the Kingdom of God. And, of course, that's part of why Jesus came to this earth, so that when the time was fulfilled, He would establish a church to carry on this work. And, indeed, the time was right for God's purpose.

His Son made His entrance on the world history, as I said, when the time was right. Just as the Apostle Paul wrote, when he said, When the fullness of time had come, when the stage was set, when everything was in readiness, God sent forth His Son. Just consider, the people of Judah had been reading the prophecies and looking for a Messiah, but they were living as one small part of the Roman Empire, oppressed. They couldn't make their own laws and rules. They had limited power. And people all throughout that empire had been worshipping these false gods, gods made out of stones or ones that the myths talk about.

And people were starting to realize that those so-called gods of Greece and Rome were empty. They didn't add anything of substance to their lives because, you know, they were just stories. They didn't mean anything. That's why, when Christ did come, the prophecy of Isaiah 9, verse 2, was fulfilled. That people had been walking in darkness, but now there was light. It wasn't a literal darkness where the sun was blotted out, but it was a darkness of understanding.

People didn't know that there was a one true Creator God. They said they were deceived by these myths, and they were looking to these statues, thinking maybe they could save them. But the great light came when the Son of God opened on people's understanding. Because, as the Apostle Paul wrote, I was going to go back to the other slide, where he said, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son.

But why at that time? It was nearly 2,000 years ago. I say nearly approximately. We've kept track of the days of the week and such, but we don't know exactly how many years. The Bible doesn't tell us why God chose that particular point in time nearly 2,000 years ago.

But we can discern, historically, of a number of important things that did occur at that time. One of which was the establishment of the Roman Empire. For the first time in human history, one government ruled most of the civilized world. If you look at the maps, which I didn't incorporate one in here, but all around the Mediterranean Sea and spreading out, where most of civilization was, one government now ruled and set up law and order.

Warfare and crime were largely suppressed. Walls and practices were imposed throughout the Empire that would make it much easier to travel and to spread a message. And speaking of travel, I would say the Romans built roads like no one before them. It became possible for people to move back and forth efficiently and safely, so that when the apostles went out to preach the gospel, as Christ told them to do, they had the means to do so.

Of course, they traveled themselves and sent letters. The Roman Empire established a regular postal service. So, if you look through the New Testament, many of these books are known as epistles, which is a fancy word that means letters. The Apostle Paul wrote letters and was able to use the Roman mail system to send them to different congregations. Another important development was the Greek language. Now, the Greek Empire had ruled not as wide an area as the Roman Empire, but it ruled a pretty extensive area. And the Greek language had become the common language of government and commerce.

We have a term for that now. We say lingua franca, which means the language of the free, the language that prevails for doing business. And everybody that had any education at all could speak Greek, and many of them could read it as well. So that anywhere within that sprawling Roman Empire, messengers of Jesus Christ went, they could communicate. Most people spoke another language as their first language. It might be the predecessors of Italian or French or Arabic, but most of them also knew Greek, so they had a way to correspond.

It's also important that the Greek language is a very expressive and precise language. It was a perfect vehicle for recording the Gospels and the Epistles. The New Testament was written in Greek and then preserved. It provided the means for God to put into writing the message that He wanted that would build on and explain the Old Testament evermore. Which leads me to the third major point I wanted to make, is that the Jewish synagogues had been dispersed throughout the Roman Empire. In history, this is known as the Diaspora. The Diaspora is a word that means the spursal of the Jews.

Several hundred years before, their kingdom had been conquered by the Babylonian Empire. Some had been taken into captivity and a few came back, but many migrated all throughout the civilized world. And where they went, they established communities and synagogues. Synagogues were where their holy Scripture existed. It was preserved in written form, so it could be referred to. And when Christ's disciples traveled to bring the message of His gospel, they went first to those who were Jewish.

The Apostle Paul and others like him, the book of Acts, shows that when they'd come into a town, they first went to the synagogue. They taught the Jews that were there, and they reasoned from the Scripture, and then they moved out from there to teach the people from the land, the natives, the Gentiles, that they were called. And so much of true Christianity and so much of the New Testament is based on the Old Testament, that it made it easier to preach that gospel, knowing that the Bible was there, the holy Scriptures were there.

What's important for us to realize is that none of this happened overnight. These three different civilizations over centuries merged and developed with God behind the scenes making them happen. Just think, the Jews were dispersed approximately 500 years before Christ, but God was moving them into place, so that would be there when He needed it. The Greek language emerged nearly 200 years after that. And then the Roman Empire was established firmly only a few decades before Christ was born. But God had been moving these historic events and controlling the destiny of three different civilizations so that it would be the optimum time for His son to appear proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom of God. Now, you might be wondering, all this talk about history and 2,000 years ago, what does this have to do with me? If 2,000 years ago was still right, what are we all doing here now? Why did Jesus Christ come in the flesh, and then later He's going to come spiritually and establish His kingdom? Well, we can take a lot of time to discuss that. We're not going to take it all now. But one thing we might want to consider is that God allowed world history to progress hundreds and thousands of years beyond that time, partly to add that many more people to His kingdom and to His family. God wants many sons to be born into His kingdom. And aren't you glad that you'll have that opportunity, because Christ hadn't returned before this? And it's also worth considering that the events in your life may have worked together over time to bring you to the point of being ready to hear this message when you're hearing it. Or, for many who aren't here with us today, perhaps they're hearing it on their television program, receiving a magazine or booklet. But God knows each one of our individual lives and will work in them for when they're ready. And God is prepared to give each person a purpose and a good meaning. And, of course, He has a job for the church to do in the meantime. Jesus prophesied that this gospel of the kingdom – remember, these are the kingdom of God seminars – it will be preached to all the world as a witness to the nations, and then the end will come. And Timothy wrote, or Paul wrote to Timothy that God has saved us. He's called us with a holy calling. He's called us. He's called me. And He might well be calling each one of you for His purpose, the reason He called. God works on a large scale, moving civilizations and nations. But God works on a small scale also, moving events in people's lives for the time that He's ready. And He's interested in your life. He wants to extend a personal invitation to you to be a part of His work and part of His kingdom. When I say that, this session was personally intended to be somewhat brief, and we'll come back in a few minutes for the next talk in this series, where we'll talk about the kingdom of God at hand. Meaning, it's at your hand. It's for you. We'll talk about how God is not just the creator of time, but master of timing. God worked in events to bring me to His work, into His church, when the time was right for me. He'll do this for every person. When the time is right, He'll do it for you. And when that time comes, you'll know that the kingdom of God is at hand for you. So, my friends, let's take a break for about 10 or 15 minutes and have some refreshments. We have some cookies and snacks and coffee downstairs, and we'll come back at 5 till 12 and start the second session. Thank you very much.