Why We Have Prophecy?

I talked about an introduction, really, to what I'm going to be covering today. Perryman. I knew it would come. It's been a hard week. So Mr. Perryman gave really an introduction to what I want to talk about today. I gave a sermon last month on prophecy, and I talked about how prophetic images, you know, half the time we can jump to all kinds of conclusions. We don't know what some of the images are, but we do can figure out what some of the images are. I mean, they're there for us to see. God has it there for us to see. And we just went through two in the book of Revelation, the fact that there's two white horses. And the one is Jesus Christ, and it's the true Christ on this white horse coming back to establish God's kingdom. The other white horse is a false Messiah. So we were able to compare the two. We also looked at Revelation 13, the beast and false prophet. And yes, that represents powers, political and religious power, but also represents two people. And these two men will be used by Satan to do all kinds of miracles. And then we showed how there's two witnesses where men used by God to perform miracles. And for three and a half years, there's a cosmic battle. The whole world watches these four men battle it out. Two men with all the wealth, all the power, all the military, and two men that can't even dress well. Right? I mean, they're in sackcloth. So they fight it out. And they think they win because those two men are killed, and then God resurrects them. And so just showing that these aren't... not everything is an image. It tells us of something real that's going to happen. And obviously, Christ coming back and this false white horse and someone riding the white horse, we can see how what that represents. That sermon is actually, as I mentioned there, and then, is a series or part of a series of sermons I want to give over the next year, you know, once every five weeks or so, a sermon where we're going to go through a lot of just basic prophecy. Because we're going to look at the templates in which we build our prophetic viewpoint. Because much of the time we're down into the woods and weeds of, you know, this imagery and missing what we do know. And so we're going to be building off of that. But actually, there was a sermon I gave in Nashville before this as an introduction that I just wasn't able to give here because we were out of town one week and just what I wasn't able to be here. I want to go back and give that sermon as sort of the beginning of this series. Why are we going to go through Daniel 2 and Daniel 7? I mean, we've gone through it before. Yes, but we have to go back to that because that gives us our prophetic overview. You know, people get lost into all kinds of prophetic things. I'm amazed how many books will come out.

I remember one back a number of years ago in the 90s, Saddam Hussein is the beast. And it was a bestseller. And now he's dead. The whole blood moon thing, which had some truth in it, where there were prophecies made, and they didn't happen. And those were bestsellers. There's all kinds of things that come along that sometimes have a little truth, but without the overview, you come to the conclusion, oh, that was a false prophecy. And of course, even in Sabbath, Sabbath keepers are known for coming up with all kinds of wild prophetic explanations. And I say wild. They make sense at the time. It's not like people are just, you know, making things out of nowhere. But, you know, there was a time back in, if you go back far enough in the history where we've come from, where it was taught that Adolf Hitler was the beast. And Adolf Hitler's dead. He's not the beast. So we have to realize that, okay, we don't always understand exactly what's happening. But the Bible gives us these prophecies for a reason. And that's where it's interesting, you know, some people will tell me they hate all prophecy sermons because they make no sense to them. It all just seems gobbledygook, and all it does is scare them. And so, you know, I don't want this fear religion. I want hope. Others, they love prophecy to the point that they're missing Christian living. You know, they can tell you all kinds of things, charts and graphs. I've seen people have charts and graphs and explanations for everything, but their lifestyles aren't what they're supposed to be. Prophecy is there for very specific reasons, very specific purposes. And it's those bigger concepts that we go through the two women in Revelation. As we go through all kinds of things, the abomination of desolation, what is that? We're going to be going through all kinds of things that we do know enough about to really give some details. And we'll be doing that over the next year.

Some people will be disappointed because there's lots of questions I don't have the answer to. I only have the overview because that's what's given to us. So we have to watch for those things that happen. We have to watch for the fulfillment of those things. We won't know some things until it happens. And then we'll understand it. That's part of the reason it's there. We have these prophecies. So let's look at some reasons why there's so much prophecy in the Bible and what should be our approach to prophecy, the whole subject of prophecy, why it's there, why God put it there, especially when there's things we don't understand. And you know, there's lots of places the Bible will even look at a few where people were watching prophetic prophecy take place, and they didn't understand it. They didn't understand it. They misunderstood what God was telling of it. The first reason that we have prophecy in the Bible is exactly what what Mr. Perryman told us. It's there to remind us that God is still God. You know, God didn't like lose His throne. We know that Satan is the, what Paul calls the God of this world, that Satan has for a temporary time. He's running what goes on in this earth to a degree. God never stepped off His throne. The kingdom of God never disappeared. And God is active in what goes on in human history in order to carry out His final will, His final plan. Now, that's a limited involvement, but let's go to Isaiah 46. Just a couple, we're just going to look at a prophetic statement made in major books about prophecy here. Isaiah 46 verse 9. Let's start in verse 8.

This is what a message that God actually gave to Isaiah. And he tells the people this, remember this and show yourselves men. Man, when God says, stand up like a man, you're in trouble. Come on, stand up like a man, because I'm going to talk to you.

Recall to mind, O you transgressors, remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there's no other. I am God, and there's none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, ancient times, things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand and I will do my pleasure. God says, I have a plan, and that plan is going to be carried out. Prophecy shows that. Now then we have all this question of, okay, how much is God controlling? Let's go to Daniel 2. Daniel 2, another statement that's made here. And we'll go through Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 and one of these sermons here over the next year as we go through every four or five weeks. Daniel 2, verse 19. Daniel answered and said, well, let's start in verse 19. Then the secret was revealed to Daniel in a night vision. So Daniel blessed the God of heaven. And here's what Daniel then says as a prayer. Bless be the name of God forever and ever, for wisdom and might are His. And He changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and raises up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and secret things. He knows what is in the darkness and the light dwells with Him. And then He says, I thank you and praise you, O God of my fathers, for you have given me wisdom and might and have now known to me what we asked of you, for you have made known to us the king's demand. In other words, you have revealed a prophecy to us and I thank you for that. When we look at prophecy, even when we struggle to understand it, we need to thank God for it to say, help me understand. And lots of times, we don't know the details. And the farther we try to figure those out, the more convoluted we can make what's actually being told to us. I'm not saying we don't know. As time goes on, we know more and more details. We know more details about prophecy than Paul did because Paul never read the book of Revelation. A lot of the things in Revelation were not revealed to him. So we actually know more about prophecy than he did. But we don't know all of it. We have to come approach this with some real humility, like everything else in the Bible. In fact, you can't really understand prophecy until you understand the Bible as an overview from Genesis to Revelation. And then you have to understand what God is doing in there. Salvation, sanctification, justification, things we've been going through. Unless you understand those things, unless you understand we don't have an immortal soul, unless you understand certain things, prophecy will not come together. In that understanding of the Bible, in fact, you know the most important prophecy in the Bible is Genesis 3.15. We'll go through that. That's the most important prophecy in the entire Bible. It tells you the whole framework of prophecy. It's in one verse way back in Genesis, and that's the framework. That's what all it's based on is that prophecy. But you have to understand even how it got there, why it has to be said.

So we see that God never left his throne. God has allowed Satan to rule. But God continues to carry out his plan. How much does he control those? Does that mean he controls everything? I mean, I actually have heard people say, you know, God sets up all the kings. Therefore, every ruler that's ever ruled, God put him or her there. So God established and set up and chose Adolf Hitler. So God chose evil.

We have a realization here that Satan is real and human choice is real. And we can't blame God for the evil in the world. He sets up who he has to set up to carry out his plan. You know, I remember asking a person who said that to me once because I've heard that a lot over the years. Oh, God chooses everything. I said, so there's a headhunter cannibalistic tribe in, you know, someplace in the Philippines 500 years ago. And God selected their king. Yes! Let's go to Hosea chapter 8. Hosea chapter 8. So what happens is we can live under a false assumption and we can give certain human beings some kind of divine acceptance that they actually don't have.

They actually don't have. When Hosea wrote this, Israel was at the end of its existence.

And it had gone through a period of time where it had been just moving farther and farther away from God. But they knew they were God's people and they were proud of being God's people. They were proud because God had chosen them.

And listen to what God tells them through Hosea. Verse 1. Set the trumpet to your mouth. He shall come like an eagle against the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law. He said there's going to come a predator against you, which would be Assyria, because you've transgressed my law, because you won't follow the covenant that I made with you. There's going to come a people, a predator against you, and they're going to destroy your country. This is a prophecy. Israel will cry to me, my God, we know you. Israel has rejected the good and the enemy will pursue him. He said, so you're going to cry out, but we are your people and we know you. You're the one who's directed our paths all these years. You've been our God. And he says, this enemy is going to destroy you. He's going to pursue you. They set up kings, okay, Israel, set up kings, but not by me. They made princes, but I did not acknowledge them. From their silver and gold they made idols for themselves that they might be cut off. He goes on and says, so I am not taking back this punishment. I'm going to let Assyria do this. Notice, you think I pick your kings. He hadn't picked a king of Israel since the split between Israel and Judah. What's interesting, you go through the history of Israel once they split from Judah. Almost half the kings were assassinated. So God is now choosing their kings by saying, I'll kill that one and you could be in charge. They were all pagan. So let's say, God is manipulating the kings of Israel to kill each other so he can put one pagan over another pagan. No, he says, I didn't choose your kings. He had never chosen their kings.

Once the split happened with Israel and they began to deteriorate farther and farther away from God, he didn't pick their kings anymore. See, God chooses rulers to fulfill his plan. When Israel left his plan, he didn't choose their kings anymore. And he condemns them for it. He condemns them. You see, if God chose every ruler, human beings could say, you never gave us a choice. You took away our free will. You know, and what's the difference between God and Satan? No, you find out through history where God did choose people. Sometimes he chose pagans, by the way, to do certain things. We'll see that when we go through Daniel to do certain things. Why? To make sure two things happened. There's two things that have to happen in his plan. The Messiah has to come the first time as a sacrifice and the second time as king of kings. Everything he does is for those two events. He prophesied them. They're going to happen. And everything he does is to make those two events happen. You know, if you're going... if you're a Wednesday night, when I do the... or twice a month, a Wednesday night, when I do the Bible studies, I've been going through the book of Ephesians and had to jump into Colossians a little bit in the Romans because he's talking about the mystery of the gospel. And there in Ephesians he says, okay, and remember those churches in Asia Minor were predominantly Gentile peoples. They were Greek. They came from... I mean, at that point, what's now Turkey was a whole different people, but they were always a mixture of people. The Turks invaded long after that, but a mixture of peoples. And so most of the people coming in the church were not Jews. Some were, but not most. And he tells them, you think that this is like an afterthought. God said, oh yeah, at some point I got to call Gentiles. And he goes back to the Old Testament and he shows them, no, when the Messiah came, the whole thing opened up so that all peoples can become part of the people of God. It's the same thing he says in four chapters in Romans, and it's the entire book of Colossians. He says, I'm telling you the mystery. Jesus Christ came, and part of that mystery, because he calls it the mystery of Christ and the mystery of the gospel, is that it's opened everyone. He was fulfilling prophecy. He said, this is prophecy that you would be called now is prophesied. It's one of the few places he uses the word predestination. In other words, God is predestined to change something here, in which, yes, he's still dealing with the physical descendants of Abraham, but the church is made up of all peoples, and the church is where he's working with on earth today. And it's just such a powerful understanding. And after being there earlier this year and taking the tour of the churches in Turkey of the ancient churches of Revelation, it's just amazing to understand now. When you read, you know, the writings to those people, what they were actually experiencing.

Just like the church today is a fulfillment of prophecy. There was a predestination, I will have people here. God called you. Now, some people refuse the calling, don't they?

But understand, no, I'm going to have a church and there's going to be people there. I'm going to call people. I'm going to call everybody into it. I'm going to call who I call at that time. Everybody has a different calling. Everybody has predestination. Everybody gets called at a different time. But there's going to be a calling. And so this little group here today, meaningless in terms of the world, is actually part of a predestination, a part of, I'm active in human history. I'm active in human history. Oh, I may not be running the UN.

They're making their own messes. But I'm going to be active here. That is one of the reasons, the primary reason for prophecy, is to let us know God is still on his throne and God's doing his plan, which was what was brought up by Mr. Perriman and the sermonette. Another reason for prophecy is to encourage people to repent. I mean, it is to tell people, you must repent and turn to God because there are consequences not to. There are eternal consequences in terms of actually knowing God, rejecting Him, having received His Spirit and reject.

There's eternal. But for the general world, there is a call to repent. In other words, and you know you really see this, strangely enough, is in the teachings of Jesus. We'll talk about that even more in a minute. But this call that there are consequences to the choices you make, whether you follow God or you reject God. What's interesting when you go through all the minor prophets, and we did a whole series of Bible studies and went through every one of the minor prophets, and when we did, there's a common theme, and that is, here's what's going to happen, but I'm calling you to repent.

Here's what's going to happen. But I'm asking you to change. I'm commanding you to change, or this will happen, over and over and over again. There's always a call to repentance. The gospel contains prophetic messages, especially about Christ's first and second coming, which is the center of all prophecy. Those two things are the center of the gospel, and both of them contain repent and obey the gospel.

Accepting His first coming, accepting His second coming, you have to repent. So that's the second purpose for prophecy. I won't go through, you know, we could go through dozens of places, especially in in the minor prophets, in Isaiah.

We go clear back to Deuteronomy, where Moses tells them to repent, that someday you're going to have to repent because you're going to go really bad here. Before they go in the Promised Land, God has Moses tell them, you know, someday I'll kick you out of this Promised Land because you're going to mess this up real bad. He knew they would, but I'll fix it and you'll have to repent. So there's always a message of repentance in prophecy.

A third is that even the negative prophecy is to help us understand and have faith in God and have to courage the face whatever we may have to forget the face. There's a fascinating instance of this in the New Testament in Acts 22. And the reason this is interesting is because nobody got this but Paul. Nobody got to receive the, shall we say, the proper understanding of this prophecy but Paul.

Acts 22, verse 10. Luke writes here, And as we stayed many days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. And when he had come to us, now they knew he was a prophet. They knew this man was inspired by God. And there's lots of false prophets. The Bible's filled with them. But they knew this man was inspired by God and God had given him a message. And when he had come to us, he took Paul's belt, bound his own hands and feed and said, Thus says the Holy Spirit, so shall the Jews of Jerusalem bind the man who owns this belt, and he shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.

He says, I have a message from God. Let me show you here. A little graphic illustration. Took his belt off. Paul had to think this was weird. Took his belt off and then tied his hands and said, this is going to happen to the man who owns this belt because the Jews are going to take him into captivity and he's going to be turned over to the Romans. Now, if someone came and gave that prophecy and you knew what was from God, I mean, that wasn't the issue.

They knew this was from God. What would our reaction be? Verse 12, Luke even says what his reaction was because he says, we. Now, when we heard these things, both we and those from the place pleaded with him not to go to Jerusalem. Don't go. Don't go. If you go, God says you're going to be taken by the Jews and given to the Romans. Don't go. This is, oh, you don't want to go through that. This is terrible. Just, let's just run away from the prophecy. Let's just run and hide.

Then Paul answered, What do you mean by weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.

So when He would not be persuaded, we cease saying, and they finally got it, the will of the Lord be done. Paul understood. Oh, this prophecy is to tell me what God's telling me. This is going to be hard, so I have to have faith and I will have courage because He's telling me ahead of time. We receive prophecies not to make us run and hide, but to us to say, wow, how great is the God who knows what's going to happen and tells us about it. That's what prophecy is supposed to do. It's supposed to give us faith and courage in the God who tells us what's going to happen. As we go through these series of sermons, we'll talk about this a lot because it's so easy for us to just live in fear. I mean, there are certain prophecies I've read that I've read that I've read that I've read I mean, there are certain prophecies I read and I think, oh my, that's in the future.

As Mr. Perriman said, you know, it really doesn't matter when Christ comes back.

If you live your life knowing that you live between the two comings of Christ and you know what the first one means and you know what the second one means, you will spend your life preparing for the second coming. It doesn't matter whether he comes now or 10 years or 100 years. It doesn't matter. You'll spend your life preparing for that because you walk out here today and get hit by a car and die. Christ came for you because the next waking moment is what? The resurrection.

So you had better be prepared. So when we understand the prophecies of the first and second coming, we are preparing for the second coming. It's so easy to say, I just want to live my life and because before he comes on because the bad things happen, well, all kinds of bad things are going to happen. And Christians had to live through all kinds of bad things for 2000 years.

Being a Christian in the first century would have been very exciting for the first 10 years and then it was a mess. I mean, Paul comes along and throws you in prison. And then Paul claims to be a... No wonder they wouldn't let Paul come into the church at the beginning. Remember they wouldn't let Paul come to church when he first said, hey, I'm a Christian now. We don't want him in our church. He's just going to have us arrested. They thought he was a spy.

But those were tough times. Grandma's in prison, dying, and we're going to let the guy come in now and what? Preach to us? No way. Because he's the one who put her there. It wasn't always easy.

It wasn't always easy when the... in the Roman church at one point are hiding in the catacombs in the sewers so they can have services. It wasn't always easy. But there are also great things, miracles, and wonderful things happened. Being a Christian always has its great joys and its great difficulties.

And if Christ is going to come back in the next 10 years, then many of us will be alive to see that.

And suffer. But it doesn't matter. If he comes back in 100 years, we have to be ready. That's part of why we have the prophetic message. Prepare for his coming.

This means that for those who know God in His way, prophecy motivates us to live a certain way. Prophecy motivates us to live with God in our lives, following Jesus Christ, and submitting to God's Spirit as God guides us and directs us. It is a total submission every day because we know. Say, oh, I don't want to hear prophecy because it's all bad. Wait a minute. We know that we live between these two events. And we don't know what the distance... the time is. I mean, the world's in the most precarious place it's ever been in right now. It really is. If you know history, this is... we're not over the edge, but we're teetering on the edge of absolute chaos.

So what about, I think, my parents, Kim's parents? They live their lives anticipating the return of Jesus Christ. That's how they live their lives. Now they're all dead. Does that mean they waste their lives? No, they did exactly what they were supposed to do. They live preparing themselves for that event, and that event has already come for them. I don't mean they're already resurrected. I mean, that's their next moment. That's all they know. They fell asleep. They wake up, and they're there at that event. That's why it's here for us, not just to scare us, to actually motivate us. Look at 2 Peter 3.

2 Peter 3. So this was supposed to be the first in this series, but I got it out of order here.

So I put it down to do it today back when I did it in Nashville. I looked at it ahead and said, okay, I'm going to do it on this date here. So 2 Peter 3 verse 10. He says, But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat. But the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Now, this day of the Lord here, remember, there's multiple days of the Lord. We'll have to go through that again, too. There's multiple days of the Lord. It means times of judgment. Israel went through its day of the Lord. Judah went through its day of the Lord. The world will go through its day of the Lord when Christ returns. And then there's a final day of the Lord that has to do with the light of fire. So there's four great days of the Lord. The other two are pale into insignificance to the one coming because this day of the Lord when Christ returns is God's judgment on the whole world.

He says, because we know the final event that we know in prophecy, Revelation ends with this. The surface of the earth being destroyed by fire, and God bringing His throne here to live with His spirit children forever. That's the final prophecy we have. And He says, looking down to that final judgment of God, the earth being destroyed by fire, and God coming, and everybody will have been changed. Everything will be different. There'll be no weeping, no gnashing of teeth. I say, He's writing this before Revelation. So there's details of Revelation He may not have known, probably did not know. But He had the general idea. Looking for and hastening. In other words, we're actually supposed to be living life saying, today is a good day because God is with me. Today is a good day because God's blessing me in spite of my jaw problems or my health problems or my getting older problems or all the things we have. Today, God is with me. And I look forward to meeting God and Christ as a child of God. That is actually a motivation for life. That's a prophetic message. Yeah, there's bad things that happen between now and then. But there's bad things in life all the time. Those are really bad things. I mean, I'm not playing down how terrible it is. But the bottom line is, there's this positive message here about understand God's given you something in prophecy. And God's given you His Spirit. And God's given you the first coming of Jesus Christ. And He's going to give you the second coming of Jesus Christ. And therefore, we should be holy in conduct and godliness. Not just something we do by coming to the Sabbath services. That's not holiness if this is the only holiness we have.

It is who we are every day. Who we are every day anticipating, wow, I've got an incredible future. "...because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Nevertheless, we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells." But you know, Paul or Peter here, like Paul, like all the prophets of the Old Testament that understood about the coming of the Messiah to reign on earth, they all looked at that promise and said, that's worth living for. That is what's worth living with. That's worth sacrificing for. That's worth not being like everybody else for.

This purpose, this promise that God has given to us, and it's a prophetic promise. Let me give you a little bit of what's going to happen throughout history. And then Christ comes once, then He comes twice. And then there's a thousand years, and then there's the final day of the Lord, and then I live with my children, God says. And God says, isn't that great? And we say, yeah, but who's the beast? Is it Bill Gates? I don't want to break any bubbles here, but it's not Bill Gates, okay? He's not bad enough. It's not Bill Gates. You see what I mean? We get locked into all the bad stuff. This is going to happen no matter what, and it's not happening because of God. It's happening because of Satan and humanity.

Satan and humanity is creating the mess, and he just keeps sort of poking his finger in the mess every once in a while so that he ends up the way he wants it. And you, he just poked his finger in your life and said, okay, you can be part of my plan right now. That's what this is. God poking his finger in your life. You can be part of it. You can be part of it here. But this is just, we're just little pieces in this huge plan. We tend to think we're the center of the universe. No, we're not. We're just little pieces in this huge plan. That's all we are. What a privilege to receive that promise. That God would take nothing, people like us, say, I'll make the promise to you if you want it. I will make you. But if you want it, I'll make this promise to you. This is why all this prophecy is here.

Which means that we do have to be aware enough of the world around us to know sort of what's going on. Now, we could get so wrapped up in all the negative happenings in the world, we forget the purpose for prophecy. People say, I can't sleep at night. I watch the news. I didn't watch the news as much. I mean, we have to keep up with things, but we can't be obsessed with it.

It does us no good to be obsessed with all the bad. We need to know about it. Every once in a while, I'll tell Kim, take a break, because that woman knows what's going on in the world. If I want to know something, I ask my wife.

Sometimes I'm amazed. Really? I don't have to go look it up, and I think, how did she know that?

But sometimes I take a break. Slow down just a little, because you can't control it. See, we can't control the negative. We can't control the bad. But God has called us for God to control us in it. God controls us in the mess. That's what we're called to.

Can you imagine yourself living in this mess with no concept of God?

No wonder, just eat, drink, and be merry, because tomorrow we die. You know? There's no purpose.

Look at Luke 12, and you think, well, okay, I don't have to watch that much. Well, no, you do have to watch some, because here we have Jesus being upset with something. It's interesting what he's upset over, because there are all kinds of prophecies about the Messiah coming twice, but the Jews didn't quite understand it. And he comes along, and he starts doing all these miracles and things that are prophesied the Messiah would do, and lots of people don't get it. But they're the ones who have the Scripture. They're the ones who were supposed to get it. They're the ones who were called and said, I'm going to give you the knowledge, so you'll know it when it happens.

I didn't get it. Verse 4. Verse 4. No, let's go to, let's see. Well, let's go to 54, or I'm going to go overtime. Okay. Then he also said to the multitudes, whenever you see a cloud rising out of the West, immediately you say a shower is coming, and so it is. It was coming out of the West, becoming out of the Mediterranean. You know, when we were down in Charleston, we knew when the rain was coming. We could see it coming out over the sea, because it rained every day we were there, but the last day, at some point. He says, when you see the clouds coming out from the Mediterranean, you know it's going to rain. And when you see the South wind blow, you say, there'll be hot weather. You know, South wind there is the desert. He said, you know, these are pretty obvious. Clouds coming out from the Mediterranean means rain. Hot wind coming off the desert means it's going to get hot. Okay. He says, you hypocrites? He's upset with them. You can't discern the face of the sky and the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time?

We discern Jesus Christ came. It's easy for us, because we have the historical record, but you have to have faith in that. They didn't discern what He was doing. There's another place where this happens. It's very interesting in Matthew 21, where He gets a little upset here, because it should have been obvious to them.

Matthew 21. He comes into near Jerusalem, and He tells His disciples, go into the village and get this donkey. Okay. This is He's getting ready for this last Passover. And Matthew later writes, oh, now we know what He was doing. First verse says, all this was done, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophet, saying, tell the daughter of Zion, behold, your King is coming to you, lowly and sitting on a donkey, occult the fall of a donkey.

So it's very interesting, as you see in the gospels, as they begin to realize oh, He told us this was a fulfillment, this is a fulfillment, we didn't get it. Now we're seeing all kinds of fulfillments. He really, you know, this is the Messiah. The Messiah doesn't come the second time riding a donkey.

The only image we have of Him is writing some kind of, I don't know whether it's an literal or it's an image, or if it's just therefore an allegory. But in this passage, He's riding a giant white spiritual horse. So I can't tell you if that's real or not. I don't know. I know the white horse of the first one is not literal. It's just it's a counterfeit of Jesus riding a white horse. But we went through that last time.

But He said, coming on a donkey was very literal and you didn't get it. So they bring the donkey and a great multitude spreads out their clothes, verse 8. Others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. Why are they doing this? Well, you know, after His years of ministry, people were starting to believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

In fact, He started to say He was. In fact, His first sermon said He was. That's why all His friends and relatives tried to kill Him. Remember the first sermon He gave? All His friends and relatives tried to kill Him because basically He was reading a passage and said, this is about Me.

So He's supposed to ride Him in a donkey. By this time, there were thousands of people in Judea who believed He's the Messiah. And they come out and they honor Him as the Messiah. In fact, they say in verse 9, "...and the multitude to one before, and those who followed, cried out, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David." That's a Messianic title, the Son of David. Hosanna to the Son of David, blesses He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

Now, Luke tells us something Matthew does not. He adds a little extra to the story. Luke's interesting because Luke wasn't there, so Luke had to get stories from eyewitnesses. So sometimes he adds details that he got from different witnesses. Well, Mark just gives what he witnessed. John gives what he witnessed. And Luke is like, okay, this person, he's writing down all these witnesses.

So let's go to Luke 19.

So they see these prophecies being fulfilled. They saw the signs of the times. That's why when I say the world has never been as destabilized and as dangerous as it is now, because the world has never had the capability of killing everyone on Earth, and that's one of the things that happens before Christ comes back. Because it says if He doesn't come back when He does, no one will survive, because there's a war. There's a world war so great, He says no one will survive this, and that's when He comes back. And this is the first time in history we actually have the capability of doing that. Just the last 40 years, 30 years, we've been able to do that. It's precarious what's happening. People forget Israel has 90 nuclear weapons, and if they're going to go down, they're going to take out every, every Arab capital. Why do you think Egypt is not cheering on Hamas? You know, they know the score here. Iran doesn't care, because Iran believes that it may be their destruction that brings on the last imam that destroys Christianity and the Jews. So they have a whole different viewpoint. Most of the rest of the Arab nations will put their chests and do a few things, but they're not. They're not looking for self-destruction. India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons, and they're having border clashes all the time. China and India are having border clashes all the time. You know what they do between China and India? They keep them from killing each other? The border guards between those two countries aren't given, they're not given guns. They're given the guns. So every time they ever run in, they just beat each other. So it cuts down on the deaths, okay? But both sides have nuclear weapons, and both are arguing over stretches of, and you know, who knows what happens? People forget, oh yeah, the French only have, I don't know, 150 nuclear weapons, and they have submarines patrolling the world all the time, filled with nuclear weapons. The French? Oh yeah.

It's a dangerous world, and it's destabilizing. And as it destabilizes, new packs will be formed, new people will try to take over and take charge of it, and it will go into exactly what is going to say is going to happen in the Olivet Prophecy. When we get there, exactly what it says is going to happen is what's going to happen. Or is that happening? Well, I would say for the first time in history, it could be happening. Because this, you know, people thought World War II, the Great Depression, that was the great, that was minor compared to what the Bible describes. You say, oh, you're scaring me. If we don't have faith to face it, what are we going to do? You can't save enough food. What are you going to do? Go buy a machine gun, a rocket launcher, and a tank? Well, you won't last very long with that either. This is about us and God.

That's where our hope is. That's where our refuge is. That's what this is about. But here, it's very interesting. These people were shouting. We're in Luke 19. Let's look at verse 39. Now, the Pharisees are watching this, and some of the Pharisees called to him from the crowd, teacher, rebuke your disciples. How dare they come out here and claim that you're the Messiah, because you're riding a donkey. How dare they say that? And Jesus says, but he answered and said to them, I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would cry out. He says, no, this is part of the plan, and you can't stop it.

I'm here because I'm supposed to be here, and you're supposed to get it, and they don't. And that's why he then says this, another prophecy. Now, as he drew near, he saw the city of Jerusalem. He wept over it, saying, if you had known, even you, especially in your day, the things that make for your peace. But now they're hidden from your eyes. He says, you should have known this, and now you can't even figure it out, because they were planning to kill him. He knew it.

You should have known. All the prophecies tell you about this. Even some of these people get it, and you don't. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embarkment against you, around you, surround you, and close you in on every side, or embankment, I'm sorry, and level you and your children within you to the ground, and they will not leave you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation. You did not understand my coming. You prophesied about it. You talked about it. You preached about it. You prayed about it, and here it is, and you're not getting it. And because of that, Jerusalem was going to be destroyed, and 70 AD it was. When you read Jesus' teachings, when he talks about his followers, he gives similar warnings that we have to understand who he is and be prepared for his second coming.

We have to be prepared for our day of visitation, and it doesn't matter. As you've heard me say before, my message to my kids, if I'm on my deathbed, is, he's coming! See you there!

Because that has to be this driving purpose in life. We know the first coming, and we know the second coming, and it's a blessing from God. Because the bad things are going to happen whether we know it or not. Would you rather face it without God or with God? Because that's our choice! Our choice is either face what happens in the world, but you know that's every Christian's choice throughout history. You want to live life with him or without him? Because it's never easy.

When you live it with him, it's actually much better. Life is whole. There are so many blessings from God, but not just physical blessings. The spiritual blessings we receive, they give us vision and comfort and understanding and purpose. Those are the greatest things we can ever receive in this life, and that's what he gives us. Prophecy is part of that. Remember who I am. Remember what I'm going to do, no matter what you see Satan and the world around you do. Remember what I'm going to do, and I've picked you to give you the message and the understanding and the help. No matter what happens, I'll be with you.

We may be approaching our day of visitation. I don't know. It doesn't matter. It's a whole lot closer than it was a hundred years ago. It doesn't matter. And bad things happen.

But instead of looking at the bad things, which we'll study, we need to look at, wow, God's with me. What more do you want? There is nothing else you can have. You can't have enough bullets, I can tell you that. You can't have enough food stored up. You can't.

You can't live in a big enough fortress, but God is with us. So when we look here at the reason for prophecy and why we're going to be doing now, like I said, over probably the next 13 months or so, maybe 10 sermons on prophecy, is we see God's hand in human history. We can be encouraged to turn to God and repent. We have our faith and courage strengthened because we see and know what God is doing. We find motivation to live righteously before God because we want to be part of what He's doing instead of part of a decaying world.

You don't think our world's decaying? Our choices for president seems to be—see, I don't make too many political statements, but I'll make this one—a narcissist and a reprobate. That's our choice. Well, it's other people's choice. My king's coming back. I don't care. My king's coming back. But that's the choices we have. A reprobate and a narcissist. Just look up the words, and it's pretty obvious.

We're able to discern the times in which we live that these are precarious times. And drawing close to God is absolutely vital for our spiritual salvation.

And then always being comforted by knowing the final outcome. God tells us how it ends. And God says, you can be part of this. So, yeah, we'll have a little gloom and doom here over the next year.

But it's not to spread the gloom and doom. It's to the opposite. It's for us to realize it is a privilege beyond understanding, because we don't know why God chose us. But He gave you the vision and the promise of prophecy.