World News and Prophecy, Part 1

If those of you down in Pressensburg, Orville and Kitty Bubbengardner are there, say hello to you. And if my good friend Raleigh Collins is there, I'll say hi to you down there, too. That used to be our stomping ground in another lifetime almost, it seems like, years ago. But my wife Debbie and I are glad to be out here with you to kick off this World News, Ambassador Bible College ABC weekend, that Dr. Dunkel has arranged for all of you. And I get to kick it off here this morning. I think Steve Myers will be here this afternoon. I hope he gets here by the time of the sermon, because he and I are supposed to give the split sermon. Then he'll give two presentations this afternoon. And then I think tomorrow is Dr. Dunkel and Mr. Antion and Aaron Dean will be joining you. So I told Frank Dunkel, I said, I'll be glad to come out and help, but I just want to come on Sabbath. I need my Sundays. We'll be doing some other things tomorrow. Anyway, I'm glad to be with you. I have the opportunity to be one of the resident faculty members at the Ambassador Bible College. We changed the name this year. I think you all know that. Same place, same room, same curriculum, but we went from a center to a college to kind of make this just sound more fancy. All that means they're trying to get a government certification to allow international students to come in more easily from Canada, from Africa, especially in other areas. And we've got to go through a lot of government paperwork. Homeland Security has come in and checked us out to make sure we are a real brick-and-mortar type place, not just something on the Internet. And we're still waiting for that. And if we get that, then at least you kind of appear in an official government list of approved places in America. If somebody in Kenya shows up at the embassy and says, I'd like a years visa to go to America to study at this Bible College, then they can look up on the list. Oh yeah, Ambassador Bible College has been checked out. It's bona fide. You know how things are today after 9-11. They don't let anybody in, just walking in and off the street. So that's why we changed it to Ambassador Bible College. And at this point, we're not going to be building a campus in four years and stuff like that. So that's not in the plans. Anyway, I have a chance to teach there. And it's a wonderful opportunity in addition to the other things that I do working in the media area for the church. What I teach is a class called, I teach the Book of Acts.

I teach all the fundamentals of belief, all 20 of them that we have. And then I teach a class called, World News and Prophecy, which is what I'm going to talk about today. I know Mr. Call said Paul in the Roman world, and I'm not going to do that. Anyway, we had some mix-up here. And I think this is what I originally sent over. I was going to talk about Paul in the Roman world. And then I decided to say what I originally decided to do. And that's World News and Prophecy. So I think Steve Myers will give you a little bit of Paul in the Roman world since he teaches the epistles of Paul. He and I just came off of a two-week trip to Italy here a few weeks ago to kind of a study tour that we had. And he'll take care of possibly getting into some of that here this afternoon. The class that I'm going to spend a couple hours talking with you about today, this morning, is a class that I teach. I kind of inherited this a year or two ago, and it's been evolving. It's called World News and Prophecy. Some of you will remember this is the masthead of the old publication we had for a number of years in the United Church of God, World News and Prophecy. I was the managing editor of that. We started that publication. Melvin Rhodes and I started that in 1977. I'm not saying 1977.

It was called Perspectives. A little name right down here in the bottom. We called it Perspectives. And then a year later, it became an official publication of the church. They adopted it. We put the name World News and Prophecy, Biblical Perspectives on Current Events. Published it for about 11 or 12 years, and then we suspended publication about four years ago and kind of rolled that material into the present Good News, soon to become the Beyond Today magazine. But this has been an off-and-on class at ABC over the years, and I inherited it a couple of years ago. And it's kind of been an evolving thing. And so what I'm going to do with you this morning is kind of give you the first couple of introductory lectures that I give. It's a big subject, as you can well imagine. And I'm not going to be able to cover everything, but I'll kind of give you what I try to do as what I want. I don't try. I do. Do not try. As Mr. Yoda once said, there is no try-do. Ambassador Bible students are 18, 19, 22. Occasionally we have retired adults who will be there, but the majority of the class are young adults. And I have found that young adults today are not as acutely aware of the world. Political events, world events, news events, in a sense that perhaps, say, I was. And I hate to do that, so forgive me. We old-timers do that. It's not like it was an hour a day back when I was.

But I do watch the news, and I see them go out on college campuses and interview students, and they have no clue about who people are today in the world. And I found that out. I put a picture of Ronald Reagan up on this year. I give him a little test. Every World News and Prophecy class opens with a 10-point quest or test. And I threw in Ronald Reagan's picture. Just who is he?

I've done that with Joe Biden. I do that with all world figures. And probably 60% did not know who Ronald Reagan was. I know. I know. But that's the reality. Now, I give him a 10-point quest every class. The class is every Friday morning at 10.30. And I say, look, I don't care what your score is. I'm just doing this to show you what you need to know. And if you don't know it, then we're learning as we go along.

And I put a map of France, a blank map of France or Italy or some other country. What country is this? And my purpose is to get them to be aware of the world and what's going on in the world today. I can't begin to even go into some of the prophecies of the Bible if they don't understand the current world. And so it's really very challenging. It's a lot of fun. I've got alumni coming back now and taking the class. And I make sure that some of our media staff come down, at least take the quiz. And so it's... I've got a cult following, folks. What can I say? We have fun. And then I give about a 35-minute lecture. So... In the course of the year, this year is going to be every... both semesters, once a week on Friday morning. So I'll have a chance to kind of expand it and really go deep into a lot of the topics about various subjects. You know, I teach them what has been... our received prophetic scenario. I've inherited this... I borrowed this term from another church member who kind of keeps up with the world events. And what he calls the received prophetic scenario that we have... Those of us that have been in the church for any number of years, we know what we're talking about, right? American, Great Britain, Middle East, Europe. And the approach that I have to that is... Look, I've got to basically, I think, with a young audience today, say, Why in the world do you need to pay attention to the Middle East? Why do you need to pay attention to what goes on in Europe? What does that have to do with your life in Portsmouth, Ohio? Or Batavia, Ohio, wherever you come from? Well, here's why. And there's Bible prophecy and there's history that you have to learn in order to understand that. So I take a very direct, basic approach that you need to know why America and Britain, for the last 250 to 300 years, have been the preeminent countries in the world. And we've been blessed to live in America in our lifetime and enjoy the standard of living that we all do. How many of you have a smartphone? I've got a smartphone. You know, that is big. That's a blessing. That is technology. That is high stuff. That's because one man named Abraham decided to obey God, Genesis 12. And you and I only paid $2.50 a gallon for gas rather than $7 a gallon for gas. That's a blessing. There's a reason for that. And we always need to understand that. So those are some of the things that we lay as a foundation. So what I want to do here this morning is to kind of walk you through some of the foundational ideas that I put forward to people. I usually have a couple of goals that I have with the class in World News and Prophecy. And they're basically summed up in two scriptures. I want to motivate students to better discern the times. Alright?

In Luke chapter 12, verse 56, there is a statement by Jesus Christ that comes at the end of an exchange that He had with some of the Jews, the Pharisees, who were challenging Him as they were often doing. Luke chapter 12, those of you that are online, I'm working off of the PowerPoint presentation here, and I'll make sure I clearly let you know what we're referring to here as much as I possibly can and keep that in mind. But in Luke chapter 12, beginning at verse 54, Christ was with some multitudes.

And He said, whenever you see a cloud rising out of the West, immediately you say, a shower is coming, and so it is. And when you see the south wind blow, you say there will be hot weather, and there is. And you see the clouds start rolling in from the West here.

You know that back in Cincinnati, we've had some rain, and you're going to get it too. You can look at the sky, and you know what's going on. That's what Jesus is saying to them here. But He said then, hypocrites, verse 56, you can discern the face of the sky and the earth, but how is it you cannot discern this time? All right. This was, what, 29 AD, 30 AD, 2,000 years ago. And He's saying to this group of Jews, you don't know the times in which you live.

Now, the specific point He was talking to was the fact that standing before this group of Jews was Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who had come to earth in the flesh. And they couldn't recognize this momentous historical earth-shaking event that had happened that God was walking on the earth in flesh. They didn't know who He was. They challenged Him. He said, you can look at the sky, and you know what it's going to rain, but you don't know when God is standing in front of you in the flesh. You have not been able to listen and discern that. He said, you don't know the times that you're living in.

And He goes on to, well, He goes on to talk about other things, but verse 56 is kind of where it ends right there. He said, you've got to discern this time. Now, we're 2,000 years later, and with our received prophetic scenario, we understand and feel we are living in the time of the end.

Do we understand our times? And for many of us, we've been living in the time of the end for 40, 50 years. I might talk about that a little bit more later on. How many of you have been in the church 40, 50 years? Raise my hand. We've been talking about this for a long time. One of my media personnel came up to me and said, you're going to go out and you're going to talk about all this stuff again.

And we were talking about it 45 years ago. I said, that's exactly right. And we're going to talk about it today, too. And I told him why it's still important. Christ had discerned this time. In 2015, what do you understand about the world and where the world is in the historical line of history that God is working out in a prophetic timeline? Where are we? What's going on? Why are the things happening that are happening today?

Why should we be concerned about Iran now being given virtually the green light to develop an atomic bomb? What will that mean in Peebles, Ohio? I bought a cantaloupe in Peebles, Ohio yesterday. Life is good in Peebles, Ohio. The green beans are coming on. We're going to can them and we'll have some food come February. Why do I need to worry about what is going on over there in Iran?

As we might say, some people might say, what do I need to know about it? Why do I even care? This is where people are today. And sometimes we can't in the church even be that way because we've heard it all before. We've been around before. Oh, yeah. A guy named Armstrong was talking about that way back in 1970. Way back in 1970. 1970 is when I went off to Ambassador College. And you're going to talk about that again? This was the question put to me a couple of days ago.

I said, yeah, we're going to talk about it again. He said, you had Reagan come along in America, where he came back. It was morning in America. You thought the world was coming to an end in 1970. And it didn't. Reagan came along and whipped them all. I said, yeah. Let me tell you why the world is different today than it was in 1970. And why we still need to be concerned.

This is where we are. And so, as I'm working with this class, I want to motivate students to better understand this time. And know where they are. Where we all are, as we all should. The second part of the goal that I have with this class is to motivate students to mature conduct. Mature, holy conduct. And godliness. Since, as it says in 2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 11. Let's go ahead and turn over there. 2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 11. This is a very interesting passage of Scripture. I've often turned here to explain how we should handle prophecy.

Because when you get into prophecy, people want to know, when's Christ coming back? How much time do we have left? What do you think? Is this pope going to be the false prophet? Are the armies going to surround Jerusalem in six months? And I've been around enough, I know that we've set dates, we've looked at individuals and said, this is the one. Or it could be. Or as one of my teachers at Ambassador College years ago would say, it could, in 10 to 15 years, happen.

He's still saying that. Okay? And at the end of the day, you've got to get your education, you've got to get a job, you've got to make a contribution to your retirement plan. Because life goes on and it has gone on. And you need to get your teeth fixed. Keep them up. Buy your glasses. And don't think, well, Christ is going to return, I don't need to get those glasses.

Or I don't need to get that tooth fixed. Yeah, you do. Yes, you do. You plan for the rest of your life, but then you keep your eye on the horizon and what's going on in the sky and realize, you know, Christ could come back in our lifetime. But you've made your plans for your life, your family, and your future. And so what is being said here in 2 Peter 3 and verse 11 is Peter's response to that very attitude.

Oh yeah, I've heard that before. I've heard people say, the end is near. And we said that 45 years ago. And what he said here in verse 10, 2 Peter 3, verse 10, The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat.

Both the earth and the works that are in them will be burned up. And one verse, Peter kind of sums up a whole lot of prophetic verses here. It will come, he says, in spite of scoffers, which he's already addressed, in spite of people who say, well, you know, life's going on. Green beans will come in next year. It's going to be as high as an elephant's eye on the 4th of July. Verse 11, Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you be in holy conduct and godliness?

That's why you study the Bible. That's why you study prophecy. That's why you need to discern the times. And understand what the prophecies of Scripture are, so that in a balanced way, it motivates you and I to godly conduct. To be good people, to live righteously, morally, ethically in this world, and make a life based upon God's word, God's law, God's standards, regardless of when Christ will return. Regardless of when and whatever will happen in other parts of the world.

Peter says, these things are going to happen. And your response should be, make sure your life is in order. And as parents, we teach that to our children. I'm teaching it now to my grandchildren. And I'm still living it. I haven't changed my belief in over 50 years.

So this is what I try to instill with the class and with the students to motivate them and to help them do what Jesus says we should all be doing as His disciples, and that is to discern the times in which we live and to be aware of the world. So sometimes people ask, what does all this have to do with preaching the gospel or with the gospel?

It's a good question. And I think it's one that needs to be answered and understood as well. I've read Luke 12 and verse 56, where Christ said, discern this time. In Mark chapter 13 and verse 32 is another passage, Mark 13 and verse 32. Christ said, of that day and hour, no one knows. And the context is essentially the Olivet prophecy, signs of the end of the age tribulation, coming of the Son of Man, verse 24.

Verse 32, of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. God knows that. I don't. As we'll see later, the prophet Daniel didn't know as much as he did know. He didn't know that day and that hour. And I don't today. I always kind of chuckle when people ask, how much time you think we got? I say, well, time enough to make another deposit to your 403 or your IRA. 401, 403 for me, I'm a work for a nonprofit organization. 401k or your IRA. We've got that much time. And let God know the rest, take care of the rest of it.

Verse 33, take heed, watch and pray for you do not know when the time is. Watch and pray. And watching folks, listen very carefully here, watching means more than just watching Fox News or Glenn Beck. It's a whole lot more than that. If you choose to watch Fox News, which I do, that's fine. I don't listen to Glenn Beck anymore because I don't want to pay the fee to listen to him. I'll let some of the others give me links to it for free and then if I need to, I'll listen to him.

But it's not necessarily that. It's all of this package I'm talking about, to watch, discern and understand the times in which we live. And let it then motivate us. Watch your own life. We might be tempted to stray off of God's way and sin. Watch out. That's what Jesus is talking about. Pray that you be account worthy to escape these things. That's at the heart of what he's talking about.

You don't know when the time is. Watch, verse 35, watch therefore you don't know when the master of the house is coming in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster in the morning.

Lest suddenly he find you sleeping. I say to you, watch. And so you put these scriptures, just these three that I've read to you. Luke 12, 56, Mark 13, 32, and the following verses, 2 Peter 3, 11. And there's many others I could turn to. 1 Thessalonians 5 and all.

But just take these from Christ's own words. We have enough for us to understand and answer that question. What does all this have to do with the gospel? It has a lot to do with the gospel because the gospel is the good news of salvation, of God's coming kingdom, and of an entire way of life based on the kingdom of God that we are called to live.

And we've got to know where we are as human beings in the course of history, why all that has gone before has gone the way that it did. One of the things that turns people off toward God, the Bible, and our religion, is that they look at the suffering of mankind from the very beginning and all through the ages of the war. And they say, how can there be a God who lets this happen?

And they get turned off. They adopt the fashionable idea of atheism or agnosticism, or just, you know, I don't really care about that. You've got to understand history in the context of God's Word. In the Bible, what it tells us to understand why, begin to even understand the answers to why human suffering, why evil has seemed to prevail so often so much through the years. So it has everything to do with the gospel. Everything to do with the gospel. But you have to approach it properly, responsibly, and when I say properly, I mean you interpret the Scriptures correctly.

You don't force your interpretation, your meaning. In this case, I'm talking about prophetic Scriptures. You don't try to set a date by figuring out what some obscure prophecy back in Ezekiel or Daniel means.

Or what really does the 1,250 or 1,60 or 1,75 or 1,242 and a half days mean? And I think I finally got it figured out. Somebody says, I don't say that. Listen, I was on a prophecy committee for the church and studied everybody's ideas. I've heard them all. And there's some interesting ones out there. You can find them on the Internet as much as you want.

But the reason we started World News and Prophecy in 1977, or what was then Perspectives, we were doing it out of our garage with the local church funds and trying to distribute to whoever. That was two years into the United Church of God, 19...did I say 77 again? 1997. I got my wife's mouth kind of grimaces. I know that I've said something wrong.

1997. Two years into the United Church of God. We were still rebuilding our doctrinal belief. We were still working through other issues organizationally. Prophecy was not on the radar screen. And I saw some of my members in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, Indiana, interested in prophecy. But they were often somebody else's pastor feeding on chickweed, poison grass.

And I said, wait just a minute. We can do better than that. So we got together and we started this publication because I wanted my sheep feeding on good ground.

You've got to properly handle the Scriptures. You've got to be responsible with them. And you've got to be balanced. You can't just study prophecy all the time. Prophecy by itself is not the gospel. Unfortunately, in our past, some feel that is.

Nothing irritates me more today is to get a letter or a comment from some well-meaning person over an article or program that I've done. Or an article in The Good News. Now that's what we're preaching meat! Glad to hear we're preaching meat today. That's the gospel. And I want to say, well, I'm glad you enjoyed the article or the program. But that's not the gospel of and by itself.

And I'll tell you, there's a whole lot of meat in the book of Proverbs and in the book of Romans that doesn't deal with prophecy. And there's a lot of things I want to understand about God and Jesus Christ and His life in me. That to me, in my point in life, is far more meat, if you want to use that term, than trying to figure out the last few verses of Daniel 12.

Or setting a date for Christ's return. Or preaching a fiery sermon about the beast and the false prophet. I can preach a fiery sermon about the beast and false prophet.

A few weeks ago, I saw the Pope in Rome and some people, I don't know that he's going to be the false prophet, I don't think so. But I saw the Pope in Rome. I could talk about that for an hour, but that's not meat.

So, it has everything to do with the Gospel, but you've got to keep it all in balance. Christ Himself talks about this so much in Matthew 24. The Olivet prophecy, the disciples came to Him, What will be the signs of the end of the age and of Your coming? It was the question they put to Him. And He launches off into His most famous prophetic sermon, and He talks about wars and rumors of war.

False teachers, and right on down the list, famine, pestilence, a great tribulation. He also says the Gospel will be preached into all the world as a witness, and then shall the end come.

The entire chapter of Matthew 24 and its corollaries in Luke and Mark are extremely detailed aspects of prophecy. Christ was a prophet.

So, He did talk about that, and that forms a part of the Gospel. But again, how to treat your neighbor, how to live righteously, is also there in equal proportion, and maybe in some ways even more. So, it is there. 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 1. The Apostle Paul writes about this, and I put this scripture here because we know it. It's a familiar one, but we've got Peter, we've got Christ, and now we have Paul, who wrote the majority of the New Testament. 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 1. He says, Concerning the times and seasons, you know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. Watch and be sober.

And so, Paul understood the urgency, even of the times in which he lived. And you can certainly make a very valid case that Paul felt for a period of time that Christ was going to return in his lifetime.

But then he realized that he wasn't, at the end of his life, that it wasn't going to happen, at least in his lifetime. But his teaching here endures and goes on.

I've already talked about 2 Peter 3, what man or person should you be in all of this.

Let me kind of switch gears here for a minute, and let me talk a little bit about Daniel the prophet.

I've given you these verses out of Thessalonians, 2 Peter, the Gospels, Christ statements.

Christ said, discern this time. Watch and pray. As I've been developing this class, last year it came to me, how do we then, you know, dawn on me, if there was one person in the Bible that I could point to who he kind of epitomized, and is a good example of somebody who watched and prayed, who might that be?

And especially in regard to the subject of prophecy. I thought, Daniel, Daniel the prophet.

That's always been one of my favorite books, and just in terms of a character study in the Bible, I've always enjoyed preaching about Daniel, giving a sermon on some part of his life that we have there.

It's a fascinating character in period of time. I thought, Daniel discerned his time.

Daniel prayed three times a day. You remember the account in Daniel, where when the Persians wanted to, the Persian underlings wanted to trip him up, and they set him up, and then they went to spy on him, and basically what was it that they couldn't pray to anybody but the king, and he was praying, and they caught him. Because it says, he went into his room, and as his custom was, three times a day he prayed.

And yet, on the other hand, Daniel was a man who wanted to understand the times in which he lived.

Two, as Christ said, discern this time.

Think about that. You know Daniel was a young Jewish man, along with three other friends who found themselves in Babylon, after Judah had been taken captive by the Babylonians.

They had been singled out. They went through a fast-track program to be used within the Babylonian government. Chapter 1 tells us that. And then Daniel is discovered to be a man in whom the spirit of the Most High God dwelt, and he could interpret the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar.

But I think the background and the context of what Daniel became very early in those first few chapters of the book tells us that he was a man who was trying to figure out why and what had happened.

He'd been a Jew. He lived in Jerusalem. He was of the tribe of Judah.

God's people, God's nation. And it had been destroyed. The great temple of Solomon had been leveled by Nebuchadnezzar's invading armies.

Daniel and the remaining Jews had been transported to Babylon. His homeland no longer existed.

But there's not just any homeland. It was God's chosen people. God's chosen city.

And the temple where God actually dwelt was all gone. Daniel, as a young man, let's just say he was 23. We don't know his exact age, but he was young.

His whole world had been turned upside down, and he wanted to know why. This geopolitical power called Babylon had come in. Assyria had been defeated. In the nations of his day and time, Babylon was the what?

The Soviet Union? What did some of us fear 50 years ago?

An atomic bomb from Russia, the Soviet Union. I grew up in my junior high school every day when I went to PE class. I walked by one of these yellow and black civil defense signs.

And I walked by mattresses and cases of food. Because where I changed to go out and play basketball and get into my gym shorts, was a civil defense shelter in those days. In the event that we got attacked, if we lived, duck. Remember that?

That's the period I grew up in.

The Soviet Union was the Babylon of the day. Well, in Daniel's time, it actually happened. The bomb went off.

And Jerusalem was destroyed. And now he was captive. Prisoner of war. Why, God? Did you forsaken us? What's all this mean? Daniel wanted to understand the world in which he lived. Just as much as I want to understand the world I live in today, and I think you do, to figure out where are we? What's God doing? What's going on among the nations? And so, Daniel is an example of that.

Daniel also lived in a momentous period of history where Babylon now was coming on. And as we know from the dream of Nebuchadnezzar that he interpreted. And this is a picture on screen here of the image of Daniel chapter 2 that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed, that he sought understanding from, and Daniel was the only one who could do it.

And Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, he said, here's the interpretation that God's given to me. I'm paraphrasing chapter 2. He said, you're this head of gold, Nebuchadnezzar. Your kingdom, Babylon, is this head of gold. After you will come three others. The arms and the chest of silver, which we know from the subsequent time, that was Persia. And then the torso of brass, belly and thighs of brass, Greece. And then the legs of iron and the feet of iron mixed with myre clay, Rome. Daniel gave him an outline of world history from that moment, frankly, all the way to this very moment in which you and I live today. Daniel 2 is a fascinating chapter. Plus the others there and what Daniel is actually given the inspiration to sketch out. Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream and he gave him the outline of world history that we are still living in today. From the time of Nebuchadnezzar, and as you know from Daniel chapter 2, part of the dream was a stone cut without hands strikes this image on the feet. And that understanding comes to us from later in the book of Daniel chapter 7, as well as Revelation chapters 13 and 17. And to show how Rome is still with us today. I wish I did have the time to go into that part of it. Just having come back from a visit to Italy and studying this intensively there, and then being inspired to get back into all my books on Rome that I've had on my shelf gathering dust for 30 years. I've pulled them all off and I've just kind of been immersing myself into Roman history and helping to just understand a lot of things. We are still living in this period of time in many, many ways today. But it just highlights again the scope of what Daniel was able to give to Nebuchadnezzar. So Daniel is a man, through his example, when you look through the rest of the book of Daniel.

In chapter 2, he was given the understanding to Nebuchadnezzar of the whole scope of history. In chapter 4 of Daniel, he comes back again and he's dealing now still with Nebuchadnezzar. And he gives him a very powerful witness. Daniel 4 is where Nebuchadnezzar boasts of what he has accomplished in Babylon. And he says, you know, look at what I've built. And God brings him down for seven years.

He's like a wild animal, living off the grass of the fields. And from history, you can show what we know about Nebuchadnezzar's reign. There's a gap of time that is missing in that part of the story. But Daniel witnessed, if you will, to the beast. In Revelation 12, there are two witnesses, God's two witnesses, who at the time of the end will witness to the power that has arrived, the beast power.

Daniel did that. And again, to study his example gives us a bit of an insight into all of who we are and what we should do. In Daniel 5, he's still alive at the very end of the Babylonian Empire. He's called in during the time of Belshazzar to interpret the handwriting on the wall that comes out during this great feast that he has. And they're dining off of the vessels taken from the Jerusalem Temple.

And essentially, Daniel's interpretation of the handwriting on the wall is, you've been weighed in the balance, and you and your nation and your people are found wanting. And so, again, you just look at the stories there and you see what you see is Daniel was a man who, as the years progress within the story of the book, and Daniel grows older, and Babylon gives way to Persia, and Daniel's still there.

He survives regime change. He survived the corporate takeover of Babylon Incorporated. You know how businesses get bought out and people don't always survive. New management comes in, they clear the middle management, or things change. Daniel survived a takeover, a hostile takeover, because he was a righteous man, praying three times a day. God looked out for him. He had given him insight and understanding and discernment. He could discern his time, and he could tell Nebuchadnezzar's grandson, Belchazar, that it's up, buddy. It's over. Get your resume ready. And he goes on into the time of the Persians.

And when you look through chapter 7 of Daniel, chapter 8, chapter 9, and all those episodes, and Daniel fasting and praying, wanting more understanding, chapter 7 of Daniel, verses 16 and 19, it shows him asking and wanting to know the truth of certain passages of Scripture and visions. And it's a good reference for us to recognize, you know what? How old is he by this time?

Maybe 45, 50, 55? I don't know. But after a number of years, he's still wanting to know and learn. That's what it means to discern this time. To not give it up, not walk away because Christ hasn't come, all things continue as they are. I've heard that before. The church was saying this 45 years ago. He kept wanting to know. And in another time, the understanding that he did have trouble him, but he kept the matter in his heart.

In other words, he didn't quite understand it all, couldn't figure it out, but he just put it aside. I can imagine Daniel at times just kind of walking away, saying, you know, I've had enough of the study on this topic for a while. And I think I'll go study botany. I'll go up to the Tigris River here, and to, you know, rent me a cottage up here on the Tigris River for a month, and I'll study the animals up there.

Bird watch. We're talking about bird watching this morning. I'll say what kind of birds they've got up there. I'm tired of all this. He kept it in his heart. He didn't give it all up, but it just, you know, you move on, and then you come back. In chapter 8, verse 15, he was seeking the meaning. I continue to seek the meaning of various Scriptures.

I think as I read history, I understand things in Revelation 17 and 18 better today than I did five years ago. Not that I've been, I'm not saying that I've been given any wisdom and knowledge in a revelation in the night of a vision from God. I'm not saying that at all. But, you know, in looking at all this, I realize, you know, if we do like Daniel did, when we continue to seek meaning and understanding, God will give it to us.

In chapter 9, he's wanting to understand the books, this very intricate and detailed 70 years prophecy. All right. And he said, I understood by the books, and he didn't understand at all. And God gave him this understanding. And to be honest, we're still trying to understand the 70 weeks prophecy today. I'm going to try to teach that a little bit more this year. And we have a paper on it.

We've had an understanding. I've read alternative understandings on it. But it's one of those things you kind of just may trouble you. Keep it in your heart. And in time, God lets things be known. But you look at the example of Daniel over a number of years. He never stopped learning. He always sought to understand the prophecies, the time, the setting, and all that was before him.

He was given understanding about the Greece and Persia of the day. And the longest prophecy in Daniel 11, he was able to understand. And when you come down to chapter 12, finally, at the end of his life, he was told by God, verse 4 of Daniel 12, God says, He wanted to know what will be the end of these things in verse 8. And God basically said, it's all sealed till the time of the end. Go your way, Daniel. Time's up. You'll not know it all. And I read that and I realize, you know, I'll be 64 here in a few days. I'm probably not going to know it all.

And it could very likely happen that it's not going to return what I'm standing and seeing. That I could very well, will likely join the group that are going to be the first coming up out of the graves at 1 Thessalonians 4.

And I can live with that. But it doesn't change my way of life, what I thought, what I've understood, what I believe, and how I live my life today. How about you? That's why I like to use the example of Daniel when it comes to this matter of understanding our times. So, we'll take a break there. It's 10 minutes till 11, and I think we're set to start again at 11 and go till noon. So I want to give you about a 10-minute break, and then I'll pick this up. And I've just given you the first class of the Ambassador Bible College, at least in my class, on World News and Prophecy. So, we'll come back, and in 10 minutes, we'll jump ahead one week in terms of my timeline and talk some more. So, take a break here for a few minutes.