From Daniel chapter 7, we'll
read two verses, 13 and 14. In my vision at night I looked
and there before me was one like a son of man coming with the
clouds of heaven. He approached the ancient of
days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory,
and sovereign power. All peoples, nations, and men
of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting
dominion and will not pass away. And his kingdom is one that will
never be destroyed. Now, the book of Daniel was written
by the prophet Daniel. It contains 12 chapters. The
first part of it is mostly a historical narrative. He was among four
Jews that we are aware of who served as special advisors to
Nebuchadnezzar and then to Darius the Mede, and I guess Belshazzar
in between there. But you remember Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego. They were companions of his,
and when they were taken into captivity, they were made to
be among the special advisors to the king. The first six chapters
is the narrative of that. The last six are what is commonly
classified as apocalyptic literature. That's what the Book of Revelation
is. In fact, that's why they call it apocalyptic literature.
The people, when they think of the apocalypse now, they're always
thinking of destruction. You know, they'll say, oh, that
was a crisis of apocalyptic proportions. And what they don't understand,
and I understand why they don't understand, they don't realize
that apocalyptic literature is more about salvation than it
is judgment. even if more of its verses and
more of its symbols pertain to judgment. But the word Apocalypse
actually comes from the first words of the book of Revelation,
which is Apocalypse Jesu Christu, the revelation of Jesus Christ. And that's all that Apocalypse
or apocalyptic means. The first part of it means from,
and the other one is essentially the cover or lid So you could
call it the discovery. It's to take the cover off of
that which is hidden, that it might be known. Now, what is
revealed in the book of Revelation, actually, you'll find that as
we look at what happens here in Daniel 7, and really through
the remainder of them, and these visions Daniel had, they're all
talking about the same thing, and use even some of the same
imagery to get the point across. But in both of these books, the
thing that is hidden is things that are going to happen in the
future. And then most importantly, things
that are already happening in that world that we cannot see
right now. See, we live by faith, not sight. And the reason it's not by sight
is we're trusting in things that are going on in a world, well, in a world that you can't
see. A world where God exists, or
a universe, or a reality where God exists, where Christ is,
wherever Christ went when He ascended on high. And it's called
heaven, but actually the word heaven, in our English, it just
means the heaved up places. You know, they always think,
hey, it's up there. Well, you know, I don't know if it's up
there, out there, A different dimension? I don't know. But
that's where our hope is. But we can't see it. And so in
apocalyptic literature, it's as though the veil that keeps
us from seeing what's going on is drawn back that we might understand
what is happening out of sight. So this is apocalyptic literature. It's symbolic. It's symbolic
because it tells us about things for which there is no natural
description. It describes God, but God's the
invisible God. So how are you going to describe
him? So it has to set him forth in symbols that we do understand
that we might gain a little bit of understanding about that one
for whom it's impossible to gain a complete understanding. Now
the apocalyptic portions of scriptures are taken up with the very same
theme as the rest of the Bible, and that is the salvation of
God's people through the triumph of Jesus Christ. That's what
it's about. That's the story. All else is scenery. Imagine
that history as we know it, and the scriptures as it describes
history, imagine it as a play. What's the story? The story is
the salvation of God's elect by Jesus Christ and His victory. That's why the Apostle said to
Timothy that the Holy Scriptures are able to make you wise unto
salvation, because that's what they're about. Now, these visions or dreams,
they describe the general course of a specific portion of history,
though they do it in symbolic form, or the portion of history
they reveal also gives us some insight as to how things always
are. Now, one of the reasons that
people get caught up in things like the Book of Revelation and
Daniel and some things in Ezekiel is they think that the things
that are spoken of in these visions are one-time occurrences. Well,
there may be one spectacular fulfillment of them which can
be anchored in history, yet they describe things or the kind of
things that are going on all along. Because you see, the world
never changes. Well, it never changes in the
fact that it's always undergoing change. Maybe that's the way
we ought to put it. There's always upheaval going on. There's always
kingdoms rising and falling and always wars going on and always
the natural things of life. It's regrettable that most people
miss the best blessings of these apocalyptic scriptures because
they're more interested in predicting what will happen on earth than
they are in learning about what God has already done and is presently
doing in his kingdom. So their mind is occupied with
trying to identify specific events. Now some can be identified in
here, but As I say, that's not the story, that's the scenery. People are, and you know this,
I mean even though we don't make a big issue of it here, you know
if you watch any religious TV or anything like that, you know
that people are occupied with who is the Antichrist? Someone
who's mentioned, I believe it's four times in all the scriptures,
and all of them by one author, Most of the time it's in the
book of 1 John, and then I think there's one mention in 2 John.
And you know what John tells us about the Antichrist? There
ain't one. There's many. Antichrist is not
someone we're looking for in the future, and we're trying
to figure out, you know, is this guy Antichrist? Add up the numbers
of his name, see if it works, you know, all this kind of stuff.
No, Antichrist comes out of the churches, the spirit of Antichrist. works in those who would take
the gospel of Christ and make it about something other than
Christ. That's what it is to be anti-Christ.
And they come in the church and they act like they believe the
gospel that's being preached and they act like they love Christ,
but in due time it is revealed who they are from and they go
out and they preach another gospel, a different message, a different
Christ. So don't look for him to be showing
up in the White House or over there in Israel, that's not where
he is. This morning, the spirit of Antichrist is occupying most,
I don't think I'm wrong in saying this, he's occupying most of
the Christian pulpits. And by that I mean the ones that
call themselves Christian. Those that focus on, Anything other than Jesus Christ,
they are of the Spirit of Antichrist. Those who would put any particle
of our salvation anywhere other than in the grace of God revealed
in Jesus Christ, they are of the Spirit of Antichrist. So we're not looking to identify
people. The experience of the apostles
teaches us that the purpose of prophetic scripture, whether
it's such as when our Lord would give descriptions of what was
going to happen or some of these visions and things like that,
the purpose of them was not so that we could read them and predict
what's gonna happen next week or 100 years from now. That's
not what it was for. It was designed so that when
these things came to pass, we could say, oh, that's what he
was talking about. Now, these things have come to
pass and those that have not been taught from the scriptures
don't know what's going on. They don't know how to give significance
to the events of the world. But we who have been given grace
to understand the scriptures, We can put the proper significance
on what's happening because the scriptures have taught
us what's going on. Now, the two verses that we read,
they are a visionary description of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ, the Son of Man and the Son of God, has triumphed. And he is crowned with glory
and honor and majesty. And he has been accepted into
the presence of the eternal God. And he rules all things as king
of an everlasting dominion and an indestructible kingdom. Now that's what those two verses
mean. The two verses we read. Whenever we read or study the
scriptures, if we miss that point, And what that, we are missing
the message. In some way or another, all the
scriptures point to this. Jesus Christ, Son of Man and
Son of God has triumphed. And as the victor, he is given
glory and honor, power, authority, and he's been given a kingdom
and a dominion that shall never end. and the salvation of God's elect
is all tied up in that. Now, this chapter begins with
Daniel telling us when he got this vision. In the first year
of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream. Now, you
remember Nebuchadnezzar. That was the first king. He was
the one who was king when the southern part of Israel was taken
into what is called the Babylonian captivity. And that's when Daniel,
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and all of them were taken up
there and they you know those four men were made advisors to
Nebuchadnezzar. And it was Daniel who told Nebuchadnezzar
about how he was going to, for seven years, he was going to
live like a beast, and eat grass, and his hands, the fingernails
on his hand would grow like claws, and his hair would be like feathers,
and sure enough that came to pass. We find that in chapter
four. And now, and this Daniel, he is the one who spoke to this
Belshazzar. Now this, we read in chapter
five, the story of Daniel talking to Belshazzar, which shows you
that these visions that Daniel had were before what happens
in chapter 5. See, Belshazzar came after Nebuchadnezzar. He was Nebuchadnezzar's son or
grandson, they're not sure. But he was the king after Nebuchadnezzar. And he was wicked, he was useless.
He saw his position as king only as a means to live a lavish and
debauched life. Sound familiar? Politicians have
been doing that for a long time, haven't they? And that's what
he was doing. And it was when this Belshazzar
gave a feast, he was giving a feast, and he was so full of himself
and so much disregard for God, he had them bring the vessels
that had been taken out of the temple of God, had them bring
them to his drunken feast, and they started drinking wine and
just having a debauched time using the vessels of the Lord.
And that's when the fingers of a man's hand appear and wrote
on the wall, and it's Aramaic and he didn't
know what it was. And someone said, I believe it
was his wife, said, there's one of the Jews, he can tell you.
And they went and got Daniel. And Daniel came in to him and
he really scolded Belshazzar. And he said, here's what the
message means. numbered the days of your reign
and brought it to an end. Tekel, you have been weighed
on the scales and found wanting. Perez, which is the singular
of Parson, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.
Now Belshazzar's reign was so corrupt and useless that it only
lasted two years. And this vision we read of in
Daniel 7 came to him first year of Belshazzar's reign. Now he
gets a vision of the world it says, verse 2, in my vision at
night I looked and there before me were the four winds of heaven
churning up the great sea. Four beasts each different from
the other came up out of the sea. Now we're not going to spend
a lot of time on this because like I said this is the scenery
this isn't the story. But what he's saying is these
four winds, and when they talked about the four winds, they meant
north, south, east, and west. But wind coming from every direction.
They were churning up the great sea. Now, from Revelation 17,
verse five, we get what is probably a good description of what this
sea is, because there, the angel told John, he said, the waters
you saw, the sea that you saw, where the prostitute sits, are
peoples, multitudes, nations, and languages. And what does
it say here? It says the wind was churning
up the great sea. And that's a pretty good description
of our world all the time. It's always chaos. It's always wars and threats
of wars. It's always this one rising up and then that
one falling down and then just a mess. Dangerous. Unpredictable. And here's the thing, I believe
that the four winds represent God. We read that The spirit of God, and remember
in both of the primary biblical languages, wind, breath, and
spirit are all the same word. And in creation it says the spirit,
the wind, hovered over the deep. Now, whatever's going on in the world,
and not everybody believes this, but I take great comfort in whatever's
going on, it's God that's doing it. God that's making it happen. When we see, particularly when
we see upheaval, like a violent sea, we should realize it's our
Lord that's stirring them up. Now out of this comes four beasts, and these
four beasts represent four empires that would come and go between
the time of the vision and the time of Messiah, the Christ.
Now we know basically who these four empires were, because we're
looking at it backwards. The first one was the Empire
of Babylon. The second one was the Medo-Persian
Empire, which toppled Babylon and took over basically the same
area. And then Alexander the Greek
Alexander the Great came up and he established a Greek empire,
that was the third beast. And the fourth was Rome. Now
all these beasts look terrifying, they look odd, but the fourth
was the worst. And out of the fourth it said
came ten horns. And these most often in apocalyptic
literature They may represent various kings. They may just
represent great amount of power. But there was 10 horns and then
another horn rose up and it began to speak boastfully and it displaced
three of the horns. Now here's the thing. We don't
know what all the details of this mean. I don't even know
enough history to know what's this, you know, 11th horn that
came up and then destroyed three of them. I don't know. Your point
doesn't matter. Here's what we learn. these four
beasts. They rise up and they fall down
and another one comes in its place. And every one that rises
up does so in pride and ferocity and they think they are somebody
and they think that their kingdom will last forever. But it doesn't. It doesn't. Another one comes. And then another
one. And then another one. And it's
been doing that since the world began, and it'll be doing that
until the world ends. But what many have a hard time
with is the realization everyone who rises up in power was put
there by God and they stay there as long as God wants them to
and then He takes them out. That's what Daniel told Belshazzar.
He said Nebuchadnezzar was full of pride and thought he's the
one that built Babylon. And God says let me show you
who put you on the throne, who can take you out and who can
put you back on again. And that humbled Nebuchadnezzar. And Daniel went on to Belshazzar
and he said, but you are not humbled. You do not realize that
God exalts the one he wants to exalt. And he takes him out when
he wants to. Now I didn't come to this scripture
because of the things going on in our nation right now. I actually
came to it because I saw somebody reading those two verses we read
at the beginning, I saw them reading it. And so I went to
look for it because I thought I'd like to preach on that, just
a wonderful description of Christ, you know. And I read the whole
chapter. But you think about what's been
going on in our nation. Look at the uproar. Look at the
upheaval. Things been going on, and I began
to notice this 20 years ago, or about that time, when we started,
you know, after 9-11, when we started getting involved over
there in the Mideast. And there was things we wanted
to accomplish. And for all of our power, as the most powerful
country in the world, we couldn't get it done. And one president served for
eight years, and then another president with a completely different
set of values, he's in for eight years. And then in 2016, a man became
president to the shock of almost the entire world. There were only a handful of
people that believed Donald Trump would ever be president. I remember
I even thought he's just doing it for fun. He doesn't have any
intention of being president. Well, I don't know what his intention
was, but it was God's intention that he be president, even though
there were very powerful worldly forces standing in opposition
to it. And for the entirety of his life,
presidency. They tried to take him out. And
I'm not here saying who's good and who's bad. I'm just saying
this is what that very powerful people tried to take him out.
And for all their efforts they couldn't do it. And then a little
less than a year ago God sent a virus. Something so small you
and I can't see it without some very special equipment. And with
a virus He took him down. And not all the efforts of those
who wanted him to be president for four more years. And believe
me, there was a lot of people. I mean, it was a very close election. A lot of money, a lot of energy.
They couldn't get it done. And here's the thing. When he
became president, and notice this, so full of pride, throughout
his presidency, so self-aggrandizing, And after the election, he was
so full of himself he couldn't believe that he lost. Now, I'm
not saying, I don't know who won or lost if he actually got,
you know, and we're probably never going to know. The point
I'm making is he just thought so much of himself he didn't
think there was any way he wouldn't be president again. And the worst of it all is many
who profess to be Christians, had pointed to him as God's man. Well, that's the one God put
in there, but he didn't, you know, it's not like he's accomplishing
the will of God any more or less than the men who came before
him or would come after him. He didn't realize he was just
a chess piece and a pawn at that. And God put him in, moved him
around, and took him out. And there's not a thing that
any of us could have done to stop it. And whether he won by
an honest vote or a dishonest vote doesn't matter. It's God
put him in, God took him out. But you can already tell the
next administration has not learned their lesson. And just like Belshazzar,
they think it's all about them. And you know something? We start thinking that, too. How many people from the Democratic
Party just fell apart when Trump won? They thought it was the
end of the world. It wasn't. And now he's out. And the other side of the political
script, oh, what are we going to do? Here's what we need to do as
believers. Okay. Let's watch. Let's see what God
does. Because we know this. The world
is in upheaval. And it's God that's causing the
upheaval. And it brings about his purpose. Now, all these beasts were frightening.
But the fourth seems most frightening in its appearance and violence.
We know that it's Rome, but it's not clear what all those tin
horns and stuff are. But even if we were able to identify
specific individuals or movements that these things apply to, it wouldn't help us any. Because
I said, that's not the story, that's the scenery. Let's begin
the story. Verse 9, as I looked. I looked that up in Hebrew just
because I know that translations all have some interpretation
to them. And sometimes interpretation can change the perspective at
which you look at. Strictly speaking, it says, I
looked until. I looked until, and then he describes
what happened. And the thing I noticed here,
or that I picked up from it, is what Daniel is saying. I saw
the four beasts. And then that last one, oh, iron
teeth and claws, vicious and ten horns. And here, this really
boastful one comes up and displaces three of them. And I was listening
to all his boastful words, and I, my attention was taken up
with that. That's what I'm looking at. That's
what I see. Until. Now, it wasn't until this next
came to pass it was when it was finished and you'll see why. And he says, and I looked, or
I watched, I listened to this boastful horn until thrones were
set in place. Here a new scene opens up. It
seems to me, at least as I visualize it in my head, here's this vision
here. It's like, as I said, like if you're watching a play and
here's the stage and things are going on over it, and then another
curtain opens over here and another story is being told. The thing
is, this story is going on at the same time this story is going
on. But this story, we see it all
the time. It's only at times like this
we're privileged to find out what's going on in this other,
behind this other curtain. The problem is we're fixed on
this so much, we don't see what's happening over here. We don't
see the curtain rise. We're so taken up with beasts
and boastful horns. We're not paying attention to
what the real story is. And I say this by my own experience. Oh, how easy it is to get wrapped
up in the beasts and forget about the one who sends them and takes
them out. To get all worried about iron
teeth and boastful horns and be mesmerized by them, forgetting
that something of far greater and lasting importance has been
going on all along. Thrones were set in place. We
normally think of one throne for one king, but this would
simply mean official chairs. And I believe it's plural because
you look over here and it says near the end of verse 10, and
the court was seated. So thrones are set up, official
places of authority are put in place. And then it's written this, and
the ancient of days took his seat. Now you'll notice over
here, chaos, sea, upheaval, ugly, horrifying beasts. Over here,
order, majestic things, but nothing
horrific. Over here, the beasts clawing
after power. Over here, the ancient of days
who already holds all power. Over here, people trying to accomplish
things. Over on this side, he. who holds everyone and every
event in his hand. He takes his seat. Now this is a visionary representation
of God. God can't be seen. It's going
to give us a description as though he could be seen, but Daniel
saw a vision. He didn't see God. Book of John
says no man has seen God at any time. So he didn't actually see
God, he just saw a visionary symbolic representation of him.
So the Ancient of Days comes in, deliberate, not afraid, not
upset, not bobbing up and down in this heaving ocean. And he just comes in and takes
his seat, a place of authority, a place of being settled and
in control. And it said his clothing was
as white as snow. Now, the body is where we think
of people taking action, you know. Your arms and your legs,
you know. Legs take you places, your arms
do things and all. And his clothes, therefore, being
white like they were, white as snow, represents that this ancient
of days, is one whose works are altogether righteous, pure, and
just. Now those beasts, almost nothing
that they do is righteous, pure, and just. This one, everything
is. Everything. Our God has never done anything
wrong. The way he has revealed righteousness
and justice to us, is what he is. People get mad at God as though he's answerable to
them. I remember here some time ago when a brother and sister
in a town between here and Sioux City, they were both killed.
It was awful. I mean, it was tragic. High schoolers. And I ran into someone here in
town that knew them and knew the family. spitting nails at
God. I thought that was wrong. God has never done anything wrong.
And he goes on to say the hair of his head was white like wool. Now it's called in the Ancient
of Days and that's not a reference to his eternity. It's just saying
it represented God as an old person. Actually the visualizations
most people would make of God now, you know, white haired.
But it's not old in the sense of weak and feeble, it's old
in the sense of wise and established. All these beasts, they come into
their kingdoms as young men. Wild men without wisdom, without
restraint, without righteousness, without decency. They took their
kingdoms for no other reason that they wanted them and they
thought they had a right to them. They thought they had a right
to anything they could take by force. But God bears himself with the
wisdom that you associate with years. And it says his head, the hair
of his head was white like wool. The head is where the will, the
desires, the purpose all come from. And with God, With this
Ancient of Days, his head is represented as covered in this
righteousness and justice. So not only has he never done
anything wrong, there is nothing within the nature of God that
would move him to do what is anything but righteous, pure,
and just. His throne was flaming with fire.
Fire is a picture of a couple of things. He says fire speaks
of purity. Our word purity comes from the
Greek word for fire. We also have another word in
English that comes from the Greek word for fire, and that's the
word pyre. You have a funeral pyre. And you take that word
and pronounce it like Greeks do, it comes out pur, and eventually
became pure, because fire purifies things. And so it's speaking
here of the purity of the throne, that every decree from God and
every judgment of God is true and righteous altogether. And his wheels were all ablaze. Now, I don't know if any other
thrones had wheels. I never heard of a throne with
wheels on it. Why would they have wheels on this? Well, again,
it's a symbolic thing. And what I picked up from this
was that unlike a chair-type throne, This one's, shall we
say, portable. It's not confined to one spot.
You see, everyone was of the opinion back then, God, the various
gods, they were God over a certain territory. There was the God
of Israel, and those outside of Israel thought he was confined
to Israel. And then they had their gods in Babylon, they had
their gods over here, and their throne was in a spot and it didn't
go anywhere from there. Not this throne. It goes everywhere. And everywhere it goes, it goes
in justice, it goes in power, it goes in righteous authority. Now you see the difference between
these two scenes? Frightening, horrifying, ugly
beasts. Glorious. Righteous. Throne. Thousands and thousands
attended Him. Excuse me, a river of fire was
flowing, coming out from before Him. In the book of Revelation,
we see that from the throne of God comes a river, a pure river
of life. But that's the throne of grace.
This throne is the throne of justice. And from God's throne
of justice comes a river of pure and righteous justice and condemnation
of the wicked. Thousands upon thousands attended
him, 10,000 times 10,000. Once again, we find this number
in the book of Revelation, numbering the angels around the throne,
singing the praises of God under the in the context of the gospel,
but here it's thousands and thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand
attending God as he dishes out justice. The court was seated
and the books were opened. Now, this is much more solemn than
we might think. This scene here is not a scene
of if. It is not a scene where those
charged with a crime are brought in to determine whether or not
they are guilty. This is a court scene in which
the verdict is known and recorded. They sit. There's no if here. The books are open and these
books are the record of the deeds of men. How solemn is the thought
that all the deeds of men are recorded. God's court is not
a place of contest to determine whether the prosecution or the
defense has the better lawyer. The defendants there will not
be given an opportunity to bring forth any contradictory testimony.
The books are not the testimony of men but of God. Right now
these books are closed. We don't know what's in them.
I don't know what's written about you. You don't know what's written
about me. I'm glad. I'm glad you don't
know me like I know me. I'm certainly glad you don't
know me like God knows me. And the reverse is true. But the
day is coming when the books are opened. Men think because
those books are closed now and they are able to hide their wickedness
from men, they think that it will forever be hidden. But the
day is coming when the books will be opened. will be found
out. The books will be opened and
there will be your record written, unchangeable, and irrefutable. Verse 11, then I continued to
watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking. That's verse 11. What's he saying?
All this is going on over here, and Daniel's still taken up with
his boastful horn. Oh, what it takes to get our
eyes off of this world and on to the next. But something did. Something got Daniel's attention. I kept looking until the beast
was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire.
And here's the sad reality of it, brethren. We're going to
have our eyes on this world. We can't help ourselves. We're
going to be watching it until God gets rid of it, or we leave
it. One or the other. We cannot change
the fact that our natural connection is to this world. But then verse 13, in my vision
at night I looked, and there before me was one like the Son
of Man. That's the only thing that could
get his eyes and his ears off of that boastful horn on the
fourth beast. The Son of Man, this is our Lord
Jesus Christ. We might not know who all the
other symbols are talking about, but we know who this one is.
He is the Son of Man. He called himself the Son of
Man. This phrase, Son of Man, means the representative man,
the perfect man, the man of all men. He was all that men were
supposed to be and never were. He it was who came into this
world as a babe, not born of Adam, but born of God, a special
and miraculous creation. He's God manifest in the human
flesh, but he lived his life as a human under all the obligations
of humanity and with none of the privileges of deity. And
in that position, he lived perfectly. And then he suffered as a substitute
for us who didn't do anything remotely perfect. And he was
victorious, and he raised from the dead, and he ascended on
high, and here he appears in the court of God. And the books
are open. And beast after beast And all
the followers of those beasts have been brought in and they've
been condemned and destroyed. But he says here, one like the
son of man, he was before me, not meaning
before in time, he was right in front of me. God on the judgment throne. You
know, you can see this huge hall. He's down there. You don't want
to approach him. But now comes God in human flesh,
the Son of Man, and he's right here. Right here. He is before you
and me in his humanity. Oh, listen to me. We do not worship
a God who doesn't know what it's like to be us. You think on that a minute. We
don't worship a God who doesn't know what it's like to be us.
Because he became one of us. And he remains a human being. He came before us. He revealed
himself to us. And he came with the clouds of
heaven indicating his majesty and glory. Our Lord, when he
left his apostles and ascended on high, he was in a cloud. And
when he showed up in glory, he was still with the cloud. Clouds
are symbols of divine majesty and glory. He approached the Ancient of
Days. He wasn't summoned there. He was not hauled before God. But standing tall, with no fear, this son of man approached the
Ancient of Days. He was led into his presence.
That is, he was given permission. Do you remember in the Book of
Revelation, the one on the throne held a scroll in his hand with
writing on the front and the back, and there were seven seals
on it? And John wept because there was
no one found worthy to take that scroll from the hand of the one
on the throne and loose the seals and bring to pass the things
that are in there. And the angel said, don't weep, John. The line
of the tribe of Judah has prevailed and he is worthy to take the
scroll and to loose its seals. And that's exactly what he did.
He approached God and was given permission to come in. And look
here, he was given authority, glory, and sovereign power. It irritates me what goes on
in the world. It shames me that sometimes it
scares me, because it shouldn't ever scare me. It irritates me
that men are liars, that they're unjust, that they're power hungry
and that a good many of them think they have the right to
rule my life. And I suppose that's a legitimate
way to feel. But look here, we should never
be afraid. Our Lord stood before Pilate
and Pilate said, don't you realize I have the right to crucify you
or let you go? And the Lord said, you wouldn't have any authority
unless God gave it to you. You can't do anything to me that
God doesn't allow. And neither can any of these people. Oh,
they're going to restrict our liberties. That's concerning,
not frightening, because one thing they'll never be able to
do is bind our conscience to where we can't worship God. They
can make it difficult, but they cannot keep us from doing it. Our Savior, he says, all authority
in heaven and earth has been given to me. He's got the authority. He's got the glory. He's got
sovereign, unstoppable. Irresistible power. I think that's good news. I like
it. My Lord, my Savior, He's in control. Now, all peoples, nations, and
men of every language worshiped Him. All these beasts rising
up, they often rose up against the Lord Jehovah and against
his Christ and they said we'll break his bands. We're not going
to submit to this man. We'll not have this man rule
over us. Yes, you will. Yes, you will. They crucified
him. It didn't keep him from being
the king. The thief noticed that. There he is. Our Lord is hanging
on a cross, dying. And by the grace of God, one
thief was given grace and he said, when you come into your
kingdom, remember me. He's a king And people from all over the
world they tried to stop the spread of his gospel his kingdom
didn't didn't work His dominions an everlasting dominion His kingdom is one that will
never be destroyed All the beasts of the world they
rise up and then they're put down and another beast comes
And then another and then another I don't know how long the world
will go on, but there will be a time when the USA exists only
in history books. But this kingdom, there is no
end. It's never history. It is an
everlasting present. And even though all we see is
a heaving sea, Even as the sea heaves up and down, and monstrous
things gain power and spread their wickedness everywhere. God's throne is established. He sits upon it, and every wicked
person will be brought before Him, and the books will be opened.
They'll be dealt with. And our Savior, the Son of Man,
is at His right hand. And he's the king of our kingdom. I love the USA, but my hope's
not here. My citizenship is in heaven.
May God bless his word.