Friends, would you please stand with me as we read the Lord's Word. Again, we're looking at Daniel chapter 7, verses 15 through 28. If you would stand with me, we'll go ahead and read that again. This is the Lord's Word. As for me, Daniel, my spirit was distressed within me, and the visions in my mind kept alarming me. I approached one of those who were standing by and began asking him the exact meaning of all this. So he told me and made known to me the interpretation of these things. These great beasts, which are four in number, are four kings who will arise from the earth. But the saints of the highest one will receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever for all ages to come. Then I desired to know the exact meaning of the fourth beast, which was different from all the other beasts, exceedingly dreadful, with its teeth of iron and its claws of bronze and which devoured, crushed, and trampled down the remainder with its feet. And the meaning of the 10 horns that were on its head, and the other horn which came up, and before which three of them fell, namely, that horn which had eyes and a mouth uttering great boasts, and which was larger in appearance than its associates, I kept looking at that, and that horn was waging war with the saints and overpowering them. Until the ancient of days came, and judgment was passed in favor of the saints of the highest one, and the time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom. Thus he said, the fourth beast will be a fourth kingdom on the earth, which will be different from all other kingdoms, and will devour the whole earth and tread it down and crush it. As for the 10 horns, out of this kingdom, 10 kings will arise, and another will arise after them. And he will be different from the previous ones. and will subdue three kings. He will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One, and he will intend to make alterations in times and in law, and they will be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time. But the court will sit for judgment, and his dominion will be taken away, annihilated, and destroyed forever. Then the sovereignty, the dominion, and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the Highest One, His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all the dominions will serve and obey him. At this point, the revelation ended. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts were greatly alarming me, and my face grew pale, but I kept the matter to myself. This is the Lord's word. Would you please be seated, friends? Again, our Lord, we thank you for your word and pray that your blessing be upon us as this Apocalyptic literature is mysterious. Father, it doesn't tell us specifically who this person is, where he lives, what he looks like. Doesn't tell us his name. And yet you have told us here what we are to know. And these things are to be for our encouragement. So I ask Lord that your people will be encouraged. that we will be sober-minded, that we will not be swayed or duped by the world in which we live, and that we would remember, Lord, all that you have done, remembering that you are our God, you are our refuge and our rock, and that you keep us safe under your wings. We ask, Lord, that you would now bless us. Bless the word going forward. Bless your kingdom. We ask humbly in Christ's name. Amen. So we left off last week only after verse 18. And I want to remind you of just a couple of things briefly as we set into looking at verses 19 and following. The first is that we are engaged in a warfare. The church is in a battle. I know our experience has been, well, I grew up in the United States. I went to VBS every summer. I did all of these things. And so I've never really experienced hardship. I promise you. That's going to change. We're in a warfare. Paul would say it. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. And the warfare, as we mentioned last week, is not just a spiritual privatized warfare. I mean, we are all struggling with our flesh. We struggle with sin. We struggle with these satanic attacks. But the church itself, the church throughout the nations, is struggling at the face of those who would oppose the Lord and oppose his people. As we've been moving through Daniel 7, remember Daniel is given this vision during the first year of Belshazzar. Again, Belshazzar was killed off in chapter 5 by the invasion of the Medes and Persians in 539 BC. Israel has been in exile in Babylon now for many decades. God's people were living in the midst of a deplorable state, a very pagan environment, not unlike the Lord's people today. Some governments are more pagan than others. All governments are pagan. But some are worse than others. And we see this as we distance ourselves from the light of the scriptures, we distance ourselves from the Lord's revelation of himself, we become more and more pagan. Just imagine, I'm turning from light and I'm running towards darkness. How well do you walk around in the dark? You don't, and so we are turning in this way. So our situation in many ways does parallel the Israelites who are in exile in Babylon. Christians are in a foreign land, and it is not what we were raised with necessarily. It's certainly not what the Christian ought to esteem, what we see being fed to us day in and day out by our government. Belshazzar himself was bad. He was an arrogant and blasphemous king. condescending to Daniel, to God's people, and it is very difficult living in that kind of environment. And I want to remind you that this apocalyptic prophecy, and I think this is a very seminal thought, and I hope you will hold on to this. One commentator said, the apocalyptic prophet sees these dreams or visions and records them for his audience, which is often suffering persecution and in need of encouragement. And comparing the two types of prophecy, typical prophecy versus apocalyptic prophecy, he says both types of prophecy address the problem of evil, but regular prophecy addresses evil in God's people from which they need to repent. Whereas in apocalyptic prophecy, the evil is around God's people and they need to endure it until God acts to destroy it. So Daniel, by God's providence, God has given this vision to Daniel. Daniel is writing. And those first hearers, those Jews who would have been in exile hearing this, they would see this, and they should ultimately be encouraged. Why? Because the Lord wins. Because he wins. But it's not a prophecy that's just, woo-hoo, this is great. Hey, this is fluffy, like a giant, Jewish pep rally. Hey, we win. He's very, very realistic about the sufferings that they are going through and will continue to go through. And so as he's, he's given this dream, um, while upon his bed and its purpose is not to simply, it's not to stupefy us to get us speculating in the dividing the church, rather it is given in order to inform the Lord's people and to comfort us in the midst of warfare. The hardships we are facing, while difficult, we should not be overwhelmed with them. Why don't we understand and why don't we read, for instance, the Book of Revelation? We touched on that briefly last week, but it's the idea that we can't actually understand this. And I've really been challenged myself studying these passages and even reading reading in the book of Revelation like we did this morning, and you see all of this imagery, well, what are we supposed to get from these things? If you listen to some people, you know, you're supposed to connect all the dots. You're supposed to find a one-to-one parallel with everything going on. It's very helpful to remember that this is apocalyptic literature, and it's metaphor. It's rich with pictures. And so read it, if I can say it this way, read it with blurry eyes so that you see what's actually being said. For instance, I was reading from Revelation 17, and it talks about this beautiful woman with all her adulteries. I go, now wait a second. Immoral women are not beautiful. They're dangerous, you should stay away from them. That's what strikes you, doesn't it? You read it and you hear about how beautiful she's depicted. And that's why the sin is always appears beautiful. It appears beautiful, but it's not. And so we have to remember that this apocalyptic literature is given to us and it's given to us in pictures. And we have to remember this, that is, as Daniel is giving us this thing, as we looked at last week, The first point he pointed out in verses 15 through 18 is simply this, life in the world will be difficult, but then we will win. Life for the Christian in this world is difficult, but then we win. That's the extent that we need to go to to understand what awaits us as Christians. What do you need to know? Do you need to know who the man of lawlessness is by name? You don't. What do you need to know? That when you leave church today and you go back into the workforce tomorrow, expect to have hardship. Expect it. Expect that the upcoming election is going to be difficult. Expect that there are going to be jabs taken at the Christian, at the church, as being uninformed, uneducated. religiously preoccupied, they're going to say all these sorts of things about us. Don't be shocked and don't be disheartened by it. This is what we can expect. Life in the world is difficult for the Christian, but then we will win. That's where we left off last week. That's a very brief overview of where we were. And as we continue now, we want to continue looking at this fourth beast, the kingdom under which we now reside. Let me say that again. people ask, are we in the end times? And the answer is yes, we are in the, you don't have to worry about it because we're there. They're not coming. We're there. And we've been there since the new Testament, since the time, of Christ's crucifixion, the time of his ascension. We have been in the last days. Paul says this very thing. So are we in the last days? Yes, we are in the last days. Here, Daniel now wants to know, and we're told, then I desire to know the exact meaning of the fourth beast. Notice that this beast is described for us twice in this chapter. Notice that The kings of one through three, the Babylonians, the Medes, and the Persians, and the Greeks, Daniel's not saying, well, tell me about the third kingdom. Tell me about the second beast. He says, what about this fourth beast? Notice that the chapter, it doesn't focus now on the first three kingdoms. It doesn't focus on Babylon. It doesn't focus on the Medes and Persians. It doesn't focus on Greece. It's focusing on what I believe is the Roman Empire, this fourth beast. Um, then he says, I desired to know the exact meaning of the fourth beast. Um, it's, it's one kingdom gives way to another kingdom. One difficult kingdom gives way to another difficult kingdom. And now Daniel wants to know specifically about this fourth beast. And he starts by giving first a description. Then he describes the demeanor and then he describes the, destructive nature. So what he does is he first of all, he describes what he has seen again, and then the watcher, the angel, is going to give him the meaning of what he has seen. So again, once he describes it, he says, this beast arises from the sea of humanity. It is the last, the fourth beast in succession, and it was different from all the others. Categorically, this beast is in a league all of its own. All the beasts are terrible, but this last beast is said to be exceedingly dreadful. It is not described in terms of an animal, such as a lion, a bear, or a leopard. Rather, it has teeth of iron, and this now is added, and it has claws of bronze. It is dreadful. With its teeth and claws, it crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet. Notice he doesn't say with its paws, he doesn't say with its hooves, but he says with its feet. This is a brief description of this fourth kingdom, the kingdom under which we now currently live. Its demeanor, that is how it carried itself, its deportment. Daniel also desired to know the meaning of the ten horns that were on its head and the other horn which came up, and before which three of them fell, namely, that horn which had eyes and a mouth, uttering great boasts, and which was larger in appearance than its associates." So again, notice, he didn't want to know, didn't inquire about the first three beasts, he wants the fourth. And now he doesn't inquire about who are these 10 kings, he doesn't need to know that. But the focus becomes upon this 11th horn. You see what he's doing, so they keep repeating the same things, the things that are important for us to be able to focus upon. Remember that the horn which had eyes and a mouth uttering great boasts and which was larger in appearance than its associates. We mentioned this, that Jerome said this would be an actual person, one of those men in whom the whole of Satan was to dwell bodily. And I think it's interesting, too, because we are told that it was a small horn. And yet here, we are told that in appearance, it was larger than its associates. How do you explain that, that it's larger? We had a Jack Russell Terrier one time, little dog bred for chasing down small animals. And this dog, his name was Jack, real original, Jack stood in our front yard, a big dog would walk by, and this little Jack Russell Terrier just would take a pose, would strike a pose, and he would bark like he was some mammoth dog, but he was just tiny. And you think about this, that a person can appear larger than they are by the mere fact that they're loud. They can appear larger. Now, I'll just point out, how many LGBTQ people are there in our culture? You would think by the voice, by the sheer volume that they project, that you would think that it's well over 50% of our nation. But it's not. It's actually a small percentage of our population is LGBTQ. But they appear larger. One thought. So he has this demeanor. This beast has this demeanor, has this deportment. It functions this way. These horns, these kings are all rising up. And then there's this one horn in particular comes. This one king rises on the scene and he's got a big mouth making big boasts and doing terrible things. Finally, it's destructive. He has destructive power towards the saints. This is something else we need to bear in mind. Daniel says, I kept looking and the horn was waging war with the saints and overpowering them. Meaning the horn was waging war and he was wearing down the saints. He was prevailing upon the saints. This destructive power we are told lasted until the ancient of days came and judgment was passed in favor of the saints of the highest one, and the time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom. So once again, we've had this description of this fourth beast given to us a second time. What does it mean? What is the truth? What are we to expect from this fourth beast under which we now exist? Here's the meaning. Again, let me read for us verses 23 through 25. Thus he said, the fourth beast will be a fourth kingdom on the earth, which will be different from all the other kingdoms and will devour the whole earth and tread it down and crush it. And for the 10 horns, as for the 10 horns, out of this kingdom 10 kings will arise and another will arise after them. And he will be different from the previous ones and will subdue three kings. He will speak out against the most high and wear down the saints of the highest one. And he will intend to make alterations in times and in law and they will be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time. The fourth beast, we are told, is a fourth kingdom on the earth. It is a kingdom which is different from all the other kingdoms. Different in what sense? Different in quality, different in kind? Now, I have to admit that as I'm studying these things and I'm meditating on this word and I'm writing these notes, I want you to think of the kingdom of Babylon. I want you to think of the kingdom of the Medes and Persians. I want you to think of the kingdoms of Greece. You can think of Germany. You can think of France. You can think of those of you who are history buffs. Think about how nations typically, how empires typically advance. You've got a charismatic king. This king comes on the scene. He's got his armies, and they pick where they want to invade and where they want to attack. They muster their troops. and they march in and they conquer a people. This is what we saw with Babylon. This is what we saw with the Medes and Persians. This is what we saw with Greece and with Rome to some extent. But their kingdoms were all localized type of kingdoms. They controlled an area. But this kingdom will devour, we are told, the whole earth. It devours the whole earth and it treads it down and crushes it. So it's a different kind of beast. It's not like the beast, it's not like a lion, it's not like a bear, it's not like a leopard where it's fast. This beast is altogether, this kingdom is altogether different than any of the previous kingdoms we've seen on the earth. The last kingdom under which we will live will consume the entire earth. And I have one word for you, and I hope you wake up and remember this, globalism. Now, I'm not just pulling things out of the newspaper for us, but this is exactly what's occurring. This beast, we are told here in the word of God 2,500 years ago, we are told that this This beast will crush and devour the entire earth. It's a very different type of kingdom, isn't it? Where's the king? Where's the king who's gathering together his armies? Where are they? And yet, and yet, what's happening? We find the whole earth. We have the United Nations meeting in the last two weeks here in New York City. And they're talking about globalism. coming together and working together. In the last few weeks, we have heard the Pope, and I told you I was going to say this again, talking about all the religions of the world are really just the same. We all go to the same God. Friends, this is globalism. It's syncretic. It's bringing everything together as though it's one. You can see the financial systems are talking about globalism. How do we influence the world economically? We can have digital footprints, and they can track us, and we could get on a currency. I mean, globalism is the thing. We see this very thing in play right now. The whole Earth. The whole world will be the kingdom of this final beast. You will either be devoured and consumed by it. Remember, iron teeth. Iron is not weak. Iron doesn't give. Iron doesn't bend. And this is unyielding, unsubmitting. This is what this government will be. This is what this beast will do. You're going to say, well, I don't want any part of that. And they're going to say, tough. Deal with it. That's what we're facing as Christians. You're not going to be able to get your exemptions because we're here to take over the whole earth and we're here to get everyone on the same page and you're fighting it. And because you're fighting it and you're not allowing us to devour you, we're going to crush you. We're going to become part of it or be destroyed because you wouldn't be part of it. As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings will arise and another will arise after them and he will be different from the previous ones and will subdue three kings. As noted earlier, the horns are kings. A horn, like on an ox or a bull, the horn is a symbol of power. The horns are considered kings. And we talked about this previously as well. Ten kings. Are there really only ten kings? Again, we must be careful to understand that in apocalyptic literature, numbers, too, take on a different significance. So in Revelation 20, we speak about the 1,000 years. Is 1,000 years just 1,000 years? Or is it a long time? We would argue that it's a long time. The Lord owns the cattle on 1,000 hills. He even owns them on 1,010 hills, because the point is He owns all of the hills. And so 1,000 would be a significant, a long time. Or the seven spirits of God in Revelation 4 and 5, we're not talking about the seven holy spirits of God. We're talking about the perfect spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. So here, 10 kings represents the fullness of kings, a complete amount of kings, a lot of kings. They come, these kings come, and these kings go. So this beast, this fourth kingdom, instituted this fourth beast that came out of the sea of humanity, comes up, and there's a whole bunch of kings. There's a whole bunch of kings that are going to be in play. One comes, one goes, another one comes, another one goes, on and on and on. And then this little one comes. This little horn starts to sprout. He comes up, and he pulls out by the roots three other kings. I have no idea what that means. other than he replaces them. He steps in and he removes these guys, and this one steps up on the scene. This one comes, this 11th horn, and he will be different from the previous ones. Now again, notice, the fourth beast is different than the other ones, and now this 11th horn, this 11th king, this individual, he is different than all the other kings that have come before him. And he comes on the scene, and he replaces displaces, rather, these other three kings. This 11th horn, this king, he will be different than the others that came before him. Some believe that this 11th horn was Antiochus Epiphanes from the second century, who would sacrifice a swine on the altar in the temple. The problem with this is timing. And believing that it's Antiochus Epiphanes, the problem is the timing. Antiochus Epiphanes has long been dead. And this 11th horn is said to be in place at the time of the Lord's return. So that's why we can say it's not Antiochus Epiphanes, though he may be an example of that last individual who's coming, that type of character. He is one like the 11th horn. I believe that this This 11th king, this horn, is the man of lawlessness. I'm not alone in my opinion on that, just so you know. I'm not just creating and inventing things to share with you out of novelty. I believe it is the man of lawlessness from 2 Thessalonians 2 that we've been preaching about the last few Sunday evenings, whom John would call the Antichrist. In fact, I want to turn to you, because a number of you may not be familiar with 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, I want to read to you again, and it's important, friends, that we remember this, that when the scriptures are addressing issues, the scriptures don't contradict one another. And so what we read in 2 Thessalonians, how does that fit? You ask yourself, well, how does this fit with Daniel chapter seven? How does it fit with the book of Revelation? And so we interpret scripture with scripture. But now listen, this is not apocalyptic literature, 2 Thessalonians. This is just Paul speaking very plainly. There's no imagery here. This is Paul saying, this is what is to happen. Second Thessalonians chapter two verses three to nine. Listen, let no one in any way deceive you for it. That is the Lord's day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed. The son of destruction who opposes and exalts himself. Now listen to this, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called God or object of worship so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things? And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. Then that lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will slay with the breath of his mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of his coming. That is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan with all power and signs and false wonders. That is the 11th horn. That's the king that comes, that last king in the final kingdom is the man of lawlessness. What do we know about him? Again, we read this in verse 25, a verse that's packed. He will speak out against the most high and wear down the saints of the highest one and he will intend to make alterations in times and in law. Notice what kind of words he comes with. He will assault the Almighty with his words. He will speak blasphemies against the highest. He will employ language in which he will endeavor to set God aside and will irrigate unto himself prerogatives which belong alone to God. Again, Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians 2.4, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called God or object of worship so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. This is the Antichrist. And we should be encouraged in this. He does have a big mouth, and he makes big boasts and great blasphemies. But what I find is so interesting is he's only got words. He doesn't have power. not that can compete with God. And so he's got a big mouth and he makes big boasts, but all he can bring against the Lord are words. He can't hurt the Lord, nor can he depose him. Never stop, never think that God is here and Satan is here and they're just dueling it out. It is such a blasphemous thought. The Lord is sovereign. Even over the devil, Luther would say, and you know this, that the devil is God's devil. God controls him. He can go no further than what the Lord permits him to go. The Lord is sovereign. And we're told that he not only has words, but he goes to war. and he will wear down the saints of the highest one. Evil will be overwhelming for the Christian. You have heard it said that Christians will avoid the tribulation because of the rapture. That's not in the Bible, friends. And this is plain here from Daniel 7, that he wages war against the saints. There's persecution, and there is to be suffering, and this is what we must expect. When we see this 11th horn, we don't know who he is. We don't know where he is. We don't know if he's on the world scene just yet, but we know this. He will be a braggart. He will be blasphemous. He will exalt himself against God. He will set himself up to be worshiped by other people, and he will go to war against the saints. He will persecute them. They will suffer, and we must expect suffering in this world. The words of Paul are fitting here, friends, and I want you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 10, if you will, and listen here again to the scriptures. A good exhortation, a good reminder to us in Hebrews 10, 32 through 39. Paul writes, but remember the former days when after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of suffering, partly by being made a public spectacle through the reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourself a better possession and a lasting one. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. For yet in a very little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul. Persecution and war are to come upon the Christian. You must not think to yourself that I will be exempt. I won't have to go through this. you will go through this. And we have this wonderful example given to us in Hebrews 10. These people are suffering because they're followers of Christ. They're suffering because they're ministering to other Christians. Their property is being seized. They are being thrown in prison. They're being treated horribly. And what's the end result? Hang in there. Don't shrink back. But that's the temptation. That's what this fourth kingdom will bring upon the church He brings alterations, and he will intend to make alterations in times and in law. In his arrogance against God, he will manifest in his intention to change times and laws. One commentator said this, the foundations and main conditions emanating from God of the life and actions of men in the world. He actually thinks he knows better than God. He actually thinks he knows better than God. Now, please bear with me. I know I'm going on. I promise you I'm gonna be done with this sermon in just before five. I know it just seems like it just keeps going on and on. There's so much in this. And I wish we knew more, but we don't need to know more. We know just enough to be encouraged. This man, This individual will seek to make alterations in time and in laws. And you may be thinking, what, a little like daylight savings? No, no. More basic things, I believe. And I think this commentator is right. And I say this based in part on the study we've been doing in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, where it talks about where we use the word apostasy. I've been encouraging, look, consider the word rebellion. And it's not just the church. But it's the whole world is in rebellion against God. In what way? God created man, male and female. He created them. How many genders are there in our culture today? There's still just two. There's two sexes, right? Gender is one of these social construct nonsense things. Right? He made them male and female. Done. Settled. Period. But what does our culture say? Oh, no. I'm a cat. Right? I'm a dog. I'm a furry. Fuzzy. I don't know what it is. But I'm one of these things. And so we're fighting against God. God says, take dominion. Rule in the garden. I want you to plant. I want you to grow. I want you to do all of these things. And what do we say? Oh, work. That's it's not necessary. You don't have to do that. Your government will take care of you. Don't don't work. God says, get married, have babies, plural, have children, be fruitful, multiply. And what do we hear? You're destroying the planet. You got to quit having children. Friends, listen to me, have children. That's a wonderful blessing. Fill the earth with these little image bearers and train them up like arrows in the hands of a warrior to serve the Lord without fear. That's what the Lord tells us to do. But what is our culture saying? What is this fourth beast saying? They're saying, don't be fruitful and multiply. Don't fill the earth and subdue it. We're told to rule over every living thing. in the garden. This is the mandate that God gave. And what does the world say? You're on the same par with the rest of the world. How arrogant of you to think you could tell the dolphins what to do. How arrogant of you to tell the penguins what they need to do. Glad you're laughing, because it really is stupid. But that's where we are. This is where we are with these things. And then finally, the Sabbath. to rest, work six days, rest. The Sabbath is something that the Lord instituted for our good. But what do we do? Let's make it a day of sports. It grates at me when our local schools or public schools are sending kids out to do sports on Sunday. I'm sorry, that shouldn't be happening. We need to rest. That's the way God wired this universe to work. that we work six days and then we rest. That's it. But you notice everything that's fundamental that God established in the garden for humanity to observe. This fourth beast is saying, that's not so important that you do these things. I mean, you could make a sermon about each one of these little things. And I'm just pointing out to you that these are the alterations in times and laws. It's not just about daylight savings or Can you park or cross a double yellow line while you're... He's not talking, but these are fundamental things that affect humanity and our service unto God. And this fourth beast is saying, nope, nope. And we're told that they will be given into his hand for a time, times and half a time. And what does that mean? And again, there's so much debate over these things. Time equals a year. years and half a year. So someone would say, well, two is plural, so you'd have three and a half years. Christians, the Christians, this horn is going to wage war against Christians for three and a half years. Have you heard that before? Yes, I have too. Are we to only be troubled by the Antichrist for three and a half years? No. No. Because one, I can say this, Christians have already been troubled for thousands of years, and it's not over yet. In this apocalyptic literature, again, some believe that this is to be taken symbolically, that the suffering that we are given into the Antichrist's hands for, they believe, were given into his hands for a protracted amount of time, but then that time is cut short. When Daniel is writing this or when the angel is revealing to Daniel what's going on, he's not saying for three and a half years. His point is this, you're going to suffer for a long time, but then it's going to be cut short. That's what you need to understand. The emphasis is on you're going to be delivered. You'll have a long period of suffering. Don't mark your calendar saying, well, it's three and a half years from now, we're going to be done. You'll be disappointed. You'll be disappointed. Listen, what did the Lord say? Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved, but for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short. I think that nicely summarizes what time, times, and half a time means. Quoting again, Ralph Davis, who was quoting another, he says, We could say that the fourth empire to be established on this earth will be a true universal empire that will make all other empires look pale and insignificant by comparison. This empire will conquer all other kingdoms and states, whether they be great or small, neutral or belligerent. It will be an empire without parallel in power and ruthlessness, and we might add in persecution. As the last kingdom, It is the one in which human evil and rebellion will reach its apex. This is where we're living today, friends. This is it. That fourth beast is active, is in power. We see it crushing, devouring the earth, persecuting the church, exalting itself, changing laws, promoting the mutilation, the trans, all the stuff that you find repugnant, it's doing it. And this is what we are to expect. And as Daniel was writing for his day, he's writing for our day just as much, showing us that this is what we are to expect in this world. We have to have a course correction. We live in the United States. We are not exempt from judgment. In fact, in many ways, the United States has shipped our immoralities off around the world. We will not escape judgment. The Christian will not be exempt from enduring hardship during these days. So I tell you that so that you're not discouraged and so that you don't quit. I tell you that so that you're realistic about what is to come, and then you will train your children to be realistic. This is what we know, and this is what the Lord has revealed to us, again, so that we are not discouraged and caught off guard. But it doesn't end here. And I will wrap this up very briefly. The Lord, after we have suffered a while, he will come. he will intervene and cut short the persecution of the Antichrist, whom we were told in 2 Thessalonians 2.8, whom the Lord will slay with the breath of his mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of his coming. Again, verse 26 and 27, but the court will sit for judgment and his dominion will be taken away, annihilated and destroyed forever. Then the sovereignty, the dominion and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the highest one. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom and all the dominions will serve and obey him. The Antichrist, this 11th horn who wages war and speaks blasphemous words, he will be judged and we, we will be with our Lord forever. Vengeance is the Lord's, he will repay. It is only just that God afflict those who persecute his people. That's what he says in 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 6 through 9. This last kingdom, this last beast, will be annihilated and destroyed. And Christ, our king, wins. He has won. He reigns. And we will reign with him in a kingdom that will never end. And on that day, all the dominions of this earth will serve and obey him. Have you ever wondered who are the people, who are the elect? Where does God have his people? From every tribe, tongue, and nation across this earth, he is redeeming his people. And on the day Christ reigns, guess what? People from every tribe, tongue, and nation. I'm convinced Americans will still be Americans, but we won't be godless Americans. In the Swahili, they'll be jumping around, clicking their tongues, singing their praises to Jesus Christ. And the Germans will be sitting there, very proper, singing, you know, Martin Luther's a mighty fortress is our God. And Southerners will be clapping and playing the tambourines and preparing for the fellowship meal. And it's just a wonderful thing how the Lord redeems people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, but they will together be no longer under the Antichrist who crushes and devours the earth. but they will be under a sovereign king who will worship. They will worship him and he will take care of them forever. Listen to this closing verse. It's from Revelation 11. Then the seventh angel sounded and there were loud voices in heaven saying, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he will reign forever and ever. Amen. My friends, that's what we look forward to. So we endure for a little while the hardship that's coming, and just know that it's coming, and it'll be just for a little while, and then Jesus Christ will cut it short, and he will bring everything and put it right. Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, again for your word and for the patience of these people. I pray that their hearts, their faith might be edified and strengthened, that we will not be duped by what is to come, and what is coming. We pray that we would be those, though, however, that keep our eyes fixed upon you, knowing that you have told us in advance what is coming so that we would not be deceived. We pray for your church, especially those who think that we will be exempt from tribulation. We pray that their eyes would be opened quickly and that they would see that their interpretations were wrong and that there's nothing strange happening, but that we are called to rest in you. I pray that you will sustain your church, especially the church in this country. We pray that you would refine us, that you would revive us, and that you would make us, again, a faithful witness for who you are. Bless your people now, I pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.