On page 68, if you got your book, we're going to start looking at the kind of the characterization of apostasy. Now, I'll make some stopovers and talk about current events and stuff, but notice in the right middle of this, page 68, it says, the second passage relating to the character of apostasy. You all find that right there? Okay, 2 Timothy then says this in 3.5 about apostasy. Having a form of godliness. but having denied the power thereof, from these also turn away." So one of the characterizations of apostasy is these people who claim to be Christians or have fallen away from Christianity still have the outward look that they're Christian. They look Christian. They have the outward garb. So if I want to take this out to some extremes, The Catholic church still has the outward garbs, so to speak, even though we wouldn't, we wouldn't consider that Christian. They have the spirit that are sorry, the image of religion on them. They look religious. They have crucifixes and monstrances and, and churches and stuff like that. And they look religious. And so then to a lesser degree, you get into, whether it's Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, they appear to have a form of godliness. The Mormons appear on the outside as godly, even though it's completely empty. It's fake. It's not there. They look like they have a thing called a church. I don't know what that thing is. It looks like a Klingon vessel every time they build one of them from Star Trek. Okay, so people think in the culture, well, they're going to church and stuff like that, and they wear suits and ties, and they dress themselves up, and then they act very moral. That's called a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. What are they denying? They deny the power. That's right. They deny where the power is found in order to change an individual. You can only become born again by the power of God. Yes, you express your faith, but he has to regenerate you once you express that faith. You can't make yourself born again. That's the whole discussion he had with Nicodemus. That if you want to be saved, you can be saved by faith. And once you express that faith, He regenerates you. He saves you. He gives you eternal life. So that's why Paul will say, I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power unto salvation. It is the only power that changes you is to make you born again through Jesus Christ. It is His blood. Okay. There's where the power is. Also, that's where the power is found for us to be conformed to the image of Christ in daily sanctification, and in a future glorification, the power is found only in Christ. So whether you're talking about justification, sanctification, glorification, the power is found only through God and Jesus Christ. Okay, that's basic 101 Christianity. And that's why we preach the gospel, because that's what it can only save people. Okay. All apostates then eventually deny the person and work of Christ. They'll deny him. So the Catholic Church, interesting enough, will not deny the person of Christ. They'll deny the work of Christ. The Mormons do both. They deny the work and the person of Christ. So do the Jehovah Witnesses. They deny the person and work of Christ. So what you're seeing about apostasy, they look Christian. Therefore, they're called lukewarm. They're neither hot nor cold. They pretend to be something they're not. And so the problem is they deny the person and work of Christ where the power is. And so they're fake, it's not true. So that's one characterization of it. So it starts with denials, denials, okay? Keep that in mind, denials. Okay, the next passage that he enumerates in here is 2 Peter. We're studying 2 Peter, we've just finished 2 Peter. I'm not gonna go into the entire text, but there's two things I wanna bring out in this entire text. Peter, which I've talked to you about in the sermons, points out the motivation for apostasy. He's going to point out that there's two motivations of why they're doing what they're doing. And Peter's going to establish that they're doing this because of their lusts and primarily sexual immorality, and two, they're doing it for money. Okay, that's basically Peter's argument for the motivation for apostasy. Now, I want you to think about that. I want you to think about that for the Catholic church. Okay. Just as an example of those two things, think about how the church is involved in sexual immorality and money. All you have to do is look through history and watch what the Catholic church did. Okay. So when they made the issue of celibacy happen, guess what happened? Monasteries, convents, orphanages started popping up in those triads everywhere through Europe. Eventually, by the time Martin Luther gets to Rome, he thinks he's going to have a religious experience by going to Rome, he gets there and he starts seeing, he says, the priests were going to prostitutes. He says, this is debauched. It was completely like a harem type of situation because of the sexual immorality. And then in our modern day, because of the celibacy issues, the priests have now turned homosexual. They're practicing homosexuals, most of them. I heard of Catholic, ex-Catholic priests who have come out of it, got saved, say about 50% of them are. In his estimations, his best estimations, the Vatican is littered with it. Like I told you, the apartment complex or whatever is a gay bar where a lot of the cardinals stay by Vatican, which is frequented. A lot of the Vatican soldiers that protect the Vatican are hit on by the priests and cardinals for homosexual relationships. I don't need to go any further. That's what we're talking about. That's what Peter predicted. That they do this because of sexual immorality. Not just to take advantage of women, but take advantage of themselves, obviously, with other men. It gets debauched. Then the money. Well... Forget it. Study history and see what the Catholic Church did. They owned all of Europe at one point in time. They owned all of Italy at one point in time. They gave a lot of that, they gave it back and they gave a lot of portions of Italy back. But the Vatican is extremely wealthy. They are number one in money. The gold and the treasuries of the Vatican are unbelievable. So they have the money. That's right. Absolutely. And the Catholic Church sucks them dry. In the Latin American countries, it sucks them dry through communism. And the Catholic Church is actually promoting communism down there in these Latin American countries. And the two are tied together. The priests are right on the dole. How about Mormonism? Money, sexual immorality. They're littered with sexual immorality. Littered with it. The fact that they allowed polygamy. One of the things was that you were doing Joseph Smith a favor if you gave your wife to him to have sexual relations with him or Brigham Young. It was the most debauched thing imaginable. And the polygamy still exists today in some parts of Utah and things like that. And don't hesitate for a moment that this gay marriage thing is not going to open the door for them to want polygamous relationships sanctified by the state and the federal government. That's coming. Because that's part of their doctrine. It's part of their doctrine in heaven. Because what do they do? I mean, think about this. I know this is gross. But it's evidence of what Peter is saying. The men get to have celestial sex with their virgin wives, polygamous wives on their new planets for all of eternity and get to populate that planet by having that endless celestial sex. Now wait a second, it sounds vaguely familiar with another religion that I know of. Did you catch that one? Oh my land, I am telling you, when you compare Islam and Mormonism, they are very similar. Very similar. The polygamy in both, the abuse of women, the fact that a lot of the salvation of the woman is dependent on the man. In Islam, a woman has to be called to heaven by her husband. or a male family member. Well, guess what happens in Mormonism? If your husband doesn't give you that secret name, he's the one who calls you back from the dead. Your husband resurrects you. How gross is that? You're going to say, I'm going to be dependent on him to resurrect me? He'd probably leave me there. That's bad, man. You think about that and how backwards that is and how weird and incestuous that becomes. There's no doubt. I mean, you just take your pick. I mean, there's some really rank things that start happening. And the Amish are following a German book that's their authority rather than the scriptures. And it's perverted. Every cult you see, David Koresh, he was sleeping with the women, he would have the men give them their wives to sleep with. It's always a part of it. So, the two go hand in hand. Money and sexual immorality are always together in apostasy. If you get a little into more of the mainstream and away from the cults, but you get into apostasy in, let's just call it mainstream evangelicalism, the sexual immorality will be there, not to such a degree as it is in the cults, but it'll be there, and the money will be there. How many people you know that you hear about these scandals of these guys sleeping with everybody under the sun, and like the Ted Haggard guy was sleeping with a homosexual prostitute, it's there, and the money's also there. I'm not saying every instance that that happens is evidence of that, but I'm just saying there's a trail behind it. There's always money there, big money, I'm talking big, big money. And there's always somehow sexual immorality wrapped behind things. It's always in the back area. Remember Jim Baker? All that stuff, man. I mean, it's always there. Now, he's repented and all that, but he says he's seen the light, so to speak, but it's always there in apostasy. The two go hand in hand. So that's Peter's point, and then he starts outlining more stuff, and then on next page 70, We're going to go talk about the different types of heresies. So if you go to the middle of the page, 2 Peter 2.1 talks about, but there also rose false prophets also among the people as among you. Also, there shall be false teachers who shall privately or secretly is the idea, bring in destructive heresies. And I talked about that when I was preaching a couple of weeks ago that It's destructive heresies. These are denials. And that they come in and infiltrate privately or secretly, denying even the master that bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction. So denials of Jesus, denials of the person and work of the Messiah. So Peter gives a broad term. It's denial. It's denial. The hallmark of an apostate, they deny, they deny, they deny. Okay. So then the scripture starts explaining some of these denials. Okay. So if you move down first, John two 22 through 23 says this, who is the liar, but he who denies he, the word deny. That's the common term denies that Jesus is the Messiah or the Christ. This is antichrist or the spirit of antichrist is what John's trying to say. Even that. Even he that denies the Father and the Son, whoever denies the Son, the same has not the Father. He that confesses the Son has the Father also." So it's a denial of the Trinity, in essence, and denial of the deity of Christ. Interesting enough, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, sorry, not the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock Mosque in Jerusalem, on that golden dome, on the side of it, do you know what it says? is a complete denial of this passage and it says God has no son. Right on the mosque it says that. And that's exactly who is the Antichrist. Not the Antichrist person, but the spirit of Antichrist. The spirit of Antichrist is already working and outright denying who Jesus is, the denial of Him. Okay, so denial of the Trinity, denial of the deity of Christ. Look at the next one. 1 John 4, 2-3, there's another denial. Hereby, know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. This is what's called the denial of the incarnation. And every spirit that confesses not Jesus is not of God. And this is the spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it comes. And now it is in the world already." So he's talking about the spirit of Antichrist already being there, denying the incarnation, that Jesus wasn't incarnated. The incarnation is, to get technical, means that I'm accepting what's called the hypostatic union of the Messiah. Yes, so that coming to flesh is the term of the incarnation, but the theological term of the incarnation is called the hypostatic union, which we acknowledge that Jesus has two natures. He is 100% God, 100% man, in one person though. And to deny any aspect of the hypostatic union is a denial of the Messiah himself. So whether they say, like you said, a lot of people believe he's just a man. And so that's a denial of his deity. But there are some who deny that he was even human, that he appeared to be human. that he was God and he just manifested himself like that. But there was a denial of the humanity of Jesus. That later developed in the second century with Gnosticism. And yes, Gnosticism denied that. They said it was the Christ spirit. Well, today there are cults that deny the humanity of Christ and say that he just came in spirit. And then also that, now this is very technical, if I can explain this, but they won't deny that Jesus was a human being, but they'll say the Christ of him was separate from him. That there was a man called Jesus, just out there, and the Christ Spirit came upon him. Well, that's a denial of the hypostatic union. And then they'll say, well, New Agers a lot of times say this, that Christ Spirit left him, and then he was just a man after that. So that gets a little technical, but it all centers around attacking the hypostatic union. You have to have the nature of Christ correct. And if you don't, you can't say you're a believer. You just can't, because that's that's fundamental to understanding who Messiah is. If you don't believe he's a man, then he's not your kinsman redeemer. If he's not God, then a simple man cannot make sacrifice for the entire world. So to have the perfect sacrifice to happen, you have to have a man die whose blood has eternal value. Otherwise, it's just a man dying for you and a man can't simply die for you. And so it's fundamental to accept the incarnation because your salvation depends on it. And so that's one of the denials. And so everywhere you go in these cults, they'll deny some aspect of that. OK, so let me give an example with the Mormons. OK, these are easy examples. The Mormons deny the hapostatic union. Well, but then they'll come back and say, no, I believe Jesus is God and I believe he's a man. But how did that happen, you say? And they'll say, well, the father came and sired him through Mary. Sired him? Yes. Do you know what that means? It's blasphemous, what they're intending. That there were sexual union between the Father and Mary. It's a blasphemous doctrine, but that's what they mean by it. And that produced Jesus. In essence, making Jesus a half-man, half-God. Do you see the difference? Not 100% God and not 100% man by the power of the Holy Spirit, but a siren of him that makes them half and half. And I tell the Mormons, you do not believe in the incarnation, because that's not what the incarnation teaches. So that's a denial. And when you believe that God gives libertarian freedom to every individual to make a decision for him, and that when you deny that decision, there's a penalty attached to that. And he talks about it in Romans, and the penalty attached for denying truth over and over again is you blind yourself. you harden your heart. And so when you deal with a Mormon or Jehovah Witnesses, and they've been that way for a long time, it's not that they couldn't understand at the beginning, they can understand now because they have personally blinded themselves to truth. That's the penalty for denying truth, is you get blinded. The more you deny it, you get blinded. I'll give you another example, just outside the cults, the atheistic scientists. I've heard plenty of them say, We knew we were lying. We knew the whole system about evolution was made up. And then they convert to Christianity and they say, it was a game we were playing because we wanted to keep our sexual mores the way we wanted them. So the game they're playing, you might think, they might pretend to you that Chuck, I'm really hard-hearted, I don't see what you're saying. What they were saying is, we knew you guys were right, but we knew that if we had to side with you, we had to stop doing our behavior, and we didn't want to stop our behavior. So behind the scenes, Chuck, you must understand, it's always a moral issue. It's never because they don't understand theology. They do. But if they have to side with the theology that you're presenting, they have to stop what they're doing. And they don't want to do that. Because they like their life. Because their deeds are evil and for fear that those deeds will be exposed. That's why they don't come into the light. And so right there tells you, Jesus says that's the verdict. And He just told you, when He opens that up, He says, the issue behind people not coming to Me is a moral issue. It's always a moral issue, because if it's a theological issue, we're making theological statements from the scriptures. The scriptures are enough to prove. I don't need to go into a Ph.D. argument, even though I could with a cultist. All I have to tell him is read the scripture because God says that's enough for you. That's enough for you. And if you don't accept his word as it is written, then you have an issue and there's something behind your your issue of why you won't accept what he's just saying. This isn't plain language. And so I played the games with the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons, and I've given them high, high PhD arguments, and it goes right over their head, and they say, I still have a burning in the bosom. And so now you start understanding, oh, this is not about logic anymore. This is not about intelligentsia or anything, because I just gave you J.P. Moreland's defense of the Kalam cosmological argument, and you're not accepting it. It is the best argument out there, or William Lane Craig's cosmological argument, and you don't accept it, or whatever. I'm just throwing that out there as an example. And they're like, that doesn't make sense. Well, it's perfectly logical, and you're not accepting it because you have a moral issue. So I always tell them, What are you holding on to? What are you holding on to that's so important to you that you won't let go and let you see the light? What are you holding on to? And they don't know what to say because you've got to go out to their heart. You've got to go out to their heart and the heart, the Bible will always tell you this. The reason they're holding on, they have a desire for something illicit, and they want something they know they can't have, and whether they're getting it or not, it's part of their desire. It goes back to the Garden of Eden. Why did Eve want the fruit and eat it, even though she was told you can't have it? She still wanted it. And that's how people are. They want things that you can't have. And God says, no, and they say, I don't care what you say, I'm going after it. And that's how it is. It's always a moral issue. Let's go back to some of these things. So you're seeing an individual that doesn't have a sin in nature still have the problem that she still wanted the fruit because it did several things for her. She thought it was going to make her wiser, that she would desire to go contrary to God, add to Scripture, so to speak, because she added to God's Word. She was told not to eat of the fruit and she adds, and not touch. So she started adding things, but the issue is you have to get down to her motivation. Her motivation is threefold, but one of the motivations was she thought it would make her wise. She'd be better, that somehow God was holding back on her, and she would be made wiser by doing this. And that desire to be wise, the fruit was appealing to the eyes, it appealed to her pride, pride of life, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes. She succumbed to that, thinking it would make her wiser. And so, what I want you to see about that is the same thing that you see with people today. God says, that's off-limits. But then their minds are saying, I don't understand why that's off-limits, because that's going to enhance my life. That's really going to make me the kind of person I want to be. It's going to make me fulfilled experientially, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and I don't understand why He's saying this is off-limits. And they say, you know what? God must not know what he's talking about. I'm going to go ahead and do it. That's exactly what Eve did. What's the ultimate behind this? We're talking about apostasy. But I can put this in a real world application. What's the point? Why are so many people apostatizing? And I can go, we're going to study this a little bit more and we're going to finish up, take a break. But why are so many people apostatizing? Why are so many people wanting stuff that doesn't belong to them, wanting stuff that's off limits? And God says, no, no, no, no, no. Why are we even discussing that stuff? Why? Why is that even being debated? Because now they're denying even marriage. Now they're denying how the creator created things. You're denying the fundamental principle of biological formations of human beings, of man and woman, saying, I saw today, well, Lupe put a thing on Facebook about a guy married his son now, and it wasn't his biological son, it was his adopted son or something like that, they adopted each other, and now they're getting married in the state of Pennsylvania. Why, I mean, they're in their 70s, and so why would those two guys, want to hook up, when biologically it doesn't work. You better believe it. It's an illicit desire, and it doesn't matter if it's a sane desire, it's a desire, I want this, and I don't care what God says. I don't care what the creation order is. I don't care if I defy biology. If I defy the biology, I don't care because I want this. What is the point of apostasy? It's illicit desires for things people want, because God says, no, that's off limits, that's not theologically correct, that's not moral, I don't want you doing that, so they apostatize. Why is this being played out? The question is, why is God allowing it? Why does God allow people to go haywire? Why doesn't He just corral them and bring them back? Why doesn't He just say, come on back, I'm not going to let you do that, come on, it's time to get off, you were not playing like that, come here. Why does He allow them the freedom to go ahead and do that? It's called libertarian freedom. If you don't believe in that, then you can't explain what's happening. He is giving people the freedom as a A human being made in his image, libertarian freedom. I'm not talking about compatibilistic freedom as Calvinism teaches. I'm talking libertarian freedom. Because Calvinistic compatibilism freedom tells people they're determined to act a certain way. And if God wanted to change them, he could change them internally and they'd still be free, even though he has to change them internally and change their thoughts, minds, actions, and deeds, and they would do the right thing. So my question then, if compatibilistic freedom is correct, then why doesn't he change everybody to do right? Because if he could, and you theoretically said he could, then he should change everybody then. Ah, but wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Where are you going with this, Brandon? What's the point about all that we're talking about? The highest value, we see that God is giving freedom to creatures to rebel against Him, to do what they want to do, to go haywire, to go crazy. And it's like, you'll watch people and you're like, man, that dude's or that gal's heading for a train wreck. And there's nothing I can do to stop it. You're right. And you can't. And you're watching this bystanding. Boom! And God will let them just go right near the cliff, man. Bam! And you can't do anything about it. It's not the freedom that's the highest value. What is higher? The love. He, above all things, wants a love relationship with His creatures, and therefore He must give them libertarian freedom And if he doesn't, then he's determining them. So to have a true love relationship, if I came to Harry and Fu and said, hey man, I want you guys to love me, and here's a gun to your head, love me. Okay. Gotcha, man. I love you, man. No problem. And I can get that, right? But that's not a true relationship. So God is letting people have freedom because the highest value is not freedom. That's an outgrowth of the higher value. The higher value is, I want them to love me back. I already love them. I want them to love me back. And so I will let them destroy themselves. The reason we can love is He first loves us. So the highest value... Why is so much apostasy happening? He's letting the people of the church have their freedom. And their freedom to obey or disobey is there and it's evident. There's no doubt there's consequences, but the highest value is to let them have freedom. And so what's happening now is Christians are ruining their lives because they think they have a desire, that they want to live this certain way, and they're bent on doing it, and then boom, they do it. And God doesn't get in their way. He says, go right ahead. And Satan's over there greasing the skids, right? Go for it. I'll make you slide faster off the cliff." And he greases the skids and the libertarian freedom is allowing the person, whoop, go right off. And that's what you're seeing with the apostasy of the church. If he was able to just simply say, I'm not gonna allow this, then he would limit freedom, but ultimately he would limit the human relationship of love. And that's what he will not do. He will not have people be forced to love him. Because that's not the essence of a free will relationship. And he wants a love relationship with his creatures. And the only way to do it is give them libertarian freedom to where they can destroy themselves. That's the liability. That's why you see people come maybe later in life to Christ. They have burned their candles at both ends and they fall flat on their back. I've seen people on their deathbed accept Christ. I've led them to the Lord on their deathbed. But it took that. to finally wake them up. And so whatever, make no mistake, God's after people and calling them and saying, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. And they're saying, no, no, because you tell me I can't have this, stay out of my life because I want this. I want this. And God's ever seeking them. We're going to get into it later on, but the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, all three go together. And it's an illustration that God is seeking, because the Pharisees taught the opposite, that you have to come and seek God Himself. And Jesus says, no, no, no, you're making a big mistake here. God is seeking the lost. He's going after them. He's calling them to repentance. Come, come back to me. Come, come, come. And they just won't. There's no love with them, but it is an evidence, if you see it from this standpoint, of pure libertarian free love. He is giving them the ability to choose Him or choose Him not. And once you see that there's penalties attached from not choosing Him, there's conditions that are put on a person who deny God. And like we talked about with Chuck, the condition will be blindness and hardness of heart will erupt after that. And that's just what sin does to you. It blinds you. And I've always said this, and you guys sometimes quote it correctly, there is no sense of sin. It's irrational. It does make you crazy. And what you're seeing, obviously, the ultimate expression of what sin does is with ISIS. They're crazy. You can't even, they're lunatics. Imagine, imagine When God brought Joshua into the land, and He tells them, I want these people driven out, they were on the ISIS level. People would say, well, God was causing Joshua to commit genocide. Oh, no. Would you call it genocide if we sent an army in to destroy ISIS? No, you would not. You would say, go get them. They deserve death because they're crazy. That's what he did with Joshua and people don't understand them. These Amorites had been allowed to live for 450 years like that, like Isis. And so Joshua was on there and on the border and saying, Joshua, go get them and drive them out of the land. And notice he never said, Joshua, go kill them. They were told to drive them out. So God's instructions to Joshua is, if they willingly leave, don't kill them, but if they fight you, kill them, is the implication. So tell them to get out of the land, and some of them actually left peacefully, and some of them actually tried to bargain with Israel, but then the ones that tried to fight them, you're dead. So the term is, he never said go genocide them, he said drive them out of the land. That's the operative word to Joshua, drive them out. Which implies, I won't kill you if you'll leave. But a lot of them didn't. But again, it comes back to libertarian freedom, love relationship. And that's where it goes, that's how the liability gets when you give that person that kind of freedom, they go crazy. Well, it's a lot of times, it's like what you did with Abraham. His test is faith. You know, will you sacrifice your son Isaac to me? And that was one of the tests. Obviously, waiting on Isaac was another test. And I think what you start seeing is God is giving you the test when you're ready for a certain type of test. So, you know, that's why some of the tests that come later in your life, you couldn't have accepted that when you were 19. You wouldn't have handled it correctly. So he gives you tests later in life where your spiritual maturity is built up a little bit and you can handle it without flipping out. And nonetheless, some of them are hard, there's no doubt about it, and he prepares you spiritually for them. If you look at the groundwork before a trial comes, you can see, oh, I had these other mini-tests that prepared me for this big one. Some of the tests might floor you. Paul said in what, 2 Corinthians, I think it was, that some of the experiences he was having, he worried that he was just gonna die through it. He didn't think God would get him out of it. And I know people use the phrase, God won't give you as much as you can handle. That's in the reference of temptation. That's not in the reference of suffering. And what you see with Paul, He says, we nearly died. I got pushed to the point of breaking on this one. And if Paul is saying that, he is saying, God will give you more than you can handle. And there's a reason behind it. He, God is trying to wake you up to get you to focus in on him. Cause if, if you think you could handle it, you would never turn to him. You just wouldn't. And so he does give you more than you can handle. So you say, whether it's talking to you or me, Brandon, Chuck, Are you going to pay attention to me right now? Are you going to do your own thing? And the test is so great, it forces you. No, no, I, loud and clear, you got my attention. What do you need? You know, what do I need to do for myself? And that's sometimes how He has to take us through that. But I can tell you, and you can think of it as your own life, some of the tests you're undergoing now, you couldn't have handled in your 30s or in your 20s. It would have floored you because you spiritually weren't ready for it. If it would happen to me in my teens, I wasn't ready for, I wasn't even a believer. So God knows how much to test you with and how much you're prepared for in that sense. But people have a choice in that thing. And that's the hard one, Chuck, because the tests will come regardless of, trials will come. Peter says it's inevitable the tests will come, but here's the deal. You have a choice in the test and you still have freedom of how you're gonna respond. And the response is, will I do it God's way? Or am I going to do it my default way and handle it the way I've always handled it and screw this up even more? Because that's what a lot of people do. They say, I'll just pull myself over my bootstrap and I'll try really, really hard and I'll go into my default mode. And then they compound the problem even more and they don't learn the lesson. And so God's trying to say, are you going to do it my way? Are you going to do it my way? Are you going to do it my way? Okay, yeah, 2 Corinthians 1, for we did not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia, obviously in Turkey, that we were burdened beyond measure. You see that phrase, burdened beyond measure? When someone says, God won't give you more than you can handle, Paul just contradicted that statement. The statement in 1 Corinthians 10 is, God will give you more temptation that you can handle. And He will always provide a way of escape in temptation. But in this case, He's talking about burdens. He says, we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Did you see that? Most people have never read or skip over what Paul said in 2 Corinthians. I thought we were going to die. And we despaired of life, I was overburdened, and we thought this was it. Yes, we have the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death and does deliver us in whom we trust that he will still deliver us. You also helping together in prayer for us that thanks may be given to many persons on our behalf for the gift granted to us through many. He says, the only thing that got me out of that was God. He delivered us out of that. So I almost died, but God delivered me from that death. And what he is saying is, I've had stuff coming on my life that I couldn't handle. I thought I was going to die. It overburdened me. Have you ever felt like that? That I have such a weight that I feel overburdened? And Paul is saying, thanks be to God, He delivered me from that. I didn't die. And thanks for the prayers from the Corinth church. He's telling, thank you for lifting us up in prayer. I appreciate that. He delivered us and your prayers helped in getting us through that time. But make no mistake, Paul's not standing there saying, oh yeah, we took it on the chin. It was no big deal. He's saying, I almost died. And we feared our own lives. Well, there you go. He will give you more than you can bear. He just stated that. But He delivered him. 2 Corinthians 1, verse 8. You know, that's a good question. And here's the deal about that one. Only Jesus would know when that heart has made a final turn. We will never know that. And it's never explained to us to ever give up on somebody, because we don't know that. So we keep praying, we keep reaching out. But Jesus does know if that person is ever going to turn back. And obviously, you can rest assured that Jesus will do everything He can without violating their will and violating that true love relationship to coax them and coerce them to come back to Him without violating that will. But He knows, hey, you're whatever, that person is going to make a final turn on me and they're not coming back. And He still at that point doesn't even take their life, He lets them continue to live. And so, He would know that, not us. And so, that's why you never give up praying, because you just simply know. And I can tell you this, I've had tons of people I've led to the Lord on their deathbed. Death wakes people up, I'm telling you, it does wake them up. And I've been there on the bedside, and I've led people to the Lord right there, and they were sincere, and they got saved. And thank God they did, because they were days or minutes away, and they got called home. So yeah, you keep working, you keep praying, and you keep going after it.