Turn to page 437. Then we're gonna jump after this into Israel in the messianic age and then we'll get into the messianic temple and things of that nature and explore all those aspects. But let's look at page 437, the other characteristics of Israel's final restoration when they're back in the land. And the first thing we're gonna notice is that they're reunited as a nation. Do you know where the term Jew came from? Why are the Israelites, who are typically called the Hebrews or the Israelites, called Jews? Do you know why? It's a shortened term for a particular tribe. Judah. Okay, so when the nation of Israel broke up, and you recall, it broke up because of Solomon's boys. Remember that? Was it Rehoboam, I think, went in the north and Jeroboam in the south. I think that's how it was. I get the two mixed up because the names sound so familiar. And so you have the split of the kingdom that happens at that point in time. And the kingdom never got back together, by the way. It stayed split. So the northern kingdom then gets taken over by Assyria. They get deported. They intermarry. And it created the Samaritans. And they were interdispersed with the Assyrians. So a Samaritan was a half Jew, half Assyrian. So who kept pure in a lot of ways was the tribe of Judah and Benjamin and then they were deported by the Babylonians and they got taken to Babylon as you recall in 596. So the kingdom split and then when they came back from Babylon they came back and it was typically from the tribe of Judah and Benjamin but Judah overrode the name and so hence the Juden, the Jews is what they were eventually called. I'm not sure what happened with the northern tribes because they got inter-dispersed among the Assyrians. So I'm sure God knows what genetic tracks are there with the northern tribes and who's still part of those northern tribes because obviously you have the 144,000 that's gonna come into the future and they're from those northern tribes. So those northern tribes exist in some form or fashion, only God knows who they are and they would be part of the Jews today. And then you have, obviously, Judah and Benjamin. But in theory, though, the civil war, the faction that broke up, never actually got put back together. So the promise is that he's going to, in their final restoration, put Israel back together, Israel and then Judah and Benjamin coming back together as a reunited nation. I'll explain an application to this, because this is very important, to understand what caused the division. But nonetheless, he puts them back. And in Jeremiah 3.18 on your page, it says this, in those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel. Right? And they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I give for an inheritance unto your father. So there again, another promise to put them back. And then if you go to the next page, and well, it's kind of weird. Ezekiel 37 starts on the very bottom of your page and then starts on the next page. But if you recall, on the next page, Ezekiel 37 is the famous passage called what? the dry bones vision. So in the dry bones vision, as you know, God's putting Israel back together piece by piece by piece and eventually blows the breath of life into them and they have a regeneration and then he puts them back. So he says this, the word of Yahweh came again unto me saying, and you son of man, take you one stick and write upon it for Judah and for the children of Israel his companions. Then take another stick and write upon it for Joseph and the stick of Ephraim. And for all the house of Israel, his companions, and join them for you one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand." And then we don't need the rest of it, but the whole point is he's going to put them back together. The Hebrew word that's used there is echad. It's used for God as well, that hero Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord your God is Echad, which is a composite unity, the plurality of the Godhead. Well, Echad is used for this, is used in this passage of, it's a plurality, but we're gonna unify the plurality. And that's why the Hebrew word Akkad means one, but it means a plurality of unity. Okay, so here's some application before we move on. The root cause of the division between Israel and the northern tribes and the southern tribe, the southern two tribes, it's real simple, sin. That was the root cause. that caused the whole civil war, so to speak, or the breakup of the whole nation of Israel. It's interesting enough. that it takes them coming to faith in Messiah and being regenerated to reestablish them as one Echad again. And this goes into personal application for all of us. As you watch the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, what you'll see is a pattern develop and a pattern that continues to develop into our personal lives that Paul will say in 1 Corinthians 10, that when you watch the pattern happening to Israel, Watch what will happen in your personal life is basically what he's saying. Okay, so here's what you have to remember. In your own personal family, when there is sin involved in somebody's life and they refuse to repent and they refuse to get their head screwed on straight, it then causes division, right? Because those who are clinging to the truth versus those who are not clinging to the truth, it will divide that family, just like it did divided Israel. And divided in almost 2,500 years, I'm thinking on top of my head, 2,500 years have been broken up. And so that being the case, even in your own families, Sin will divide your family because sin is the opposite of truth. And so when someone's keeping hold to the truth, keeping steady with it, your family will then dissolve right in front of your very eyes. because Sin puts people on a different track Sin makes them fight against you sin makes them fight against the truth now. Here's what starts happening Jesus said I've come not to bring peace, but I've come to bring a sword father against to be a son a mother against her daughter and So a man's own enemies will be his own household and that's what happened to Israel their own their own households divided over truth and versus sin question when an individual is involved in sin, what are you supposed to do? Separate. Yes, you will start practicing Matthew 18. So before we separate, you do Matthew 18, right? There's three levels to Matthew 18, okay? So the first one, you go to them, try to reconcile, and they're like, hey Sandy, put an egg in your shoe and beat it. OK? They're going to say things like that, right? And they're like, you're crazy, Sandy. So then you bring Charlie with you. Now, you bring the big guns. And he's loaded for bear, right? So you bring a witness with you. And so you and Charlie confront Joe Boe and your family. And he still says, hey, both of you, put an egg in your shoe and beat it. Get out of here. And so now you've went level one, level two, and Joe goes to your church. And so then now you bring him to the church. Hey man, we've talked to him two times, brought witnesses, he won't listen, he won't stop, he won't stop robbing banks. So I'm bringing this before the church because we can't get him to stop. Then the church decides what they're gonna do, they confront, and at that point, If the person doesn't stop, then the church makes the decision to either excommunicate or whatever. And at that point, if the church has excommunicated, then what is Sandy and Charlie's obligation if the church says, we're done with you? What do we do? What do they do? Invite them to Easter? But what if this is their own son? Do you see what the problem is? What if this is their own daughter? And I've just excommunicated them as a pastor. Okay, I think it's easier if they go to attend the same church, right? But what if, again, just throwing this out there, they have a relative that goes to another church, then what do you do? Or let's say they don't go to church at all. Then what do you do? Matthew 18 is only within the local confines of that church because she can only bring to me someone under the church's authority of that local church. So that person would need to be able to be at our church in order for me to exercise church discipline on them robbing banks. But if the person goes to a different church, guess what? I don't have a dog in the race because they're under someone else's authority. Now they could go to that other church's authority and appeal to them, but they couldn't appeal to me. I have no say in the matter. But then, okay, so all right, I can go to another pastor of another church and tell him that, hey, Joe Blow is robbing banks. They may or may not discipline them. Okay, so question, what if you go to their church and that church says, you know what, we don't practice church discipline at this place because we just want to love. Then what? Then what does Charlie and Sandy do? they will still be obligated to separate. They've done as much as they can do, so at their level, they need to separate at that point in time. I wanna read a passage real quick, because this division thing, it's really important that you get this one down, because the hyper-grace movement is saying, well, we're just gonna love them back to Jesus. We're just gonna love them back to Jesus. Let's say, instead of bank robbing, they're shacking up, okay? They're shacking up together. So, and they say, well, we're trying to save money on rent. You know, and it's not like I've heard that 75 times from people. Pastor, we're not having sex. We would never have sex. We're just living in the same home. I'm staying in my room. He stays on the couch. And I say, yeah, right. And I said, even if you wanna pull that one on me, I've got you because 1 Thessalonians says, I can't even allow the appearance of evil. And the fact that you live in the same home and you're not married is the appearance of evil, you appear to be shacking up. So at that point, you're still messed up. So they're saying, well, pastor, we're gonna get married. They go to Charlie and Sandy, hey, what are you getting onto us? We're gonna get married next month anyway. But Sandy, I don't have money. My parents live in Oklahoma, and I'll be renting a hotel room. I don't have the money for a hotel room. Yeah, but that's hard, because Charlie's hard to live with, man. So you'll hear these excuses and then you're right. Hey, you can come live at our place or we'll put you up over here. And eventually after all these excuses, you have to break them down and say, hey, look, man, let me tell you, I know what's going on. You're getting milk from the cow without buying the cow. And they look at you and they don't know what you're talking about. And they do. And they're just like, we love each other. It's all under grace. Jesus loves us too. Jesus wouldn't talk like that to us, pastor. You're being really mean. Okay, so then I read this. It is actually reported that there are sexual immorality among you and such immorality that is not even among the Gentiles. Okay? I wrote to you not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean sexually immoral people of the world, unbelievers, he's referring to, or with covetous or extortioners or idolaters since you wouldn't need to go out of the world. So he's basically saying, I'm not saying this is for unbelievers. I'm saying this is for believers in the house of God. He goes, but now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, which means those who claim to be of Christian descent. Okay, they're Christians, right? who is sexually immoral. But let me throw in more, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner. So he says, I'm not even talking about just sexually immoral Christians. I'm talking about extortion Christians. I'm talking about drunkard Christians. Wait a second, I didn't know Christians could be drunkards. I didn't know Christians could be extortioners. I didn't know Christians could be sexually immoral. But yet, he says, that's who I'm talking about. He goes, not even to eat with such a person. What? Therefore, put away from yourselves the evil person. Oh, oh, I can't eat with them? No, you can't eat with them. That means no Christmas? No, no Christmas, because he said you can't eat with them. I don't know what people do with that verse. They act like it doesn't exist. And it's not just sexually immoral people, it's people in open sin. Think about this, a person who's covetousness. Yeah. This is 1 Corinthians chapter five. It's the whole chapter basically. 1 Corinthians chapter five. Question then, he's saying you can't even fellowship or eat a dinner with a believer who's claiming to be a Christian and yet living in sin. So how long do I do this for? Until they repent. But what if they don't repent? Yeah, you're gonna be separated a long time. Now, here's the question. Why does Paul call for such extreme division from people in sin? Believers in sin, not pagans, but believers in sin. Why does he call for such extreme measures? Bad company corrupts good character, no doubt about it. Here's what you're going to learn. Let me capitalize on it. And there's other answers to this. But that's one of the answers. Understand that what you do in secret will be done by your children in public. If you do not think that you're hiding stuff from your kids, and you're like, well, they never know, it eventually comes out. And they actually do what you did. The very thing you worry about, that I don't want them to do what I did, they'll eventually do if you don't fix it. Dead serious, man. It's weird. It's whether it's subliminal, subconscious, I don't know, but somehow the kids start repeating the same patterns because people won't fix it or separate. So let's say you have crazy Uncle Joe that comes to whatever, your Christmas, whatever. And he claims to be a Christian, but crazy Uncle Joe is shacking up with somebody or whatever. Your tacit approval, even if you say, I don't approve of his lifestyle, I don't approve of what he's doing, but he's our uncle, he's our flesh and blood, and we've got to invite him to dinner. And you invite him to dinner, before you know it, that tacit approval is getting to the kids, and eventually the kids start following the pattern. Well, crazy Uncle Joe does it. He does it, so I'm going to do it. It's weird. It's not that you communicate this. It's not that you're saying, yeah, we approve of Uncle Joe. In fact, you will dogmatically say, I'm against what Uncle Joe is doing. But yet, somebody will start repeating what Uncle Joe is doing. Because why? It doesn't matter what you say if you contradict what you do in your actions. If you say, I don't agree with Uncle Joe, but yet still invite and fellowship with him, that's called a mixed signal. And everybody around is watching saying, hey, what are you gonna do with that guy? And so then it's a tacit approval and then that gets passed on to the younger generation. Well, I guess mom and dad must not be too upset with Uncle Joe because he just keeps coming over here and they act like nothing's happening. Right, bingo, bingo. This is what's killing families. This is why sin divides families and they don't know why because they're not handling it correctly. And it starts messing people up. So go back to this passage. What's the point of cutting him off or her off? What is it meant to do to them? What does it show them? It's supposed to redeem them, yeah? Okay, so let's think about the mechanics. What is the purpose of cutting someone off? It's obviously to redeem them, but how does it redeem them? What message does it send to them? What are they interpreting by you saying, you're not coming over for Christmas. You're not coming over for Thanksgiving. In fact, we're not ever eating dinner with you until you fix your issue. Because I'm not supposed to eat with them, it says. What messaging am I sending? I am not supporting you, and so I'm cutting Koinonia off from with you. I'm not fellowshipping with you in hopes that you will what? Feel what? What am I trying to do to them? I want to convict them, yes. Believe it or not, this is gonna shock you, but this is what the purpose of Paul kicking the dude out of the church who was messing with his stepmom. He's trying to cause the guy pain. What? He's trying to hurt him. Redemptively. Not harm him. hurt him till he feels the pain of the sin that he is in that his sin is costing him and giving him consequences of being cut off. Cutting someone off is making them feel the pain of the loss of relationship with you. If you keep giving your relationship to them, you're not causing them hurt. They're thinking, well, I can just keep acting like this, and everything's just fine. But the minute they feel the pain of a loss of a relationship, that's how God gets people's attention. You're losing the relationship. In fact, you're going to lose all of them if you don't stop, is the mindset. Check this out what he says. If you're not thinking about pain and hurt, look what the apostle Paul says. He goes in the same chapter, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. You talk about pain. Deliver this one to Satan. for the destruction of the flesh. What does he mean by that? I mean, Paul's pretty hardcore, isn't he? Where's the love? Where's the grace? Where's the Jesus movement here? What is this idea of delivering over? Hey man, you're on Satan's territory. What does that mean? Yeah, Steven. Right. Not in a salvation sense, because that's not what's going on here, right? The person's already saved. So what does save his soul mean? He might die physically from what he's doing. So the term, save his soul from death, has to do with physical life. That whatever he's practicing, it could kill him. But number two, God can kill him. God will take his life. Hebrews chapter 12, Ananias and Sapphira, and different other passages that refer to the death of believers, premature death. Even James will point this out in James chapter one, verse 21. In chapter five, verse, 21, 22, somewhere in that neighborhood. I can't remember off the top of my head. It's chapter one, chapter five. On both bookends of James, he's talking about the death of a believer, a premature death of believers because of discipline. So this idea of deliver him to Satan so his soul can be saved, you're not talking about salvation. The guy's already saved. You wouldn't be doing this to an unbeliever. You only do this to believers. So what is Satan gonna do to the old boy? What can Satan do to him? So we're gonna save him from a premature physical death, but what can Satan do to him? It says the destruction of the flesh. What does that mean? Give him to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Yes. Here's the key in all of this. The reason I'm cutting the person off, I'm going to cause pain. Not just simply because I'm gonna distance myself and they're gonna lose my relationship. I'm gonna throw you over into an unprotected area of authority, because when you're under the church and under the authority of the church, you're protected spiritually. Even in a home, if the home is balanced and the right authority is being functioning correctly, the home is protected and even the children. The minute the home is not protected and things go upside down and there's no authority there, the home is exposed. So when this old boy doesn't want to get his ax straightened up, and then you say, you know what? Go out there. You're on Satan's territory. Now the person is unprotected from the demonic realm. when the demonic realm sees a christian who is escaped from the authority of the protection of the messiah and the authority of the church it's fair game they are fair game now they will be attacked somehow someway spiritually over what they're doing now how that that comes i don't know it can come in various forms whatever god allows satan to do but he will go for it Question, have you seen Satan go for a believer before? And what did he do? Just name some examples of what he did. Go back in the Old Testament. What did he do to believers? What did he do to Job? Took his family, took his health, everything. Now, Job wasn't in sin, mind you, but the whole point was that God allowed Satan to do this to Job. Can you think of another person in the Old Testament that was ransacked by Satan, that was given over to Satan? He was a king. Saul. Only David's music would calm Saul down from the torment that the demons were giving him. Saul was nearly losing his mind with demonic oppression. And like I've told you before, there's plenty of verses right there that I believe that Saul is saved. Samuel says, you will accompany me. And where was Samuel in paradise? So that's where Saul was going. So you have that. Then let's go to the New Testament. Peter gets out from the authority real quick, and he says what to Jesus in Matthew 16. You're not going to the cross. So all of a sudden he's out of authority, he's lost his mind. And so what does Jesus retort back to him saying? Get behind me, Satan. So wait, he's addressing Peter, calling Peter Satan, and why does he do that? Because Satan is now controlling the thoughts of Peter. Why didn't know Satan could do that? We just did, with Peter. Peter's saved. But he's being controlled by Satan to say certain things. Then obviously he goes and denies the Lord later on with his boast. Jumped into acts. What happened in acts? A couple thought they were being slick. Right? Ananias and Sapphira are believers. They're selling their property. The whole idea is everyone's donating the property back. And Peter retorts and says, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you would have lied to the Holy Spirit? The term is filled your heart. The idea of filling as the idea of controlling. How is it you allowed Satan to control you in this? So basically they weren't possessed, but they were what's called oppressed, where they were being controlled. And then Peter knocked them dead at that point in time. Okay. Early premature death. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So he, you are. And so you see how easy it is. Okay. So, Then the idea is, I'm going to put them in an unprotected area where they're not under authority anymore. They're not under the church's authority, they're not under our house's authority. They're on their own. And then Satan can have his way with them. in this unprotected state. Now what happens at that point, I don't know. Because a lot of weird stuff can happen. They could get sick. They could die. They could have all kinds of weird stuff happening. They could have demonic oppression. They could have all kinds of weird stuff happening. Particularly in sexual sin, I'll tell you, in sexual sin, or in drugs, or whatever, a lot of the sins that people get themselves involved in, tap them into the spiritual realm. So you can get to the spiritual realm pretty quick through drugs. You put yourself in an altered state of consciousness, you're there. Sex will get you there as well. So if people are having unbridled sex and they can't control themselves or whatever, it can get them there. Don't ask me how, but it does. Because people that are ex-Satanists, ex-whatever, pagans, use the sex act to commune with the spirits. And it's involved in the sex act. And I know that kind of seems kind of weird and out there, but this is what they report. And so you just don't know. You don't know what degree Satan can have their way with them. And it's pretty scary. Now, here's the question. If you turn them over and you don't see anything going on, there's no discipline, there's no heavy-handed, there's no consequences for what they're doing, you don't see anything changing, what then could I possibly think of at that point? They're probably not saved. The promise from Scripture, and it's not to doubt salvation, But when you see someone who claims to be a believer never being disciplined, life should get very tough for you as a believer if you decide to go commit sin. It should get real rough for you. But if it's not getting rough and things are just hunky-dory and zippity-doo-dah, everything's great, and they're just free-willing in sin, you're probably looking at an unbeliever. that was fake, never really had it. And again, I reserve that category because I don't wanna jump into the Calvinist camp and say, well, if you're just in sin, you're just lost anyway, you're never worth saying. No, there's always that aspect of a category that people were faking it. And that's why in Matthew 7, he says, I never knew you, depart from me, right? So you have weed among the tares. I should expect, if they're a believer, that if I do all my proper things right, from your standpoint, my standpoint, their life will get really tough. It's going to be hard to watch. I've seen it. And I've seen it work. It's real. And if people will actually practice it, it's very difficult. Very difficult. But if they will practice it, it actually helps bring the person back if they're a believer. If they're not a believer, it won't work. Because there's no discipline that's gonna happen. But it gets really bad if they're a believer. And it should. We would expect that, right? Hebrews chapter 10 says God disciplines his own children. He's gonna take them to the woodshed. Any questions on that? I know that's a lot. But when you see, okay, Israel split, it was the sin that split them. And it was so deep, it's divided them to this day. And I'm telling you, the way things are becoming now in our families, I'm counseling families, and they're just split right down the middle, man. They're split because somebody's got a wild hair, and they're doing goofy things, and they won't stop. We've talked to them. They can't get their head screwed on straight. What do you do? I have to refer to 1 Corinthians 5. You mean, Brandon, I can't invite them to Christmas? No. Change your Christmas plans. You mean I can't email them? No. It says not even to have lunch with them. Don't eat with them. So I can't have coffee with them? No. Whoa! That seems very radical, Brandon. But here's my thing. What do you do with this passage? because it's ignored. It's just simply ignored. So the purpose of it is to inflict pain, to hurt them enough to say, hey, stop. Pain is a good thing. Hurt is a good thing. It wakes you and I up, but it won't harm them. Do you know the difference between hurt and harm? If you harm somebody, you could like harm somebody in revenge, they're never gonna recover from that, man. They're gonna be jacked up the rest of their life. Hurt or pain is redemptive. It actually helps them get back on track. Like Peter's pain of denying the Lord, it helped him get back on track where he saw his failure and that pain caused him to say, I gotta get straightened up here. Okay, I know that's a lot, any questions? You have to be prepared because, be prepared you're not gonna see your grandkids if you do this to your adult child. Okay, you have to be prepared for that. You mean I'm not gonna see my grandkids? No, you probably won't for a while, but here's the question. If you want them to be redeemed, If you want that person to come back, you have to be willing to sacrifice your own relationships with that part of the family, because you're not going to see them. They're going to get ticked off at you. You're going to be the bad guy. And so they're going to pull the grandkids away. Then they're going to talk behind your back to your other family members. And you're going to say, you do see how mean Brandon is? Boy, you know, he's cutting us off. I can't even believe he calls himself a Christian. And you're going to have a cotton candy Christian saying, yeah, Jesus wouldn't do that. And before you know it, all the family's against you, Charlie. It's Charlie. It's Charlie. He's the one that's crazy. But you're the one actually doing the biblical thing, right? So you'll be alone. You've got to be willing to stand alone. Because if you're not, you're going to get hammered by your family. Yeah, they will turn on you like a sheep killing dog. Because they've got to get an alliance. And the one who will start the alliance is the one you're disciplining. That's who they'll go around and traffic, like Satan did, he trafficked to the angels. And they go one by one, and they'll get on the phone. Can you believe what Jim and Carol are doing to me? Jim's out of his mind. Carol's out of her mind. They're crazy. I don't know what's going on. And that'll spread through your whole family. And before you know it, you're the black sheep. And that's OK. You've got to be willing to take that, because no one's going to come on board. But if you want to redeem the person, this is the only thing you have. There's no other passage I can refer to you to say, here's another way of helping people get their heads screwed on straight. There is no other way. Stephen. Yeah. And so you have to be prepared for that and understand you're going to have to count the costs on that. Yeah. Believe it or not, it's the same thing when you're even talking about individual believers being divided from the Lord in disfellowship. What reunites Israel is Jesus. I know that sounds simplistic, but it's actually faith in Messiah that unites them back together. And let me explain what that means. If you go to an unbeliever out there in the world and you say, hey, unbeliever, you need to be against abortion. You need to be against gay marriage. You need to be against transgenderism or whatever it is. That's the wrong approach because you're asking them to have Christian values before they're a Christian. You can't do that to that. That's not the way it works. You have to give the gospel first, get them saved, and then you introduce Christian values to them, and they will readily accept it. That won't be a problem if they're truly born again. They will absorb the teaching. So to Tom, when Israel comes to faith in the Messiah, It's after that, the rest of the package comes with it. And the rest of the package is, if you're from Judah or Benjamin, or you're from the 10 tribes, hey guys, we're all one nation, we need to get back in line in covenant with Messiah because we're all scattered because of this unbelief. What scattered them was idolatry. They worshiped foreign gods. And so coming back to the one true God, then, after that follows what they should do. And so they start marching in line, what exactly what they should be doing. So it's, it seems simplistic, they have to come to Jesus, but it's the idea that once I do come to Jesus, then I'll obey everything he wants me to do. And he says, get along with your brothers. Okay, we're back reunited. And that's how you put it in a spiritual sense. Now when you take it to the individual sense, it's the same thing. These people who are in sin, their sin has become an idol in their life. That's what's happened. It's the same concept. It's not a wood structure or a stone structure, but let's say their boyfriend has become an idol to them, right? They want to sleep with their boyfriend or girlfriend all the time. It's become an idol. So now they have in front of Jesus a competing God, and they have to get rid of that God first. before they worship the one true God. And so once they do, then they come back to Jesus and they say, okay, I want to follow Jesus now and not foreign gods. And everything starts lining up again. Their idols is what's keeping them separate. And right now the idol is the idol of the rabbi. That's what's keeping them separate. I know. Absolutely. And then you have the 140,000. And then here's another one to add to this. The Italian prophet, you know, the Italian prophet, Malachi. Remember Fonzie went against the Malachi brothers in Happy Days. You guys remember Happy Days? They used to wreck cars. Remember that? I don't know what those were called. I went to the one one time at, what was it? Demolition derbies, yeah, I went to one in Angel's Camp when I watched the frogs jump there and they had demolition derby and I was thinking of the Malachi brothers with Fonzie, oh yeah. Anyway, long story short, back to the Italian prophet Malachi, or Malachi. Check this out, chapter four, this is the last two verses of the Old Testament. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet. before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, before the tribulation? And what will He do? And He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. What does that mean, that He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to their fathers? Yeah, he's bringing echad, unifying, but notice what he's unifying. The first thing he has to do is hit the grassroots level to unify the nation. This is Elijah coming back, man. And his ministry is a family ministry to the Jews. So what's at the grassroots here? What is the grassroots? I'm gonna turn the hearts, where the belief section is in the humans, of the fathers to their children and the children to their fathers. At the grassroots level, in order for them to get their heads screwed on straight so they can receive Messiah properly, their family unit needs to be put back together, unified spiritually. And you're only going to do that through the Messiah. So it's not just the witnesses of the 144,000. Elijah's specific ministry is to heal the broken families in Israel and prepare them to accept Messiah. Well, the only unifying effect in a family is to be on the same page spiritually. That's it. That's the secret. If the family is unified around the Messiah and the spiritual principles of Messiah, they will get along. So at the grassroots level, when he comes back, that's where he starts his ministry in unifying Israel for the Messiah. What does that say about families today? If they're not centered on Messiah, they're not unified. So again, That's why Messiah will split families because some people of the family will not want to worship or follow Messiah and not do what he wants them to do. And so therefore it splits the family. So think about this. What kind of statement is that? The last verse of the Old Testament before you get to the new is that passage that I got to put together the families. before the tribulation, I've gotta put the families of Israel back together, because they're split. So see, Israel has the same problems we do today. Our families are split. So this idea of bringing Israel back together, if you take it on a single level, it's down to the personal love, it's the same principle. It's the same principle, and he's gonna unify them. Anyway, any other questions before we take a break? Yes, it kind of, yeah, the Amish will do the shunning, but sometimes the Amish can go too far in the shunning because they'll start shunning for things they shouldn't be shunning for. So, you know, that's the thing is when you look in these passages, if you do shun, it can't be for like, well, I don't like his attitude. You can't do that. It's got to be like open sin, right? And so sometimes the Amish or even the Mennonites will go too far and thou dost use the zipper. Thou dost are shunned now because you use the zipper or you rode in a car. Right? You know, and they just take it too far. And you're like, whoa, that's not what Paul was saying. He was talking about open sin. So if you keep it in the context, the category of I only shun or separate for open sin, then you're safe. If you separate for any more than that, you're going to get cultic. You're going to get into Jehovah Witness shunning, Mormon shunning, and it gets really tricky and hairy. Tricky and hairy. Tricky and hairy. Tricky and hairy. Tricky and hairy.