Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Oh God, guide us by your word and spirit so that in your light we may see light. In your truth find wisdom and in your will discover peace. Add your blessing to the reading and the hearing and the preaching of your word and grant us all the grace to trust and obey you and all God's people said. Amen. A few weeks ago, I told you kids to thank your parents for obeying Jesus by bringing you to him for baptism and for bringing you to a church that obeys Jesus by welcoming you to eat with him at his table. The next week, I encouraged you to respond to your parents by obeying them because you are thankful to God for them. Well, I'm guessing since then, some of you have forgotten how thankful you are for your parents, and as a result, you have probably disobeyed them. And I hope that because your parents love you, they disciplined you when you disobeyed. My encouragement for you today is that if your parents have disciplined you for your disobedience, either in the last few weeks or ever in your life, tell them thank you. You see, a major part of a parent's job is to teach you to obey right away. And part of learning that it is better to obey than disobey is by teaching you from a very early age that it hurts to disobey. In fact, that phrase, it hurts, to disobey is one of the catechism questions we had for our kids when they were little. Even before they could talk, if we had clearly given them an instruction that we knew they understood and they blatantly disobeyed that instruction, we would discipline them and then tell them or ask them, it hurts to disobey, doesn't it? After they finished crying, while holding them, we would pray for God to forgive them and to help them obey in the future, and then we would hug, and I would remind them of my love for them. And we repeated that process over and over, and sometimes over and over again. We didn't count to three or make empty threats, because we knew that would actually teach our kids to disobey even more. We simply tried to give a clear instruction and then praise or discipline them according to how they responded. Now that they're older, I'm very thankful we did that because they are mostly joyful and obedient children who want to obey God by obeying us. And no, it hurts to disobey. Now, people who don't trust God or what his word says about these kinds of things told us that we were being mean because a child's brain isn't developed enough to understand all of that, to which I would say, exactly. You see, while unbelievers would say a kid's brain not being developed is a reason not to discipline, we would say that's exactly why you should discipline. Discipline is a crucial part of brain development, at least according to the Bible. If a kid is old enough to receive an instruction, stare straight into mom or dad's eyes, and then do the exact opposite of what everyone knows they know they're supposed to do, that kid is old enough to learn it hurts to disobey. Now, dad should help kids learn that lesson without disobeying God himself in the process. And if any of you wives or kids have questions about whether or not dad is being obedient when trying to teach obedience, please come talk to me or one of the other elders and we can all figure that out together. But, If your dad is being faithful to teach you one of the most fundamental truths of reality, that it hurts to disobey God, well then if you are wise, you should thank him. Because in teaching you that now, he's saving you a lifetime of pain later. In our story today, like a good Dad, Jesus is yet again explaining to his followers this basic principle, that people who insist on disobeying God will pay for their rebellion. And yet again, he promises that these things will happen in their lifetimes. Now, one of the benefits of going through books of the Bible together is that after a while, if we're paying attention, we learn to get a feel for what the author is doing. And so by now, most of you should have heard Jesus's words just now and known exactly what he is and isn't talking about. For months, when we've come to passages like this, we have tried to point out that the prophecies Jesus is giving do not refer to events that are happening in our lives, but are specifically referring to things that were going to happen in the lifetime of his audience. We've reminded you that Luke is writing to Theophilus, a Gentile God lover who is wondering whether or not he could be certain that Jesus was the King and Savior of all the nations. We've often referred back to Jesus' first sermon when he proclaimed that the prophecy about the Lord's anointed from Isaiah 61 was being fulfilled in him. And as we've gone through Luke, we've seen how Jesus's entire ministry was proof that he was who he claimed to be, the king of Jubilee, who had come to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to grant sight to the blind, and to set free those who had been oppressed by wicked rulers. And while for the last several weeks we have not seen Jesus doing those kinds of things, he has continued to prove he is the Lord's anointed from Isaiah 61. And his phrasing in verse 22 of Luke 21, which we just read, gives us a hint to that very thing. If you have your Bibles, hold your place here in Luke and flip to Isaiah 61 so that we can begin to frame how we're to understand Jesus' words that day. Here in Isaiah 61, if you look, verse one and the first line of verse two should sound very familiar to you by now. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. But look at the line after the phrase we've quoted almost every week. And the day of vengeance of our God. So the anointed one who was prophesied to do all those things in the first part of Isaiah 61 is the same anointed one who would proclaim the day of God's vengeance when he came to the earth. And so back in Luke 21 when Jesus says, these are the days of vengeance to fulfill all that is written, he is simply picking up right where he left off way back in Luke 4. There he closed with, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and said, this day the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And now here, When for the first time since that day, Jesus uses the word fulfill and says these are the days of vengeance, those days of vengeance are just as much a part of the ministry of Jesus as the year of the Lord's favor that occurred all throughout his ministry. Now for months, most of you have been taught to read and hear Jesus' Prophecies again not as being references to events 2,000 years after the fact but rather to events referring to what would go on in the lives of people in that generation But not all of you have been with us for several months, and as our fellowship hall continues to overflow, we realize that you might be wondering why your old church talked about Israel and the rapture and the last days as being in our generation all the time, but the only time we talk about it is when we tell you that's not what the Bible says. So with that in mind, with how common it is for these verses right here in Luke 21 to be misunderstood Given that it will be the last time these specific things are referred to for a while, we're going to revisit these things and hopefully you'll be able to see how we reach such a different conclusion than most of the churches around us. Now, before we dive into the text, we're gonna take a little bit of a rabbit trail to point out the very important fact that we all bring different presuppositions to our Bible reading. That's to say we all have pre-commitments that we simply assume to be true without even thinking about it. And so we automatically interpret passages based on what we've already assumed. There are basically four pre-commitments people have when reading these kinds of passages. Now, just because someone has a pre-commitment, as everyone does, doesn't mean they're necessarily wrong. But if you're not aware that you are bringing assumptions with you, well, then you might not even realize you're making it impossible for you to understand what's actually going on in a passage. The four basic approaches or commitments to these kinds of texts are historicism, idealism, futurism, and praetorism, or praetorism. Now, they're most easily understood in how they approach the prophetic letter of Revelation, so I'll use examples from there, and then we can come back to Luke. First, historicism approaches the prophecies in Revelation as referring to segments or epochs in church history that lead up to the return of Jesus, which may be any day now. Now, it's a quite complicated system and Pretty outdated. No one that I'm aware of defaults to this position, and I doubt anyone in here holds to it. So we're not going to spend much time on that one. If you want to know about it, ask about it during Q&A. Historicism. Another, and this is much more common approach, is called idealism. Idealism doesn't necessarily see prophecies as having a specific, concrete referent in time, but rather sees prophecies as general, timeless revelations of principles that are true in every age. The clearest example would be prophecies about the sea and land beasts in Revelation 13. Someone who is pre-committed to an idealist approach would default to seeing this prophecy as referring to political and religious enemies of the church in every age. So throughout time, if and when the sea beast state rises up and persecutes the church, or a religious land beast institution becomes godless, Well, then God's people can trust that he will ultimately deliver them and judge their political and religious adversaries. That's the idealist approach. And because they're used to thinking in principles, our idealist brothers are very good when it comes to making practical application from passages that can seem quite complicated. And anyone, even preterists who try to take a passage from 2,000 years ago and apply it to our day has to use the idealist approach somehow. Historicism, idealism. There's another approach that tends to read the prophecies of the Bible in light of current events, and that's called futurism. But unlike our idealist brothers who believe these are general principles that can be applied to any age, Our futurist brothers believe that the prophecies apply to specific concrete realities in our day or day's future to us, hence the name. A way you can see their pre-commitment play out in interpretation is perhaps most famously in Revelation 9 and the prophecy about the locusts coming up out of the bottomless pit to attack the people on the land. Because they're already convinced that these things are going to happen in our future, they have to figure out what the locusts refer to, which for the futurist, helicopters, drones, you laugh, I'm serious, or some other modern day flying military force. Now, maybe our futurist brothers are right in their pre-commitments. And the mark of the beast is a tattoo or an RFID chip or the COVID vaccine. But we need to at least be honest in recognizing that futurists are forced into those kinds of explanations because they are convinced before coming to a text that is how you have to interpret it to be faithful. So they're trying to be faithful. They can get away with saying things like anyone who disagrees with them is disagreeing with the clear meaning of Scripture. Because they've already made up their minds before reading the text what it has to be referring to. And so it makes sense that they think an idealist or a preterist who thinks the Bible is clearly talking about something else must not be going verse by verse through the Bible. And taking it literally, or so I heard a pastor accuse us of in our interpretation of Luke 21 this week. The last and fourth approach is preterism, which you Latin students ought to recognize as meaning past. This is the view that most of the prophecies in the New Testament have already been fulfilled, and that includes the book of Revelation. And so for the Preterist, the sea beast in Revelation 13 was a specific concrete reference to pagan Rome. The lamb-like land beast was a specific concrete reference to apostate Israel. and the locusts were prophetic references to the Roman soldiers coming to destroy Jerusalem in AD 70. You see, preterists are pre-committed to coming to a prophecy and trying to understand what that prophecy would have meant to its original audience. And only by trying to understand what it literally meant to them can we begin to understand how it might apply to us. Now, it should come as no surprise to you, even if you've only been with us a short time, that most weeks you get a preterist approach to Jesus's prophecies and explanation as to why that's the best way to understand Jesus, and then some idealist applications for those of us living so far after the fact. Depending on the text and how dangerous a misinterpretation of it could be, I will be more or less hard on our futurist brothers. Now I realize that if you have come from a futurist tradition, as most of us have, it is really difficult to take those lenses off. But I want you to try and forget about the last prophecy update you heard, set your pre-commitments aside, and let's walk through this text to see what Jesus is talking about. Now, because of how specific we're going to be, and because I want you to see that the Preterists really do take our Bibles seriously, you may wanna keep them open, because we're just gonna walk through. First, in Luke, or excuse me, in verse five, Luke gives the context of what Jesus is talking about by writing, while some were speaking about the temple and how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings, Jesus, while in the temple complex, speaks to those people who were talking about the temple and says, as for these things that y'all see, what things? The things in the temple that they've been talking about. As for these things, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down. Now you have to understand the magnitude of the claim Jesus is making. He is not only talking about the temple itself, the word he uses is referring to the entire temple complex. And the stones that were used to build that complex are not bricks. The smallest stones weighed between two and five tons. The largest one, called the Master Course, used on the western wall of Jerusalem was over 44 feet long, 11 feet high, between 10 and 15 feet deep, and weighed almost 600 tons. And so when Jesus says there will be such massive destruction that not one of those stones would be left standing on another, it's no surprise that they respond, teacher, When will these things be and what sign do we need to look out for that will lead up to that no doubt dreadful day? It's in response to that question, the question about what to look for when the temple is about to be destroyed, that Jesus gives the answer from verse eight all the way down to verse 36. I was gonna do a Scottish accent for you, but now I'm nervous, so I'm just gonna say it in English. Dr. Ferguson used to say, the you in the pew are not this you. So imagine I just said that with a Scottish accent. So to help you with that, I'm going to change the person of the grammar to make it a little bit, hopefully, easier for us to hear what was going on. To those people in A.D. 30, Jesus said, see that they are not led astray, verse eight, when they heard about wars and rumors of wars, he told them not to be terrified. People would lay their hands on them and persecute them and deliver them into the synagogues and prisons and they would be brought before kings and governors. When they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then they would know that its desolation is near. When these things began to take place, they were to raise their heads because their redemption was drawing near. When they saw the armies surrounding Jerusalem, they were to flee. And he said to them, truly, their generation would not pass away until all that had taken place. So they were to stay awake and pray so that they might have strength to escape all the things that are going to take place. It's a quick run through of everything Jesus said. So put whatever assumptions you think the text has to be talking about over here, and just ask yourself, if you were someone in Jesus' audience in the temple that day, looking at and asking about when the temple was going to be destroyed, and then Jesus answered you in the way we just discussed, what part of you would think about some day almost 2,000 years after your generation had passed away? The plain, literal, and obvious reading is that when Jesus told those people that all those things would happen during their lifetimes, he either kept his word, and they all did, or they all didn't, and he was a false prophet. Now, our futurist brothers obviously would not call Jesus a false prophet because they believe already that he wasn't talking about the events in that generation. Jesus was talking, according to the futurist, about events that were future to them and also to us. And so here the reasoning. For the committed futurist position to be true, that generation, cannot mean that generation, literally, because if it did mean that generation, then the things that Jesus is talking about aren't talking about things in our future, which they assume can't be true. Do you see how the cycle goes? Because of his pre-commitment, A futurist is forced to redefine terms in order to keep his assumptions intact. His system determines what a text can or can't say before he ever even interacts with that text. And so instead of a generation meaning 40 years, like is the case in most places in the Bible, in this case, the futurist says that the generation must be referring to the entire time of the Gentiles, which Jesus refers to in verse 24. The entire church age. The problem with that is that verse 24, hang in there, because this is going to be challenging, verse 24 is before verses 32 and 34. You see how that math works? Where Jesus keeps talking about the generation of the people standing right in front of him. And John tells us in Revelation 11, that the time of the Gentiles was going to be for 42 months when they trampled on the holy city, which we know to be the exact length of time Titus besieged Jerusalem from February of 67 to August of 70. Now, they will argue that even though generation doesn't have to be literal, all of the highly symbolic imagery must be. And since those things haven't happened yet, well, then those are the things we need to be on the lookout for. So let's examine those claims. In verse 11, Jesus says there would be earthquakes leading up to the destruction of the temple. Guess what? Just two or three days after Jesus said these things, when he was being crucified, Matthew tells us that the earth quaked, the rocks were split, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Six years later, church historian Eusebius tells of a major earthquake that occurred in Jerusalem, and the Christians linked that earthquake to the divine signs Jesus had referred to. Likely, while Paul and Luke are composing acts, in AD 60, Roman historian Tacitus records that a major earthquake happened in Asia Minor, leveling several cities, which one might sound familiar to you, included Laodicea. And if those weren't enough earthquakes to make people pay attention, another major earthquake occurred during that generation. Just as the temple they were all standing in that day was receiving its finishing touches in AD 63, Tacitus records another major earthquake occurring in Pompeii that was felt all the way to Syria and Asia Minor. And he notes that the people understood it to be a sign of impending judgment. Okay, so Jesus kept his word about earthquakes. What about famines? Well, in Luke's second book dedicated to Theophilus' acts, he records there was in fact an extreme famine which afflicted the people under the reign of Claudius from AD 44 to 46. And 20 years after that famine, the Jewish historian Josephus records an even more extreme famine that occurred during the first stages of the siege in Jerusalem. In book five of his account of the Jewish wars, Josephus provides a vivid description of this famine. The famine was so severe that many of the inhabitants of the city perished. The people were starving to death and some were reduced to eating the most vile things. Mothers even ate their own children. The famine became so intense that a woman is said to have killed her own infant and after roasting it, ate one half and saved the rest for later. So we have earthquakes and famines, but what of plagues? Well again, this time in his work Antiquities, Josephus writes about a plague in Judea in which the people of the city of Jerusalem were afflicted with a great plague and even the survivors were left in terrible distress. So during that generation, earthquakes, check, famines, check, plagues, check. And that's just verse 11. The whole book of Acts records the fulfillment of verse 12, when Jesus told them that they'd be arrested, delivered to synagogue leaders, thrown into prison, and brought before kings and governors to testify about Jesus. In Acts 4, just a couple of months after this speech, Peter and John are preaching about the resurrection of Jesus. And the priest and temple captain and Sadducees were greatly annoyed and they arrested Peter and John and brought them to testify before Annas and Caiaphas, the imposter high priests we talked about last week. Ignoring their command to stop preaching, Peter and John are arrested again in Acts 5, this time receiving beatings and being thrown out of the synagogue. Just after his ordination in Acts 7, Stephen is stoned to death for preaching against the Jews. Again, all within a matter of months of Jesus' prophecy here in Luke 21. In Acts 12, after the Apostle James is killed by King Herod, Peter is thrown into but escapes prison. And afterward, in Acts, the converted Apostle Paul is dragged before governors and kings and the cliffhanger at the end of Acts in the early 60s is the reader is wondering how Paul's trial before Caesar was going to go. So yet again, Jesus' words here began to be fulfilled almost immediately after he preached them. Well, fine, the futurist concedes, but those things were the near fulfillment. Everything coming after verse 24, the time of the Gentiles, well that's the far still future to us who are living in this generation. So let's look at Jesus' highly prophetic and therefore more likely to be symbolic than the simple phrase that generation. Jesus says there would be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and they would see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with great power and glory, things the futurist claims never happen. Well, surprise, surprise. Yet again, Josephus writes that just before the war in AD 66, the words of Zechariah and Jesus came true. While the Jews did not attend or give credit to the signs that were so evident and did so plainly foretell their destruction, and like men infatuated without either eyes to see or minds to think, they did not regard the denunciations God made to them. At that time, there was a star resembling a sword which stood over the city and a comet that continued a whole year, something NASA confirms as having happened too, by the way. On the eighth day of the month and at the ninth hour of the night, so great a light shone around the altar and the holy house that it appeared to be bright daytime and lasted for half an hour. This light seemed to be a good sign to the unskillful, but was so interpreted by the scribes as to foreshadow those events that followed immediately afterward. He also records sightings of chariots and armed soldiers in the clouds visible, saying, I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable were it not related by those that saw it and were not the events that followed it of so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals. For behold, before sunset, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armor were seen running about among the clouds and surrounding the city. And Tacitus, again a Roman historian, records this in book five of his histories. There had been seen hosts joining battle in the skies, the fiery gleam of arms, the temple illuminated by a sudden radiance from the clouds. The doors of the inner shrine were suddenly thrown open and a voice of more than mortal tone was heard to cry that the gods were departing. At the same time, there was a mighty stirring wind as of a departure. Roman historian, Jewish historian. Now look, we don't need these extra biblical sources to confirm anything God says for us to believe his word. A faithful reader of scripture should be able to hear the plain teaching of Jesus and interpret it correctly because they have been so thoroughly immersed in Scripture, they hear this kind of language and they know what's going on. Even without Josephus or Tacitus or Eusebius, we should be able to hear the prophetic language being used by Jesus and know what's going on. Jesus is prophesying that the end of the old world is coming upon that generation. And when those people saw the things Jesus was talking about happening in their generation, they should flee because Jerusalem was about to go down. They apparently took Jesus at his word for them. Because we have yet another account of these things taking place from Eusebius. The people of the church in Jerusalem were instructed by an oracle, given by revelation to leave the city and to dwell in a town beyond the Jordan called Pella. And it's a good thing they did. Because on the same day that the Babylonians destroyed Solomon's temple, The Romans destroyed the second one that Jesus was standing at the day we've been discussing. From Clement of Rome, less than 30 years after these events, to Augustine in the 400s, to the venerable Bede in the 700s, to Calvin in the 1500s, faithful interpreters of this passage have recognized that Jesus was clearly talking about the events that were about to take place upon that generation in the destruction of the temple and the inauguration of the new covenant of which we are all a part. Beloved, let us not be led astray into wild speculations that have captivated so many in the last hundred years or so. Just listen to some of the failed predictions about the end times being just around the corner. And since wisdom is known by her children, listen to the names of the men and what became of their followers. Baptist minister William Miller predicted Jesus would return in 1844. And after what ended up being referred to as the Great Disappointment, the disenfranchised members of his church began following Ellen G. White and formed what would become the Seventh Day Adventist Church, if we can still call it that. Joseph Smith, the founder of the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, claimed that God told him in 1835 that Jesus would come back in 1891. Unfortunately, his failed prophecy didn't deter the now Mormon church from following his teachings. In 1914, Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses, predicted Jesus would return that year to set up his kingdom. Herbert Armstrong, founder of the Worldwide Church of God, not Trinitarian, predicted first in 1935 and later revised to 1975 that his followers were living in the last days and Jesus was about to return. You notice anything in common about those groups? They are cults who rejected the sufficiency of Scripture and trusted some self-proclaimed prophecy expert who either just didn't know how to read the Bible or intentionally took advantage of well-meaning people's ignorance. Do not get caught up in the last day's madness. Jesus did not and does not make empty promises or threats and there is nothing in his word that day that should lead us to think otherwise. God's word is so very clear and anyone who would confuse you by redefining all these terms is at best misguided and at worst very dangerous. Jesus promised those people that like God, he was going to ride out on the clouds to judge the rebellious, God-hating Jewish leaders, destroy the temple they had come to worship, and then raise up a new people to worship him in houses of worship all over the world. And we know he kept his word, proving himself to be a true prophet, the great high priest, and now exalted king who reigns over all. And because we know he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, we also know Jesus will keep his promises to bless those who embrace him for their salvation. And until every enemy is brought under his feet, he will keep tearing down any and every rival kingdom, whether on the national or individual level. He will bring down any nation, even this one, that would reject Him and turn against His people. But He would raise up a nation where the people would humble themselves, turn to Him, pray, and seek His face like we all prayed together this morning. He will bring down any church who would tolerate false prophets, depart from the faith, and lead people into worshiping false gods. And he will raise up churches whose ministers are faithful to proclaim the whole counsel of God and whose people are faithful to trust and obey Jesus. He will bring down any household where mother or father or child acts like their Lord and Jesus isn't, and he will bless households where everyone joyfully submits to Christ and serves one another in love. And he will bring down any sinner, even you, if you dare defy Jesus. It hurts to disobey. It hurts you, it hurts those around you, and indeed it hurts the whole world. So if and when you feel the sting of Jesus's discipline, no matter how young or old, thank your heavenly Father for it. Heed his discipline, repent, and grow up into greater maturity and Christlikeness for the glory of God and the life of the world. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father, we have heard wonderful things out of your word. We praise you for revealing Christ by promise and shadow in the Old Testament and for revealing him as the fulfillment of all these things in the new. Give us your spirit so that we might understand these words and the fullness of your truth as you have revealed it to us in the person and work of Jesus, who with you and the Holy Spirit be all honor and glory now and forever. Amen. Our communion homily is from the last few verses of Psalm 23 and the first verse of Psalm 24. It might feel a little strange to do something like that, but in the Hebrew Bible, there are not verses or chapters, so anyone reading it in Hebrew would go straight into the next Psalm. So they are connected to one another, so hear them as such. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil and my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and all those who dwell therein. This is the word of the Lord. Now again, I included verse one of Psalm 24 with 23 to remind you of the same things that Jesus was trying to remind his audience of that day all those years ago. The Lord will never leave you nor forsake you. Jesus wasn't just declaring all of those things that day as a flex. He was telling his followers what was going to happen so that when they happened, they would know it was all happening under his watch. Even though he had ascended into heaven, they could know that Jesus hadn't abandoned them. He would always be watching over them, doing exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, and that included letting his enemies survive until he put an end to them. From Pentecost forward, God's people could trust that while he was putting an end to that temple they so dearly treasured, Jesus was beginning a new temple building project with his very self as the cornerstone. Using the apostles and prophets as the foundations and pillars of the new temple and his new covenant people as spirit-filled living stones, Jesus was wherever his people were. Beloved, his glorious building project includes you. When you gather with the people of God every Lord's Day, you should look around and be reminded he has not left you alone. He has called you to gather together and to be drawn up into heaven with one another and all of our brothers and sisters all over the world as a living temple. Let this table and the bread and wine that you and so many others are about to receive be a constant reminder that you're walking, even when you're walking through the valley of the shadow of death, you do not have to fear because Christ is with you. He has anointed you with His Spirit, and as you are going to receive this cup which overflows with His grace, trust that His goodness and His mercy will follow you all the days of your life. As we are dwelling in this little house of worship now, let us look forward from here to that day where we will dwell in the most glorious house of the Lord forever. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the peace.